Any thoughts that medicine had advanced considerably in the last hundred years of warfare quickly
banished as I walked into Belitz Military Hospital outside Berlin. I'm here to work
on the Professor Bernheim, one of Germany's pre eminent psychiatrists, and he's happy
to tell you so. Bernheim struggles to pronounce my name, and to be
fair, I'm Swedish old of Drummer. I studied under Professor Sigmund Freud in
Vienna. Bernheim knows how to pronounce Freud's name and does so, as one
might say, as a curse. Labor One is a fan of Freud and
is emerging psychoanalytical methods, but I specialize in them. Most of the patients
in the general ward here have terrible physical wounds. Those in the psychiatric unit
are suffering from a newly designated ailment, shell shock, and according to Freud,
all these men have severe and roses leading to organic symptoms sound organs,
refusing function, limbs, tongue, eyes. Here all unresponsive to incoming stimulate
the shocked brain. Worth witness or experience incidents so horrific as to be unbearable
would diverge by converting these blocked out memories into physical pain or fault in order
to render them in a more acceptable form. I sit in my clinical room.
There is a knock on the door, and my first patient comes in
and hands over his fire pale, brooding with a thick brush mustache. He
stands at attention while he looks at me. I can feel his eyes boring
into me. I read the medical pile. Adolf Hitler Corporal Signal Runner sixteenth
Bavarian Reserve Regiment, shrapnel wound to left thigh at Psalm nineteen sixteen, Awarded
the Iron Cross, a second class reposted to a front line after discharge.
Must At gas victim at Uprey in nineteen eighteen, temporary blindness. I'm fit
to turn. That's not yet decided, corporal, I'm fitted to return.
How So two years ago the howardzer shell kid all around me. I survived.
Why Well, there could be many reasons. Name one. Look and
now you're once again an unfortunate victim and a mustard gas attack at the prey
and you sustain another significant injury. I am not a victim. Well you
did, nevertheless, suffering the attack, did you not? Does it not
stay there? That I was struck blind. Yeah, do I seem blind?
Apparently your blindness was temporary. Do you recall Soul of Tauses Saint Paul?
Yes? I do, He too was an aream and he was struck
blind. I see he went on like this. His military exploit gave him
a feeling of being Destiny's chosen son. His constant harping on his special status
to me screamed of deep insecurity. Before I went to medical school in Vienna,
Professor Sigmund Freud had developed his theories and the practice of psychoanalysis. He
maintained that people suffer inherent of roses stemming from traumatic episodes dating from earliest childhood,
even from birth, and that these are suppressed deeply within their subconscious mind.
We have frequent sessions during Corporal Hitler's stay here at Belitz, his combatative
and clearly feels my presence is an annoyance to be suffered through. Would you
care to talk to me about your childhood? Why? Well? Were you
happy as a child? My childhood has no pertinence. It could I wish
to be discharged now returned to active duty? Were I beaten and sodomized as
a child, or lovingly handled his supportive care. Neither would change the fact
that I am a capable soldier and I belong with my men. Well,
you're not yet ready for that, corpron We have a little way to go
before you deemed fit for further military service. More sessions went on fruitlessly.
Finally, in desperation, I tried another tactic, Corporal Adolph, I know
you've seen death. I have as well, another of your patients, perhaps
a suicide, as the tired of your babbling no no. When I was
six, I had a playmate at school, a girl. Her name was
Elsa. We were at the same age. One wet afternoon, her mother
caught the two of us in a woodshed examining each other. As neither of
us had a brother or a sister. It was a union situation as we
discovered the essential difference between boys and girls. What happened, Well, to
back up, Elsa did have a brother, but he drowned in a lake
when she was just a baby, and her father had died in a shipwreck
before she was born. So it was just Elsa, who used to stutter,
and a mother who was very, very strict, And that afternoon,
when she discovered us, her mother was very angry and threatened to get to
my grandfather to cut off my penis with his biggest knife. He and my
father are both surgeons. After that, I started to stutter, just like
Elsa. Ever well, went on distress. My grandmother said Elsa's family had
madness. I asked my father what cost it, and he said men caught
sickness from women that led to madness, nearly your disease. My mother said,
none of that's wrong. She said Elsa's mother was that way because of
her family's misfortune. But that's not the worst part. What is Six years
later, hours away at boarding school, and came home for the summer vacation
to some terrible news. At that time, Else had started to menstruate and
her mother could not cope, so she stabbed Helps to death and then hanged
herself. Madness, madness, Yes, why would you tell me this?
