Gefreiter Hilter, circa 1917
"Hitler was gassed in World War One and they took him to the hospital and, according to a U.S. Navy Intelligence report, they brought in a Dr. Forster, a hypnotist, and they groomed him.
They told him that he would have troops that would someday invade Russia and kick the Communists out.
They hypnotized him so that he would always believe that he'd be a great leader, like Joan of Arc."
The Mind of Mae Brussell
by Paul Krassner
(from OUI magazine, May 1978)
A little-known United States Naval Intelligence document (declassified in 1973) for the first time identified Dr. Edmund Forster as the psychiatrist who treated Adolf Hitler during his recovery in Pasewalk Military Hospital.
The fact that Adolf Hitler served as a corporal in World War I is known. However, little has been known as to the psychiatric treatment of Hitler during the autumn of 1918 after he fell victim to a mustard gas attack while serving in the front lines with The 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment.
Historians (Rudolph Binion and John Toland) have acknowledged Hitler's days in the Pasewalk Hospital, but Hitler's psychiatric treatment was not the focus of their attention.
The author of the present paper (a psychiatrist) sets out to better understand what is known about Forster's encounter with Adolf Hitler; and discusses the possibility that suggestions given to Hitler under hypnosis may have influenced the course of history.
Author Information:
Post, DE
Clinical assistant professor of psychiatry, LSU Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry/ELSH, Jackson, LA
http://www.astm.org/DIGITAL_LIBRARY/JOURNALS/FORENSIC/PAGES/JFS14374J.htm
"An eine eigenartige Propheseiung errinere ich mich noch in diesem Zusammenhag: Kurs vor Weihnachten (1915) auesserte er sich, dass wir noch vieles von ihm hoeren werden. Wir sollen nur abwarten, bis seine Zeit gekommen ist." (208)
Please find your translated text below:
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"I was eating my dinner in a trench with several comrades. Suddenly a voice seemed to be saying to me, 'Get up and go over there.' It was so clear and insistent that I obeyed automatically, as if it had been a military order. I rose at once to my feet and walked twenty yards along the trench carrying my dinner in its tin can with me. Then I sat down to go on eating, my mind being once more at rest. Hardly had I done so when a flash and deafening report came from the part of the trench I had just left. A stray shell had burst over the group in which I had been sitting, and every member of it was killed." (Price, 241)Then, also, there was the vision he had while in hospital at Pasewalk suffering from blindness allegedly caused by gas:
"Als ich im Bett lag kam mir der Gedanke, dass ich Deutschland befreien wuerde, dass ich es gross machen wuerde, und ich habe sofort gewusst, dass das verwirklicht werden wuerde." (429)
Please find your translated text below:
- "As I lay in bed I had the idea that I would free Germany that I would make it great, and I knew immediately that this would be achieved." (English)
A group of German soldiers. A young Adolf Hitler is on the left (with the "X" above his head).
The Führer, Soldier aged 25 years Immediately after the mobilization, on 3 August 1914, Adolf Hitler’s request to King Ludwig III of Bavaria for entering the Bavarian Army was approved.
On 16 August Adolf Hitler was accepted as a war volunteer and assigned to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 16 (commander: List), to which Adolf Hitler belonged up to the end of war.
The Führer with his war comrades of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16.
From left to right: standing: Sperl (Munich), lithographer (?), Max Mund (Munich), gilder, sitting: Georg Wimmer (Munich), tram worker, Josef Inkofer (Munich), Lausamer (killed in action), the Führer, lying: Balthasar Brandmayer (Bad Aibling), bricklayer.
The effects of Germany's defeat.
Everything went smoothly as long as he felt sure that all would turn out well in the end. He never complained about the hardships that were imposed on him and he never grumbled with the other men. He was happy in what he was doing and met the trials and tribulations of army life with his chin up until he discovered that things were going badly and that his symbolic mother was about to be degraded as he had imagined his real mother had been degraded in his childhood. To him it was as if his mother was again the victim of a sexual assault. This time it was the November Criminals and the Jews who were guilty of the foul deed and he promptly transferred his repressed hate to these new perpetrators.
When he became fully aware of Germany's defeat he reacted in a typically hysterical manner. He refused to accept or adjust to the situation on a reality level. Instead, he reacted to this event as he probably reacted to the discovery of his parents in intercourse. He writes:
"I stumbIed and tottered rearwards with burning eyes...Already a few hours later the eyes had turned into burning coals; it had become dark around me."In another place he writes:
"While everything began to go black again before my eyes, stumbling, I groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my cot and buried my burning head in the covers and pillows."At the time this happened he had been exposed to a slight attack of mustard gas. He immediately believed that he was blinded and speechless. Although he spent several weeks in hospital, neither his symptoms nor the development of the illness corresponded to those found in genuine gas cases. It has been definitely established that both the blindness and the mutism were of an hysterical nature. The physician who treated him at that time found his case so typical of hysterical symptoms in general that for years after the war he used it as an illustration in his courses given at a prominent German medical school. We know from a great many other cases that during the onset of such attacks the patient behaves in exactly the same manner as he did earlier in his life when confronted by a situation with the same emotional content. It is as though the individual were actually reliving the earlier experience over again. In Hitler's case this earlier experience was almost certainly the discovery of his parents in intercourse and that he interpreted this as a brutal assault in which he was powerless. He refused to believe what his eyes told him and the experience left him speechless.
