by Norman Ohler
If it is true that a dictatorship is defined as a secret that as few people as possible know, but which affects as many people as possible,91 then Morell’s treatment was truly totalitarian. As long as no one knew of the clandestine activities within Hitler’s own body, he remained unimpeachable. For Morell there were only two possibilities: either limit the use of Eukodal or encrypt his record of it, to protect himself and his patient against outside attacks. If Hitler demanded the substance in greater quantities—explicitly or by subtle means—the doctor applied the cipher. That may have been why the dictator was so determined that his physician should never leave his side but should always remain available—to give him that “x”: the biochemical buffer between him and the world. At one point there is a marginal note explaining the placeholder, claiming that “x” means nothing more or less than glucose. However, glucose is often abbreviated to “Trbz.” (Traubenzucker), so the statement loses credibility.
We may assume that “x” at times referred to Eukodal, which Hitler used to make himself look outwardly convincing, and to artificially conjure up the old magic that he had previously radiated quite naturally. The dictator’s notorious suggestive powers, particularly in difficult situations, are well known. In his diary entry for September 10, 1943, for example, Goebbels raves about Hitler’s surprisingly fresh physical appearance, even though “the exertions of the last day and the last night have of course been huge. . . . Contrary to expectation his appearance is extraordinarily good. . . . He has had hardly two hours’ sleep, and now looks as if he had just come back from a holiday.”92 Reich Commissar Koch spoke with similar enthusiasm about the contagious effect: “I myself have been charged with new energy, and left my discussion with the Führer freshly inspired.”93 On October 7, 1943, all the Reichs- and Gauleiter (Reich and district leaders) came to the Wolf’s Lair for a meeting to lament the increasing unimpeded air raids on German cities. A pharmacologically bolstered Hitler delivered a fiery speech in which he expressed his unshakable conviction about an imminent victory so winningly that his guests returned optimistically to their bombed-out communities, firmly believing that the Reich must have some special innovation that would finally deliver victory. “11 o’clock: injection as always. Right forearm very swollen. Appearance very good,” Morell noted for this day.94 And when Hitler flew shortly afterward to Breslau (Wrocław) to boost the morale of several thousand junior officers from all parts of the Wehrmacht, Morell was at the ready with his syringe: “Injection as always.”95 The result: loud chants of Sieg Heil! from the young officers, who returned to battle freshly motivated.
Hitler’s closest colleagues, like the members of his High Command, who were not au fait with these drug fixes, often reacted with incomprehension and disbelief to their Führer’s unrealistic optimism. Did Hitler know something they didn’t? Did he have some kind of miracle weapon up his sleeve that could turn the war around? In fact it was the immediate high of the injections that allowed Hitler to feel like a world ruler and gave him a sense of the strength and unshakable confidence that he needed to make everyone else keep the faith in spite of all the desperate reports coming from every front. A typical Morell entry from this period: “12.30 p.m.: because of talk to the General Staff (c. 105 generals) injection as before.”96
For Christmas 1943—with the Red Army just beginning the Dnieper-Carpathian operation in continuation of its summer offensive—Morell was sent a centenary edition of Goethe’s Faust by the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, to “remind you not only of your friends in Munich, but also of your student days when you, as you tell us, were known as Mephisto.” This short inscription contains nothing less than the core of this German drama about Hitler and his personal physician. “But then, as today, you were certainly not the evil spirit, but the good one,” the state secretary added and, being unaware of the actual circumstances, probably thought nothing more about it.97 Morell wrote a letter of thanks for the special edition by return of post. We may doubt whether he had much time to immerse himself in the book. Treating Patient A kept him busy around the clock.
