Did Hitler have Parkinson's disease? Danbury doctor thinks so

RIDGEFIELD -- By the end of his life, Adolf Hitler had a pronounced tremor in his hands -- especially his left hand. In his military decisions, he'd become blindly inflexible, unable to base his decisions on the reality of the situation in the field.

Which raises a question that lies somewhere between history and medical diagnosis: Did Hitler have Parkinson's disease? And if he did, did the illness play a part in the end of World War II?

Dr. John Murphy, executive vice president of Danbury Hospital, has looked at photos and eyewitness accounts. He's taken that evidence and connected it with his own experience as a neurologist who has many patients with Parkinson's.

And he's come to a conclusion -- yes, Hitler did have the disease and, yes, it played a part in history.

"It is a little bit off the wall," Murphy said to a packed crowd at a talk last month at Founder's Hall here.

Murphy said Dr. Abraham Lieberman, one of the giants in the study of Parkinson's disease, was the person who first raised the issue when Murphy worked with him.

"He said to me casually, had I ever heard that Hitler had Parkinson's?'' Murphy said. "I asked him if he was reading the National Enquirer. And he said, `What? Don't you believe me?' ''

Lieberman and Murphy then made a bet. Murphy would study the evidence to see if Lieberman was right.

"After years of reading, I lost the bet,'' Murphy said. "He convinced me. The more I looked to see that Hitler didn't have Parkinson's disease, the more I learned he did.''

Murphy said some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease -- a progressive, degenerative disorder of the nervous system -- are easy to recognize. They include a tremor that gets worse over time, usually starting on one side of the body and spreading to the other.

Parkinson's can also include a slow gait, stooped posture, a voice reduced to a whisper, and a dull stare that does not seem to focus on its surroundings.

Those suffering from Parkinson's can also suffer from cognitive disorders that include a lack of imagination and spontaneity, difficulty making decisions and general apathy.

And, Murphy said, that description fits Hitler in his final years.

Using photos and bits of old newsreels, Murphy showed that Hitler in the 1930s was a voracious orator who freely used both arms while making speeches. In the opening years of the war, he was also willing to let his generals take military gambles. But as the war progressed, Hitler became a different man.

Newsreel footage shows that by 1940, Hitler never used his left hand, which was shaking badly. Instead, he left it hanging by his side or hooked his thumb into his belt. One small bit of footage, however, shows Hitler talking to troops and forgetting to hide the tremors.

"That's a Parkinson's tremor,'' Murphy said, showing the film clip to those who attended the Founder's Hall lecture. "I've seen it a thousand times.''

Hitler's entourage wrote in their memoirs that he walked slowly by the war's end. His voice was reduced to a whisper and both hands shook. He was bent over and shuffling. In his 50s, he looked like a man two or three decades older.

"Hitler's left hand trembled and he had a stooped and rigid posture," wrote Gen. Heinz Gudarian, one of Hitler's generals. An intelligence officer, Gustave Boldt, also wrote of Hitler's tremors and shuffling walk. An SS officer wrote that Hitler in 1945 "had become an old man,'' his voice a whisper.

Murphy also said handwriting analysis shows that as the war progressed, Hitler's handwriting became small and cramped -- another symptom of Parkinson's patients.

By war's end, Murphy added, Hitler had become a liability to his soldiers, ordering them always to advance and hold their position, even when they were outnumbered and surrounded.

His miscalculations about the Allied landings on D-Day may have helped the invasion succeed.

"He stubbornly insisted on holding positions at all costs,'' Murphy said.

The root cause of Hitler's Parkinson's disease may have been a condition know as Von Economo's encephalitis, a swelling of the brain that can occur after a severe infection, Murphy said.

That infection could have been the great 1918 influenza epidemic, which killed 50 million people.

Murphy said that some of the personality changes attributed to Von Economo's encephalitis include obsessiveness, compulsions and a sort of "moral imbecility" that cannot discern good from evil. It also is linked to higher rates of Parkinson's disease.

That, Murphy said, presents a paradox.

"The illness Hitler had both created, and then defeated, the most criminal mind of our times."

Contact Robert Miller

at bmiller@newstimes.com

or at 203-731-3345.