Dan Snow's History Hit - Getting Inside the Mind of Hitler

Episode Date: May 24, 2020

No man knew Adolf Hitler as intimately as his trusted physician, Theodoor Morell. As part of Hitler's inner social circle, he assisted the leader in virtually everything for the entire war years. His ...unconventional treatments were famed in Germany, and Hitler so trusted the 'miracle' prescriptions that trains were stopped to allow the doctor to deliver injections with a steady hand. I was joined by Professor Frank McDonough, an internationally acclaimed expert on the Third Reich, who revealed the concoction of drugs which electrified and maimed the erratic mind of Fuhrer.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. You know, we can't go long on this podcast without getting Frank Madonna back on. He is just one of the best. He's an academic, he's a writer, scholar, teacher. Oh, and Twitter phenomenon as well. And he's a fantastic storyteller. He is on the podcast this time talking about Hitler's health. Hitler's mental and physical health, which let me tell you guys, it wasn't great. It wasn't great, especially towards the end of the Second World War. So we cover these issues like was he full of drugs, all that kind of stuff. So enjoy this. This was actually originally broadcast as a History Hit Live. As you know, I'm doing History
Starting point is 00:00:33 Hit Lives on YouTube on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for the whole of lockdown, 4pm UK time, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific time. So you can tune in to that one. Thank you for the many, many tens of thousands of people that have been doing that. It's been a fun project and might see if we can keep it going after the end as the lockdown starts to loosen up a bit, but it's been great fun. So this is Frank McDonagh talking about that. If you want to watch Frank McDonagh
Starting point is 00:00:55 or listen to the previous episodes of the podcast that he's been on, you probably need to go to History Hit TV. It's our digital history channel. You can use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, and you can watch hundreds of hours of history documentaries, including Frank McDonagh talking about Hitler. You can use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, and you can watch hundreds of hours of history documentaries, including Frank Madonna talking about Hitler. You can also join our next Zoom live podcast record. It's with Kate Lister.
Starting point is 00:01:12 We're talking about the history of sex in quarantine. People have been having sex for a long time, it turns out, and we've been going through periods of quarantine, so there's nothing new. She's been researching what it was like. Listen in, ask some questions, and watch me tie myself in knots, trying not to say anything that will get me divorced when my wife listens
Starting point is 00:01:30 to the podcast. In the meantime, everyone, enjoy Frank McDonagh. Frank, it's a privilege. It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you for coming on. Nice to be here, Dan. Let's get on with the big question. A lot of people will look at Hitler and think, you know, invaded Russia, dragged Germany down with him, obsessed with racial. It's a throwaway comment. Oh, Hitler, that Hitler was mad. He was mad. When you're writing about Hitler, do you see method in that matter or do you see a person that was mentally very disturbed? Or do you see a person that was mentally very disturbed? Not really, no.
Starting point is 00:02:08 I think the misconception with Hitler is, obviously, we don't use the word mad anymore. I'll use it as a shorthand, really, you know, for what people used to say about people being mad, because at one time that was a common usage word, wasn't it? Now, if you think about it, you know, somebody who is walking down, I don't know, a common usage word, wasn't it? Now, if you think about it, you know, somebody who is walking down, I don't know, Liverpool city centre with a Greggs pasty in his hand, and he says, this is Buzz Aldrin. You know, you'd say that guy's not quite all there, right? But Hitler was
Starting point is 00:02:37 nothing like that. You know, Hitler actually was a person who could go into a beer hall, actually was a person who could go into a beer hall, start to make conversations with people, draw them into what he wanted to do, create a political party, negotiate with all kinds of people, including people in the beer hall, officers in the army, the local politicians. So Hitler was the opposite of what we would call mad. He was quite a person with a lot of wherewithal, and he could actually be very charming. We see this throughout his political career. I mean, look at somebody like Sir Anthony Eden.
