by Norman Ohler
But he was running out of time; cheap access to the East wouldn’t go on forever. The front was crumbling, and Morell was unable to take any pleasure from his endocrinology institute. In the spring of 1943 Kharkov was retaken by the Red Army.
“Unfortunately, the events were stronger than we were, and shattered our beautiful hopes and the initial stages of our work,”67 Morell reported disappointedly, and concentrated on his work in Olmütz in Bohemia-Moravia again. To transport masses of raw animal materials there, a journey of over six hundred miles, and thus to make as much profit as possible out of the Ukraine, he moved heaven and earth, or rather the whole state apparatus. It was quite natural for the “Führer’s personal physician,” as his letterhead had it, to reinforce his own wishes by claiming Hitler’s full agreement.
In a phase of the war that was taut to the breaking point, when there were only a few hotly disputed communication routes to the East, which were urgently needed for bringing supplies to the troops as well as returning wounded soldiers, Morell blithely used the logistics of the Führer’s headquarters to send hundreds of trucks and Reichsbahn wagons countless miles across Eastern Europe to shift his plundered tons of pigs’ stomachs, pancreatic and pituitary glands, spinal cords, and cows’, pigs’, and sheep’s livers. The strict instruction to everyone at the Führer’s headquarters to “prevent any non-crucial vehicle use” plainly didn’t apply to him.68 He even transported chickens’ feet, which were boiled down to make gelatin. The loading list of a typical Morell wagon was: seventy barrels of salted liver, 1,026 pigs’ stomachs, 130 pounds of ovaries, 440 pounds of bulls’ testicles. Value: 20,000 reichsmarks.69 A delivery like this came from the Ukraine to his Aryanized factory in occupied Czechoslovakia almost every day. Major Wehrmacht transports remained stranded because Morell was merciless: if a train with goods for the Ukrainian Pharma-Works didn’t get through quickly enough, he picked up the phone and approached the highest authorities “about the wagon provision.” He would approach the transport commandant’s office, then move on to the head of the railways or to the Reich transport minister, referring to his position and threatening serious trouble if the wagons were not authorized “to travel with the greatest level of urgency, and made available ideally with a Wehrmacht letter of conveyance.”70 If his opposite number complied, he was rewarded with the prospect of being presented to Hitler—or at least given a box of silver-wrapped high-class Vitamultin bars.71 Morell always had his way: his urgent desires were passed on from office to office as factual orders.
This led to even more toxic consequences. To keep his factories operational and as profitable as possible, he did not baulk at the use of forced labor: “At the moment we are having difficulties getting hold of untrained workers . . . so that the loading of wagons with Vitamultin can only be done by girls,” his chief pharmacist, Dr. Kurt Mulli, reported. “So I will try to import prisoners from time to time. Perhaps it might be possible for you to fetch me a confirmation via Bormann’s office that our work deserves top priority.”72 Mulli knew that his boss could influence even the mighty Martin Bormann, the widely feared Reichsleiter of the NSDAP and the Führer’s private secretary.
During those months Morell bought such quantities of organs that he exceeded his own capacities. But he insisted on a Ukrainian monopoly and preferred to let the goods rot rather than allow others to help treat them: “I cannot be expected to pass the raw materials on to my competitors. . . . The right to collect and process the glands and organs in the Ukraine belongs exclusively to me.”73
Morell focused his attention chiefly on livers. As an organ with an important metabolic function, it breaks down and produces a great variety of substances. Among these are male sexual hormones formed from cholesterol, which induce a muscle-building, potency-increasing effect, or corticoids or glucocorticoids, which were seen as miracle remedies because they raise short-term energy levels. Morell was optimistic that these, according to the state of research at the time, would have effects that were both stimulating and generally beneficial. But the liver also contains substances including a great variety of pathogens that provoke immunological reactions—and can set in motion a form of auto-self-destruction if the body is unable to distinguish harmful from harmless materials.
The more chaotic the progress of the war, the more often the frozen livers thawed during transport, because the journey was inevitably stalled for several days. Sometimes it could be three weeks before they reached Olomouc (Olmütz), where the foul-smelling organs were boiled for many hours in large pots with added acetone and methyl alcohol. The poisons were distilled out of them, and what remained was a brown pulp with the consistency of honey. It was diluted with water and put into ampoules, ten thousand per day, labeled “Hamma Liver.”
