FB 105: High Hitler: How a Meth-Peddling Doctor Changed the Course of World War II

several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners a special limited time offer a free month of unlimited access to their entire library. Sign up now through our special U r L go to the Great Courses Plus dot com slash aussy, that's the Great Courses Plus dot Com slash o z y the Great Courses Plus dot Com slash As. Before we start today's episode, please be sure to support Flashback by rating and leaving a review

for us right here in your podcast app. A special shout out this week to our listener Wells Wells, who got last week's pop quiz correct. The question was what chronic physical ailment did Adolph Hitler suffer from? That led him to seek some rather unorthodox and highly consequential medical treatment, and you're all about to find that out. Stay tuned until the end of this episode to hear the quiz

question for next week's episode. September, the fate of Europe hangs in the balance, and an effort to appease Adolph Hitler in the Nazi war machine, Allied leaders handed part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudaton Land over to Germany. A smiling British Prime Minister Nevill Chamberlain returned from Munich, then came down the steps of his airplane in triumph, and the Prime Minister comes home home to an empire pilled with giant relief, home to a welcome that he will

never forget. It seemed like a true turning point in history. The settlement on the Czechoslova Can problem, which has now been achieved, is, in my view, only the plume to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. But neither the Czechoslovakia problem nor peace had been remotely achieved. Hitler wasn't done with Germany's neighbor, and he was prepared to seize every advantage he could to finish the job,

even a medical emergency. Six months later, in March nine, Czechoslovakia's President Emil Hatcha came to Berlin to meet with Hitler, Herman Goring, and other Nazi leaders. This is scholar Norman Ohler, author of the book Blitzed Drugs and Nazi Germany. During that visit, girding Um put a paper on the desk and set please sign here. This is your capitulation. The German troops are coming tomorrow. If you sign here, no

blood will be sheard. Hot refused, but under the stress of the situation, the ailing president suffered what was likely a coronary episode. The historical records show that he actually fainted. Hatcha actually lost consciousness in that room with Hitler, Girling and some other Nazi big wigs. And of course, if Hotcha wasn't awaken functioning, then he couldn't sign the paper that would give his country away to the Nazis. Luckily,

Hitler's personal physician, Theodore Morrell, was standing by. Morrell was called and he injected a cocktail into the unconscious Czechoslovakian president. But this cocktail was no Martini. Well, it's not known for certain what was in the drugs that were shot into Hotcha. Most scholars think it was meth amphetamy. Certainly, the cocktail had the effect that Hotcha came back to life, looked around in the room, and suddenly felt that he

could do it, that he could trust these guys. And Girling would then say to him, come on, we protects you. So Hatcha then signed it and basically signed over the defeat of his country. The next day Germans came and the Czechoslovakia was basically gone. The very next morning, Hitler invaded Prague without a fight, through the snow, the legions of occupation marching to Czechoslovakia. This rapid stroke, which is outraged all freedom loving nations of the world, is got

it out with military executedure. Artillery rose into Prague, and man's God on the ragin the castle of King Winter's Mouth, presently, from a window of the castle you may catch a glimpse of Hitler himself contemplating his new conquest. Hitler stands alone in that castle window. But there was another man who was certainly in the room, doctor Theodore Morrel, the man who injected the Czech president in Berlin. Throughout the war.

He was always at Hitler's side, and the conquest of Czechoslovakia was far from the only way he helped alter the course of the war and history itself. I'm Sean Braswell. This is Flashback, the podcast from Ozzie designed to take you on a ride through some of history's most remarkable, unintended consequences. Today a story of war and peace, of madmen and vitamins, A cautionary tale about what can happen

when you give powerful people some powerful drugs. If you've ever seen a documentary film about Adolph Hitler or the Nazis, chances are you've seen some of the home movies shot by Hitler's girlfriend Ava Brown at the Berghoff the Furor's Mountain retreat. In those remarkable silent color films, you can see a relaxed Hitler chatting with other Nazi leaders like Hammon Goring and Joseph Gebbels on a sun drenched deck with the mountain view behind. The Nazis eat cake and

