«Half a century ago, Adolf Hitler’s great biographer, the distinguished journalist Joachim Fest, published one of the most important biographies of the German dictator, titled “Hitler.” Speaking to Der Spiegel magazine in 1974, Fest himself stated: «This is the most complete version of events, which includes all facets of Adolf Hitler’s life. (…) This is the last word about this man, because there will be no new revelations about Hitler that have not already been in the public domain. What new information could be investigated or revealed that would change the view of this character? The so-called “Nazi war crimes disclosure law” of 1998 helped hide certain documents under “national security.” (…)
«Fifty years had passed since the German historian and journalist’s statement, but what was demonstrated was that public opinion’s fascination with the figure of Hitler and the history of the Second World War has never faded. Among so many millions of pages, researchers discovered several records that spoke about the Führer’s health and about drug addiction by members of the German army and Adolf Hitler himself.
“Although Hitler was a strong critic of drug abuse, declassified documents made it evident that ‘certain drugs’ could be beneficial in increasing the strength, endurance and efficiency of Wehrmacht combat units. This theory, defended by most of the Reich’s leaders, led, in the late 1930s, to the mass production of a drug that the German people came to describe as ‘miraculous’: Pervitin. Produced by Temmler Pharmaceutical Company, the drug became a ‘social norm’ in all sectors of Germany. It could even be bought without a prescription in any pharmacy until the end of 1941. For example, Dr. Karl Brandt, General Commissar for Public Health and Sanitation of the Reich and Hitler’s doctor (…) from 1934 to October 1944, assured that A large study carried out by the Wehrmacht High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) among 2,000 soldiers showed that those who had consumed Pervitin in combat zones ‘developed tolerance and became addicted to this drug’. The same Brandt report revealed that ‘soldiers on the front lines are reporting positive results from the effects of the drug and its interactions with the enemy.’
“As the war progressed, Temmler produced nearly 900,000 pills per day and millions of doses of Pervitin were shipped to all war fronts. According to a report from the manufacturing company itself, the Temmler Pharmaceutical Company, in a single year more than 300 million doses were produced, turning Germans, military and civilian, into true addicts to a medication absolutely necessary to survive. Another Temmler document states that, between April and July 1940, 35 million doses were sent to the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe.
“After the defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, Temmler increased shipments.”
“The Third Reich then declared Pervitin a ‘weapon of war’ and ‘combat drug’ necessary for the subsistence of its armed forces.
«Since 1941, Pervitin was banned in civil society and only soldiers were allowed to administer it who were in combat zones. The truth is that today the use of substances in society is well known, as well as its effects, but at the time of the Second World War it is difficult to ascertain its real extent.
«Although public opinion in general, and German opinion in particular, raised various questions after the publication of the biography written by Joachim Fest, what is very true, and in defense of the famous German journalist, is that in 1973, the year in When Fest wrote Hitler’s biography, the intensive consumption of methamphetamine and other substances in the Third Reich and among its armed forces had not yet been reliably established or confirmed. Nor was it possible to prove or demonstrate Hitler’s addiction to drugs.
«This is easy to verify because, in the almost 1,200 pages of Fest’s manuscript, the name of Dr. Theodor Morell rarely appears in the entire text and the only time he is named he is mentioned, on page 737, as ‘a simple companion of the leader of the Nazi Party’, but this statement is not at all true. Dr. Theodor Morell was much more than that, and this is demonstrated by his diaries.
«On Monday, June 30, 1947, an obese, pale-skinned, neglected man, with bad body odor and aged, lay on a cot in a Red Cross shelter in Munich. His clothing until 1945 had been a shiny Nazi Party uniform. His current clothing was an American field uniform that was a little too big for him and some completely worn-out American army socks. His only identification was a card with his first and last name and the identifier of ‘American Civil Internment Camp number 29’, located in the same facilities that the Dachau concentration camp once occupied.
«A nurse checked the patient’s temperature and vital signs and decided to call an ambulance to take him to a hospital. Upon entry, administrative staff checked personal items, including an old passport from Nazi Germany. When opening its pages one could read: ‘Professor Theodor Morell, doctor, 60 years old’. An accompanying report indicated that the doctor had served his sentence in the Camp 29 hospital in Dachau. The same document indicated that patient Morell suffered from severe heart failure that made him unable to work and a severe ‘aphasic’ disorder that prevented him from speaking. At the end of the document, sealed by the American military authority, the phrase was handwritten: ‘Adolf Hitler’s personal physician.’ That man would die on May 26, 1948, at 4:10 in the morning. All your documents would be seized by the CIC.
«A year after Fest’s biography of Hitler was published, the first indication of the existence of several documents referring to Morell was found, including interrogations by British and American intelligence. Among the doctor’s documentation, after his death, were the medical records, electrocardiograms, skull x-rays, urinalysis, serologies, neurological reports and dental studies of a patient baptized as ‘Patient A’, ‘MF’ or ‘Adolf Müller ‘.
«The so-called ‘Morell Diaries’ came to demonstrate that Fest’s statement that “(…) there will be no new revelations about Hitler that have not yet been in the public domain” was misguided. (…)
«Hitler had a very close relationship with his doctors. Theodor Morell maintained a very close relationship with the Führer from the winter of 1936 until almost the last days of the collapse of the Thousand Year Reich. Hitler’s last words to his doctor, while outside the Chancellery the approaching Soviet artillery could already be heard, were: “Take off that uniform and go back to being that doctor from Kurfürstendamm.”
Even today the idea persists that Adolf Hitler was a true addict to the drugs administered by Morell, and the truly true thing is that Joachim Fest’s words were incorrect and the figure of Hitler still gives us a lot to investigate and a lot to talk about. , although I will not fall into the same trap as the German journalist. The so-called ‘Nazi war crimes disclosure law’ of 1998 still continues to reveal valuable and surprising data about the man who dragged Europe down» (…).