But did such a brew ever find its way to the consumer? To the doctor’s chagrin, from May 1943 no new medication was allowed to be introduced to the market, due to the regulations of the war economy. But Morell was even able to negotiate that hurdle. Autocratically he turned to the responsible Reich Health Office, run by Reich Health Führer Conti: “In response to the description of the difficulties that I’ve been having with my remedies, the Führer has authorized me to do the following: if I bring out and test a remedy and then apply it in the Führer’s headquarters, and apply it successfully, then it can be applied everywhere in Germany and no longer needs authorization.”74
As sick as it might sound: Morell, formerly a popular doctor from the Kurfürstendamm, now with a pharmaceutical empire that he had built out of nothing, used his patients in the Führer’s headquarters—and in all likelihood Hitler himself—as guinea pigs for dubious hormonal preparations and steroids, produced often enough in disastrously unhygienic conditions, then introduced into the bloodstream by injection. The resulting concoction was released into the Reich and to the Wehrmacht: the autoimmunological downfall.
“X” and the Total Loss of Reality
The Führer’s appearance is rather deceptive in regards to his health. If one looks at him only fleetingly, one has the impression that he is in excellent physical condition. But this is not in fact the case.
—Joseph Goebbels75
With the capitulation of the remains of the 6th Army in Stalingrad, early in February 1943 the Wehrmacht had lost its halo—and, with it, Hitler. His outward reaction was always the same, whether it was to the military disaster on the Volga, Rommel’s defeat by the British in Africa, the devastating bombing raids on German cities in the Ruhr by the Royal Air Force, or the submarine battle in the Atlantic, which the Germans were losing. Hitler was consumed by total isolation, accompanied by the unequivocal conviction that only his decisions could be correct. He stubbornly insisted on the obvious outcome of a “final victory” and showed no willingness whatsoever to base his decisions on reason or sobriety. Instead of facing up to the changed situation and seeking new strategies such as a peaceful solution, the system still further ossified—paralleling the condition of Patient A.
Loneliness surrounded Hitler. He visited his Werwolf headquarters for only a few days in the whole of 1943. Otherwise he retreated to the Wolf’s Lair again like a wounded animal, where the communal meals and nocturnal tea-drinking sessions were felt to be more and more excruciating. Hitler engaged in lengthy and enervating conversations with himself, spells that lasted until the early morning. These waffling monologues could go on for hours; the Führer’s soft baritone addressing no one in particular. Instead his eyes gazed into the distance as if he were talking to a vast and invisible following. He never grew tired of going over his favorite themes yet again: talking about the harmfulness of smoking, preaching against the poisoning of the body, and praising his own vegetarian diet, which his personal physician, who received a tax-free allowance of over 100,000 reichsmarks on January 30, 1943, had recommended on the basis of its vitamin content and restorative properties. To calm his nerves he had the occasion to neglect rules that had once seemed incontrovertible: after dinner Patient A now sometimes d
rank a beer, or knocked back a slivovitz, which had previously been analyzed by the field laboratory, acting on the Führer’s orders, for methyl alcohol.76
That year, when the fate of the war turned once and for all, a physiological transformation occurred in the rapidly aging Gröfaz. “Hitler came to me, bent by a heavy burden, with slow, rather weary steps,” wrote one lieutenant general. “It was as if an inner voice were talking to me: ‘Look at this old man! He can’t carry what he’s burdened himself with!’ Hitler had declined, and with great emotion I looked into dull, tired eyes. No doubt, those eyes were ill.”77
Morell could no longer ignore the physical degradation of the dictator and the demotivating effect that it had on others. But what would cure his patient and turn him back into the leader everyone admired? The cocktail of hormones, steroids, and vitamins was clearly no longer enough. July 18, 1943, was a special date. The situation was unusually tense. The Red Army had won the greatest tank battle in military history at Kursk, and thus destroyed all German hopes of a turnaround in Russia. At the same time the Allies had landed in Sicily, and Italy was about to switch sides and abandon its alliance with Germany. Hitler saw all his hopes going up in smoke, and because of the imminent “betrayal of the Italian Army . . . he had not slept a wink,” as Morell wrote. “Body tensed hard as a board, full of gases. Very pale appearance, extremely nervous. Tomorrow very important discussion with Duce.”78