sit tea, and gleefully discuss plans for world domination. One of the figures you see heatedly but might not recognize, is an overweight bald man with glasses. This was Hitler's personal physician, doctor Theodore Morrele. What you don't see, of course, is what happens when Ava Brown turns off the camera. That's when things are turned to normal and the Nazis warts are revealed. Brown goes back to biting her lips

until they bleed. Dr Morrell is so unhealthy he can barely climb a flight of stairs, and Hitler himself when the camera stops, his hands are shaking so badly his teacup rattles loudly in its saucer. The German fuel is a wreck and a drug addict, and an increasingly deranged one. And there's one man to thank for it. But believe it or not, this whole thing, and perhaps the most fateful doctor patient relationship in history, starts with a very

minor problem. One that World War Two historians don't often pay much attention to Adolph Hitler's insane and unrelenting flatulence. Hitler suffered from pretty bad health. This is Giles Milton, historian and the author of When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenen Lost his Brain. He had suffered from stomach cramps, from diarrhea, from appalling flatulence. I mean this was partly

perhaps due to the diet that he ate. He he only ate these sort of watery vegetables which he had purred or mashed, and he ate these virtually every meal. Hitler had such bad gas he would often have to leave the table, and his dietary problems left him desperate

for solutions Norman Ohler. Again, Hitler was always looking for an orthodox treatments and he did not like his conventional doctors that would send him on diets when he was complaining of stomach cramps and gas, which was his main problem in the In the mid thirties, finally Hitler met someone who could help, even if his methods were a bit unorthodox. Morel as a celebrity doctor in um Berlin in the early thirties, and he was known to treat patients for diseases that didn't exist. He was a type

of doctor Field Good. Morrell was also something of a medical pioneer. This was a new approach to medicine and he used especially vitamins. In the beginning. He was sure that if you inject high dosages of vitamins into the blood stream of a person, that that person would have more energy and that it would also elevate the mood of that person. It's not such a crazy idea when

we do it still today we take vitamin supplements. But I was walking once in l A and I saw at a health food store an announcement that they were offering injections of vitamin B one. So I guess Morrell in a way was an avant garde health doctor or fitness doctor. Then in nineteen thirty three, something happened that made even Berlin's resident doctor feel good uneasy. Someone smeared the word Jew and large letters across the plaque outside

the doctor's office. Morrell was not a Jew, but in the wake of that hate crime, he knew he needed to make sure others knew that as well. His response was that he joined the Nazi Party to show that he was not a Jew, Because the Jews obviously weren't allowed to join the Nazi Party, and Morrell came to

see the Nazis as more than just protection. This reaction was not what an appalling racist movement, but his reaction was, Yeah, I'm going to join them so they don't, you know, so I can be part of this, uh, this movement. So that was a very opportunist reaction, but it tells a lot about Morel and his late approach in life towards the Nazis. He basically tried to take advantage of them. He was never a real believer in the i theology. He was just a believer in power and money and

even fame. And a few years later an opportunity came knocking that would give the social climbing Nazi vitamin peddler just the chance he desired. One day in the phone rang in Dr Morrell's office. A few hours later, he was being flown to Munich for a special vegetarian spaghetti dinner with none other than the Fewer himself. After the dinner, Hitler admitted to the doctor that his digestion was so

poor he could barely function. Giles Milton again, and he turned to Theodore Morrell because fid Or Morrell claimed that he would be able to help him, And help him he did, but in the most unorthodox ways. Morrell studied Hitler in his diet and his resulting digestion. After Hitler down to typical vegetable platter one day, the doctor recorded in his diary that quote constipation and colossal flatch once

occurred on a scale I have seldom encountered before. He began by giving the fear these things, these tiny little black tablets, and they were they were called Dr Custa's anti gas pills, and Hitler was taking sixteen of these pills a day. What he didn't realize is that they contained small quantities of stricken in, which of course is

a poisoning. But the treatment did work on the gas front, Norman Owler, and it did cure Hitler's um bloating in nineteen thirty six nenteen thirty seven, and Hitler was so impressed by this effect, which was a big effect on his daily life, that he appointed Morel as his personal physician. Doctor feel good had gone from being a celebrity doctor to treating the most powerful man in Europe. And for