The increasing biochemical entrenchment of the Führer had one other consequence: anyone who wanted a talk with him was soon also grateful for a pharmacological booster to help survive the meeting unscathed. Communicating in a state of dejection, exhaustion, or even just sobriety with a doped-up commander on whom your life depended, one who could forgive no one, even himself, the slightest sign of despondency, became too precarious for many. Hitler couldn’t bear failure or weakness: anyone who looked ill, slack, or even uninspired was quickly out of the picture. He had often explained the dismissal of a prominent figure as being on grounds simply of ill health.98 Morell took advantage once again: as there was no sick room in Restricted Area 1, the doctor with his field pharmacy in the “drone barracks” was the man with the emergency supply onsite. Hitler’s valet, Linge, for example, was immediately given the hardcore drug Eukodal even for a case of flu, so that he could stay fit for duty and good-humored. The fat doctor always kept a supply of different remedies for officers, adjutants, or orderlies and thus inveigled himself into the good books of the aides who were so important for life in the bunker. The doctor also liked to help generals who wanted to put themselves in a calm, confident state before meeting their supreme commander.99
Pervitin was considered the most effective substance for surviving a briefing. Morell knew about the dangers of the upper and wrote to a patient who asked for a prescription from him: “This isn’t a power food. It isn’t oats for the horse, it’s the whip!”100 And yet he unhesitatingly handed out the Temmler preparation, and word of the use of methamphetamines in the Wolf’s Lair made waves as far as Berlin.101 Conti, Pervitin’s old enemy, got wind of the way the drug was being doled out so generously and wrote to Bormann requesting that all district leaders and prominent Party members be informed about the dangers of so-called stimulants. He assumed that there were high levels of abuse even at senior levels. Bormann’s reaction to the letter is unknown.
What we do know is that if Hitler’s visitors needed exponentially harder drugs to withstand the pressure in that meeting room, this further reinforced an atmosphere of augmented reality in the inner circles of the Nazi leadership. The long-term consumption by Patient A, which no one was allowed to know about, was contagious. Hitler’s multi-addictive presence replaced any relationship with reality among all the people in his immediate entourage.
One Reich, One Dealer
The extent of systematic drug abuse in the Nazi state is apparent from documents that refer to dubious connections between the army’s main medical depot and the German military secret service. In 1943 the Wehrmacht’s central pharmacy delivered 1,250 pounds of pure cocaine and 130 pounds of pure heroin to the Foreign/Counter-Intelligence Office.102 These are huge quantities that exceeded the annual medical requirements of the entire German Reich many times over. Spies, however, had no authorization from the opium section of the Reich Health Office to receive these “special deliveries.” The lion’s share went to a Department Z, which took care of the organization and administration of the secret service, as well as Department ZF, which was responsible for finances. The latter department on its own received half a ton of cocaine hydrochloride, a quantity worth millions. Might this have been a way of getting hold of foreign currency by exporting pure substances? Perhaps it was also used to bribe important contacts abroad, whom the Nazis wanted to keep onside in difficult times.
In December 1943 the army medical inspector wrote an urgent letter to put a stop to these clandestine deals. He prohibited the distribution for any reason other than “healing purposes in the usual doses.”103 This demand didn’t impress the head of counterintelligence, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. In April 1944, 4.4 pounds of cocaine hydrochloride, 3.3 pounds of morphine hydrochloride, and 7 ounces of heroin were delivered to SS-Sonderkommando Wimmer in North Africa, which was carrying out the sabotage operations against the Allies in the Sahara, and possibly doing a thrivi
ng drug trade at the same time. The deliveries to the secret service were made on the express wishes of the recipients. They wanted Merck’s cocaine in its original packaging: that internationally popular product from Darmstadt.104 What was done with it has not as yet been discovered. One Reich, one dealer.
Patient B
Either you give up smoking or you give up me.
