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
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
____________________________________________________________________________________________
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.)
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
