Dr. Morell and the Patient A

A review of Normal Ohler’s "Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany"

As I walked yesterday past the Metropolitan Museum in New York, I saw, among many stands that sell all kinds of trinkets, a table filled with books. One attracted my attention. It is called Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler. I never heard of the book nor of the author. I was even a bit reluctant to look at it because it seemed intentionally “scandalous”, like the books which, in order to sell, revel in detailing (or inventing) the scurrilous parts of totalitarian leaders’ lives. However, after reading a few pages my original inhibitions were overturned and I bought the book. It cost 5 dollars.

Norman Ohler, who is a journalist with historian’s ambitions, published it in 2015. It can be broadly divided into three parts. In the first, Ohler describes the growth of German pharmaceutical industry before and after World War I. By the end of the 19^th century, Germany became the world leader in what is called today “big pharma” and many of the then-created companies (like Merck) continue to operate and make money today. It gave the world all kinds of substances, from the aspirin invented in 1897 to morphine derivatives (invented the same year and by the same man, Dr. Felix Hoffman) and various methamphetamines (so-called “uppers”).

The second part focuses on one of such substances, Pervitin (similar to the US-produced Benzedrine) that, despite the formal ban on its wider use by the Nazi regime, became ubiquitous in the top echelons, including Wehrmacht. Pervitin was supposed to increase concentration, reduce the need for sleep and food, improve acuity of thought and was thus an ideal substance to give to soldiers and officers who had to fight, drive, or walk for hours. Ohler seems, however, to overrate the importance of Pervitin in the German 1940 Blitzkrieg. There is some vague plausibility in seeing stimulant’s effects interact with the military’s need tor a fast victory (that required a 24/7 presence of mind by soldiers and officers), but surely the traditional elements like the extraordinary audacious plan by Generals von Manstein and Guderian, and French’s Army low morale, did play much more of a role than an amphetamine.

The book’s best part is the third that analyzes, in detail, using historical evidence, the relationship between Dr. Theodor Morell, Hitler’s private physician, and his Patient A. Dr. Morell had a hugely successful career in Berlin. He got to know Hitler in 1936, and, from 1942 they became inseparable as Patient A increasingly depended on daily doses, first of various vitamins, then of Pervitin, morphine, gradually “upgrading” to cocaine and to a mixture of opium and cocaine (so-called “speedball”). Ohler quite plausibly argues that there was no closer person (with the exception of Eva Braun) to Hitler than Dr. Morell, at least from the time when Hitler moved to his Wolf’s Lair in Eastern Poland and then to another fortified compound near Vinnitsa in today’s Ukraine. From August 1941 until August 1943, there are, Ohler writes, 1349 days; on 883 of these, there are documented records of Morell’s meeting Hitler (p. 132). Morell’s premises were next to Hitler’s, and the doctor was with him almost every day (at times, being asked to come in the middle of the night) injecting the Führer with drugs.

There is little doubt that by mid-1943, Hitler was an opioid addict. He probably never spent a day without either being injected with, or taking orally, one of Dr. Morell’s concoctions. Morell kept a detailed list of substances and injections as a way to protect himself from possible accusation of malpractice by Hitler’s entourage. These diaries are Ohler’s main source of information. Ohler speculates on the mental state of the dictator, especially after 1943, when his decisions were increasingly dysfunctional from the military point of view. Under that interpretation (which, in my opinion, is not fully convincing) Hitler’s physical and mental state had a non-negligible effect on how the last three years of the war were fought, and thus the Morell story belongs to History (with a capital H) rather than to the field of dictators’ idiosyncrasies.

Indeed, Patient A’s physical state was pitiable. Living in totally artificial conditions of armored bunkers (especially after the failed assassination attempt in July 1944), with no physical exercise, hardly any exposure to the fresh air and sunshine, sleeping in a room with suffocating and foul-smelling air, and eating only vegetarian food, Hitler aged tremendously: “until 1940 Hitler looked younger than he really was [51 years], but after that he aged rapidly. Until 1943 his outward appearance matched his age but later his rapid physical decay became obvious” (p. 226).

Even more important was his mental state. Such pitiable physical state produced neurosis, insomnia, lack of concentration, digestive problems, impaired Hitler’s vision and hearing. He clearly could not think clearly at all. There enter Dr. Morell and his miracle drugs. To a patient on the edge, Morell administered doses of stimulants that, almost miraculously, restored his ability to think and make decisions, and most importantly to seem to the generals and foreign leaders who met him, to be of a fully clear mind, physically fit, and in control. On many occasions, Ohler, citing Dr Morell’s diaries, describes the transformation of an old, physically devastated man, who within minutes of an injection, becomes alert, self-confident, takes big strides toward the conference room, and once there, holds everybody’s attention and dominates all.

It is possible that Morell exaggerates the miracle effects of his various drugs. Yet there is no doubt that Hitler’s physical and mental state was ruinous while, on the other hand, numerous observers and participants at the conferences throughout 1943 and up to the end of 1944, left with the impression that the Führer was as strong-willed and determined as during his rise to power.

Thus leads us, I think, to ask the following question: Was Dr. Morell a “crackpot”, a “charlatan”, a “dilletante” as he is always described in books on Hitler? I had known of Dr. Morell’s existence from various biographies of Hitler, and in every one of them he was dismissed in less than a paragraph as a charlatan that ingratiated himself with the Führer. Ohler’s book makes us see things differently. Dr. Morell’s approach hardly had anything to do with medicine as such. It was dominated by short-terminism to an extreme degree. The objective was to make Patient A feel better, more in command, and especially to leave such impression on the others who met him. It had nothing to do with Hitler’s long-term health or concern about his drug-dependency. None of the latter were of Morell’s interest. Morell was there to solve a political problem. And reading the book one leaves with absolutely no doubt that Morell in fact did solve the political problem, and that it was not irrational for Hitler to have kept Morell next to himself for so long and to go as far as brush off the attempts by Ribbentrop, and later by Himmler and Borman, to get rid of the arrogant and obstreperous doctor. Hitler was entirely depending on his drugs and on his provider. It was, as Ohler writes, a case of complete dependency of an addict on the dealer.

Was this whole thing unethical from Dr. Morell’s side? One can pose this question in two different ways. Would it have been more ethical if Morell had poisoned Hitler (as he was, without any proof, accused of doing by Himmler)? Perhaps it would have saved many lives. But it was not a thought that ever entered Dr. Morrell’s mind and it would have been contrary to the Hippocratic oath. Was he however faithful to the Hippocratic oath? No, because he was not interested in Patient’s A health as such, but in his ability to survive day by day while not mentally and physically collapsing in front of everyone (as Hitler finally did in April 1945). So here we run into a political, and not necessarily professional, imperative of one’s job. And judging from that angle alone, Dr. Morell was a huge success.

PS. For an economist, there is an interesting detail. German occupation forces find that near Vinnitsa, close to both Hitler and Morell, there is an immense, ultra-modern slaughterhouse, built entirely using American technology probably during Soviet First Five-Year plan. Morell requisitions the abattoir and uses it for his own “raw materials” (parts of slaughtered animals), but for an economist it suddenly and unexpectedly shows the importance of the access to American technology for Soviet early development.