Adolf Hitler's Battle with Syphilis

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in Austria. The son of an Austrian customs official, he was a high school drop out.
He served in Bavarian army during World War I , where he was wounded and received the medal cross of bravery. In 1921 the Nazi party, named Hitler as it's chairman. Before his rise to power Hitler was arrested and sentenced to 5 years in Landsberg fortress. Hitler was released after only 9 months. Most people think of the holocaust of the Jews and World War II , when they hear of Hitler. Most people don't realize Hitler's long battle with a mind destroy disease. Syphilis is speculated to be behind the madness.

It is not historically known where Hitler did indeed have the disease. He was known to go into a tirade about syphilis. In fourteen pages of the Mein Kampf, Hitler, called it the "Jewish disease". It is known that during the last part of his life that he had tremors and irregular heartbeat which could be associated with tertiary syphilis. As late as 1939 Hitler tested negative on the Wassermann test. The Wassermann test was known to give faulty false positives. So the accuracy of the test is cloudy. Hitler did live in fear of syphilis and was known to take treatments for it.

In the biography of Doctor Felix Kersten " The Man with the Miraculous Hands" Journalist Joseph Kessel spoke of how in the winter of 1942 Kersten learned of Hitler's condition. Kersten was shown a top secret twenty six page report, detailing how Hitler contracted syphilis in his youth. This twenty six page report also accounted how Hitler was treated for syphilis in a hospital in Pasewalk, Germany. In 1937, the symptoms resurfaced showing the Syphilis was still active. By 1942 according to this report signs of progressive syphilitic paralysis was occurring.

On April 30, 1945 Adolf Hitler and his wife of only one day, Eva Braun committed suicide in an underground bunker. Having left orders to burn their bodies, left no way for an autopsy to be preformed. With the lack of an autopsy, there is no way of knowing for certain that Hitler had indeed suffered from syphilis.