Ever since those episodes have prevented me from establishing relationships with girls and now with
women, your childhood has affected your adult life. Yes, I never told
anyone this before. Thank you. From then on, our relationship changed.
I learned about him, both from him and from others in the hospital,
and knew him Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in eighteen eighty nine and his
father, Aloua, was the illegitimate son of Mariah Schicklgruber, and when Mariah
became the third wife of Johann Heidler, he adopted the five year old boy.
But it wasn't until he was forty that Aloa Schicklgruber legally changed its surname
to Hidler, and it was rumored that Aloua's father had been the son of
a Jewish family for whom his mother, Maria, had worked as a housekeeper.
After spending a career as a custom officer, by eighteen ninety six,
was retired to a small farm in half Her, Austria, where he kept
livestock and bees while his wife, Hitler's mother Clara, tended her vegetable garden.
This garden would be the source of Hitler's first significant confession to me.
I was seven and my mother was alone in her vegetable garden when she discovered
that my father's ducks had ripped up her garden pea plants, and she threatened
to wring their necks in her distress. She did not know I had overheard
her, as I was coming from the house and going off to the village,
and you did something about this. In the village, I was accosted
by some bigger boys who bullied me and insulted my father and my mother.
I ran back home in a rage and killed all my father's ducks. And
how did your parents react? I did it to please my mother, but
my father didn't see it that day and I received a severe beating. Now,
how did you feel about that? Betrayed better? I got used to
them. Corporal Hitler remained under my care at the village for the next few
weeks. We had established our patient therapist bomb but he remained frustrated at his
medical incarceration. He was still there when Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and Germany's surrender and
the armistice was signed in November nineteen eighteen. Admissed the general celebration and relief
being expressed by all the other patients and staff. Corporal Hitler remained aloof becoming
more and more angered and hysterical, and after the war he returned to Munich,
but remained in the army and was appointed as an intelligence agent to infiltrate
the German workers Party there. His nationalist views and oratorical skills led him to
becoming a member of the party, and by nineteen twenty four he was the
leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party known as the Nazi Party. Though
I lost track of him as a patient, his name appeared often in the
newspapers as his political activities advanced, and I maintained a close interest in him.
Then I happened to be spending an eight in Munich on my way to
Vianna to visit my old mentor. Passing around a beer hall, I heard
this unmistakable voice. A meeting was being addressed by my one time patient,
and I decided to go in. I never not a backer, I perfectly
can vouch forever changed, said the back. I do not recall seeing you
here before? Good morning? Are you a party member? Well, no,
no, I'm just passing through me and to come away to Vienna.
I'm known Adol for some years and I just wanted to come and see him
again in actual so to speak. What he remember you? I'm sure he
will, who hasn't seen me since he was in Bellaire. In that case,
I can arrange it. After the meetings. Stay here. You must
consider joining the party. You know, if we need men like you,
I'm sure you understand. I want a brute, just basic security. You
understand, m zaghaire mine fila. Who is this? He says, You
and he are old friends from Poulin. Ah, I see it now,
the good doctor. My mind is too preoccupied, Colm Doronic, How are
you sit down? Oh? Well, thank you. I'm sure you're very
busy these days. Indeed, I am here. I want you to take
that and study it. My book, Oh mind comps I struggle, But
he's not a victim. I wrote it while in prison. Can you believe
it? They put me in prison for disturbing the peace. They called it
treason. I told them I was standing up for German workers' rights, and
they led me out once they realized how mistaken they were. We heard about
it in Berlin. In Berlin, yes, So what brings you to Munich?