a while everything was great. Then Hitler in fact, did not get sick for those first years in Morel's treatment, never got the flu or anything, never got a cold because he was always ion filled to the brim with vitamin C and other vitamins. By the summer of nine, a healthy Hitler in Germany had taken much of Europe and turned their attention to Russia. At midday on June twenty two, the peoples of the U. S. S I

heard the news that table at war with Germany. Loudspeakers in the principal cities carried the voice of Mr. Montov announcing that the Nazis were already flinging in the battle about a hundred divisions along up front extending arly two thousand miles. The invasion of Russia was a critical juncture in the war, and Hitler was at odds with his generals about the best way to do it. And then Hitler fell ill. He had for the first time. He was ill since the war started, actually since thirty six

and since he met Morrel and um. He had a strong, very strong flu with high fever, and demanded from Morrel that he would give him something that would enable him to go into the military briefing room and continue his version of the campaign. And so the loyal doctor obliged and gave the few of something stronger, a substance that would alter Hitler's physiological makeup and ultimately his conduct of

the war, and with disastrous consequences. Do you have an interesting tale about unintended consequences from history or your own life. Please share it with us by emailing Flashback at Aussie dot com. That's Flashback at os y dot com. Enjoying this episode, check out the Great Courses Plus streaming service. It's an excellent resource to expand our knowledge on a

variety of subjects. Like Adolf Hitler, in researching this episode of Flashback, I dove deep into the lectures World War, to Battlefield, Europe and Utopia and terror in the twentieth century. With the Great Courses Plus app, we can keep our minds active, escape into this vast world of information. Watch or listen at any time anywhere. Right now, they're giving our listeners a special, limited time offer, a free month

of unlimited access to their entire library. Sign up now through our special u r L go to the Great Courses Plus dot com slash AUSI. That's the Great Courses Plus dot com slash o z y the Great Courses Plus dot Com slash AUSI. When Hitler and the Nazis first came to power in three they quickly set out to brand themselves as a new type of political party from those that had gone before in Germany, one whose members were virtuous even in their personal lives Norman Ohler.

Drugs were quite widely taken in the Baymar republic Um. They were not tabu at all. There were laws against it, but those laws weren't enforced, so Hitler changed that. Hitler proclaimed to be leading an anti drug movement, and an important part of that self betrayal was to announce that Hitler himself was an abstinent person who did not drink alcohol, let alone take any drugs. Hitler also wouldn't drink caffeinated

coffee or tea because he considered them stimulants. So this portrait of the Fura as the pure the pure man, was an integral part of the cult around Hitler and of the propaganda that the Nazi Party was spinning in Germany and also abroad. The Nazis promised clean living and

a kind of social and ideological intoxication. That the core of that portrayal was the notion that the Nazis were about purity, They were about cleaning up the mess of the Vama Republic, cleaning it from strange influences like the Jewish, especially the Jewish influence. And for years Hitler, the teetotaler and vegetarian, never drank and hardly ever ate meat. As flashback listeners will know, millions of soldiers, especially in America,

became addicted to cigarettes after World War One. Hitler, as the story goes, through his last pack of cigarettes into the Danube River after he fought in that war. As one of Hitler's supporters marveled about his purity and quote, he is all genius and body and gas. It might have been added, but thanks to Theodore Morrell's treatments and vitamins, even that unfortunate byproduct of his purity went away, and Hitler seemed as physiologically invincible as he was politically invincible.