That this interpretation is correct is evidenced by his imagery in dealing with the event later on. Over and over again we find figures of speech such as these:
"...by what wiles the soul of the German has been raped."which illustrate his sentiments very clearly.
"...our German pacifists will pass over in silence the most bloody rape of the nation."
The origins of his belief in his mission and his longing for immortality.
It was while he was in the hospital suffering from hysterical blindness and mutism that he had the vision that he would liberate the Germans from their bondage and make Germany great. It was this vision that set him on his present political career and which has had such a determining influence on the course of world events. More than anything else it was this vision that convinced him that he was chosen by Providence and that he had a great mission to perform. This is probably the most outstanding characteristic of Hitler's mature personality and it is this which guides him with the "precision of a sleepwalker."
From an analysis of many other cases we know that such convictions never result from an adult experience alone. In order to carry conviction they must reawaken earlier beliefs which have their roots far back in childhood. It is, of course, nothing unusual for a child to believe that he is some special creation and destined to do great things before he dies. One can almost say that every child passes through such a period on his way to growing up. In many people remnants of such early beliefs are observable inasmuch as they feel or believe that Fate or Luck or Providence or some extra-natural power has chosen them for special favors. In most of these cases, however, the adult individual only half believes that this is really so even when a whole series of favorable events may make the hypothesis plausible. Only rarely do we find a firm conviction of this kind in adulthood and then only when there were extenuating circumstances in childhood which made such a belief necessary and convincing.
In Hitler's case the extenuating circumstances are relatively clear. Mention has already been made of the fact that his mother had given birth to at least two and possibly three children, all of whom had died prior to his own birth. He, himself, was a frail and rather sickly infant. Under these circumstances, his mother undoubtedly exerted herself to the utmost to keep him alive. He was unquestionably spoiled during this period and his survival was probably the great concern of the family as well as of the neighbors. From his earliest days there was, no doubt, considerable talk in the household about the death of the other children and constant comparisons between their progress and his own.
No photo of ‘mystery man’ Adolf exists during the so-called "missing years" in Vienna. HItler said that during that period he was practically penurious:
“In the years 1909 and 1910, my own situation had changed somewhat in so far as I no longer had to earn my daily bread as a common laborer. By this time I was working independently as a small draftsman and painter of watercolors. Hard as it was with regard to earnings—it was barely enough to live on—it was good for my chosen profession. Now I was no longer dead tired in the evening when I came home from work, unable to look at a book without soon dozing off. My present work ran parallel to my future profession. Moreover, I was master of my own time and could apportion it better than had previously been possible.” (Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 34).
There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion.If this account is true, Hitler apparently did not act on his new belief. He often was a guest for dinner in a noble Jewish house, and he interacted well with Jewish merchants who tried to sell his paintings."
As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence.
I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic anti-Semitism.
Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks.
My first thought was: Is this a Jew?
They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz.
I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?
In 1909 Adolf and his step brother arrived in Ireland. His step-brother Alois obtained a job as a "waiter" in the Shelbourne hotel, Dublin.
Bridget was swept off her feet by the charm of the debonair Austrian:
It was at the annual Dublin Horse Show. Everyone had come to see and buy the fine Irish horses - English and Irish sportsmen, the nobility, tourists from all over the world.
I always enjoyed going anywhere with my father, and I must confess that I was not unaware of the honour of being escorted by 'the best-looking fellow in the countryside', as he was generally described. Many eyes turned towards us: the tall Irishman and the girl in a white muslin dress with flounces and a blue sash. My white hat was ornamental with ostrich plumes, and I carried a parasol. This was the year 1909.
Father was discussing the horses with Mr Tynan, a neighbour, and presently they were talking with a handsome stranger dressed in a brown suit, a homburg hat and immaculate spats. To my interested eyes he represented the height of elegance according to the vogue at the start of the century.
A white ivory walking stick with a gold handle was hooked over his arm with inimitable dash. In his tie was a pearl pin, and two rings on his left little finger, one a diamond and one a ruby, added just the right note of lavishness. Across his cream coloured waistcoat a heavy gold chain stretched from one pocket to the other and his moustache were waxed and curled up right 'á la Kaiser.' He introduced himself as Alois Hitler from Austria.
