Hitler and WW I

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It happened in 1918, while Hitler was still a soldier at the end of  World War One.....

About two months after winning the Iron Cross, Hitler was blinded by mustard gas during a battle. He was taken to the Pasewalk military hospital in northern Germany where he was diagnosed as suffering from "psychopathic hysteria." Hitler was consequently placed under the care of a psychiatrist, Dr. Edmund Forster. What exactly was done to Hitler while under Dr. Forster's care is uncertain because years later, in 1933, the Gestapo rounded up all psychiatric records related to Hitler's treatment and destroyed them. Dr. Forster "committed suicide" in that same year.

In a work published in the History of Childhood Quarterly, psycho-historian Dr. Rudolph Binion suggested that Hitler's psychopathic visions may have been deliberately induced by the military hospital psychiatrist, Edmund Forster. Dr. Binion cited a book completed in 1939 entitled, Der Augenzeuge (The Eyewitness), written by a Jewish doctor named Ernst Weiss who knew Dr. Forster and had fled Germany in 1933. It is a thinly fictionalized account of Hitler's "miracle cure." As a follow-up in a published review, David Bonnell recently summarized the Pasewalk puzzle:

There is considerable controversy regarding precisely when Hitler became driven to destroy the Jews and dominate the world. There is strong evidence, however, that the 'hate and pain' which characterized Hitler's speeches in 1919 and afterward, as well as his fanatical purpose, were not in evidence prior to his psychiatric treatment.

Other psychologists have also published conclusions similar to those of Dr. Binion. In November 20, 1998 for example,  the following feature article was dispatched by Reuters to international newspapers


Baton Rouge, Louisiana (Reuters) -- Adolf Hitler's belief he was meant to rule the world may have stemmed in part from a hypnotic suggestion given during treatment for hysterical blindness in 1918, a Louisiana psychiatrist said in the November Journal of Forensic Science. Dr. David Post, a forensic psychiatrist at the state's forensics hospital in Jackson, Louisiana, based his theory on a book he believes used material from a German military hospital where Hitler was treated after he was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack in the First World War in October 1918. Hitler was a corporal at the time, but the hospital records from that period were later destroyed by the Gestapo, although Hitler wrote of his sudden blindness and his resolve to enter politics if he regained his sight. After Germany's surrender on November 11. 1918, Hitler wrote that he had "a supernatural vision ... A miracle came to pass" and he could see again.

In a book called "Eyewitness" by Ernst Weiss, an exiled German doctor and novelist, a German psychiatrist in a military hospital used hypnotic suggestion in a still-accepted medical protocol for post-traumatic stress syndrome. He tells the patient A.H.: "I am a simple doctor. But perhaps you yourself have the rare power, which occurs only occasionally in a thousand years, to work a miracle. Jesus did it. Mohammed. The saints.... An ordinary person with such a condition would be blind for life. But for a person of particular strength and will and spiritual energy, there are no limits."

"You have to have a blind faith in yourself, then you will stop being blind ... You know that Germany needs people who have energy and blind self-confidence. Austria is at an end, but not Germany," the book passage stated. Hitler was born in Austria. Post believes that passage was based on the German Pasewalk Military Hospital notes and records of Weiss' friend, Dr. Edmund Forster, chief of the Berlin University Nerve Clinic, who treated Hitler at Pasewalk in 1918.

"It was chilling and disturbing to me to read what I believe may have been an account of his hypnotic session," Post told Reuters. Weiss wrote the book for a literary competition in Paris in 1933. 

He committed suicide as the German army marched into the city and the book was not published until the 1960s. Weiss also was on the board of a German exiles newspaper Forster contacted in Paris in 1933, taking copies of his records from Pasewalk. Forster warned the editorial board not to be surprised if he were killed.

Shortly after returning to Germany, Post said, Forster was picked up by the Gestapo on charges of "harboring a subversive attitude toward the new (Hitler's) regime." After 13 days of interrogation, Forster was reported to have killed himself. The records of Hitler's 29-day stay at Pasewalk later were destroyed by the Gestapo, Post said. Although Hitler suffered what are now considered classic symptoms of mustard gas poisoning, including depression, he was diagnosed as a "psychopath with hysterical tendencies" by Forster even before the hysterical blindness, Post said. 