Then in ninety one, he got the flu on the eve of the war with Russia, and right before he briefing with his generals, he asked Morrele what else he had in his drug cupboard, and Morrell gave him then for the first time, an opioid called Dolantina German opioid at the time, which cured here. Hitler's flew immediately and

let him go to the briefing room. From that point on, as the war raged on and Hitler encountered more stress and exhaustion, Morrell started to add some new ingredients into the vitamin mixture he was giving to the fure Giles Milton again. He was giving him testosterone, He was giving opiate, sedatives, laxatives, barbiturates, morphine, I mean, you name it. He was pumping the fear of full of full of this stuff. Up to eighty

different drugs a day, so an extraordinary cocktail. As Morrell recorded in his notes which were later recovered, he gave Hitler more than eight hundred injections during those final years of the war Norman Ohler Hitler received one to two injections a day, which is an incredib will amount of injections. I don't know if there's any person in the world that gets so many injections into the veins of the

arm each day. Morrell's drug cocktail got even more bizarre as Hitler's addiction and needs grew animal hormones, steroids, cocaine, Hitler, the icon and purity was now a common drug addict. So you can imagine that the once teetotal Hitler towards the end of the war was had a very different approach to drug taking, and thanks to Morrell's efforts, so

did rank and file Nazis. Germany was a drug free country basically due to the nazis strict anti drug regime, until in night a new medicine was allowed to come onto the market. It was called pavvy teen because pevyteen was pure mathemphetamine. One pill had three milligrams of methemphetamine and it became a big hit in Germany. That's right, methamphetamine a special brew developed by Dr field Good himself for the German public. You could buy at a local pharmacy.

You didn't even need a prescription, and it wasn't long before the troops were taking it to crystal meth is. That is actually a very good drug for a fighter because it mobilizes um all your strength within a short period of time. It was the perfect drug to accompany the nazis new method of warfare. All under the world learned the meaning of a grim new word, let's cree.

When Germany attacked France, thirty five million dosages of methamphetamine were distributed to the troops, enabling the Germans to perform the German soldiers to perform longer than the Allied soldiers. In the first hundred hours of the Nazi invasion of France, the Germans gained more territory than they had in over

four years. During World War One, the Allied forces had brought a knife to a pharmacological gunfight, which was red wine in in the First World, where the French were using red and quite successfully boosting down Morrele in the in the In World War Two, this didn't work anymore, really, because the Germans were on meth, but it didn't take long for the rampant substance abuse to catch up with the Nazis and their fere The drug filled bubble that

Theodore Morrell had injected into the veins of World War Two was about to burst, and the casualties would be in the millions. As the needle marks grew in number on Adolph Hitler's arms, so did his bizarre actions. Giles Milton. This extraordinary regime of drugs, many of which are are classified as illegal these days, led to increasingly erratic behavior on the part of the FURA, and there was one infamous meeting between Hitler and Mussolini in Italy where Hitler

really began. He was almost hysterical when he was talking to Mussolini, and it seems that he had been taking so many hittamines that it was really begin to beginning to affect his performance, the way he talked, the way he acted. Where Hitler and once relied on adrenaline and natural charismatist sway audiences, he now relied on pharmaceuticals for his edge. If you watch videos of Hitler's speeches, that you get the impression of this kind of almost manic,

pumped up sort of person. And I think this is largely to do with the with the regiment of drugs he was on. Soon he stopped doing speeches almost altogether and increasingly retreated into his bunker. He was unbalanced, irritable, impulsive, and at times delusional. He would go on screaming tirades that could last for hours. Of course, this it became increasingly complicated because it was taking on more and more responsibility for the actual running of the war, much to

the horror of his senior generals. But certainly by the end of the war he was unable to think straight at all because he was, you know, so pumped up by the drugs he was taking. Norman Ohler, we can see for sure that Hitler became more and more inflexible in his decision making, his ego was so inflated that he never doubted himself. Hitler had actually been quite a measured strategic planner during the early days of the war.

In the beginning from nineteen thirty three to ninety one, he basically made no mistakes, no great no big mistakes. Let's put it that way. I mean that the attack on Poland was of course a big mistake, which led to his downfall eventually. But still he won the war against Poland, he won the war against France. He won't basically the war against everybody in Europe. But his growing drug addiction helped change all that. His military decision making at a point in the war against the Soviet Union

was not working anymore. The situation demanded of him a flexible mind, but he didn't have a flexible mind. Still, with the war dragging on in the Nazi forces losing ground and men in nineteen forty four, Hitler remained remarkably upbeat during his military briefings. So it beat that his own generals assumed he had an atomic bomb or some other secret playing up his sleeve that would turn the war around. But all Hitler had up his sleeve were

track marks. The drugs kept him on his road as the few who knows everything and who could not fail. And and this was the road that led him to self destruction and led the whole country of Germany to to destruction and final defeat. Hitler's misplaced optimism kept Germany in a war that it could not win for months, even years, while millions perished throughout everything. Dr Morrell remained at Hitler's side himself wouldn't have anything said against Theodore Morrell.

