Theodor Gilbert Morell was born on July 22, 1886, in the Tru district of Münzenberg, then part of the German Empire. He was the second son of an elementary school teacher.
Morell studied medicine in Grenoble and Paris before completing an internship in obstetrics and gynecology in Munich in 1910. After finishing his doctoral studies in May 1913, he received his full medical license.
Before the outbreak of World War I on July 28, 1914, Morell worked for nine months as a doctor on a cruise ship. In 1915 he was called up for military service and deployed as a physician.
He soon developed kidney disease and spent the following years partly in military hospitals and partly as a doctor in prisoner-of-war camps. In early 1918 he was discharged as unfit for service.
Morell settled in Berlin and established a urology practice, where he also offered electrotherapy. In 1920 he married Hannelore Moller, a wealthy actress. The marriage remained childless.
Thanks to his wife's fortune, Morell equipped his practice with the most modern medical technology and focused on unconventional treatments for a demanding clientele. His methods became fashionable for treating skin and venereal diseases.
His services were sought by members of some of the world's royal families, including the Persian Shah and the Romanian King. In 1933 Morell became a member of the Nazi Party.
Two years later he moved his practice to the Kurfürstendamm, one of Berlin's most famous boulevards, presenting himself there as a specialist for skin and venereal diseases. Among his patients were numerous celebrities and politicians, as well as Hitler's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, whom he treated for gonorrhea with various commercial preparations.
In 1936 Hoffmann arranged for Morell to visit Hitler at the Berghof, the mountain residence on the Obersalzberg in the Bavarian Alps. Morell managed to help the Führer with his gastrointestinal problems, such as flatulence, which made most of his social dinners unbearable.
His flatulence was often worst right after dinner, so Hitler frequently rose from the table and withdrew to his private quarters, causing considerable surprise among his guests. Behind his back, the Führer was also called "der Fürzer," meaning "the farter."
Morell succeeded in easing Hitler's flatulence and secured the position of his personal physician. Thanks to Morell's prescribed medications, Hitler's leg rash also disappeared.
Hitler was convinced of Morell's medical genius and soon included him in his closest social circle. Some historians connect this fact to Morell's treatment of syphilis, along with Hitler's own fears of the disease, which he closely associated with Jews.
While the Führer was enthusiastic about his new doctor, other high-ranking Nazis held a different view. Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, and Heinrich Himmler rejected Morell as a charlatan.
Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer stated in his 1969 autobiography that when his circulation and stomach troubled him in 1936, he summoned Morell to his private practice. After a superficial examination, Morell prescribed probiotics, dextrose, vitamins, and hormone tablets.
To be safe, Speer then had himself thoroughly examined by an internal medicine specialist at the University of Berlin, who told him he had no organic disorders but nervous symptoms caused by overwork. After Speer slowed his pace, the symptoms eased, but so as not to offend Hitler, Speer pretended to carefully follow Morell's instructions.
Speer characterized Morell as an opportunist who, once he gained the status of Hitler's doctor, became extremely negligent and lazy in his work. The Führer, however, was satisfied with his doctor, who had an injection or pill for every ailment.
When Hitler was plagued by morning lethargy, Morell gave him injections of a water solution mixed with a substance from several small golden packets that he called Vitamultin. Hitler rose refreshed and invigorated.
When Hitler gave one packet to Himmler, Himmler immediately became suspicious and secretly ordered one of his SS doctors to have it laboratory tested. It was found to contain methamphetamine.
While in low to medium doses methamphetamine can improve mood and increase alertness, concentration, and energy in tired individuals, in very high doses it can induce psychosis, breakdown of skeletal muscle, and cause seizures and cerebral hemorrhage. Chronic use of high doses can accelerate unpredictable and rapid mood changes, stimulant psychoses such as paranoia, hallucinations, delirium, and delusions, and cause violent behavior.
At least once, Hitler ordered his private train to stop so that Morell could administer an injection without worrying about the train shaking. Hitler and his entourage used this train to visit various fronts and wartime negotiations, and for security the front and rear sections of the train were used to prevent a possible attack.
Morell was not popular with Hitler's entourage, who complained about the doctor's rude behavior at the table, poor hygiene, and body odor. Hitler's response to the last problem was: "I don't employ him for his scent but to take care of my health."
Hermann Göring, who was himself addicted to morphine, called Morell the "Reich Master of Injections" and variations on that theme, alluding to Morell's resorting to injectable drugs and overusing them when addressing health problems.
Morell kept a medical diary of the medicines, tonics, vitamins, and other substances he administered to Hitler, usually by injection up to 20 times a day or in pill form. Most were commercial preparations, but some were Morell's own mixtures.
Substances administered to Adolf Hitler included commercial poisons and psychoactive drugs such as heroin, cocaine, adrenaline through eye drops, and methamphetamine, which from 1938 was widely sold in Germany as an over-the-counter medicine under the brand name Pervitin.
Pervitin became colloquially known among German soldiers as "tank tablets" and "Göring pills," a mocking reference to Göring's drug addiction. The side effects, especially withdrawal symptoms, were so severe that the army sharply restricted their use in 1940.
Historian Kamień Sky said that a soldier who went into battle under the influence of Pervitin usually found himself unable to perform effectively the next day or two. He suffered a drug hangover and looked more like a zombie than a great warrior and had to recover from the side effects.