Post is a faculty member at the Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans and a former fellow in forensic psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School, where he began his research on Hitler. Post documented connections between Weiss and Forster through interviews with historians, a Hitler biographer, a copy of a 1943 U.S. Naval Intelligence report declassified in 1973, and records of the German exiles' newspaper. 

"Because of the deaths and the records' destruction, we'll never be able to prove definitively if Weiss' book is a direct account from Forster's reports or just an incorporation of key passages," Post said. "But I'm convinced the account is true.":

Psycho-historians agree that the greatest change in Adolf Hitler's life occurred in Pasewalk Military Hospital while recovering from a mustard gas attack at the end of World War I. His hatred for Jews may have been implanted there by hypnosis, drugs and modern brain washing techniques.

An explanation for what may have happened in Pasewalk to cause Hitler's desire to rule the world is that Dr. Forster developed a scientific method of producing a "programmed assassin" or cruel, pre-coded tyrant using mind control drugs. But the drastic alteration of Hitler's personality may have been a more thorough switch-over than just a change of mind. Pasewalk would have presented a perfect opportunity for identity theft, the world's fastest growing crime today. If so, perhaps the real Adolf Hitler never left the military psychiatrist's watch, but remained an experimental hostage or guinea pig until his apparent suicide. An in-the-flesh impostor, using Hitler's name and personal data to spy within Germany in ways that involved fraud and deception, may have been the man who was actually released from Pasewalk Hospital a month later:

A young German soldier lies in a hospital bed, suffering from hysteria and mustard gas blisters. His face is bandaged with gauze. Is he really Adolf Hitler? When the bandages are finally removed, he will only slightly resemble his earlier person. A New Hitler is about to be hatched, a changed man, with almost no recollection of his past. His nose, forehead, and chin will seem permanently altered from inflammations caused by exposure to mustard gas. From now on, his voice will sound rough and croaking due to respiratory damage and coughing. He will wear dark glasses during the first period of recovery from his chemical blindness. He will have extreme difficulty recognizing his close friends and remembering old acquaintances. But he will be a New Hitler indeed, always mindful of the miraculous change which guided him on his occult mission to lead Germany.  Literally overnight, he will quickly discover his eloquent powers of ceremonial speech. And he will debate with dogmatic opinions about history, geopolitics, philosophy, and other things that never crossed his mind before. The uneducated country bumpkin who never had a girlfriend will suddenly emerge from a few weeks in hospital as a seasoned diplomatic leader and spy. He will even shamelessly seduce his own niece.  


Yet ironically, in 1918 the New Hitler will abruptly lose his artistic talent. Out of awkwardness, he must abandon the art of applying  paint to canvas, even as a pastime. The illustrator who once made a living by selling landscape paintings in Vienna will now be all thumbs: he can't draw a straight line. His artist's signature will not be the same.

During the last few days I had begun to feel somewhat better. The burning pain in the eye-sockets had become less severe. Gradually I was able to distinguish the general outlines of my immediate surroundings. And it was permissible to hope that at least I would recover my sight sufficiently to be able to take up some profession later on. That I would ever be able to draw or design once again was naturally out of the question.

 

~Attributed by Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

 
Hitler supposedly painted between one and three watercolors a day during his Vienna years. If one assumes he painted only one painting a day, and only three days a week, then the minimum number he would have painted would be six hundred, which is close to Hitler’s own recollection of "over a thousand." While the early years were doubtless lean at times, he was not nearly as destitute as he indicates in Mein Kampf.  After Hitler's stay in Pasewalk Hospital he stopped painting and concerned himself with politics. Yet it would be wrong to say that he no longer had time for art.