He thought he was a marvel worker and stayed with him to the very end, and in fact, right up to the fool of the Third Reich Green. Hitler was in his bunker fid m Rrell was at his sides, continually pumping in full of drugs. It was Morrell that supplied Hitler with the lethal cyanide pills that the dictator and Ava Brown would use to kill themselves in that famous Berlin bunker. Morrell himself escaped that bunker and was eventually tracked down not by Allied forces but by an

industrious New York Times reporter. Thanks to her story, American forces took Morrel prisoner, but the increasingly ill doctor was of little use as a witness at Nuremberg and died a few years later after the war at age sixty one. Theodore Morrell had left his mark on Adolph Hitler's health and on world history, helping to prolong a costly and deadly war well beyond when it might have otherwise concluded.

How many lives would have been saved had Hitler's drug addiction not reached such dangerous levels, Or might a healthy Hitler have made better decisions with the Nazis, have been more successful and the war lasted even longer. It's impossible to know. But there's one other fascinating wrinkle to this story that complicates things even further. Hitler had a pre existing condition that, when undiagnosed at the time, one that might have made all the difference to his drug induced downfall.

That's next. Adolph Hitler is hardly the only world leader to have ever relied on a loyal doctor to services health and diet requirements. In fact, there was another big name twentieth century leader who also received regular injections while in charge of a major industrial power. There are that communism is the wave of the future that damn come to Berland. Like Hitler, US President John F. Kennedy suffered

from a number of ailments that required doctor supervision. Nasier Gami is a psychiatrist at Tufts University in Harvard Medical School and the author of a First Rate Madness, uncovering the links between leadership and mental illness. In the case of Kennedy, he was getting um um steroid injections for his underlying Addison's disease, which is a adrenal gland um deficiency. One White House physician gave Kennedy these injections several times per week. But Kennedy, like Hitler, had his own less

orthodox German doctor Max Jacobson. Jacobson was in a emigre from Germany and he had private previously worked in Berlin, and there is some possibility that he had actually worked with Theodore Morrell and had actually been was a protegee fact of Theodore Morrell. Jacobson, like Morrel, was a doctor feel good and a physician to celebrities, and perhaps his most famous patient was the thirty five President of the

United States. He gave him intravenous amphetamines as well introvenous aeroids, a lot of the same treatments that that Morrell used. Uh you know, again, ground up testosterone, things of that nature, and then uh, he was giving these to Kennedy in the early years of his administration, the first two years or so, and again, just like with Hitler, Kennedy's friends and advisors and even family were noticing that he was acting differently. He was very irritable, impulsive, very hyper sexual.

But despite the cocktail of drugs he was receiving, Kennedy's behavior and health didn't deteriorate the way that Hitler's did. Why well, Dr Gami says, the answer to that starts with another underappreciated aspect of Hitler's health, his mental illness. People who knew Hitler as a young man observes some

very distinct behavioral traits. So, for instance, you know, they would describe that he would have periods of time where he would become much less functional, much less interested in things, wouldn't talk much, would need much, would just stay in his room for weeks or months on end um and that's kind of a standard definition of a clinical depression.

