[THS] Secret Ordeal in Psychiatric Hospital Turned Adolf Hitler Into a Tyrant

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Secret Ordeal in Psychiatric Hospital Turned Adolf Hitler Into a Tyrant

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Important questions remain unanswered about Nazi mass murderer Adolf Hitler

Tuesday May 4,2010

AN explosive new book turns our understanding of Hitler on its head. Graham Ball
reveals how the Führer’s experiences during the First World War and his subsequent
stay in a psychiatric hospital transformed an unremarkable man into one of the most
notorious despots in history.

The image of Adolf Hitler overshadows the history of the last century. By the time he
committed suicide in the ruins of Berlin in 1945, he had been responsible for the
extermination of millions and the destruction of most of Europe.

Today he is perceived as the personification of evil, a mass murderer and architect of
the Holocaust. Despite the destruction of his Nazi dream of world supremacy,
important questions remain unanswered.

How did a lowly First World War veteran with no real education or wealth become the
most powerful tyrant in Europe in just 15 years? What transformed a dull, second-
rate artist into a ruthless despot capable of such despicable cruelty? Who was Adolf
Hitler and what gave him the power to command others to obey his perverted
desires?

Much has been written about his rapid rise to power, the creation of the Third Reich
and his conduct during the Second World War but little was known about his early
life, until now. Claus Hant is a German author who has spent 15 years researching
Hitler's younger days and he believes the events of one day in the Nazi leader's life
changed the course of history.

Most of Hitler's early life was quite undistinguished. He was born in Austria, his family
were poor and his drunken father would beat him. He left home and settled in
Vienna in 1908 and tried to make his way as an artist. He was a run-of-the-mill
figure, hard-up, somewhat eccentric and described as a bit of a bore.

He was said to have no exceptional traits or talents. However, all that was to change
one day in October 1918. Hitler had joined a Bavarian regiment of the German Army
in 1914 and fought at the front throughout the conflict. On October 14, 1918, at
Werwicq in Belgium, Lance Corporal Hitler and his comrades fell victim to a gas
attack.
He was one of a number of injured men taken to Bavarian Field Hospital No53 at
Qudenaarde near Brussels. All the men who had been exposed to gas were treated
at Qudenaarde but the doctors refused to treat Hitler because they diagnosed him as
a "war neurotic" and soldiers unable to cope mentally with their experiences on the
front line were banned from treatment alongside other injured men.

This led to Hitler being transported 600 miles to a small hospital in Pasewalk, a
remote, rural town on the German border with Poland. Hant explains: "This incident
is one of the key points I make in my book Young Hitler. It is, I believe, the most
significant event in Hitler's early life and goes a long way towards explaining what
drove him to become the man he was."

Hant believes Hitler underwent a dramatic personality change that can be pinpointed
precisely to the days immediately following his exposure to poisonous gas in Werwicq.
"On his admission Hitler was examined by psychiatrist Dr Edmund Forster, who
diagnosed him as 'a psychopath with hysterical symptoms'.

"Hitler remained at the hospital for a month and may have been treated with
hypnosis, which was the usual treatment at that time for war neurotics, although it
seems unlikely that hypnosis could provoke such a profound and permanent change
in a person's being as was the case with Hitler. Equally, he may have undergone
electric shock therapy."

It arguably makes no difference whether Hitler's psychological metamorphosis was
triggered through treatment, a severe shock on the front line, the effect of poison
gas (most probably mustard gas), a near-death experience or a combination of these
factors.

"His racism, his anti-Semitism, his opposition to democracy and his exaggerated love
for Germany had all been present before Pasewalk, as had his violent temper,
vindictiveness, delusion of genius and the certainty that divine Providence was on his
side, " says Hant.

"After Pasewalk Hitler was the same average person he had been before. However,
there was one crucial difference. What had previously been an assumption had now
become absolute certainty to him.

