Background: Even more than 70 years after the end of WW II, questions regarding the personality of dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) remain unresolved. Among them, there is a focus on the problem of his state of mental health, in particular on the possible relevance of the medical treatment he received for a war injury at the military hospital of the small German town of Pasewalk in the last days of WW I. Some authors have come to postulate a profound change of his personality due either to a psychic trauma suffered or a hypnotic therapy he supposedly underwent for curing a hysterical blindness. Objectives: The assumptions about Hitler's war injury which rely on only two significant sources shall be assessed for their validity. Methods: Existing historical sources and inferred hypotheses will be discussed in the light of alternative interpretations. Results: The mentioned suppositions reveal their highly arbitrary character: neither a hysterical blindness of Hitler's nor a hypnotic treatment at Pasewalk military hospital can be substantiated. Discussion: Given the fact that Hitler's medical sheet is most likely irrevocably lost, the authors plea for the acceptance of the limitations of historical research, even more so since the occurrences in Pasewalk lack any deeper importance for a historic assessment of Hitler's personality.
Aby Warburg, one of the leading German intellectuals in the early 20 (th) century, developed a severe psychosis towards the end of WW I. Given up as incurable, he managed to recover after 6 years most of which he spent in three different mental hospitals. Although his treatment involved some of the best known psychiatrists of that time, it was later criticized as old-fashioned. As major parts of Warburg's case history have recently been published they now enable us to reconstruct and evaluate his treatment within the context of clinical concepts and methods available in the early 1920's. Apparently German-speaking psychiatry back then held no sufficient tools to adequately consider psychological factors both in the etiology and therapeutic response for Warburg's case. Instead his own scientific work played a crucial role in the "restoration of reason".
S One should altogether abandon the notion of Hitler having suffered a permanent change of personality in 1918, be it due to psychiatric treatment or to psychological trauma itself.
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