I cannot deny that this stranger with his fine foreign manners and his debonair Viennese ways made a great impression on me. His conversation was quite different from that of the commonplace, hardworking farmers and their wives which made up the society I was accustomed to. Everything he said was so new to me and interesting that even his broken English seemed charming. (Bridget Hitler, Memoirs, pp. 17-18).
On March 12, 1911, Bridget Dowling eloped to London with Alois Hitler. Nine months later they had a son but they could not agree on a name. Bridget wanted to name him Patrick but Alois wanted to name him William.
"On April 1st, 1924, Hitler was taken to the old fortress at Landsberg and given a spacious private cell with a fine view. He got gifts, was allowed to receive visitors whenever he liked and had his own private secretary, Rudolf Hess.
The Nazi Party after the Putsch became fragmented and disorganized, but Hitler had gained national influence by taking advantage of the press to make his ideas known. Now, although behind bars, Hitler was not about to stop communicating.Pacing back and forth in his cell, he continued expressing his ideas, while Hess took down every word. The result would be the first volume of a book, Mein Kampf, outlining Hitler's political and racial ideas in brutally intricate detail, serving both as a blueprint for future actions and as a warning to the world.
Hess wrote Mein Kampf.
Unambiguously.
Reading Mein Kampf is like listening to Hitler speak at length about his youth, early days in the Nazi Party, future plans for Germany, and ideas on politics and race.
The original title Hitler chose was "Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice." His Nazi publisher knew better and shortened it to "Mein Kampf," simply My Struggle, or My Battle. "
"Landsberg prison, which is in the town's western outskirts, was completed in 1910. The facility was designed with an Art Nouveau frontage by Hugo Höfl. Within its wall, the four brick-built cell blocks were constructed in a cross-shape orientation. This allowed guards to watch all wings simultaneously from a central location (based on the Panopticon style).
Landsberg, which was used for holding convicted criminals and those awaiting sentencing, was also designated a Festungshaft (meaning fortress confinement) prison. Festungshaft facilities were similar to a modern protective custody unit. Prisoners were excluded from forced labor and had reasonably comfortable cells. They were also allowed to receive visitors. Anton Graf von Arco-Valley who shot Bavarian prime minister Kurt Eisner was given a Festungshaft sentence in February 1919.
In 1924 Adolf Hitler spent 264 days incarcerated in Landsberg after being convicted of treason following the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich the previous year. During his imprisonment, Hitler dictated and then wrote his book Mein Kampf with assistance from his deputy, Rudolf Hess."
Former German Chancellor Brüning
"I did not and do not even today, for understandable reasons, wish to reveal that from October 1928 the two largest regular contributors to the Nazi Party were the general managers of two of the largest Berlin banks, both of Jewish faith, and one of them the leader of Zionism in Germany."
Regarding a letter Brüning had previously written to Winston Churchill (then in the wilderness) August 28, 1937.
At Brüning's request, the quotation of this letter was kept out of Churchill's Six Volume history of World War II (published by the Time-Life Corporation of Henry Luce, in-house press to Skull & Bones at Yale
At Brüning's request, the quotation of this letter was kept out of Churchill's Six Volume history of World War II (published by the Time-Life Corporation of Henry Luce, in-house press to Skull & Bones at Yale
May 6, 1990
Hitler Never Really Was Schicklgruber
To the Editor:
The colorful canard that Adolf Hitler's last name was ''originally'' Schicklgruber continues to live on. I'm referring to your April 14 ''About New York'' column on the third reunion of the Mobile Radio Broadcasting Companies of World War II - the psychological warfare experts who were responsible for boosting our morale while demoralizing the enemy by using lies or the truth - whichever was more effective.
In the case of Hitler's presumed last name, it seems a lie was more effective, perhaps because ''Schicklgruber'' sounds more ridiculous than ''Hitler,'' even today. Therefore, the lie lives on, being more preferable than the truth. This may be the most enduring success of our psychological warfare experts.
As you report it, Hans Habe, leader of the Broadcasting Companies and post-World War II novelist, was responsible for having ''broken the story that Hitler's original name was Schicklgruber.''
Almost 40 years ago, however, in ''Hitler, A Study in Tyranny,'' which remains a standard biography of Hitler, Alan Bullock exploded this myth. Bullock noted that Hitler's father, Alois, had been born out of wedlock to Maria Anna Schicklgruber.
Eventually, the acknowledged father, Johann Georg Heidler, married Maria, but he never bothered to legitimize his son.
In 1876, however, the brother of Johann Georg Heidler, then dead, took the necessary steps to legitimize Alois and legally change his name. Thus, records Bullock, ''From the beginning of 1877, 12 years before Adolf was born, his father called himself Hitler, and his son was never known by any other name until his opponents dug up this long-forgotten village scandal and tried, without justification, to label him with his grandmother's name of Schicklgruber.''