Starting point is 00:03:20 You know, when he met him, I think for the first time in 1934, he was very impressed by Hitler. You know, he said he had a real grasp of foreign relations. He was very charming. So somebody like Anthony Eden, you'd hardly say, oh, here's a man who's completely gullible. Originally, he was taken in by Hitler's charm. To some extent, he charmed other people, like, for example, the piano millionaire, Beckstein, got here to support the early nazi party again very well-heeled woman very much part of the upper classes of bavaria and yet she sees hitler as you know a really charming person she mentions this quite a lot so i think we've got to get away from this idea that he was mad and the whole problem with hitler is that there's too much in these memoirs of people who
Starting point is 00:04:08 wrote after the war. You know, for example, his generals, you know, most of his generals go on about his terrible temper. Now he was always uncontrollable. But often they were as just as uncontrollable as him. These arguments that he had with his generals were quite bitter and it wasn't all one way either. Sometimes he came up with a perfectly rational argument and they rejected it and sometimes he was proved right over arguments like that. The Battle of Kursk is a good example. He actually really had cold feet over this and he was more or less pushed into it by his generals. the attempt to take Moscow in 1941 Hitler didn't want to take Moscow he was more concerned about economic gains in the Caucasus in the south they pushed him you know they pushed him on to take Moscow and when it was all over
Starting point is 00:04:59 he got angry you know anyone would get angry if you had a plan which was to go in another direction and someone went in a different direction and you would prove right you'd have every right to be angry I think and I think the anger of Hitler is over emphasized most people say that he was very much under control his personality was under control if used anger, he often used it for effect. He would feign anger against people. Take he comes back in, Hitler's all nice, you know, have a cup of coffee. How are you doing? Yeah, we'll get you home on my special train. So, you know, that was Hitler. He's very manipulative. But being manipulative doesn't make you mad. And I think if we go too far down the Hitler was mad route or Hitler had you know serious mental problems then we end
Starting point is 00:06:06 up in mitigation don't we we end up saying oh yes but because he had all these mitigating circumstances maybe he didn't know what he was doing in that attack against the Soviet Union maybe he really didn't know what was going on in the Holocaust you know you can end up absolving him what a brilliant answer thank you very much frank let's go back to hitler's childhood and you've just briefly was there anything there that people have been poking around looking for instances where he may have developed this irrational hatred of jewish people or people that weren't caucasian what kind of upbringing did he have and were there any clues any useful bits for you as a historian to explain how he turned out? You know, if Freud's right, then your early life shapes the rest of your life. Now,
Starting point is 00:06:49 there's no doubt about that. We're all shaped by our early life. I don't know anyone who wasn't influenced by their parents or their father and mother. Many people are influenced in their politics. You know, in the end, you had all kinds of arguments with your dad about, you know, you wanted to be, you know, a revolutionary. And then in the end, you turn into a liberal, just like your dad. It's a bit like that. And I think with Hitler, his dad, although he painted him as a lowly clerical worker, in fact, he was a customs official. He was basically a really powerful member of the Habsburg Empire. He had a uniform. He was a customs official for the whole of the town of Linz. Also, you know those kind of powers that are given to people who are customs officials.
Starting point is 00:07:32 They have lots of powers to go into people's houses, seize goods, etc. So his father had a lot of responsibility. He was far from this lowly civil servant that Hitler portrayed him as. Now, he was quite brutal. There's no doubt there was beatings. We know that there were beatings in the early life because his half-sisters say there were beatings as well. So he did rule the house with a rod of iron and the mother was the sort of passive one. You know, this kind of old-fashioned Victorian relationship, you know, the father administers the sort of punishment and the mother administers soothing medicine. And that was the way Hitler's life was.
