Hitler was treated several times for 10 years from 1935 by Karl Otto von Aiken, a German otolaryngologist
The Swiss descendant of one of Adolf Hitler’s doctors gave to publicity letter details revealing how this doctor treated the dictator of Nazi Germany for voice problemsaccording to today’s post Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag.
Hitler underwent treatment several times for 10 years from 1935 by Karl Otto von Eiken, a German otolaryngologist, the newspaper reported.
The doctor’s letters to a cousin were discovered by Robert Dopgen, von Aiken’s great-grandson, who found the letters while searching family records for a school project. Von Eiken died in 1960.
The British historian Richard Jay Evans, an expert on German history, certified the authenticity of the unpublished letters, the newspaper reported.
These show Hitler’s fear of serious illness.
«If there is something wrong, I must definitely find out“Hitler told the doctor after their first meeting in May 1935, according to the letters.
The newspaper stressed that the letters also showed the importance Hitler attached to his voice, which he used in speeches to incite supporters of his Nazi regime.
An operation to remove a polyp was postponed until after a speech, the letters say, as von Eiken advised Hitler to rest his voice after the operation.
In his letters, von Aiken never denied that he was treating a man whose actions led to the death of millions in the Holocaust and World War II, the newspaper reported.
The report adds that when Russian investigators were asked after the war why he did not kill Hitler, von Eiken said: “I was his doctor, not his killer.”
Hitler committed suicide in a shelter in Berlin in 1945, shortly before the end of the war.
