I just saw a show on the History Channel, suggesting that Adolf Hitler suffered from advanced syphilis. It seems that his personal physician/quack (Dr. Morell) had left some notes behind that suggested that der Fuhrer was suffering from advanced syphilis. Hitler had developed a heart murmer, and his erratic behaviour (screaming fits, uncontrollable rages) are characeristic of the final stae of this disease. My question: was advanced syphilis curable in the 1940’s? Salvarasan (the “magic bullet” developed by Dr. Ehrlich) was around, but is it useful against the late stage of syphilis?
Dr. Morell was a starnge guy…I have read that he was a benzidrene addict, and that he often gave Hitler shots of addictive drugs-and this was true of Goebbles, Himmler, and a lot of the Nazi hieracrhy-they used incredibl;e amounts of drugs.
As far as I know, Hitler never had a sexual relationship…even with Eva Braun. He also raved about syphilis…in his “Mein Kampf”, he called it a “Jewish disease”.
Have any tissue samples from Hitler ever been analyzed for the presences of this disease?
Hitler’s corpse was burned the remains buried an undisclosed place by Russian soldiers - so I doubt his remains were analysed for anything. Also he had multiple mistresses before Eva Braun (he had a preference for 16 year old girls, whom, he said, were like soft clay in the hands; easy to mould into whatever he wanted. – Also I suspect, like Islamic fundamentalists, not an affront to a weak self esteem), why do you think he had no sexual relationships – actually how likely is it he should have contracted syphilis without sexual encounters?
There have been many, many attempts to explain why Hitler became the man he did. Commendable of a sort I suppose, this inability to fathom that a regular sane person ever could do what he did, but none the less misguided. I strongly believe it is very important that we face up to the fact that nothing out of the ordinary made Hitler. No strange sickness, no weird childhood experience. Nothing. He was a man just like everybody else and you and me. It’s in us all.
Just to be clear about this point, Morell in his notes did not suggest that Hitler was suffering from syphilis. Rather he recorded symptoms and treatments which others have subsequently interpreted as evidence for syphilis.
And the big problem with any retrospective diagnosis of syphilis based largely on recorded symptoms is that syphilis is notoriously ‘The Great Pretender’. Just as the symptoms of syphilis were often mistaken for the symptoms of other diseases, so, with the patient long dead and unavailable for examination, the symptoms of other diseases can easily be misinterpreted as evidence for syphilis.
Morell historically has been labeled a quack, so his observations about Hitler’s symptoms aren’t exactly reliable, and Der Strange One’s behavior could be just as well explained as being due to the drugs with which Morell liberally supplied him.
That possiblitly is explored quite well in Ms. Deborah Hayden’s book, Pox.
Entirely incidentally, Mussolini suffered from some unidentified venereal disease, though whenever he was tested for syphilis it came up negative. On one such occasion, he was however so relieved that he had the brainwave that the good news should be announced to the Italian people that Il Duce did not have syphilis. Various advisors talked him out of the idea.