Starting point is 00:08:10 And he said something like in Mein Kampf, I admired my father, but I didn't love him. He had a difficulty in loving people, although he did definitely love his mother. There's no doubt about that. You know, he had a very close relationship with his mother. He was a mummy's boy. He did dote on his mother. There's no doubt about that. You know, he had a very close relationship with his mother. He was a mummy's boy. He did dote on his mother and his mother's death hit him really, really hard. But in terms of his early life, you couldn't say that his early life was deprived. His father had
Starting point is 00:08:37 a detached house. His father was a beekeeper. They had their own honey. They had their two domestic servants who lived there. There was orchards in the garden, so he could go out and pick himself a pear or an apple. You look at the photographs of him in the school. He doesn't look like somebody from the poorer sections of society. In fact, it was a fee-paying school that he went to. So in other words, he went to what we would call a public school. He glossed over all of that. He was always a reader. He liked to read mainly history was his thing. And he liked art as well.
Starting point is 00:09:10 He had an aptitude for art. And he was very much more than a house painter. You know, the famous line in the producers, you know, Hitler, wear a house paint, one room, two coats, one afternoon. He was much more than that. And okay, he couldn't paint people, which some people said, oh, that shows his detachment from people. And I think he was a loner. I think he developed to be a loner. I think he had a close friend, Kubasek, who went to Vienna
Starting point is 00:09:37 with him and he sort of fell out with him for some reason that we don't know, possibly because he felt ashamed by the fact that Kubasek got into the Vienna School of Music he was a gifted pianist and Hitler didn't get into the Vienna School of Art and they shared the flat together and after that Hitler disappeared maybe because he felt he couldn't face him after he got turned down twice to get into the Vienna School of Art and we know there's a big debate over his sexuality, isn't there? You know, I mean, Lothar Mactan wrote a book called The Hidden Hitler. And he argues quite persuasively, actually, that Hitler might have been gay.
Starting point is 00:10:15 And he produces a number of pieces of evidence for this, including this extract from Kubasek's book. For example, they meet a local businessman in a hotel, him and Kubasek. And after the end of the meeting, Hitler says that the local businessman stuck a card in his pocket and said, you can come and meet me. And the businessman offered to pay for the dinner. So he met them in the streets and said,
Starting point is 00:10:39 do you want to come for dinner? I'll pay. So there's that instance. There's another instance in the barn where they're both naked and Kubasek sort of wipes Hitler down. And he says something like Hitler could see that this was quite a sexual moment. He laughed about it. And then there's a guy in the army called Hans Mend who makes the allegation that he had a relationship with Hitler while he was in the army.
Starting point is 00:11:02 Then, of course, he brings in the after the war period. He mentions all of these people who were in the early Nazi party, Ernst Röhm, for example, who was definitely gay. And others, Dietrich Eckhart, you know, there were many others in that early coterie of people who were gay. And when you think of the Nazi party's profile, you wouldn't think of it as a group of gay men. But in fact, there was a higher proportion of gay men in the Nazi Party, way higher in the group that Hitler knew than in the population as a whole. You mentioned the war there, Frank. Let me just quickly ask about that. I mean, Hitler was on the front line. He had actually a particularly dangerous role in the First War
Starting point is 00:11:41 and the trenches. Rather than his childhood, It was that experience, something that helped turn his mind towards these extreme and violent and terrible things. Well, he says, doesn't he, in Mein Kampf, that when he went to Vienna, he'd never been anti-Semitic at all, because he'd never seen and lints, he never saw any Jewish people. But when he went to Vienna, a cosmopolitan city, he started to see Orthodox Jews, and he could see that they were different. And once he saw that they were different, he started to observe what they did, and he sort of had a low opinion of them then. But he said it wasn't much beyond a sort of hatred of them, because they had a good life, and he was living in a lodging house at the time. He was far from poor in Vienna. Again,
Starting point is 00:12:22 He was living in a lodging house at the time. He was far from poor in Vienna. Again, he bequeathed the occupational pension that his father had from the civil service. So he's far from poor. And he sold postcards there as well. He says that he wasn't. And also he went for musical evenings with a Jewish family. So he definitely wasn't anti-Semitic beyond the norm.