So, the mundane truth is, Hitler was always Hitler, having been born so. But Hans Habe's triumph lives on, for a good lie, it seems, dies hard, even in your pages.
ERIC LEIF DAVIN
Pittsburgh, April 20, 1990
An excerpt from the book The Mind of Adolf Hitler The Secret Wartime Report by Walter C. Langer
Basic Books Inc. - 1972, hard cover
from pages 111 - 113
The Hitler Family
FATHERThere is a great deal of confusion in studying Hitler's family tree. Much of this is due to the fact that the name has been spelled in various ways: Hitler, Hidler, Hiedler, and Huettler. It seems reasonable to suppose, however, that it is fundamentally the same name spelled in various ways by different members of what was basically an illiterate peasant family. Adolf Hitler himself signed his name Hittler on the first Party membership blanks, and his sister usually spells her name as Hiedler. Another element of confusion is introduced by the fact that Adolf's mother's mother was also named Hitler, which later became the family name of his father. Some of this confusion is dissipated, however, when we realize that Adolf's parents had a common ancestor (father's grandfather and mother's great-grandfather), an inhabitant of the culturally backward Waldviertel district of Austria.
Adolf's father, Alois Hitler, was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. It is generally supposed that the father of Alois Hitler was a Johann Georg Hiedler, a miller's assistant. Alois, however, was not legitimized, and he bore his mother's name until he was forty years of age when he changed it to Hitler. Just why this was done is not clear, but it is generally said among the villagers that it was necessary in order to obtain a legacy. Where the legacy came from is unknown. One could suppose that Johann Georg Hiedler relented on his deathbed and left an inheritance to his illegitimate son together with his name. It seems strange, however, that he did not legitimize the son when he married Anna Schicklgruber thirty-five years earlier. Why the son chose to take the name Hitler instead of Hiedler, if this is the case, is also a mystery that has remained unsolved. Unfortunately, the date of the death of Hiedler has not been established, and consequently we are unable to relate these two events in time. A peculiar series of events, prior to Hitler's birth, furnishes plenty of food for speculation.
There are some people who seriously doubt that Johann Georg Hiedler was the father of Alois.
Thyssen and Koehler, for example, claim that Chancellor Dollfuss had ordered the Austrian police to conduct a thorough investigation into the Hitler family. As a result of this investigation a secret document was prepared that proved that Maria Anna Schicklgruber was living in Vienna at the time she conceived. At that time she was employed as a servant in the home of Baron Rothschild. As soon as the family discovered her pregnancy she was sent back to her home in Spital where Alois was born. If it is true that one of the Rothschilds is the real father of Alois Hitler, it would make Adolf a quarter Jew.
According to these sources, Adolf Hitler knew of the existence of this document and the incriminating evidence it contained. In order to obtain it he precipitated events in Austria and initiated the assassination of Dollfuss. According to this story, he failed to obtain the document at that time since Dollfuss had secreted it and had told Schuschnigg of its whereabouts so that in the event of his death the independence of Austria would remain assured. Several stories of this general character are in circulation.
Those who lend credence to this story point out several factors that seem to favor its plausibility.
1. That it is unlikely that the miller's assistant in a small village in this district would have very much to leave in the form of a legacy.
2. That it is strange that Johann Hiedler should not claim the boy until thirty-five years after he had married the mother and the mother had died.
3. That if the legacy were left by Hiedler on the condition that Alois take his name, it would not have been possible for him to change it to Hitler.
4. That the intelligence and behavior of Alois, as well as that of his two sons, is completely out of keeping with that usually found in Austrian peasant families. They point out that their ambitiousness and extraordinary political intuition are much more in harmony with the Rothschild tradition.
5. That Alois Schicklgruber left his home village at an early age to seek his fortune in Vienna where his mother had worked.
6. That it would be peculiar for Alois Hitler, while working as a customs official in Braunau, to choose a Jew named Print, of Vienna, to act as Adolf's godfather unless he felt some kinship with the Jews himself.
This is certainly a very intriguing hypothesis, and much of Adolf's later behavior could be explained in rather easy terms on this basis. However, it is not absolutely necessary to assume that he has Jewish blood in his veins in order to make a comprehensive picture of his character with its manifold traits and sentiments. From a purely scientifc point of view, therefore, it is sounder not to base our reconstruction on such slim evidence but to seek firmer foundations. Nevertheless, we can leave it as a possibility that requires further verification.
In any event Maria Anna Schicklgruber died when Alois was five years of age. When he was thirteen he left the Waldviertel and went to Vienna where he learned to be a cobbler. The next twenty-three years of his life are largely unaccounted for. It seems probable that during this time he joined the army and had perhaps been advanced to the rank of noncommissioned officer. His service in the army may have helped him to enter the Civil Service as Zollamtsoffizial later on."