And then he would come out of these periods and suddenly he'd be very energetic, very active, very talkative, and that would last weeks or months and again that's a classic definition of manic episodes. And this happened repeatedly, and that's what the definition of bipolar illness is. Despite being bipolar, says Dr Gami, Hitler was able to function for years

before nineteen thirty seven. Hitler's mannic and depressive periods were on the mild side, and he wasn't treated medically because there were no treatments um at the time for depression or bipolar illness. But once Theodore Morrell started his injections, everything went haywire. A lot of people after the war among the West just thought that Hitler was an irrational, impulsive person, but by the end of the war, the

drug fueled fure was not that person. The problem with amphetamines, if you have by polar illness, is that it can make you manic, and it can. Once you get manic, you go up and down and up and down, and suddenly you'll be having lots and lots of mood episodes caused by the amphetamines. The amphetamines improved the depressive symptoms short term, but they were some the depressive and manic

episodes of given long term. Historians for years have pondered whether Hitler suffered from some kind of madness, so did his fellow Nazis. People like Himmler and others thought that he just got sick, that he just developed a new maybe insanity or a new kind of disease. But I think in retrospect it's much more likely the correlation is with the intravenous amphetamine treatment, that his baseline bipolar illness

was just made worse. John F. Kennedy did not suffer from bipolar illness, and therefore his body responded to the amphetamines he was given differently, but he was also the beneficiary of a successful intervention. White House doctors tried for months to get Kennedy to stop taking advice and injections from Max Jacobson, and at first President Kennedy resisted. He famously said, I don't care if it's horse piss, it works.

But the one person that could influence John Kennedy was Robert Kennedy, And when Robert Kennedy, the President's brother and the Attorney General, came down strongly against Jacobson, he was removed from the White House, and the president's other doctors were able to step in and prescribe a less harmful drug regimen. Adolf Hitler might have been a ticking time bomb well before he even met Theodore Morrell, but the doctor helped light of fuse that would have devastating consequences.

It's an extreme example, but one we can still learn from Chiles Milton. The lesson is you've got to be very careful when you're, you know, messing around experimenting with these these drugs. They have powerful side effects and you don't always know what they are. And the more powerful the person taking the drugs or medication, the more powerful

and impact those substances can have on the world. So, you know, my advice for any of today's CEOs, in in Silicon Value or elsewhere, would be to think very carefully before you start pumping yourself full of very very powerful drugs. Adolf Hitler is one of the most scrutinized figures in history, but in this episode we managed to extract a few of the more surprising lessons from his life. First, in some cases, farting is truly no laughing matter. Second,

don't believe everything you see in a home movie. Third, Adolf Hitler had more track marks than Courtney Love. And finally, beware of celebrity doctors pushing vitamin supplements that can change your world. Sometimes they can and not for the better. Going has Got One Ball, Hitler I So very small, him so very similar, and Gobbles Has No Ball. A Flashback is written and hosted by me Sean Braswell, senior

writer and executive producer at Azzy. It was produced by Robert Coulos, Tracy Moran, Jori Di Gisia, and Shannon Williamson. Chris Hoff engineered our show special thanks to the crew at I Heart Radio podcast Networks, especially Sophie Lichterman and Jack O'Brien. This episode features the song Hitler has Only Got One Ball, performed by John Jones. Make sure to subscribe to Flashback on the I Heart Radio app or

listen wherever you get your podcasts. Flashback is the latest podcast from Azzi, a modern media company producing original TV series, festivals, news and podcasts for curious people. Ozzy's unique storytelling focuses on the new and the next, whether that's forward looking news and features bold perspectives on TV or brand new ways of looking at history. To dive deeper, head to azzy dot com slash Flashback That's o z Y dot

com slash Flashback. There you can find my lecture notes from today his episode featuring extended interviews, links to further reading and more information on the unintended consequences of giving drugs to Adolf Hitler, as well as other hidden stories from history uncovered by me and other reporters at Aussie. The song You're hearing is a wartime propaganda song that was hugely popular among British troops, and there may be some truth to the urban legend that Hitler had only

one ball. A few years ago, a German historian unearthed some of the long lost medical records showing that the Gassy Dictator suffered from right side cryptochitism or, in late terms, an undescended right testicle. Please be sure to support Flashback by rating and leaving a review for us right here in your podcast app, and remember to answer this question about next week's episode for a chance to win a shout out. Who unintentionally paved the way for abortion rights

in America? Was it a George Washington's cousin, little Tommy Delaware, be a woman with seventeen children, see a powerful lawmaker's common house cat, or d a male crusader against obscenity. Take your best guests and leave it as a comment in your podcast app along with your five star review. Thanks for listening, Smile