—Adolf Hitler to Eva Braun105
When General Field Marshal Erich von Manstein demanded at the briefing session on January 4, 1944, that the front on the Dnieper River bend be drawn back to avoid a further military disaster, Hitler became so worked up that, “because of spasms,” he called for Morell, who gave him a restorative Eukodal injection that calmed him down.106 On the same day the Red Army crossed the 1939 eastern Polish border and marched relentlessly toward the German Reich. Five days later Hitler once again demanded the strong opioid, “for flatulence (excitement),” as Morell recorded107—and when the dictator had to speak to his people shortly afterward in a radio address, the doctor noted: “Afternoon, 5.40 p.m.: before big speech (radio for tomorrow) injection as always.”108
At the end of February 1944 the Wehrmacht was on the point of having to retreat from the whole of Ukraine and Hitler was holed up in the snowy Berghof, his frozen cloud-cuckoo-land of a home in Obersalzberg, where his lover, Eva, nineteen years his junior, was staying. A place where he could watch ravens and perform his wearying impersonations of the sounds made by different machine guns used in the Second World War—whether he did so high or not, we cannot tell. And at teatime there was always steaming hot streusel cake made from a family recipe by Morell’s wife, Hanni: “the best Streuselkuchen in the world.”109 Dense snow was falling outside the enormous panoramic window of the big drawing room. Opposite was the mystical Untersberg, which lay covered in white, glittering in the winter light. Legend had it that the emperor Barbarossa slept there until his resurrection and the reinstatement of a glorious Reich. Since the defeat in Stalingrad Hitler had an almost physical dread of snow, and called it the shroud of the mountains. The Führer barely stepped outside the door.
In any case the situation offered little comfort to the Germans. The Russians, clearly resistant to the cold, were preparing to retake the Crimea, and the coolly rational British were bombing Berlin and other cities in the frozen Reich. Germany’s former allies, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, threatened to break away from Hitler, and defeats accumulated everywhere. In Italy the Allies were marching northward slowly but inexorably. Successful field marshals like von Manstein110 and Paul von Kleist*111 were dismissed because they persisted in expressing views of their own.
Hitler’s personal physician certainly wasn’t fired—quite the contrary. On February 24, 1944, his patient awarded him the Knight’s Cross of the War Merit Cross. While bestowing him with this high honor, Hitler described him as a gifted doctor, the savior of his life, and a pioneering but misunderstood researcher in the field of vitamins and hormones.112 By way of thanks, a short time later the freshly decorated physician gave his patient “Vitamultin injections for the first time (for fatigue and freshness). Before the injection very tired and exhausted, without sleep. After that very lively. Two hours’ discussion with Reich foreign minister. In the evening over dinner very fresh compared with midday, very lively discussion. Führer extremely pleased!”113
Morell also treated Eva Braun more often now: Patient B made the work easy for him, as she demanded the same medication as Patient A in order to be on the same wavelength as her lover. In his hormone dispensation, however, Morell made an exception from this synchronization. Hitler received testosterone for his libido, while Braun was given medication to suppress menstruation so that, quite literally speaking, their chemistry was right, and they could at least enjoy some sexual success in the momentary breaks between increasingly lengthy military briefings. At any rate that was what Hitler strived for, despite rumors to the contrary. He even on occasion claimed that relationships outside marriage were in many respects superior, since they were rooted in natural sexual attraction. He seemed convinced of the beneficial effect of physical love: without sex, he claimed, there was no art, no painting, and no music. No civilized nation, Catholic Italy included, could manage without extramarital intercourse. Morell in turn provided indirect information about the kind of copulation performed at the Berghof, when he stated after the war that Hitler had sometimes canceled medical investigations to conceal wounds on his body from Eva Braun’s aggressive sexual behavior.114
Outwardly the image of a healthy “Führer world” was widespread even in the spring of 1944, in spite of the disastrous military situation. The Berghof, whose walls were hung with the works of old masters, played an important part in the dissemination of propaganda, and contributed considerably to the continuing media implementation of the Führer cult. When the man and his faithful German shepherd, Blondi, stood at the edge of the forest in early spring, gazing into the distance, Braun (personally trained by the official Reich photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann) was always there, having chosen his ties beforehand. Issuing instructions on how Hitler should pose, she put her Agfa Movex into action. Even today clips shot by Braun still circulate on the internet. Anyone who sees these pictures might think that Hitler was the most ascetic, conscientious, modest person in the world. No hard drugs are injected; instead fawns come into view or, failing that, children are stroked and Easter eggs hidden, while the self-justifying Speer paces back and forth on the terrace in his light-grey pinstripe. The personal doctor can also be seen munching cake and putting a brave face on things.