Tape #794, 2/23/87, Adolf Hitler buried "in Mendoza, January, 1987." CNN News 2/20/87. Arrests of dangerous fascists, Rev. P. Gale, Juan Lopez Rega, Franklin Camper, Francesco Pazienza, Stefano Delle Chaiae. Ollie North's safe, "G & C" and Elie Weisel. Accuracy in Media, Reed Irvine, Part II. Cancer as a weapon. AIM, Rockefeller links. Senator E. Zorinsky, untimely death, Nugan Hand bank, Iran-Contra connections.
#799 Broadcast 3/30/87
Hilter In Pasewalk
Hitler in Pasewalk, by Bernhard Horstmann
Published in Germany a few months after David Lewis’ The Man who Invented Hitler, Horstmann’s book treats the same topic, namely the astonishing personality change that immediately after the end of World War I came over the twenty-nine year old, previously unnoticed Corporal Adolph Hitler. For four years the morose loner had served with unhesitating dedication to soldierly duty on the western front without giving the slightest indication of leadership capabilities or of a thirst for power. He was, therefore, a man of a cast wholly different from that of the one bearing the same name whom we meet in histories of World War II. Pointing to essentially the same documents, both Lewis and Horstmann explain the metamorphosis in terms of the hypnosis used in the neurological center of Pasewalk by Professor Edmund Forster to treat the hysterical blindness that had befallen Corporal Hitler roughly three weeks before the end of the war. Lewis’ work, among other things a veritable eye-opener on developments in psychotherapeutic technique in the 19th and early 20th centuries, covers much more material than Horstmann’s and is more thoroughly researched, a circumstance that explains, for example, the wide differences between the two accounts of Edmund Forster’s visit to Paris in 1933: Lewis clearly had access to the better sources.
On three separate grounds Horstmann’s book has a value of its own. The first is the light it sheds on a question pertaining to Hitler’s rise to power that had remained more or less moot. It had been well known that General von Schleicher, Hitler’s predecessor as Chancellor, and von Schleicher’s close associate General von Bredow, both of whom were murdered in 1934 during the alleged Röhm-putsch, had had nothing whatever to do with Röhm or the SA; yet no convincing theory as to the real reason for their murder was ever able to gain currency.
Horstmann shows that in the summer of 1932 at von Schleicher’s instigation Colonel von Bredow had seized medical records pertaining to the events of Pasewalk and containing Edmund Forster’s diagnosis of Corporal Hitler as a “psychopath with hysterical symptoms.” Word of this diagnosis must have gotten abroad, for later in the same year, a few months before Hitler was made Chancellor, General von Schleicher was urgently warned by a high-ranking friend that if Adolph Hitler came to power, and if he, von Schleicher, did not get rid of those documents, his life and the life of General von Bredow were lost. In point of fact, while General von Schleicher was an idealistic and politically minded man whom Hitler had good grounds to fear, von Bredow had no political ambitions at all. His murder was typical of the chilling brutality that characterized the Nazi movement right from the start and ultimately united the better part of the world against it. In both cases the murder was followed by teams of men ransacking their victim’s living quarters in search of papers.
The second ground is connected with what may seem the weakest point in the argument of both Lewis and Horstmann: the circumstance that the document most central to their common thesis is a chapter taken from a rather second-class novel. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he had the SS launch a vigorous campaign to destroy everything and everyone in any way connected with his treatment by Edmund Forster in November of 1918, first of all the documents.
Anticipating their move, Forster, who understood perfectly the historical importance of his personal records of the case, made copies of them and drove to Paris, where he made contact with such exile authors as Joseph Roth, Alfred Döblin and Ernst Weiss. What happened to the other copies is not known, but it is known that one copy was left with Ernst Weiss. When Forster returned home several days later and was then gradually made to realize that the SS had him in their cross-hairs, he came to think that flight would be useless, and cheated them of his life.
In the following years Ernst Weiss, destitute in Paris, made a last ditch survival effort by competing for a prize offered in the US for the best novel written by Germans in exile.
His attempt, The Eyewitness, tells in the first person the life story of a psychologist. The heart of the book is a gripping chapter that recounts a therapeutic session in which the protagonist, who uses the technique of hypnosis in a place called P., cures a patient named A. H. of hysterical blindness.
As the rest of the novel has serious literary deficiencies, Ernst Weiss was not awarded the prize he coveted. Unaware that an immigration visa and passage by ocean liner awaited him at the American Embassy, he took his life as German troops entered Paris in June of 1940. All the papers found in his apartment were destroyed, but the typescript of The Eyewitness had been sent to the US in 1939. After the war it found its way to Germany, where it was published in 1963. Of those who read it, none seems to have recognized the initials P. and A. H. or the story of the hysterical blindness.
