(Had he not committed suicide)?
I have been reading a book about WWII, and it seems that Hitler was rapidly ageing-by 1943 he had developed arteriosclerosis, and showing signs of Parkinson’s disease ( tremors and shaking). For these (and other reasons) he was rarely seen in public after 1943.
Which leads to the question-would he have died soon anyway? In 1944, Adolf Hitler was 55 years old-but Albert Speer thought he looked like a 75 year old man.Plus, his personal doctor (Dr. Morell) was giving him all kinds of pills and drugs-which probably contributed to his condition.
So, had GErmany not been facing defeat, would Hitler have died soon anyway?
Had he not killed himself, I’d place his death date at 16 October 1946.
ETA: if we start talking about alternate histories where Germany doesn’t lose, I’d still put money on Hitler dying in an internal coup sooner rather than later.
Didn’t the Russians reach the bunker first? I wouldn’t imagine Hitler surviving that encounter.
Assuming ideal conditions (regarding staying out of the hands of the Allies), he wasn’t going to last too many years.
Speer wrote that Hitler was planning on retiring in the late 1940’s if things went well. Hitler was planning his memorial and all that. Piecing things together it seems that Hitler knew he wasn’t going to last much longer. Maybe he thought he’d make it to 1955 at the latest.
But he was definitely going downhill fast. How much of that was stress from the war and really crappy “medical” treatment is unclear. Without a war and with good quality care he actually might have made it to 1955, but without those he had only a couple years to live.
One of the wildcards in all this is whether he had syphilis of nor. Some of his symptoms suggest it. Untreated syph at that advanced stage meant he wasn’t long for the world. Or at least mentally long for the world. Who knows if penicillin would have made a difference if has very far along.
Overall, I can’t imagine him lasting past 1950. I always thought the stories of him being alive in Argentina and such in the 1960s were laughably. (Much like Elvis being alive in the late 1980s.)
Oh, I imagine he would have. Stalin was actually a much bigger proponent of war-crimes trials than Churchill was - I’m not sure he was so keen on these trials being fair, but he certainly would have wanted to parade Hitler around in one. I am not a WW2 historian, but I’d be amazed if the first troops sent into the bunker didn’t have very specific orders to take Hitler alive.
There have been speculations that Hitler had tertiary syphilis-this would have caused his heart problems. He was also showing signs of demetia-plus thos screaming fits that his generals were familiar with.
At any rate, if he had syphilis, would the traetments avilable have cured him or hastened his death?
Another thing from the writings of Speer and others. Hitler was in a rush to conquer as much as he could due to his awareness of his own mortality. E.g., attacking Russia before dealing with England. So Hitler really knew he didn’t have a whole lot of years left in him.
As to the Russians if they got to him: The front line Russian troops were remarkably well behaved given the circumstances. (The follow up guys were the real goons who did most of the raping and pillaging.) I know of no prominent German who was summarily executed during the fall of Berlin by the Russians. Bormann was killed during a breakout attempt but there is no indication that the soldiers knew who he was other than a German trying to get by them. (At that point the Russians ignored whether a guy was wearing a uniform or not. Esp. since many German soldiers were donning civilian clothes to escape.) All the prominent generals who surrendered in Berlin survived to be shipped off to Russia (in many cases for the rest of their lives). I think any Russian soldier finding Hitler alive would have understood the extreme value of taking him alive and the severe penalty of shooting him on sight.
Stalin loved show trials.
Roosevelt was 63 when he died. He’d had access to the best medical care available throughout his life, but it couldn’t beat heart disease.
Although medical science improved between the mid 19th and mid 20th centuries, I think it’s informative to look at his family member’s lifespans:
Father: 65
Paternal grandmother: 52
Paternal grandfather: Probably 65
Mother: 48
Maternal grandmother: 76
Maternal grandfather: 76
Sister: 64
Half-brother: 74
Half-sister: 66
Given Hitler’s already poor health and unimpressive genes, it seems unlikely that he would have lived past the the mid 1950’s or so.