The book is set in Germany during the Great War and tells the hitherto-unknown story of how drastic
psychiatric treatment
transformed an insignificant, hysterical lance-corporal into a charismatic leader who led his nation and the world into a nightmare of death and destruction, how an experiment that went hideously wrong brought about the death of some thirty million people. .
Against backdrops of the privileged elitist world of Prussian aristocracy, the growth of
psychiatric knowledge and the despair of a post-war Germany crushed and humiliated by the harsh Versailles treaty, Lewis peoples the story with a host of characters exemplifying each stage but two major characters stride across the pages. Their paths meet briefly; in a few short weeks, a catastrophe is forged
In the last days of the Great War, Lance-corporal Hitler, one of many blinded in a gas attack, lay in a psychiatric hospital. The victims fell into two groups, either permanently blinded by mustard gas, or suffering temporary hysteric loss of sight, similar to shell shock, brought on by contact with nerve gas. In most cases, these latter victims, in time, recovered without
treatment, or in more severe cases, with minimal psychiatric care. This recovery brought about an accusation of malingering, a crime in the nationalistic ideology of the German army.
Hitler, clearly diagnosed in the hysteric group, did not respond to any treatment, but became a restless, agitated complainant, raging against his fate, the harshness of the Versailles treaty, the the weakness of the Austrian people whom he considered corrupted by Marxist-Jewish infection, and the need of an inspired leader to resurrect the glorious German people. He was referred to a specialist clinic at Pasewalk, where his file came to the attention of Dr Edmund Robert Forster.
Dr Forster, highly trained in the treatment of hysterical soldiers, had developed a controversial but highly effective therapy, based on his conviction that the hysteria was the result of lack of will-power in the victim. He had a domineering personality, and bullied his patients by commanding them to put their disability aside return to duty. This verbal abuse, successful in almost all cases, failed with Hitler.
Forster realized that some severe shock was needed. “I could attempt to find a way to free him of his symptoms through an ingenious coupling of his two ailments, with his drive for status, his drive to be like God, his excessive energy…I had to approach this man not with logical premises but with a tremendous lie in order to conquer him…. for he was one gigantic lie for whom there was no absolute truth, but only the truth of his imagination, his striving, his urges’<1>
He told Hitler that his blindness was caused by mustard, not nerve, gas, and was permanent, but in rare cases, the exercise of intense will-power could bring about hidden qualities that could conquer the disease. Grabbing Hitler by the shoulders and shaking him violently, he stressed the rarity, the immense will power that would be required, and the fertile hidden qualities necessary for this miracle.
Within hours, Hitler’s sight returned, together with the conviction that he was the miracle leader. He was speedily discharged, within weeks the war had ended, and a new and very different Adolf Hitler returned to civilian life, rebellion, prison, and the beerhalls of Munich where the Nazi party was born.
* * *
A hundred other histories have documented what follows, the growth of Hitler’s power, his party, his demented Third Reich – and his downfall and death. What is not recorded is the determination of the Nazis to cover up Hitler’s hysteria and psychiatric treatment, an unwelcome blot on the background of Der Fuhrer. Records were destroyed, many individual witnesses murdered. Forster himself was falsely accused and discredited throughout the profession. The author leaves no doubt that Dr Forster’s eventual apparent suicide was one more such murder.
Apalled by the effect of his action and in fear for his life, Forster recounted in detail what he had done, to a Jewish friend, Ernst Weiss, who incorporated all this into a novel entitled ‘Der Augenzeuge (The Eyewitness)’ in which the patient was only named as “A.H.”. This was smuggled out of Germany to a publisher in Paris. Forster entrusted his original medical notes on the case to a family member who rowed across Lake Constance in the dark to mail these to a Swiss safety-deposit box.
Lewis, researching for an article on psychiatry, by chance, came across a reference to Forster’s treatment of Hitler, described by an Austrian doctor, Karl Kroner, living in Iceland as a refugee from Nazi Germany, in a report to a United Nations Naval Intelligence officer. Intrigued, he pieced the clues together over many months into a tale that reads like a movie spy-script.
David Lewis, himself a chartered psychologist, deftly avoids esoteric explanations and brings this fascinating story to life in readable non-technical terms.
<1> The Eyewitness, page 103.