Starting point is 00:12:42 You know, anti-Semitism was widespread in Vienna at the time. He wasn't more anti-Semitic beyond the norm. You know, anti-Semitism was widespread in Vienna at the time. He wasn't more anti-Semitic. During the war, none of his comrades in the trenches say that he was anti-Semitic. They can't remember him mentioning the Jews at all. They say he mentions communists and he's against them, but he doesn't mention Jews. So we think that his anti-Semitism grew after the war. Two things, really. He bought into this sort of fake document called the Protocols of Zion, which brings out a kind of Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. And he says that he believed in
Starting point is 00:13:18 that. He also buys into the idea that it was Jews who conspired with communists to stab Germany in the back at the front. So we had this kind of myth. Germany didn't lose the war. It lost the home front and it was betrayed by these people that they're stabbing the back myth. And he believed in that. And then we start to see that in his early days in Munich after the war, when he becomes this beer hall speaker, he speaks on the Jewish question quite a lot. And he does blame them for being communists. He's very much got this idea that Jews are very much connected
Starting point is 00:13:55 with being communists as well. So it's like there's anti-Marxism and anti-Semitism get mixed together. And of course, as he believes in this jewish world conspiracy and as things go badly in germany of the great inflation the wall street crash he tends to see the jews as fermenting international ideas and not national ideas so if you want to create a national socialist state and not socialist in the kind of equality of people idea you know socialist in terms of a community national community you're better than saying national socialist he could have called it the national community party really he hijacks the concept of socialism
Starting point is 00:14:38 because it's popular he hijacks the red flag doesn doesn't he? Because he realises that's popular with the masses. So we can say that he doesn't become anti-Semitic until the war is over. What about the war? Because he was brave in the war. Was he a runner, a message carrier? I think in the early part he had a bicycle and he would take messages. It was a very dangerous thing to do. He was taking messages from the officers to the front. Artillery were banging and dropping all around him. I think he got a motorcycle later on in the war. So he was a kind of motorcycle
Starting point is 00:15:10 messenger. He was awarded the Iron Cross. So he was definitely brave in the war. I don't think there's any doubt about that. And all of his comrades say that he became incredibly patriotic. Was he damaged by those experiences? Not particularly. I mean, I think it's a little bit like that thing, you know, when you go back to your childhood and your teenage years, you know, maybe it wasn't that great, but, you know, he used to play football in a team and all that. I think he liked the camaraderie
Starting point is 00:15:35 because he'd never really had a coterie of friends like that. So they weren't really friends, but he felt part of something bigger than himself. He was part of this great movement of winning the war, fighting the war. And it was a very passionate thing for him. Whenever anybody talked about the possibility of Germany losing the war, he'd blow up, you know, and say, you've got to stay loyal, got to stay loyal to the Kaiser. So yeah, I think the war shaped in terms of, you know, the idea of having a culture of people around him and really that group of people you know
Starting point is 00:16:08 built themselves into the Nazi party and the Nazi party was really full of people who'd served in the First World War somebody said how did you get in the Nazi party you just showed people your medals from the war and if someone hadn't been in the war he'd bring it up he kept bringing up to chamberlain you didn't serve in the war he's a badge of sort of courage if you said in the war and when he met lloyd george it was over the moon about lloyd george and the fact that he'd been the war leader this great little man he said he changed the entire war you know and he really
Starting point is 00:16:41 admired lloyd george he spends a lot of time in my camp talking about Lloyd George. That Welsh wizard, he said, he transformed propaganda. If you want to learn about propaganda, he said, watch Lloyd George in the first world war and read his speeches. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Stand a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence.
Starting point is 00:17:14 Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week So in fact, what does he learn when he does become leader? 1933, let's take his sort of leadership before the outbreak of the Second World War in September 39. How does he cope with being leader? Does he change? Does he rely on alcohol like Churchill or cups of tea? What's his health like in his mental state?
