Abstract
Background Even more than 70 years after the end of WW II, questions regarding the personality of dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) remain unresolved. Among them, there is a focus on the problem of his state of mental health, in particular on the possible relevance of the medical treatment he received for a war injury at the military hospital of the small German town of Pasewalk in the last days of WW I. Some authors have come to postulate a profound change of his personality due either to a psychic trauma suffered or a hypnotic therapy he supposedly underwent for curing a hysterical blindness. Objectives The assumptions about Hitler’s war injury which rely on only two significant sources shall be assessed for their validity. Methods Existing historical sources and inferred hypotheses will be discussed in the light of alternative interpretations. Results The mentioned suppositions reveal their highly arbitrary character: neither a hysterical blindness of Hitler’s nor a hypnotic treatment at Pasewalk military hospital can be substantiated. Discussion Given the fact that Hitler’s medical sheet is most likely irrevocably lost, the authors plea for the acceptance of the limitations of historical research, even more so since the occurrences in Pasewalk lack any deeper importance for a historic assessment of Hitler’s personality.
Highlights
Though more than 70 years have passed since the end of World War II, that outburst of extreme violence in Central Europe remains somewhat enigmatic: how could a country like Germany, which considered itself among the world’s most civilized nations, become the perpetrator of such extreme destructiveness? One of the explanations at hand points to the person of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and his charismatic, even hypnotic aura
Is where some authors make the assumption that psychiatry plays a role, stating that Hitler underwent a profound personality alteration at the end of World War I, when he fought with the rank of lance corporal in a Bavarian infantry division
They postulate that the presumed change was the result of either a severe psychic trauma suffered when his unit was attacked with mustard gas in the trenches close to the Belgian town of Ypern in October 1918, or from the psychiatric treatment he supposedly received afterwards in the Northern German town of Pasewalk, where he was a patient at the local military hospital from October 21 to November 19 of that year
Summary
Though more than 70 years have passed since the end of World War II, that outburst of extreme violence in Central Europe remains somewhat enigmatic: how could a country like Germany, which considered itself among the world’s most civilized nations, become the perpetrator of such extreme destructiveness? One of the explanations at hand points to the person of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and his charismatic, even hypnotic aura. Is where some authors make the assumption that psychiatry plays a role, stating that Hitler underwent a profound personality alteration at the end of World War I, when he fought with the rank of lance corporal in a Bavarian infantry division They postulate that the presumed change was the result of either a severe psychic trauma suffered when his unit was attacked with mustard gas in the trenches close to the Belgian town of Ypern in October 1918, or from the psychiatric treatment he supposedly received afterwards in the Northern German town of Pasewalk, where he was a patient at the local military hospital from October 21 to November 19 of that year. Discussion: Given the fact that Hitler’s medical sheet is most likely irrevocably lost, the authors plea for the acceptance of the limitations of historical research, even more so since the occurrences in Pasewalk lack any deeper importance for a historic assessment of Hitler’s personality
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