Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet - Hardcover

Redlich, Fritz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195057821 ISBN 13: 9780195057829

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Adolf Hitler unleashed a nightmare of terror in Europe that changed the course of history and forever altered our conception of human nature. But how is it possible to understand Hitler? Hitler: Diagnosis of Destruction begins to answer that question by providing the first analysis of Hitler's life by a trained MD and practicing psychiatrist.
Fritz Redlich, MD, provides a full-length biography of Hitler, focusing especially on his medical and mental history and showing us precisely how Hitler's physical and mental health influenced his beliefs and behavior. Redlich engages a host of fascinating questions. Was there a history of mental illness in Hitler's family? Did he suffer from congenital abnormalities? Did he contract syphilis as a young man? What bizarre role did that disease play in his anti-Semitism? What is the history of Hitler's amphetamine abuse? Did he suffer from Parkinson's disease? Drawing upon medical records of Hitler's World War I injuries andsubsequent illnesses, combined with a penetrating exploration of Hitler's writings, Redlich offers new insight into Hitler's vision of himself as a prophetic leader. The final chapter offers a psychiatric portrait of Hitler, and it is here that Redlich's analysis reveals the highly combustible mixture of denial, projection, sexual repression, paranoid delusion, and narcissistic rage that transformed Hitler from an aimless, friendless, and vaguely resentful youth into the most destructive force of the twentieth century.
Complete with illustrations, critical medical reports by Hitler's personal physicians, and a medical glossary, this book brings to light the darkest recesses of one of the world's most impenetrable minds.

About this title

About the Author

Fritz Redlich was born in Vienna in 1910 and received his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1935. He was forced to emigrate to the United States in 1938. Currently, he is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, University of California at Los Angles, and formerly Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Dean, School of Medicine, Yale University.

Reviews

More than 50 years after the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler continues to fascinate, as evidenced by the dozens of biographies and political analyses published during the past several years. The shadow of the Holocaust he created continues to darken the 20th century. Surely only a madman could have wreaked such unspeakable horror.

It would be a comfort to have an eminent psychiatrist propose a definitive diagnosis to explain Hitler's behavior, for it would permit us to avoid confronting humanity's capacity for evil. But in Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet, Fritz Redlich does not provide such comfort. Long troubled by the ease with which diagnoses were proffered for the architect of the Holocaust, Redlich, who was forced to flee Austria in 1938, set himself the monumental task of establishing a definitive diagnosis for Adolf Hitler. After reviewing many thousands of pages of documents, including the records of Hitler's attending physicians, and interviewing eyewitnesses to Hitler's behavior, Redlich, with scrupulous attention to detail, worked his way through a thorough psychiatric diagnosis at a distance. The results of this effort are both impressive and persuasive.

Redlich first presents a political biography of Hitler, which is rich in psychological detail and accurate in conveying the complex political and economic circumstances of the era. In portraying Hitler's life, he pays particular attention to Hitler's medical conditions and their possible bearing on his political behavior. This thorough psychosocial study well conveys the forces that shaped Hitler's political personality. Modestly disavowing any credentials as a historian, Redlich describes his work as a "pathography" -- a study of the life and character of a person as influenced by disease. But, in fact, the historical details he conveys go well beyond pathography and are crucial to understanding the intricate interplay between Hitler's personality and his political behavior.

A concern about health was prominent throughout Hitler's life. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes a "serious lung ailment" as coming to his aid. He probably exaggerated the symptoms and malingered to avoid secondary school. In the waning days of World War I, he received a shrapnel wound in his left thigh, and on returning to the front, he was caught in a surprise British attack with mustard gas, which led to severe burning of the eyes. This injury was associated with a short-lived episode of hysterical blindness. A hypochondriacal eater, he became a vegetarian after the death of his niece in 1931. He never smoked, and with rare exceptions he avoided alcoholic beverages. After 1944, a number of Hitler's associates recorded changes in his health and in his habits. Increasingly afflicted with a tremor, he demonstrated frequent rages and lability of affect.

Redlich details Hitler's preoccupation with purity of the blood. This was the foundation of the sterilization law and the euthanasia measures and ultimately of the Final Solution. Indeed, Hitler's use of medical imagery was striking. Depicting himself as physician to the diseased German body politic, Hitler variously portrayed the Jew as a tuberculosis bacillus infecting the German people, a toxin, a parasite, and a cancer.

Drawing on the extensive medical diaries of Hitler's physician, Dr. Theodor Morell, Redlich systematically goes through the catalogue of diseases that had been diagnosed in Hitler. Redlich characterizes Morell as a charlatan and polypharmacist. Indeed, the remarkable range of medications with which Morell treated Hitler has led medical historians to wonder whether some of Hitler's symptoms were iatrogenic in origin. In particular, the question of physician-abetted substance abuse has been raised.