One of his most ambitious projects was codename Sonderauftrag Linz (Special Assignment Linz). It involved establishing Linz, Austria as the art capitol of Europe and stripping Vienna of that distinction. It is interesting to note that one of Hitler’s favorite official functions was the dedication of art galleries depicting a variety of artworks, past and present. Yet he himself would no longer paint. Only when critics became skeptical of his artistic talent did Hitler finally produce a few more paintings and architectural sketches in the 1920s and late 30s. (Of course, there were also forgeries and copies of his work which the Nazis ordered destroyed.) If we assume that the real Adolf Hitler was still being held as a secret hostage since his stay in Pasewalk Hospital, it would not have been difficult for his military guards to persuade him (by threat or torture) to produce a few more paintings to satisfy the public's curiosity. Characteristically, Hitler's last artworks were interiors, as one might expect from a prisoner under secret arrest. It is highly possible that in those final paintings, the Pasewalk hostage left abstract visual clues about himself and his captors.  

Keeping a Doppelgänger hostage could serve two main purposes in this type of in-the-flesh identity theft. First, to be able to interrogate the hostage at will, and extract any relevant information about that person's life, including other people's names, past activities, and special experiences worth quoting or remembering. Second, if the secret plan to commit genocide or violate sovereignty went wrong, the look-alike hostage would be blamed and killed in a way resembling suicide. The real criminal would then be able to escape unnoticed.

 

Rumors of a Hitler-Hostage: 

Official World War Two intelligence reports from some nations disclosed formal references to "a war prisoner named Hitler." According to Reich leaders, the mysterious hostage was Adolf Hitler's favorite nephew, Heinz, who they said was captured by Soviet troops. 

An exchange of prisoners was supposedly set in motion with Stalin to free the obscure Hitler-Hostage. But his fate remains unknown. He is presumed to have died in a death camp in 1942.


By 1919, the New Hitler immediately began identifying all colleagues and fellow soldiers who smelled a rat (or impostor).  He earned himself a promotion by having them rounded up to be shot as Communists. Then, he was assigned to the highly secret Political Department of the Army District Command. Hitler's new unit was an intelligence operation. The unit refused to accept the defeat of the German-Turkish Central Powers in World War I and assassinated some of the leaders who had negotiated surrender. The New Hitler had now entered a different, wealthier inner social circle. He avoided, and in many cases even refused to see his old acquaintances and relatives. In a secret wartime report, later published as The Mind Of Adolf Hitler, Walter C. Langer drew attention to the curious fact that the New Hitler supposedly always carried a photograph of his deceased mother in his vest pocket. Yet when questioned about her, he could not remember the date of her death. 

Another peculiar detail noticed by Langer was Hitler's German "accent" or particular mode of pronunciation. It is taken for granted that Hitler sometimes uttered Germanic syllables with a local Austrian dialect. But his voice defect was important enough to be brought to the attention of William Donovan, the director of OSS (forerunner of CIA).  


The New Hitler ran into serious dysfunction when he plotted to kidnap the leaders of the Bavarian government and force them at gunpoint to accept him as their leader. With the aid of famous World War One General Erich Ludendorff, he hoped to win over the German army, proclaim a nationwide revolt and bring down the German democratic government in Berlin. The Nazis put this plan into action when they learned there would be a large gathering of businessmen in a Munich beer hall and the guests of honor were to be the Bavarian leaders they wanted to kidnap. It did not occur to them to first take over newspaper offices and radio broadcasting stations. A beer hall was selected instead as the best site for their revolution.


"On November 8 and 9, 1923, SA troops under the direction of Hermann Göring surrounded the place. Hitler and his storm troopers burst into the beer hall causing instant panic. Hitler fired a pistol shot into the ceiling. 'Silence!' he yelled at the stunned crowd."

Hitler and Ludendorff then marched through the streets of Munich at the head of a group of roughly 3000 men, only to be met by police gunfire which resulted in sixteen dead and Hitler's arrest. This brought the would-be Putsch to an end.


On February 26, 1924, the New Hitler was tried for his crime. He successfully turned the tables on his accusers with a "white brotherhood" propagandist speech. Hitler was sentenced to five years imprisonment in Landsberg Prison. It was during this time that his autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), was dictated to Rudolf Hess. Hitler was released November 1924, after serving only nine months of his five year sentence.