Ten years later, in 1973, US Naval Intelligence declassified a report on “Adolph Hitler’s Blindness” based on information supplied by a Dr. Karl Kroner, who had been a colleague of Edmund Forster at Pasewalk. Kroner stated that he had been present when the blind Corporal Adolph Hitler was admitted and placed in the care of Professor Forster. At that point, it could be documented that the protagonist of Ernst Weiss’ novel was, in fact, a historical person, namely Edmund Forster, that P. was Pasewalk and that his patient A. H. was another historical person.
At this point, therefore, the incredible importance of The Eyewitness was waiting to be discovered. The one who put two and two together seems to have been Prof. Rudolph Binion, who, having once realized the facts of the matter, went behind the Iron Curtain to do research on Edmund Forster in Greifswald before writing a foreword to the English translation of Ernst Weiss’ novel, which appeared in 1977, presumably at his instigation.
Chapter VIII of Horstmann’s book consists of the very dramatic chapter that makes up the heart of that novel. Horstmann then sets himself the task of taking that chapter as Michelangelo once took the breached slab of marble, and arriving by a series of removals at a text as close as possible to the case record Edmund Forster had turned over to the chapter’s author, much as the great Florentine once arrived at his statue of David.
Hence, chapter IX of Horstmann’s book consists of highly plausible reflections by which the author himself crystallizes a certain number of principles that were to guide his undertaking, for example that unlike the chapter in the novel, the case record on which it was based may be presumed not to have contained literary or dramaturgical flourishes. In line with the same goal, chapter X consists of an expertise written by Frau Heidi Baitinger, a psychotherapist who specializes in the technique of hypnosis. In the sentences written by Ernst Weiss, who by training was a surgeon, Frau Baitinger perceives the unmistakable ruminations of a masterful colleague.
To her trained eye the strategy applied by Edmund Forster was instantly transparent, and she explains it with great clarity. In the course of the war Forster had seen many cases of hysterically induced blindness. Men who could no longer take being on the front would go blind. Their blindness did not follow from an act of will, but rather from a partial loss of will.
Professor Forster knew how to be overbearing, and his usual technique in such cases was simply to roar indignantly at his patient for abandoning his comrades in their hour of need. His success rate was astonishing. The usual pattern was that the patient, who suddenly could see again, would be overcome with gratitude. He had not enjoyed his blindness, nor had he had the slightest inkling that he himself was the cause of it.
In the case of Corporal Hitler, who genuinely longed to be back at the front with his comrades, Forster understood immediately that his usual strategy could only be counter-productive and took a different tack. The session took place at night, in the dark, and consisted in genuine hypnosis. He hypnotized his patient telling him that his corneas had been burnt by the mustard gas, that as hypnosis goes by way of the eyes, he could not be hypnotized, that he would never see again, unless he had the kind of will that comes only once in a thousand years, unless he were like Jesus or Mohammed, who had wills stronger than nature.
Then he lit a candle and held it before his patient’s eyes—which had not been burnt at all—and asked him what he saw. Dissatisfied with the vague reply, he charged him to do better. The patient saw then first the light, then his hands, and finally the rest. Hitler came away from that session knowing himself to be possessed of unconquerable will, to have been chosen by Providence to be the man of the millennium who by his will could triumph over the laws of nature.
In April of 1939, an article appeared in Cosmopolitan reporting a statement made by Hitler about his days in Pasewalk: “And as I lay there, the realization came to me that I would liberate the German people and make Germany great.” The monster was born in Pasewalk. The tragedy of it all stems from the fact that Edmund Forster, unexpectedly released from military service one or two days later, suddenly found himself in a chaotic and threatening situation and never got a chance to free Corporal Hitler from his post-hypnotic suggestion.
Frau Baitinger’s expertise is undoubtedly one of the most valuable parts of Horstmann’s book. “Gladly do I confess,” he writes, “that Frau Baitinger’s comprehensive and wholly objective analysis is what gave me the courage to bring the complex topic “Hitler in Pasewalk” before the public.” (p. 139) The shortened version of the dramatic chapter of Ernst Weiss’ novel, Horstmann’s historiographic David, appears in his book as Appendix I.
The third ground reflects the fact that Herr Horstmann’s doctorate is in law. He raises the question of the influence of hypnosis on responsibility. To answer it he is content to quote a passage from an author named Roxin, a recognized authority on the theory of jurisprudence. Roxin’s unambiguous statement is that hypnosis or post-hypnotic suggestion has exactly no bearing whatever on the question of responsibility, that it is impossible for a person to commit a crime under hypnosis from which he would otherwise shrink. In her expertise Frau Baitinger raises the same question and gives convincing reasons for taking the same view. Hypnosis is a technique enabling the therapist to connect elements already present in the patient’s sub-conscious mind, which is a kind of memory. It does not enable the therapist to create new memories.
