Interdisciplinary methods in research and practice

Interdisciplinary Methods

One weakness of Robert G.L. Waite's classic work of psychobiography and psychohistory, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler (1993) is that no written evidence exists today from any psychologist or psychiatrist who actually examined Hitler, although his political opponents in Germany allegedly had reports from military psychiatrists in the First World War that Hitler was no promoted above private first class because of mental and emotional instability. In spite of the lacunae of evidence, Waite offered a convincing medical and psychological portrait of Hitler, and he has gathered considerable evidence to demonstrate the irrationality of his subject, who he diagnosed as a borderline psychotic. George Victor asserted in Hitler: The Pathology of Evil (2007) claimed that he had a depressive nervous breakdown in 1909 and a schizophrenic breakdown in 1918, when he was in the Pasewalk military hospital in Berlin. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi found that Hitler suffered from a bipolar disorder or manic-depression, as did his alcoholic father Alois, and even though Adolf did not drink, his mental illness was exacerbated by chronic use of amphetamines, steroids and opiates like Oxy-Contin.

From a medical point-of-view, Martin Housden (2000) found evidence that Hitler suffered from moderate Parkinson's disease, as well as high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis, which probably increased his depression, paranoia and cognitive decay. His physical and mental health was further damaged by daily methamphetamine injections by Dr. Theodor Morrell, which made him more aggressive and paranoid. Housden also agrees that his father was and abusive alcoholic and that he had a mental breakdown in 1918 that caused hysterical blindness and muteness. Hitler did have a courageous record as a soldier in World War I, as Frank Cass noted in the military history Corporal Hitler (2005) and even received the Iron Cross first class, which was rarely awarded to enlisted men in the German Army. In later years he frequently said that he enjoyed soldiering more than any other profession and his military experience greatly influenced the Nazi ideology and worldview, including its glorification of war, militarism, aggression and heroic self-sacrifice. In addition, Hitler was very likely suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after four years on the Western Front, which contributed to his breakdown when he learned of Germany's defeat in 1918.

As Robert Rosenbaum points out in Explaining Hitler (1998) certain myths about the Nazis Leaders background, personality and psychosexual makeup have persisted since the 1920s and 1930s. Among these were the stories that he had only one testicle; that he forced his niece Geli Raubal to urinate and defecate on him during sex and murdered her in 1931 when she tried to escape from him; or that his father Alois was half-Jewish. None of these explanations of Hitler's personality and psychology have any real evidence to support them, no more than that he was homosexual, impotent and suffering from tertiary syphilis. His family doctor, Eduard Bloch, who treated Klara Hitler for breast cancer, actually reported that young Adolf Hitler was a very quiet, polite young man who was devoted to his mother, and he suffered from no obvious physical or mental abnormalities but seemed to be depressed and withdrawn. In Adolf Hitler, Shree Zalampas describes hoe Freudians like Eric Erikson and Walter Langer diagnosed Hitler as a paranoid narcissist and psychopath (or sociopath), which they traced to his abusive and dysfunctional childhood. Alfred Adler argued that his real childhood trauma was an inferiority complex in relation to his father, which caused him to live isolated in his own fantasy world of gods and heroes, where he played the central role.

Methods Section

From an interdisciplinary viewpoint, historians, political scientists and international relations theorists assume that most states and their leaders are rational actors who make decisions calculated on the basis of self-interest, although there is considerable debate about the rationality of Adolf Hitler. Physicians, psychologists and psychiatrists almost invariably have found that Hitler was mentally ill at least to some degree, and that his psychological problems were worsened by physical illness and drug addiction as he aged.. All of these professionals have applied their specialized expertise to the Hitler problem, in order to determine the medical and psychological factors that contributed to his personality and political ideology. Given the lack of direct evidence beyond the reports of Hitler's own physicians and the reports of German Army psychiatrists, any attempt to describe his possible mental illness are bound to be speculative, but not blindly so.