Eva Braun stands in for Leni Riefenstahl in capturing Hitler on film.
But when Eva Braun turned the camera off, the masks fell straightaway, and she again started digging her fingernails into her forearm and biting her lips until they bled—while Hitler’s hand shook so much when he was drinking apple tea that the cup rattled on the saucer, embarrassing everyone. As for Morell, he was so run down by now that he could hardly climb a flight of stairs. Admittedly the personal physician found no rest because everyone needed him. Going to see the fat doctor was part of bon ton. Meanwhile his patients had come to include all the top-ranking officials of the Reich and their allies: he treated Mussolini, who was given the code name “Patient D”; industrialists like Alfried Krupp or August Thyssen (fee for treatment, 20,000 reichsmarks115); many Gauleiter and Wehrmacht generals; Leni Riefenstahl, who was given morphine enemas; the SS chief, Himmler; the foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop (“Patient X,” or “Rippenshit,” as American Intelligence later nicknamed him); the Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer; the Japanese ambassador, General Hiroshi Oshima; and the wife of Reich Marshal Göring, who had injections on alternate days of “Vitamultin forte”—whatever was hidden behind that label.
More and more influential National Socialists made the pilgrimage to Morell—even if it was only a way of announcing their closeness to Hitler and confirming their own position. Above all, of course, Hitler claimed the time of his personal physician, and Morell, who was himself in poor health by now, complained to the wife of the economics minister, Walther Funk, another patient: “At all times of day and night I have to follow the instructions that I get from above. At the moment I drive up to the Führer at noon to possibly give him treatment, and come back to the hotel at almost two o’clock in the afternoon, to lie in bed all day so that I’m able to accompany the Führer again the following day.” By now Morell was hooked on the needle himself, and his assistant, Dr. Richard Weber, had to travel from Berlin to the remote Berghof, as he “is the best at giving injections, and the only one guaranteed to find my veins.”116 What Morell was treating himself with is not recorded.
Illnesses, medicines, and mass murder defined everyday life at the Berghof in the first half of 1944. The bowling alley, still an attraction in the 1930s, was hardly used now. Camouflage nets hung over the famous panoramic window because of the constant fear of air raids; everyone vegetated in an eternal twilight, sitt
ing around, either by a stove on the bench or in expensive armchairs, staring at the dust-gathering Gobelin tapestries: vampire-like figures who had a fear of natural light. Even when the sun shone outside, the electric lamps were burning inside. The thick carpets gave off a musty smell.
The supreme commander of the navy came for the Führer’s fifty-fifth birthday: Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz reported on the establishment of a special unit with miracle weapons, brought models of new mini-submarines as a present, and asked his commander in chief to do everything to keep the Baltic ports open in return. Hitler, as mad for boats as a child for toys, blindly promised Dönitz that he would. On his birthday Patient A’s personal physician injected him with a cocktail of “x,” Vitamultin forte, camphor, and the plant-based coronary prophylactic Strophanthin,117 followed the next morning by an injection of Prostrophanta, a concoction for heart conditions made by Morell’s company, Hamma. There were also intravenous injections of glucose, more Vitamultin, and, as the cherry on the cake, a homemade preparation of parasite liver, whose intramuscular injection would immediately brand a medical practitioner today as a quack, and possibly put him behind bars.118 Patient A sincerely thanked his physician as the only one who could help him. The birthday party was disturbed only by an air raid warning: the sirens wailed, the big artificial fog device was turned on, and the Berghof, that refuge from reality, sank into artificial whiteness like a nightmare version of mystic Avalon, cut off from the world by an opaque veil. For fear of damage to his heart and “ever greater breathlessness [from] discharged gas,” Morell briefly fled to the valley.119