Apart from seeing me? Of course, I'm on my way to the
add to visit my old mentor, Professor Freud. The glow went out in
his eyes, Sigmund Freud, charlottean and some people think so well, I'm
not one of them. You shouldn't associate with someone like him. They are
better German experts on the mind. You're German, why not learn from them.
I'm Swedish and I came to this country by way of Professor Bernheim's invitation
and to work under him. No, no, I had, doctor Drummer.
You are mistaken. You came to this country because it was your destiny
to recognize Germany as the greatest, the strongest of all nations. You came
from Swee, but your father was German. I noticed only a German father
could have endowed you with the distinct features blue eyes, blonde hair, strong
physique that our destiny's emblem. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but my father
is also Swedish. He grinned, but it was a grin that left a
cold pit of dread in my stomach. Thank you for the visit, doctor,
Remember what I told you, A man like you should join the party.
It will stand you in good stead. Mind how you go Nowadays,
Munich can be our of city, especially at night. In my deal with
Hitler, I found him to always have a simmering fanitism, mostly about himself,
lurking beneath the surface. Slight though he was in some ways I felt
the man shouting at an audience was his true form, whilst the man who
smiled at me was another mask, a person like him having found evodeed followers.
Well, I didn't know what to make of it. The following day,
I traveled to Vianna and visited my old professor. He gave me a
concert ticket that he was unable to use. I didn't realize how much that
gift was to change my life, as I told Hitler, which I remember
with a feeling of violation. Since boyhood I had a trouble relating to girls,
and perhaps even more so to women as I grew older. M a
border cissage from the flower cellar outside the concert hall, and I took it
to the violinist who had thrilled me as she departed with her violin case.
Ms Man Leafen. Yes, would you please accept this small token for the
joy you have given me this evening? How kind? Thank you? Won't
you put it for me just here? I'm not sure I can do that?
Oh please do It's very easy, but I'm hindered carrying this all right,
like like this perfect thank you? You're welcome. Oh what a ways
to go back to the hotel now and just take it off. Would you
like to go for a cup of coffee? I prefer chocolate at night.
I know just the place, Cafe florid Huber. I know weanna well.
From a student's viewpoint, I was here as a medical student. You're a
doctor, yes, yes, Well, I'm sorry I should have introduced myself.
I'm all of drummer. You can call me Dey. Beethoven and most
I both played at this cafe, so you'll be among good spirits. You
said you very here as a student. Does that mean you are not here
now? I live and work in Berlin. I'm here visiting my old tutor
and professor. Then did you stop being a student here in nineteen sixteen,
nine years? That means you must be thirty two, much too old for
me. I can't tell if you're joking or not. Are you married?
No? I seem to be too busy to get into relationships other than I
analyzing my patience. You always go to concert alone, I suppose so,
yes, music should be enjoyed in the company. Well, I'm usually surrounded
by an appreciative volumece of strangers. Come see me again. I'm not a
stranger anymore. We started writing letters to each other. Dear all of thank
you for your last letter, so full of news and Berlin memories. My
good news is I applied to join the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and have been accepted.
So I shall be back with my parents in Berlin, and that means
we shall be able to see each other again. Tilney. As happy as
I was that Tildor was coming to Berlin, I felt equally as concerned about
the state of the country. Having read mine counted the book he had given
me Munich, I realized what Hitler was spousing. Then in nineteen thirty three,
the political, ambitious corporal became Chancellor and returned to Berlin. The following
year, nineteen thirty four, his storm troopers purged the Nazi Party during the
Night of the Long Knife, muttering all opposing elements in the party, and
following President Hinnibur's death in August, Hitler declared himself Fewer Germany's supreme leader,
and one day later the same year, I was summoned to Bernheim's office.