In the middle of the night Morell was dragged from his bed by Heinz Linge, Hitler’s valet: the Führer was bent double with pain and an immediate cure was required. The white cheese he had had for dinner as well as the roulades with spinach and peas had disagreed with him. Morell gave him an injection, but the basic medical treatment didn’t work. The doctor wondered feverishly what needed to be done to combat the “great attack”79 in this precarious situation. He needed something that worked, something that would numb Hitler’s severe pain and keep him functioning. He needed an ace from up his sleeve, and in fact he did have something. But its use was risky. For the second quarter of 1943, in the bottom right corner of file card “Pat. A,” a substance is listed and underlined several times: Eukodal. A drug manufactured by Merck in Darmstadt, it came on to the market as a painkiller and cough medicine in 1917, and was so popular in the 1920s that the word “Eukodalism” was coined. Its extremely potent active ingredient is an opioid called oxycodone, synthesized from the raw material of opium. The substance was a hot topic among doctors in the Weimar Republic because many physicians quietly took the narcotic themselves. In specialist circles Eukodal was the queen of remedies: a wonder drug. Almost twice as pain-relieving as morphine, which it replaced in popularity, this archetypal designer opioid was characterized by its potential to create very swiftly a euphoric state significantly higher than that of heroin, its pharmacological cousin. Used properly, Eukodal did not make the patient tired or knock him out—quite the contrary. The author Klaus Mann, who (to the sorrow of his father, Thomas, the famous novelist) was highly experimental in this respect, as in many others, confirmed the special status of the substance: “I don’t take pure morphium. What I take is called Eukodal. Sister Euka. We find it has a nicer effect.”80
Morell debated with himself whether to use this hard drug. The moment of departure for the important meeting with Mussolini was edging closer. Patient A seemed apathetic, was hunched over, and talking to no one. Morell knew that Eukodal would pep the Führer up straightaway and remove the violent spastic constipation that probably had a psychological cause. But he saw the possibility that after trying it just once, the addiction-prone dictator would be very unwilling to give up this supposed nectar of the gods. After only two to three weeks of regular use, Eukodal can make a person physically dependent on it. On the other hand, world history seemed at stake. The chance that Hitler might not be up to a state meeting of the Axis powers, or that he might even cancel it, was quite unthinkable. Morell decided to take the risk. He injected the new drug subcutaneously—under the skin. It was a momentous decision.
Patient A’s file card for the summer of 1943: first use of the narcotic Eukodal.
The immediate transformation of Patient A in the minutes and hours after the application was so striking that no one in his entourage could fail to spot it—even if, of course, no one learned the cause for his abrupt change of mood. Everyone sighed with relief at the boss’s sudden burst of energy and prepared enthusiastically for the meeting with the Italians. Hitler seemed suddenly in such good spirits that he promptly requested another dose, but Morell initially refused, “as there were still some important discussions and decisions to be made before the departure at 15.30.” Instead he offered a massage and a spoonful of olive oil, but that didn’t suit Hitler, who now claimed to feel dizzy, again jeopardizing his departure. Whether he ordered another injection of the powerful substance or Morell provided one on his own initiative is not recorded. At any rate the personal physician gave a second injection, intramuscular this time: “Before leaving for the airfield one Eukodal ampoule i.m.”81
A U.S. Secret Service report written after the war and all eyewitness accounts confirm that Hitler was hyped up at his meeting with Mussolini in the Villa Gaggia near Feltre in the Veneto. The Führer talked for three hours without a break in a dull voice to his beleaguered fellow dictator, who didn’t get a single opportunity to speak but just sat impatiently with his legs crossed on the edge of a chair too big for him, frantically gripping one knee. Mussolini had actually planned to convince Hitler that it would be better for everyone if Italy came out of the war, but all he did was knead his painful back from time to time, dab his forehead with a handkerchief, or sigh deeply. The door kept opening to pass on new reports about the bombing of Rome, which was happening at that very moment. Mussolini couldn’t even comment on this because Hitler was talking nonstop to a room full of painfully embarrassed people about how no one should doubt the imminent victory of the Axis powers. The dejected Duce was effectively talked into the ground by the artificially pepped-up Führer. The result of the meeting: Italy would stick at it for the time being. Morell felt vindicated. He seemed to have maneuvered high-level politics with his injections, and he noted self-importantly: “Führer fit and well. No complaints whatsoever on the return flight. Führer declared in the Obersalzberg in the evening that the success of the day was to my credit.”82
Undecipherable: Morell’s handwriting.