Dr. David Marshall
Ohmstrasse 3
80802 Munich
Germany
David.Marshall@gmx.net
Ohmstrasse 3
80802 Munich
Germany
David.Marshall@gmx.net
Karl Kroner’s Report
Compiled by an unnamed OSS Officer
Typescript from photocopy of original document declassified by US Naval Intelligence 6/6/72
ISSUED BY THE INTELLIGENCE DIVISION OFFICE OF CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS NAVY DEPARTMENT
OSS Restricted C.I.D 31963
Serial 24043 (start new series each year, i.e. 1-40, 2-40)
Monograph Index Guide No……………………
(To correspond with SUBJECT given below. See O.N.I. Index Guide. Make separate report for each main title)
From Intelligence Officer at Iceland Date March 21, 1943
Reference:……………………………………………
Source German refugee in Reykjavik
Evaluation F-3
Subject GERMANY NAZIS – Psychiatric study
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Serial 24043 (start new series each year, i.e. 1-40, 2-40)
Monograph Index Guide No……………………
(To correspond with SUBJECT given below. See O.N.I. Index Guide. Make separate report for each main title)
From Intelligence Officer at Iceland Date March 21, 1943
Reference:……………………………………………
Source German refugee in Reykjavik
Evaluation F-3
Subject GERMANY NAZIS – Psychiatric study
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Brief. – Here enter careful summary of report, containing substance succinctly stated; include important facts, names, places, dates etc.
The following report on Hitler, prepared by Dr. Karl Kronor, a German refugee living in Reykjavik, and a former nerve specialist in Vienna, is forwarded for information. A tentative evaluation of B-3 has been placed on the report. Dr Kronor is supposed to have been present at the original medical examination of Hitler.
ADOLF HITLER’S BLINDNESS
(A psychological study.)
(A psychological study.)
When the first World War came to an end Private Adolf Hitler, as he then was, was not at the front. He was in a military hospital in the small town of Pasewalk in Pomerania. According to the version given in the Nasi literature of the 1920’s, he had gone blind as a result of gas-poisoning. We are not told however, how long he remained in hospital after the armistice.
It cannot have been long, for soon after he turned up in Munich, where he was employed as a sort of spy of the military league, to report to them the activities of the working–class political movement. We are also not told what after effects, if any, on his eyesight were left behind by the blindness. This is remarkable, for, as everybody knows, blindness is not normally cured without trace. Nothing is known, however, of any permanent after-effects, in Hitler’s case. In the numerous photographs which we have of him he always has the same studied, hypnotic stare, which is familiar to us from his prototype, Mussolini. There is no recorded example of gas-poisoning having had so favourable an outcome.
In such a case, there are only two possible explanations:
1) Simulation
2) Hysteria or Psychopathy.
(or, of course a combination of both, for hysterics can simulate, and, in fact, tend to do so.)
1) We will not, in the approved Nazi style cast suspicion on a man simply because he is our opponent. Here we are concerned only with an enquiry into the true facts. We must therefore ask: was Hitler really such a hero in the war as he is represented in the Nazi- controlled press? We have amazingly little subjective information on the subject. One thing only is certain…that after 4 years front – line service with the same unit, he had not been risen to the rank of corporal. It is also established that the Iron Cross, 1st class, which he always wears was never awarded to him, and that he is not entitled to wear it. (Note: In this, Kroner was mistaken. Hitler’s Iron Cross was perfectly legitimate- DL) In view of these facts it is quite possible that Hitler, embittered by his failure to win any distinction after long service at the front, wanted to turn his back on it. In any case his behaviour during the unsuccessful putsch of November 9th, 1923 shows that he was not this fearless hero that he is made out to be. On the evening before he had bombastically declared at a meeting in the Bürgerbräu in Munich: “Tomorrow will see us either victorious or dead”. This, however, applied only to his supporters, not to himself. He fled when the police opened fire on the demonstration.
2) Taking all this into consideration, simulation is a definite possibility. Actually, however, it was the other diagnosis which was made in the military hospital, and by a man well qualified to judge. Professor Forster, at that time Head Doctor at the Berlin University Nerve Clinic and consultant neurologist to the military hospital at Pasewalk, declared Adolf Hitler to be a psychopath with hysterical symptoms. This became known, in spite of all subsequent efforts to hush it up.