Some facts are clear enough, such as his father Alois being an abusive, authoritarian parent, probably suffering from alcoholism and manic depression. Hitler never loved him like his mother Klara, but rather feared him and also found his public drunkenness embarrassing. Alois physically abused his children, and left Hitler with a lifelong disdain for alcohol and alcoholics, which he regarded as a genetic aberration. Most sources also agree that young Hitler was depressed, isolated, withdrawn and tended to live in a fantasy world, although there is no consensus about exactly how far along the spectrum he was in the direction of actual psychosis or schizophrenia. He was by all accounts a courageous soldier for four years during World War I and suffered a nervous breakdown in 1918 when he learned of Germany's defeat. This resulted in psychosomatic or hysterical blindness and muteness which the psychiatrist treated with hypnosis. Another important factor after Hitler became dictator was his 'treatment' by Dr. Theodor Morell, who injected him with steroids and amphetamines, which probably increased Hitler's paranoid and aggressive tendencies as well as cognitive deterioration. All of these factors together almost certainly influenced his more irrational, aggressive and destructive decisions, his lack of human empathy for the millions of victims, and his decision to commit suicide when all was lost and taking as many others with him as possible.

Discussion of Hitler's Possible Mental Illness

Robert G.L Waite argued in The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler that the Fuehrer of the Third Reich was probably suffering from some severe psychopathology such as paranoia, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder or borderline personality disturbances, which led to irrational decisions in both foreign and domestic policy. His hatred of the Jews and others he regarded as 'inferior' was downright maniacal, obsessive and pathological, as was his inability to love or trust any other human being except perhaps for his mother Klara. His military planning lacked any rational, long-range strategic plan and finally assembled an Allied coalition against Germany that even Hitler sometimes realized could not be defeated. From a psychiatric viewpoint, Hitler may have been a borderline or schizoid personality, with both neurotic and psychotic symptoms, and his "fantastic view of the world…had very little relationship to external reality" (Waite, 1993, p. 359). Coming from an abusive, dysfunctional family, young Hitler developed into an isolated, alienated loner, prone to fantasies and delusions that may well have been psychotic or schizophrenic at times, particularly after the defeat of Germany in November 1918. This seems to have been a key turning point since the politician and warlord that the world knew emerged only after the breakdown and collapse in 1918. His passionate ideological hatred of Jews and Communists became very clear after this time, and even if they already existed in Vienna or Linz, he would have been in no position to act on them. After this time, none of these ideas changed even slightly until his suicide in the Bunker in 1945.

Very little reliable information is actually known about Hitler's childhood beyond the basic facts that he hated the abusive, alcoholic Alois and loved his mother Klara. In fact, he always carried his mother's picture with him right to the end of his life, and frequently admitted that he feared his father. Hitler's racist and militaristic ideology was based on his own delusions and paranoia, and his obsessions about the Jews infecting the body of the 'healthy' Aryan Volk are well-known. Waite traces these back to his unfavorable childhood circumstances, such as his abusive, alcoholic and authoritarian father and his idealized mother who died of cancer when he was still an adolescent. In Hitler's mind, the blonde, timid, submissive Klara was symbolic of Germany and many of his female relationships were with younger women who resembled his mother. Klara may also have felt guilty about marrying her older male relative Alois, who she usually referred to as 'uncle' (Zalampas, 1990, p. 116). Ian Kershaw and other biographers also noted that he hated his "authoritarian, overbearing, domineering" father Alois, and also that he copied most of his traits (Kershaw, 2008, p. 3). Alois may have been manic-depressive as well as being an alcoholic, and in his manic phases he moved his family seventeen times over the years (Ghaemi, 2011, Chapter 13). Hitler recalled that even when he was 12 or 13 years old, Klara sent him to the bar to tell Alois to come home, and would have to prop him up as he staggered down the street. He recalled this experience as so humiliating and embarrassing that he could hardly think about it, but it gave him very negative views about alcohol (Housden, 200, p. 169).

Young Hitler also hated school or any type of organization or routine work, and lived in an escapist fantasy land in which he was a great artists or a cowboy fighting Native Americans in the Wild West of the American frontier. All of these traits of "indolent lifestyle, the grandiosity of fantasy, the lack of discipline for systematic work" stayed with Hitler for the rest of his life (Kershaw, p. 11). Even in his youth, he was fascinated with Wagner and nationalistic myths of Nordic gods and heroes, and imagined himself as a great leader or an artistic genius. As Albert Speer observed, Hitler had a talent for drawing buildings but never the human figure, which is why he was not admitted to the Vienna Art Academy (Zalampas, p. 128). Even though Speer was the closest friend Hitler had -- if he ever had any -- he "felt he never really knew the man." His other close associates also regarded him as "aloof and contradictory, someone who protected his inner core," and he left no diary and very few personal letters (Housden, p. 166).

