The health of Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, has long been a subject of popular controversy, including both his physical and mental states. Hitler had genetic markers for Kallmann syndrome, as revealed by 2025 DNA analysis. He is noted as having had a very strong sweet tooth. His other suspected health issues were exacerbated by the many drugs he was given by his unconventional doctor, Theodor Morell, as well as the 20 July 1944 attempt on his life. Partly because he had hand tremors late in life, it has been speculated that he had syphilis or Parkinson's disease.
Trauma
First World War During World War I, Hitler served as a dispatch runner for the List Regiment of the Bavarian Army. On the night of 13–14 October 1918, he and his comrades were victims of an Allied mustard gas attack near Ypres, Belgium. They had been leaving their dug-out to retreat when the attack occurred, and were partially blinded by it. Hitler received initial treatment in Flanders, and on 21 October was sent to the military hospital in Pasewalk near Stettin in Pomerania. Some claim that instead of being treated for a gas attack, Hitler was being treated for syphilis. It was there that Hitler learned that Germany had asked the Allies for an armistice. He also learned that revolution was in the air. Hitler later claimed that it was while recuperating at Pasewalk that he became a virulent antisemite, although historians consider this to be unlikely, especially when Hitler referred to his conversion in terms of a vision he received. He left the hospital on 19 November, eight days after the armistice was signed. Hitler's claim has been disputed by many historians.
1944 assassination attempt As a result of the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt – in which he survived a bomb explosion at his Wolf's Lair headquarters – both of his eardrums were punctured, and he had numerous superficial wounds, including blisters, burns, and 200 wood splinters on his hands and legs, cuts on his forehead, abrasions and swelling on his left arm, and a right arm that was swollen, painful, and difficult to raise, requiring him to use his left hand to greet Benito Mussolini, who arrived that day for a previously scheduled summit meeting. The punctured eardrums were the most serious of these injuries. Weeks later, blood was still seeping through Hitler's bandages, and he suffered sharp pain in the right ear, as well as hearing loss. The eardrums took several weeks to heal, during which Hitler suffered from dizziness and a loss of balance which made him awkwardly hew to the right when walking. In addition, his blood pressure was high. One unusual result was that the trembling in Hitler's hands and left leg, which had increasingly afflicted him for sometime, abated for a time after the explosion, which Theodor Morell attributed to nervous shock; it returned in mid-September.
Syphilis Hitler's tremor and irregular heartbeat during the last years of his life could have been symptoms of tertiary (late stage) syphilis, which would mean he had a syphilis infection for many years. However, syphilis had become curable in 1910 with Dr. Paul Ehrlich's introduction of the drug Salvarsan. In The Man with the Miraculous Hands, his biography of Dr. Felix Kersten, journalist Joseph Kessel wrote that in the winter of 1942, Kersten heard of Hitler's medical condition. Consulted by his patient, Heinrich Himmler, as to whether he could "assist a man who suffers from severe headaches, dizziness and insomnia", Kersten was shown a top-secret 26-page report. It detailed how Hitler had contracted syphilis in his youth and was treated for it at a hospital in Pasewalk. However, in 1937, symptoms re-appeared, showing that the disease was still active, and by the start of 1942, signs were evident that progressive syphilitic paralysis (tabes dorsalis) was occurring. Himmler advised Kersten that Morell (who in the 1930s claimed to be a venereologist) was in charge of Hitler's treatment and that it was a state secret. The book also relates how Kersten learned from Himmler's secretary, Rudolf Brandt, that at that time, probably the only other people privy to the report's information were Nazi Party chairman Martin Bormann and Hermann Göring, the head of the Luftwaffe.
Monorchism
It has been alleged that Hitler had monorchism, the medical condition of having only one testicle. In 2008, a British newspaper reported that in 1916, a German doctor named Johan Jambor had encountered an injured Hitler during the Battle of the Somme. Jambor allegedly asserted that Hitler – who is known to have suffered a groin injury in the battle – had in fact lost a testicle. Jambor had supposedly described the dictator's condition to a priest, who later wrote down what he had been told. Hitler was routinely examined by many doctors throughout his childhood, military service, and later political career, and no clinical mention of any such condition has ever been discovered. Eduard Bloch, Hitler's childhood doctor, told U.S. interrogators in 1943 that Hitler's genitals were in fact "completely normal".
Huntington's disease It has been speculated that Hitler had Huntington's disease. When many of the physical symptoms shown in newsreels during his later life – his hand tremor and shuffling gait – are coupled with his alleged mental and psychological deterioration, they may also point toward Huntington's. This is only conjecture, since a definitive diagnosis would require DNA testing. Although Huntington's disease was known and considered a hereditary disease during the time period, even appearing in state papers on the sterilisation list, it is not known if Hitler knew of this condition.
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