Starting point is 00:18:06 Well, I think Hitler was a reluctant leader to begin with. I mean, he says before the sort of Munich Beer Hall coup that ends in a disaster and he ends up in prison for treason, he says, I just want to be the drummer. He mentions that a lot. He wants to be the drummer of the movement, you know the man who does all the speeches but he wanted at that time somebody else to take the leadership
Starting point is 00:18:30 of it so in a sense he was like kind of reluctant leader then he becomes the leader and then he realizes mainly through the power of his oratory his organization and propaganda he starts to think you know i'm pretty good at this, you know, and he realizes he's an excellent speaker. Like anybody who's a good speaker, you know, he knows it. He sort of knows he's a good performer and that he'll get a good reaction from it. So I think that he sort of builds himself up into this lead and he starts to believe in this Fiora principle, the idea of the leader must have total power. He starts to believe that by the early 30s, that he's a kind of man of destiny. And he keeps saying, luck will always
Starting point is 00:19:12 save me. He said that to Goering, luck will always save me. And in many cases, you know, there is a lot of luck that goes on throughout his life. He does get lucky loads and loads of times. I only have to mention the two assassination attempts. You know, he leaves the Beer Hall, you know, in 1939, 13 minutes before the bomb goes off. Somehow he doesn't get killed in the bomb attack by Stauffenberg in 1944. He does get lucky in that way. You know, Hindenburg dies conveniently so he can take total control of Germany. So he did have a lot of luck on the way, I think. But when he becomes leader in 1933, I think he does have some idea of what he wants to do,
Starting point is 00:19:51 and he does believe that he can transform Germany. So in a way, he's a self-made man, a kind of autodidact. He thinks, I know better than these people. They don't rate me very highly they think I'm someone crude from Bavaria and they think I speak in this sort of you know obvious dialect but they don't realize you know I've got native wit I'm well organized I can run rings around these bourgeois politicians and in a sense he does run rings around these bourgeois politicians, but he's an impressive person in the cabinet. We see that in the cabinet, first of all, when he starts to run the cabinet.
Starting point is 00:20:32 Franz von Papen, who is the vice-chancellor, he famously said, you know, we'll have Hitler squeaking in the corner after six months and he'll be dancing to our tune, the conservative tune, we'll control him. And after three months, Hitler has won round Hindenburg, who first of all is very dubious about whether he should become Führer at all. And now Hindenburg really believes in him, you know, after this fantastic day in Potsdam in March, where they celebrate Frederick the Great in this day of Potsdam. And on that day, Hitler goes down on one knee and he shakes Hindenburg's hand. And Goebbels is nearby.
Starting point is 00:21:10 And Goebbels said, I could see the old man was in tears. And Papen said, within three months, it completely pushed me aside, Hindenburg. And he felt that Hitler was the man he could trust. And also, he said, in the cabinet, I could start to see that my arguments didn't carry as much weight as Hitler. And he said, Hitler was a master of facts. And he said, he dominated the cabinet. And he would put forward his point of view
Starting point is 00:21:36 and he would win people around to his point of view. He said, it wasn't a matter of pushing his ideas. He had persuasive arguments to back them up. And what about his personal health? Does the famous and controversial Dr. Morell, does he come into Hitler's life at this point? There's a number of things about Hitler. Number one, he was always a hypochondriac.
Starting point is 00:21:56 Whatever was going around, he'd have it. He was always taking a lot of sort of prescription medications, even before he became Führer. He had stomach problems. He had pain in his stomach all the time. He had digestive problems. Some people say, you know, he might have had hepatitis at one time. Hepatitis was very common. Some people think he might have had a gallbladder condition, which was never treated because he had some of the pain and the sort of infection that is associated with that. So early on, he doesn't have a kind of personal doctor.