Dr. Eduard Bloch, a Jewish physician in Linz who often practiced charity medicine, treated both Alois and Klara Hitler in their final illnesses, and Hitler always referred to him as a 'noble' or 'honorable' Jew who was not to be harmed when the Germans annexed Austria in 1938. When interviewed by U.S. intelligence officers after he immigrated to New York in 1940, he remembered young Adolf as "a nice, pleasant boy" with the very formal manners expected of Germans in those times. He had no physical deformities (such as a missing testicle) and no obvious signs of mental abnormalities or aberrations, although he did seem rather melancholy and withdrawn. He was very devoted to his mother and stayed in a room next to hers as she was dying, ready to wait on her night and day. Bloch denied that there was any hint of incest or abnormal attachment, only that he was extremely moved when Klara died. He also said that Alois and Klara would have rolled over in their graves if they had seen what he had become, but he had never seen any evidence that young Adolf Hitler was a monster, sadist or madman. This may well be true, and therefore the most disturbing conclusion of all, but Adolf Hitler was not born with two horns and a tail or the mark of the Beast on his forehead (Rosenbaum, 1998, p. 147). Ron Rosenbaum could also find no evidence that Hitler had a "profound, concealed and deeply disturbing sexual secret that explains his otherwise inexplicable pathology," such as being sexually abused by Alois, engaging in incest with Klara or in perverted sex with his niece Geli (Rosenbaum, p. 141).

Waite maintains that Hitler's temporary blindness at the end of the war was a hysterical or psychosomatic reaction rather than caused by poison gas. Based on the report of the psychiatrist who treated him, Dr. Edmund Forster, Hitler's blindness and muteness responded to treatment by hypnosis, and the voices from God that he reported hearing in his mind at the hospital were probably those of Dr. Forster (Ghaemi, Chapter 13). Alfred Adler thought that defeat in 1918 caused Hitler to have a breakdown because he "could no longer see himself as the invincible Wagnerian hero whose victory was guaranteed by virtue of being a member of a superior race" (Zalampas, p. 131). George Victor thought that the 1918 breakdown was schizophrenic or psychotic in nature, and that in general Hitler's paranoia, suicidal and homicidal impulses and inability to form relationships as show that "he was extremely disturbed" (Victor, 2007, p. 3). Prior to the capitulation, though, Corporal Hitler served for four years on the Western Front with the List regiment, and often said in later years that "I passionately loved soldiering" (Williams, 2005, p. 4). He was a good soldier, even a fanatical one, and deserved his two Iron Crosses for bravery. Even though he was disliked by many of his fellow soldiers as an aloof loner, their postwar criticism of him always focused on his "eccentricities, personality and sexuality…never his courage or soldierly virtues" (Williams, p. 1). He vowed that Germany would never surrender again, however, and also insisted that the Jews, Communists and socialists had stabbed the army in the back.

From this time forward, his hatred of the Jews and other 'non-Aryans' was clearly pathological and he frequently expressed the desire to kill them all with his own hands. As early as 1922, he was on record stating that he would hand all the Jews in Germany and leave their bodies on the public gallows "as long as hygienically possible" (Waite, p. 363). In 1929, Hitler had said that 70-80% of German infants should be exterminated every year to "strengthen the bloodline" (Waite, p. 414). He had long planned to exterminate the handicapped, mentally ill and senile persons, and this T-4 euthanasia program began in 1939. Two years later, many of its personnel were transferred to Poland to organize the first death camps for the Jews, and his last will and testament in April 1945 still blamed them for the war and "all the evils of mankind" (Waite, p. 415). Hitler had often threatened to kill himself in difficult or stressful situations, and finally did so on April 30, 1945 when the Soviet armies were only a few hundred yards from his Bunker.

Hitler's decision to go to war with both the Soviet Union and the United States in 1941 was universally regarded by German military and political leaders as irrational, involving Germany in a two-front war that it could not possibly win. In his more lucid moments, Hitler himself acknowledged that it had been an illogical an impulsive action, especially when he obliged the U.S. with a formal declaration of war after Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor (Waite, p. 404). At the time, Franklin Roosevelt was very concerned that he could not obtain a declaration of war against Germany in Congress, which would insist on concentrating the entire war effort in Asia. Hitler relieved him of that worry, even though he had often said in private that the real reason Germany had lost World War I was because the U.S. finally joined the Allies in 1917. Not even his closest associates understood why he had decided that history had to repeat itself, but Waite believed it was based on his destructive (and self-destructive) impulses rather than rational, strategic planning -- of which hardly any existed in Nazi Germany (Waite, p. 406) .