Hitler summoned an up-and-coming movie director named Leni Riefenstahl and asked her to film the entire week-long 1934 Nazi rally at Nuremberg. Her film of the Nuremberg rally bore the title personally chosen by Hitler, "Triumph of the Will," and became one of the most powerful propaganda statements ever made. As a pseudo-religious movement, it became political gold, symbolizing the dynasty Hitler claimed would survive for the next thousand years.


The Berghof was Adolf Hitler's home in Obersalzberg, in the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden/  It was located on the same mountain as the Eagle's Nest and was connected to the Platterhof Hotel by a series of complex bunkers deep inside the mountain. The tunnel system was an outstanding piece of underground engineering with a subterranean engine that provided power to run the elevator. Yet strangely enough, Hitler's favorite place was neither the Berghof nor the Eagle's Nest, but a cozy Tea House built on the northern boundary of the area. The pleasant walk to the "Teehaus" often became the scene for important political decisions. Hitler preferred to relax, and even nap, in the Teehaus itself, dreaming of dark angels while surrounded by his closest friends and occult associates.



A blurred portrait is visible in the controversial photos of Adolf Hitler's "Doppelgånger suicide". The out-of-focus portrait is almost certainly a photograph of Eva Braun. It's size, contours, shadows, and range of luminance all bear marked similarities to a now-famous series of photos probably taken by Heinrich Hoffmann, who was Hitler's personal photographer and "corporate" image maker


During World War I "about two months after winning the Iron Cross, Hitler was blinded by mustard gas during a battle. He was taken to the Pasewalk military hospital in northern Germany where he was mistakenly diagnosed as suffering from 'psychopathic hysteria'. (The symptoms were probably caused by the mustard gas.) Hitler was consequently placed under the care of a psychiatrist, Dr. Edmund Forster. What exactly was done to Hitler while under Dr. Forster's care is uncertain because years later, in 1933...the Gestapo rounded
up all psychiatric records related to Hitler's treatment and destroyed them. Dr. Forster 'committed suicide' in that same year.

"The mystery of what was done to Hitler at Pasewalk is deepened by Hitler's own statements. According to Hitler, he had experience a 'vision' from 'another world' while at the hospital. In that vision, Hitler was told that he would need to restore his sight so that he could lead Germany back to glory. Hitler's latent anti-Semitism, which had already been planted by his mystical readings in Vienna, emerged at Pasewalk."

"In a shrewd piece of detective work published in the journal, History of Childhood Quarterly, psychohistorian Dr. Rudolph Binion suggests that Hitler's visions may have been deliberately induced by the psychiatrist, Edmund Forster, as a means of helping Hitler recover from his blindness....Dr. Binion cites a book completed in 1939 entitled, Der Augenzeuge ('The Eyewitness'), written by a Jewish doctor named Ernst Weiss who had fled Germany in 1933.

"It is a thinly fictionalized account of Hitler's "miracle cure".
     
- William Bramley, The Gods of Eden


"Being labeled as such (suffering from 'psychopathic hysteria) would most certainly have resulted in Hitler being subjected to psychiatric treatment for that condition, according to Professor Ernst-Gunter Schenck.

"Other records show that Hitler's personal physician from 1936-1945, Theodor Morell, was prescribing and personally injecting Hitler with psychiatric drugs. The drugs, to which he was addicted, produced a sense of euphoria, for which Hitler expressed his extreme gratitude to Morell.

"Among the drugs he was administered were Eukodal and Pervitin. Eukodal is a narcotic similar to morphine and codeine, with the known adverse effects of euphoria and dysphoria. Pervitin is a methamphetamine, known to cause euphoria, dysphoria, severe social disabilities, personality changes and psychosis. Both are highly addictive.

"There is considerable controversy regarding precisely when Hitler became driven to destroy the Jews and dominate the world. There is strong evidence, however, that the 'hate and pain' which characterized Hitler's speeches in 1919 and afterward, as well as his fanatical purpose, were not in evidence prior to his psychiatric treatment." 

- David Bonnell