He explained that, having been called in by Hitler's personal physician, doctor Morrell,
the previous year, he had been treating the Fewer recurring bouts of depression
with heavy medication, and he went on to say that Hitler had demanded he
sent young drum Irk to see him, so he remembered me, and to
my horror, he trusted me. Bernheim furnished me with a strong injectable medication,
of which he assured me Hitler was in need of. In Bernheim's opinion,
Hitler held progress from a neurotic state to that of a psychotic and was
far beyond the reach of my psychotherapy method. You're not my doctor. I
was told you requested me specifically. Whoever told you that was mistaken. You
shouldn't be here, Adolf. I am here. We may as well talk,
right. You should address me as your europe Why did you ask me
for a meeting today? I told you, is there a reason someone might
have thought you required my assistance? It must have been explained to you it
was, and I want to hear you say you want who helped me as
your doctor to hear the reason why in your own words. There are times
I wish to die. I look at my gun and I mentioned firing it
into my brain. No one would ever believe a suicide if it'd be presumed
my enemies had assassinated me, the people would rise up carry on my work
in my name. Have you picked up the gun when you think these thoughts?
No, Well then they just thoughts. I hold this entire nation,
It's future within me, the burden and the liars and the traitors surrounding me.
Which liars and traders? Everyone? I read them, and they sprout
again. Well, how do you know they are liars and traders? I
can sense it. So how do you know that I'm not a liar or
a trader? You're Swedish. You admit it only by your own definition,
but deep down you are of good German Aryan stock. Be not mistaken as
the Jews are mistaken in claiming that Christ was Jewish. He was born with
a Teutonic warrior serving in that area of the world. I notice I tell
you this as your supreme leader the fure, you shall study your fiero's mind
and learn on this. I do insist years ago, if you were the
recipient of some of my innermost thoughts and experiences, you were analyzing me,
and you shall do so again. For now, give me Bernheim's injection and
leave hi. Hitler, good day, health doctor. So you have just
come from attendings of fiora officer crunch we meet again, or burst of Fior
crumbs. You're in a privileged association with Fior doctor that makes you a most
honorable citizen. By becoming a member of our party, you will be doing
consider our both service. Won't you join us? Value still have a chance.
Some days later, Bernheim informed me that I had made quite an impression
on the fewer and that he insisted on seeing me for some further therapy session.
Bernheim added that, in his opinion, that would be total waste of
time, but the fuwer was insistent. I had no wish to interfere with
this treatment program. But the professor replied, it's not wise to confront this
man with a refusal, and besides that, he had no one else to
recommend. If you leave your bishops there, olof my dear, I'll have
you checkmate in two moves. Oh what? Oh yeah, yea, I'm
sorry. Let me move in here. That's better. You seem distracted tonight,
my darling. Is everything all right? Yes, yes, it's just
that I've been assigned a patient that I rather not have to deal with the
caton someone I would know right now, I really can say. As I
entered the huge office of the Fuer, I was even more reluctant to continue
my psychoanalysis or the monster Hitler had become since the days of the lowly corporal
I've seen at the Belitz Hospital back in nineteen eighteen, some sixteen years ago.
I appreciate you're asking me for further therapy session, mind Furer, but
I don't believe we can go any further now. Why not my skills?
My skill is beneath you. I don't deserve this honor we started at the
bailis yes, and we shall now go forward together. Have you come to
believe in fate? Doctor? Perhaps I have. I think you should do
You truly won't help you tell me the truth? No one else around me
does. As long as I live and breathe, we shall be yoked together.
You now have a therapy practice of a single client, Doctor Juma.
The Hitler File is a production of Voyage Media. The series is produced by
nat Mondel, Robert Midas and Dan Bennomore, directed and produced by Dan Bennomore,
written by Desmond Fosbery, based on the novel The Drameric File by Brandon
Rolfe, starring Peter Stormare as doctor Drmieric and Denis O'Hare as Adolf Hitler.
Additional cast credits available in the show notes. Edited sound designed and mixed by
Nick Nissiti. Original music by Darlas Gonzalez. If you're enjoying the show,
please leave us a five star review and Apple Podcasts or anywhere you're listening,
and subscribe now for future episodes