What is a psychopath? According to one well known definition, psychopathy is a “mental inferiority usually conditioned by hereditary disposition, and distinguished especially by weakness of will and inability to adapt oneself to society. It produces in consequences tendency to misdemeanour and crime”. Another definition lays more emphasis on abnormal energy and the need to cut a figure in the world. In short, we are dealing with people who, from a spiritual point of view, stand midway between the healthy and the insane. The German psychiatrist, professor Kretschmer, has concerned himself with them not only from the medical aspect. He wrote in a book which appeared over 10 years ago, roughly as follows: The part played by psychopaths in society is always underestimated. In normal times they pass away their lives as adventures, petty swindlers, founders of sects, etc. But in troubled times their opportunity comes. They acquire a tremendous power over the masses. Briefly it can be said; in troubled times the psychopath’s rule over us, in quiet times we investigate them. It became apparent at an early period that Adolf Hitler comes into this category.
The son of a minor official, he felt himself called to an artistic life. He failed the entrance examination to the Vienna Academy but drifted into casual work in building jobs, and so for in the three years immediately preceding the war, disowned by his family, he lodged in a sort of asylum for the homeless in Vienna.
The war of 1914, which he greeted with rejoicing set him free from his untenable position. The end of the war in 1918 threw him back into the same situation again. Once more, he was not disposed to take up any proper, settled profession. He became a political adventurer.
His blindness was cured. But Germany became blind so blind that she chose him to be chancellor. Then, in 1933, came the tragic ending to the story of his illness.
Naturally it was important that it should not become known, what a pitiful part Private Adolf Hitler had played in the hospital at Pasewalk, and what the diagnosis of his illness had been. The story of this episode was hushed up by the well known methods: already, from about the beginning of the 1930’s, no further mention had been made of it. But this alone was not enough; the still surviving witnesses of the incident must be silenced. This was simplest in the case of Hitler’s former company Sergeant-Major Amman. He was bought, being appointed by Hitler’s business manager of the entire German press.Through this position Herr Amman had acquired a large fortune by highly disreputable methods He is today a millionaire many times over.
Forster had, meanwhile, become head of the Faculty of Medicine of Greifswald University, and was not a man who could be bought. He had therefore to be silenced by other means. Shortly after Hitler came to power, Professor Forster suddenly died. The cause of death was given as suicide. At the time doubts were felt, and these have grown to certainty, Professor Forster a man of excellent health. In the best years of his life, cheerful and successful in his career. Nothing, even the most trivial kind, was known which could have driven him to suicide. In short, there can be no doubt to the mind of anyone well acquainted with Nazi methods that Professor Forster was murdered and that the supposed suicide was a carefully arranged deception.
A very critical reader might object that a political murderer or mass murderer, or a man responsible for murders of a political kind, need not to be considered a murderer in the ordinary sense of the word. The following two cases will suffice to prove, however, that even in private life, the psychopath Adolf Hitler belongs to the class of psychopathic criminals.
(a) His own niece, a certain Fraulein Rubal, was found dead with a bullet round in the head and a revolver by her side. Suicide was declared to be the cause of death (as in the case of Professor Forster). Actually she was shot because she refused to surrender to the perverse desires of her uncle. (Hitler, like many psychopaths, is sexually abnormal. He is not, however, as is commonly supposed, homosexual, but a pervert of another kind.. More detailed information on the subject can be found in the recent pamphlet by Otto Strasser, entitled “Gangsters around Hitler”, and in other publications). The murderer, unusually so clever, had failed to remember in this instance that young girls very rarely commit suicide by shooting, and never by a shot in the head.
(b) The other case concerns the bestial murder of the former Bavarian Prime Minister Von Mahr on June 30th 1934. Herr Von Mahr had in 1923 crushed the Hitler putsch referred to above. Already aging then, he had since retired, and had been living for some years in private life, an old man of 70, quite un associated with politics. In this case, therefore, Hitler did not remove a dangerous political opponent from his path, but rather took on a helpless old man a personal revenge for which he had waited 11 years.
It was the same sort of personal revenge which Hitler took, after 15 years, on the unfortunate Professor Forster, whose crime consisted of having made, at an early period, the correct diagnosis of Hitler…a diagnosis which, if it had become generally known, would have made the subject of it impossible as the “leader of a heroic race of supermen”. And that is where the story of the blindness of the “unknown soldier”, Adolf Hitler, ceases to be a trivial private affair, which could be deservedly forgotten. For it gives us a clearer insight into much that would otherwise be difficult to understand. We can perhaps fully understand it’s significance if we refer once more to the dictum of Kretchner’s, quoted above:” In troubled times, the psychopaths rule over us, in quiet times we investigate them”. One can only hope that quiet times will soon return, in which the psychopathic criminal Adolf Hitler will be investigated and brought to justice, and Germany today so blind, will see again.
DECLASSIFIED —ART 0145, ORNAVINST 5510.1C
BY CP——098910 DATE 6/6/72
BY CP——098910 DATE 6/6/72
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