Redlich carefully reviews Hitler's history of vascular spasms, headaches, and abdominal spasms and his increasing problems with locomotion and tremor of the hands. He concludes that Hitler probably suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, worsened by Morell's medications, and did indeed suffer from a parkinsonian syndrome in his final years. He probably had a genital lesion, perhaps congenital hypospadias. Redlich also diagnoses temporal arteritis in Hitler. Hitler had hypochondriasis, which led him into an unusually dependent relationship with Morell, but Redlich doubts that any of the many medications Morell freely prescribed had a substantial effect on Hitler's decisions and judgment.

Redlich develops a psychopathologic profile with great care. From his review of Hitler's family medical history, which was studded with mental illness, Redlich concludes that this history was the probable basis of Hitler's preoccupation with degeneracy and mental illness, a preoccupation, vastly underestimated in Redlich's judgment, that was probably the foundation for Hitler's view of life. He was convinced that he would die early and have insufficient time to realize his ideas. Hitler was conflicted sexually, and fears of prostitution and syphilis were an exaggerated theme in his writings and speeches. Redlich rejects categorically the idea that Hitler had syphilis but he concludes that Hitler suffered from severe syphilophobia. Syphilis, Hitler believed, was a Jewish disease that was "transmitted generationally, and destroyed races, nations, and ultimately mankind."

Redlich convincingly establishes that Hitler did not have any of the major psychoses, as some psychiatrists have suggested. He also rules out borderline personality disorder. He concludes that there is insufficient evidence of any conventional psychiatric disorder that might explain the extreme nature of Hitler's actions, offering what he terms a "politological" rather than a psychiatric diagnosis: political paranoia.

The most important psychopathology found by Redlich was Hitler's paranoid delusions, particularly the threat of world domination by the Jews. Hitler's dominant ego defense was projection, which regularly interfered with his evaluation of his adversary's intentions. In addition to many paranoid features, Redlich delineates narcissistic features as well: his grandiosity, tenuous personal relationships, sensitivity to criticism, and potential for rage. These two severe personality characteristics -- paranoia and narcissism -- were joined in his eliminationist anti-Semitism. Hitler is the exemplar of the destructive charismatic who unifies his wounded people by identifying and attacking an enemy.

In his thorough diagnostic evaluation of Hitler, Redlich rules out severe mental or physical illness as a cause of his destructive leadership, requiring us to confront the political paranoia that gripped Hitler's Germany -- the fit between a malignant leader and wounded followers -- and to ask an uncomfortable question as we grapple with the horror of the Holocaust: What is it in us, ordinary human beings, that permits us to respond so enthusiastically to the siren song of hatred?

Reviewed by Jerrold M. Post, M.D.
Copyright © 1999 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

A study of Hitler's physical and psychological infirmities. There have been many attempts to explain Hitler's obsessive hatreds by pointing to his numerous supposed mental and bodily ``abnormalities.'' Most of these effortssensationalistic or misguidedhave been dismissed. But this work, the product of 12 years' research, shouldnt be. Born in Vienna in 1910, Redlich was chair of the department of psychiatry and dean of the school of medicine at Yale. And, in an ironic twist of history, he was completing his doctorate at the University of Vienna when Hitler himself was receiving treatment there (in 1938, the Anshluss ushered Redlich to the haven of America). Redlich defines his work as a ``pathography'': the study of an individual as influenced by a disease. But this may give undue weight to Hitler's illnesses; a ``healthy'' Hitler might well have committed the same atrocities. Part One appraises Hitler's life and medical history and the growth of Nazi Germany. Part Two provides a detailed medical and psychopathological profile. The latter is probably of greater interest to most readers. Redlich uncovers information concerning mental illness in the Hitler family and some evidence of amphetamine abuse. Central to his portrait is the so-called ``degeneration hypothesis,'' in which Hitler's obsession about his own physical and sexual perversities was translated into a genocidal obsession with the Jews. This is arguably the most detailed examination in existence of Hitler's health, and readers may sometimes wonder if a discussion of Hitler's every malaise is indeed necessary to understand the dictator. A countering strength of the book, however, is the author's humility. In the end, Hitler emerges as a product of extraordinary physical and psychological pathologies. Not an original thesis, but an articulate addition to the literature. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Redlich (psychiatry, emeritus, UCLA) attempts to determine whether Hitler's actions were the result of physical and mental illnesses. Although the study of Hitler's mind is not new, this is perhaps the first book by a practicing psychiatrist to address these specific questions. The first part of the book is a traditional retelling of Hitler's career, and although it contains medical insights, it does not offer anything substantially new. It is, however, based on the latest research on Nazi Germany and the war and as such could be useful to the uninitiated. The last part of the book, which details the issues and difficulties in making a psychiatric diagnosis of Hitler, is perhaps the more useful section in that it provides a cautionary tale for those who seek easy answers. More scholarly and medically sound than Robert G. Waite's well-known The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler (1977), Redlich's work should interest specialists in the subject and enjoy a wide readership. For public and academic libraries.AFrederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195057821
• ISBN 13: 9780195057829
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 466