"Before he had 'believed' that divine Providence protected him, now he was utterly
convinced of it.

Previously he had 'believed' himself to be a genius, now he knew it to be true. His
political convictions had also now become 'absolute truths'."

So, before the war in Vienna, friends of Hitler maintain he was not in the least anti-
Semitic and they complained of his long-winded monologues. He was no orator. Yet
within little more than a year after leaving hospital Hitler held a crowd of 2,000
spellbound with the sheer power of his discourse.

In later years Hitler described his experience in Pasewalk in spiritual terms. While
medical opinion would describe what happened as a psychotic episode, Hitler
believed that he was visited by an almighty power who told him he was to be
Germany's saviour.

This belief in the allegedly divine nature of his life stayed with him until his suicide
more than 20 years later. After his stay at Pasewalk he frequently identified himself
with Jesus Christ. At a Christmas celebration in 1926, he said: "The work that Christ
had begun but had been unable to finish [Hitler] would complete."

In another speech he said he should be crucified if he did not fulfil his obligations.
The more successful he became the more he was convinced that he was an
instrument of destiny. "People of Germany, " he proclaimed in 1936, "I have taught
you faith, now put your faith in me."

A rapidly increasing number of people came to believe in Hitler's self-image, assisted
by Nazi propaganda. It was insinuated that the Führer had overcome all things
"ignoble". He had no weaknesses.
In public, Hitler was never seen wearing glasses and, as he did not drink alcohol,
smoke or eat meat, he appeared above all human cravings, and the Führer's
girlfriend, Eva Braun, was not known to the German public until after their deaths.

Hitler ensured that the people saw his utterly unshakeable self-belief and regarded
him as "the helper, the rescuer, the saviour in the hour of their greatest need. In the
eyes of the faithful Hitler was not simply another politician, he was a being sent from
God. Hitler exploited this messianic dimension in his rally and meetings.

The rallies held in Nuremburg, in particular, came to resemble grand religious
celebrations rather than the usual political assemblies.

The more fanatically the masses believed in Hitler, the more they reinforced his belief
in himself no matter what.
Hant adds: "His interval in this hospital and the reason he was there became one of
Hitler's closest secrets. He was even prepared to kill to keep the truth from coming
out."

News that Hitler had spent time in a psychiatric hospital would have destroyed his
fledgling political career. In the Twenties one of his opponents, General Kurt von
Schleicher, discovered that Hitler had spent time at the Pasewalk hospital and made
a series of attempts to get his hands on Hitler's medical records but failed.

In 1932 he recruited a close friend, Ferdinand von Bredow, a secret service officer,
who was asked to confiscate the file. A few months after the file was seized Hitler
became Reich Chancellor and in June 1934 General von Schleicher and Colonel von
Bredow were shot by the SS.

The file disappeared but one man still knew the truth of what happened at the
hospital and a secret police investigation was launched against the psychiatrist Dr
Forster, who had admitted Hitler at Pasewalk.

On September 1, 1933, Dr Forster was suspended from the clinic where he worked
and on September 11, after an interrogation by the Gestapo, his wife found him
dead in his bathroom.

He had apparently shot himself although his wife told the police her husband didn't
own the gun that killed him.

The irrational belief that sustained Hitler and enabled him to seduce the German
people was born in the trenches and took form in his mind during a secret stay in a
remote psychiatric hospital. Had these events not coincided the course of history is
likely to have changed and millions of innocent lives would have been spared.

To order a copy of Young Hitler by Claus Hant, James Trivers and Alan Roche
(Quartet Books, £25) with free UK delivery, send a cheque or PO (payable to the
Sunday Express Bookshop) to: PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4WJ, call 0871 988 8366
(calls cost 10p per minute from a BT landline) or visit expressbookshop.co.uk

Source: Express
http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/view/173118/Secret-ordeal-in-psychiatric-
hospital-turned-Adolf-Hitler-into-a-tyrant