Starting point is 00:22:28 He kind of self-medicates himself. There's no hint early on. He doesn't drink alcohol. Again, he doesn't drink alcohol because anyone with a sensitive stomach, they can't take too much alcohol. They sort of shy away from too much alcohol. So he shied away from alcohol. So he wasn't a drinker. But Dr Morell comes on the scene Dr Morell comes on the scene for a rather strange reason
Starting point is 00:22:53 his personal photographer Heinrich Hoffman who introduced him to Eva Braun she was his assistant in the photographic studio so So he found him a girlfriend. And he also finds him a doctor because Hoffman has venereal disease. And Morel is an expert on this. So he goes to see him and he says, I went to see him. He cured me. He doesn't mention it was for venereal disease because Hoffman is married. It's not something he wanted everybody to know. And he said, well, bring him to the Berghof.
Starting point is 00:23:24 Let him examine me. So he examines him. People say, oh, he was like a kind of drug dealer. But that would be incorrect, really, because what he was also an expert in was homeopathic medicine. So he was very much into this idea. I mean, I take a load of vitamins every morning. I'm not sure really whether if I stop them and make any difference you know but i sort of believe in some of them you know that's a good vitamin that's good vitamin d or whatever and
Starting point is 00:23:49 hitler was very much like that you know give me a vitamin what is it he wanted to give him vitamin because there was talk that it calmed you down it was kind of a natural sedative so he had like a combination of vitamins and what made it different was he would deliver them intravenously so hitler one minute would be sort of you know really like this next minute oh hello you know he'd jump up so this vitamin boost he kind of liked now we think then that he started to add a drug called pervertin which is an amphetamine really so then he added that to the vitamins and then he was really you know up all night but he also gave him multi-floor tablets for his stomach and this multi-floor was a weird tablet really you know it was made from the excretia of Bulgarian peasants I always used
Starting point is 00:24:39 to say not only did he talk shit he actually used to take it three times a day so he was taking these tablets and they did have an initial effect some people said maybe it was a placebo effect he'd been told that morel was a bit of a genius bit of a witch doctor then he starts to take these viscerum injections now he takes this tablet his indigestion goes away his pain goes away he says this man's a genius so he keeps them morel with him all the way to the rest of the Third Reich. He has this personal doctor who prescribes him all kinds of things. Now, you could say it's a little bit like Elvis and Michael Jackson. Once you've got a personal doctor and he can write you a prescription,
Starting point is 00:25:18 well, you know, the tendency is to say, oh, you know, I've got this pain here, you know, I've got this pain here. For example, he has a problem with his eye. Morel gives him these eye drops which have cocaine in them. Sometimes he hasn't got anything wrong with his eye and he says, can I have them eye drops again? And so Morel says, no, you're only supposed to take them, you know, for like a couple of days to stop your eyes being bloodshot. And he says, oh, you know, but they do do me good, but they make me feel good. So there's like a kind of indication that he sees a drug
Starting point is 00:25:45 and then he sort of likes what it gives him. And that goes on. By the middle of the war, he's taken about, could be like 40 different medications that he's taken in one form or another. Just pause briefly to talk about Pertivin, which you mentioned. So it's like speed, amphetamines. How widespread was it generally? I mean, was this something that helped
Starting point is 00:26:05 the famous soldiers of the wehrmacht march into battle that bit quicker and a bit more aggressively yeah yeah these medications amphetamines now it's an illegal drug isn't a class a drug but then this perversion you could get it at the chemist in america the similar drug was called benzadrine there's a famous rhyme about this woman needs her Benzadrine to keep her kitchen clean or something like that. And it's got this idea that, you know, you can get a boost out of that. And as we know, lots of drugs, cocaine was like a legal drug for a long, long time. And it wasn't a lot of cough medicine. As we know, there was alcohol, wasn't it? You know, you can always remember your granny or your great granny saying,
Starting point is 00:26:43 give me more of that cough medicine, you know, because it was a little bit like port or something like that. So that was widespread. You could buy it at a local chemist. It wasn't illegal. So a lot of German soldiers were using it. And then the German army realized that, you know, in the tank battles, the perversion, you know, when you're riding on a tank and you want to go for all night on a tank to keep the momentum of an offensive it was a good thing so early on they were a bit dubious the commanders and the doctors who were attached to the regiments but then they started to say give them more let's get more so we see like orders for quite a lot of this pervert and go into the german army in the second World War. So they are on that.