A molecule or two away from the pharmacological truth, U.S. investigators after the war suspected that methamphetamine was the cause of Hitler’s giddy behavior at his meeting with Mussolini. However, they provided no proof. Why the Americans failed to spot Eukodal, which Morell had recorded in black and white, is clear from the official translations into English of Morell’s barely decipherable notes. In these the United States Forces European Military Intelligence Service Center wrongly lists among Hitler’s countless medications one called “Enkadol.”83 But since no medication of that name appears in the list of narcotics no further importance was placed on it. The idea that it might be Eukodal didn’t occur to the investigators, particularly since no drug of that name was known in the United States.84 Morell’s scribbled handwriting put the Americans on the wrong track.
Taking Eukodal
Eukodol [sic] is like a combination of junk and C [cocaine]. Trust the Germans to concoct some truly awful shit.
—William Burroughs85
With the introduction of the new drug, Morell, spitefully described by Göring as the “Reich Injection Master,” had finally made his breakthrough.86 During the nocturnal tea-drinking session, which was the barometer for telling who was in Hitler’s good books, Morell was now the only regular guest. “He simply had to be there,” wrote Traudl Junge, Hitler’s secretary.87 His relationship with Hitler had become symbiotic.
Financially, too, the doctor’s activities had paid off: by now he was seriously wealthy. In 1943, the first Eukodal year, he wondered how he could expand his enterprises still further, and decid
ed to move actively into the opium business. A lucrative pursuit: opium was in short supply because of mounting demand. Since Rommel’s defeat in Africa and the landing of British and American troops in Casablanca the German Reich had been cut off from the poppy fields of Morocco. The military situation had also capped the supply routes from Persia and Afghanistan. In the Reich, IG Farben/Hoechst had been looking for a completely synthetic substitute for natural morphine since 1937, and were still in the development phase of a substance that would later become known as Polamidon or methadone. The hunger for an effective painkiller was growing daily, from one overfilled military hospital to the next. Opiates were a precious commodity, particularly during this all-encompassing war with its countless shattered casualties.
Morell wouldn’t have been Morell if he hadn’t spotted a gold mine here too. He extended his dense network of companies all by himself by phone and mail from his official room in the Führer’s headquarters. In Riga he bought the firm Farmacija for the sole reason that it had an opium laboratory and an interesting storeroom: “The warehouse, with a value of 400,000 RM, contains a supply of raw morphine and opium to a value of about 200,000 RM.”88 This would also discreetly secure supplies for Patient A. For a long time Hitler’s drugs had been bought through the Engel pharmacy in Berlin, but recently the pharmacist there, Herr Jost, had repeatedly demanded “prescriptions in line with the regulations of the narcotic drugs act so that they can be entered in the narcotics list.”89 Thus, Hitler’s personal physician became an opium producer, and in the second half of 1943—when the Wehrmacht was forced to retreat along the whole of the Eastern Front—the game continued. Outwardly acting the part of the abstainer who works tirelessly for the fate of Germany,90 Hitler allowed himself the luxury of Eukodal in the Spartan, windowless concrete hole of his headquarters. We can only surmise how often he took the drug. Twenty-four applications are recorded by the end of 1944. But was that all? One is struck by a lapidary “x” that occurs frequently in Morell’s entries. Also the remark “injection as always” gives the reader pause because the phrase is meaningless when applied to the case of a multidrug user who consumed many dozens of different substances every week.