Starting point is 00:27:26 But as we know, I think RAF pilots, they had amphetamines. And also, I think it was worked out that injections of vitamin B helped RAF pilots because it calmed people down. I think that the use of drugs can be over-exaggerated. Whether it makes a difference, I think sort of brings out what's already there, doesn't it? You read these monologues when he's lecturing Mussolini or talking to people over dinner. It does sometimes sound a bit like he's been on something. And do you think that did affect decision making? I suppose it must have done. People who were sort of close to him, sort of assistants, Hans Linger, for example,
Starting point is 00:28:02 he said that he saw him every morning after he had this injection from Dr. Morell. And he said he was a transformed man. All of a sudden, he said he'd go in there because his natural inclination, you know, Hitler was a kind of down person, really. He wasn't like an up person. But then he said after he had these injections, it was like, come on, what are we doing today? Right, come on, let's invade Poland. I didn't quite say that, but he sort of did really become animated over that. And obviously, as the war went on and paranoia is part of some of the side effects of amphetamines. I think he always was paranoid anyway.
Starting point is 00:28:42 I think he had some paranoia in him anyway. He's always worrying about people plotting against him so that was already there you know it's I mean Stalin was even worse wasn't he I mean more paranoia than Hitler but I don't think it really affected his decision-making in terms of he knew what he wanted to do he had the kind of framework of what he wanted to do and obviously he changed his course all the time as the war develops i think he gets physically ill i think some of these illnesses that he's had maybe it's the gallstones maybe it's stomach problems they get worse he's an insomniac and that
Starting point is 00:29:20 gets worse as well i think he's suffering from a kind of form of depression as well. He likes to keep himself on his own a lot. During the war, he starts to go on his own a lot. And he likes a kind of darkened room. These are all classic symptoms of somebody who's depressed. If you feel depressed, you don't want to see the sunshine, do you? You want to be in the darkness if you're depressed. That's certainly an aspect of him, I think.
Starting point is 00:29:44 It starts to affect him. I do think, I mean, there is an argument for this. After 1943, not only does the German campaign start to falter in the Second World War, but Hitler starts to falter. He starts to lose his nerve. There's no doubt after Stalingrad, he not the same person he starts to worry about you know the decisions that he's making look at the battle of Kersk comes close after the battle of Stalingrad and he's very tentative now he's very worried about what he should do and you see that with all of the decisions then the generals are pushing him to go one way he's pushing to go another way that's where the argument comes from because he's sort of getting tired out and i think in 44 with operation bagration in june the attack by the soviet union
Starting point is 00:30:32 on the eastern front then there's the d-day landing going through the whole of france and by september he collapses you know morel says he probably had a heart attack and then there's a big debate some of his doctors see him and he's in bed he's taken to his bed and it looks then as though he's had a complete nervous collapse and a physical collapse he might have had a heart attack on top of that and then there's a big debate with his doctors where there's this guy shank comes to see him and he's a bit worried about his condition he sees all these bottles of pills around his bed. And he says, what's all these bottles of pills?
Starting point is 00:31:08 He said, they're prescription medications from Dr. Morel. Anyway, he goes out and he says to the doctor, can I have a list of all of his medications, please? I'd just like to see exactly what he's on. He starts to ask Morel. You know, Morel's not used to this, is he? You know, he's a personal doctor, so he's got somebody coming into his lair in this way he takes a tablet called eucadyl I don't know what it's called now it's probably like those serious pain medications that you might get if you went into hospital a sort of opiate but not as high as morphine and he takes this and he quite
Starting point is 00:31:41 likes it and he looks at it and he finds that there's some strychnine in it. So Schenck goes back and he says to him, done a laboratory test on this drug and there's some strychnine in it. I think he's poisoning you. So Hitler goes away. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed.
Starting point is 00:32:14 We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week thinks about it and then this is the other thing about Hitler he has an immense loyalty to people you know if you were his friend over 20 or 30 years something went wrong in your life he'd stick with you he'd normally stick with you unless you know he had to abandon you there was no no chance of sticking with you and what he does is Morel says unless you know he had to abandon you there was no no chance of sticking with you and what he does is morel says this is rubbish he says let me take it away i'll
Starting point is 00:33:10 do my own laboratory test independently he says so he comes back and he says yes fiora there is five percent of strychnine right it helps the other ingredients to deliver the pain medication he said this is not unusual he said you know in certain medications there's a little bit of what seems like a poison he said at the level of five percent this couldn't possibly poison you whatsoever first thing hitler does he sacks shank he says go away i don't believe you i think what you're trying to do he said is become my personal doctor and then he sacks brand. Brandt, who's been with him for like 10 years. He sacks him as well.
Starting point is 00:33:49 And he says, you're in on it as well. You're in on this conspiracy to undermine Dr. Morell. And Dr. Morell survives right to the end of the war. Well, Hitler almost didn't survive to the end of the war. As you just mentioned there, 1944 must have been extraordinarily difficult for him. Not only defeats in the East and West, but there's an assassination attempt that comes very close to taking his life. We're all familiar with the memes of Hitler in his bunker from the extraordinary film Downfall. It shows Hitler breaking down. I mean, how accurate is that?
Starting point is 00:34:17 The famous one where they sort of repeat it, you know, when he tells all of his generals, you all leave the room, you know, and then he sort of throws his pen down. That really did happen. That is true. And it happened because he'd ordered, this is where the generals come in, he'd ordered a counteroffensive outside Berlin that didn't happen. And so what happened was one of the generals tells him that the counteroffensive that you ordered, it never happened. It was only in your mind that it happened.
Starting point is 00:34:45 Well, of course, when he he realizes they're lying to him and also after the bomb plot he's had enough of people who are plotting against him he loses the plot i don't think that tirade when you think of where it comes in this kind of chronology i don't think that it was completely unjustified to be angry there's no reason to go into the kind of anger that he displayed but most of the generals said that was the worst they'd ever seen him so in other words if that was the worst they'd ever seen him then they must have been exaggerating about all the other arguments that went on and it wasn't as though these generals like Manstein you know Manstein could stand up for himself. He was a soul,
Starting point is 00:35:25 he was a skillful general. You couldn't tell Manstein what to do. And a lot of these German generals were brought up in that Prussian tradition of, we decide where the armies go. And they couldn't face the idea that a politician was telling them what to do. Just lastly then, he was a broken man, he was not sleeping, he felt like a failure, all those things. Should we describe Hitler in those last months as a drug addict? I think we could say that he was dependent on drugs. I think a drug addict, you'd have to say that they aren't just dependent on drugs. They're dependent on what the drugs do to them. There is an element of getting high. Now, I don't think that Hitler ever saw these drugs that he was
Starting point is 00:36:12 taking in that way. Maybe you could say that he liked the feeling that they gave him. I do think that he felt that they took down his anxiety. I feel as though he felt it was more of a medical than a kind of recreational thing. So drug addiction for Hitler wasn't a kind of recreational thing. Let's take drugs and let's get high. He wanted to take them because he thought they'd dampen down the anxiety and the feelings. And there are a lot of drugs that he's taken that do seem like antidepressants in one way or another. And a cocktail of drugs. You know, he did have serious illnesses by then.
Starting point is 00:36:48 You know, he did have lots of pain. He had constant headaches. He had these stomach problems. So it wasn't as if he didn't need some drugs. I just don't think we can have him, you know, as a sort of drug addict where we think that he was taking the drugs just purely to get high on them. I don't think he did that.
Starting point is 00:37:10 Therefore, he may have been kidding himself that it wasn't an addiction i would say it was a dependency rather than an addiction i hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense.
Starting point is 00:37:34 But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review,
Starting point is 00:37:44 I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather. The law of the jungle out there. And I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you. you

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.