Some soldiers turned violent and committed war crimes against civilians, while others even attacked their own officers. In 1941, Pervitin use was restricted to prescription only, and the army strictly controlled its distribution. Soldiers received only a few tablets at a time and were discouraged from using them in combat.
In 1939, Morell unintentionally became part of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Shortly after midnight on March 15, 1939, Czechoslovak President Emil Hácha met in Berlin with Adolf Hitler, who wanted to occupy the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia half a year after the annexation of the Sudetenland.
Hácha was so terrified by Hitler's fiery speech that he fainted. Hitler's interpreter Paul Schmidt was horrified and said, "If he dies here, the world will say we murdered him."
Theodor Morell, however, checked the president's pulse and gave him a stimulant injection that revived him. Although Morell claimed it was only vitamins, it is possible it also contained methamphetamine.
Hitler later recalled that the 66-year-old Hácha immediately came to life to such an extent that he turned against them with new energy and displayed a spirit of resistance that had previously been entirely lacking. Hácha later recalled how Hermann Göring took him by the hand, spoke gently to him, and asked whether it was really necessary for beautiful Prague to be razed to the ground within a few hours.
Hácha yielded to the Nazi demands, and that same morning of March 15, 1939, in violation of the Munich Agreement, German troops entered the remaining Czech parts of Czechoslovakia and met with virtually no resistance. The following day, Hitler declared the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from Prague Castle, while Hácha remained head of state with the title of State President, but real power was held by Reich Protector Konstantin von Neurath, who served as Hitler's direct representative.
On September 23, 1941, Hitler relieved Neurath of his active duties and daily powers. The reason was that, despite the persecution of Czech Jews and harsh action against protesting students, his overall rule was too mild by Nazi standards. Neurath remained Reich Protector on paper, but real power was in the hands of Reinhard Heydrich, who was appointed his deputy on September 29, 1941.
On May 27, 1942, Heydrich was sitting in his Mercedes convertible when Czechoslovak paratroopers Josef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš fatally wounded this Nazi architect of the Holocaust. Morell was one of the doctors Heinrich Himmler brought in to treat the severely wounded SS member.
Probably because of Morell's poor reputation among high-ranking Nazis, his recommendation to treat Heydrich with sulfonamide, an early antibiotic, was ignored. Instead, KL Gebhard, Heinrich Himmler's chief physician, treated the Nazi architect of the Holocaust without antibiotic therapy. Reinhard Heydrich developed an infection and died eight days after the attack.
On July 20, 1944, after a failed bomb assassination attempt on Hitler, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators tried to kill Adolf Hitler at his field headquarters, the Wolf's Lair. Hitler was injured but did not even cancel his appointments and even attended a meeting with Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini that took place the same day.
Morell used penicillin to treat Hitler. It is believed he used penicillin that came from the Allies, because part of the pure penicillin sent to neutral countries such as Spain, which sympathized with the Axis, could have been diverted and reached doctors of high-ranking Nazis, including Theodor Morell.
In 1944, a hostile rivalry arose between Morell and Dr. Karl Brandt, who had been visiting Hitler since 1934. Although criticized by Brandt and other doctors, Morell always regained the Führer's favor.
The same was true in September 1944, when Hitler developed jaundice. That same month, Dr. Erwin Giesing, an ENT specialist who had originally been called to treat Hitler's damaged eardrums after the bomb explosion during the July 20 plot, became distrustful of Morell's treatment of Hitler.
Suspicious that he knew the cause of the jaundice, Giesing deliberately analyzed the pills that Morell had Hitler taking daily in large quantities and found they had mildly harmful effects. When he had them analyzed, he found they contained strychnine and belladonna, and it was strychnine that caused the jaundice.
Giesing informed two other Hitler doctors, Karl Brandt and Hans Karl von Hasselbach, who in turn told other members of Hitler's team. When the news finally reached Hitler, he was furious, declared that he absolutely trusted Morell and his treatment, and dismissed all three doctors, Giesing, Brandt, and Hasselbach, even though the latter two had been with him since the first days of his rise to power.
Morell also profited financially from his relationship with Hitler. During the war years, Morell bought factories in which he had, among other things, hormone preparations, vitamin concentrates, and a lice powder called Russa produced.
This delousing powder, which Morell himself developed for the Wehrmacht, proved effective in a number of tests, but soldiers refused it because it gave off an unpleasant odor and had to be used dry. Because of the simple packaging and storage conditions the soldiers had, the medicine was often ineffective.
On Hitler's orders, the Wehrmacht purchased large quantities of this medicine, which was intended to prevent typhus transmitted by lice, from the businesses Morell ran. Thanks to his connections with Hitler, Morell earned millions in addition to his annual salary of 60,000 Reichsmarks and owned villas not only in Berlin but also in the spa town of Heringsdorf on the Baltic Sea, and toward the end of the war he even had a third villa built in Berchtesgaden near the Berghof, Adolf Hitler's mountain residence.
On January 16, 1945, Hitler settled into his Führerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery, which became the center of the Nazi regime until the last week of World War II in Europe. One of the inhabitants of the Führerbunker was Hitler's loyal doctor Theodor Morell.
In April 1945, Hitler was taking many pills and numerous injections daily. Morell's personal notes describe how he treated Hitler over the years, including notes such as "injection as always" and "Eukodal," an early German trade name for the opioid oxycodone, a highly addictive and commonly abused drug.
The onset of pain relief usually begins within 15 minutes and lasts up to 6 hours for the immediate-release product. However, common side effects occur, including not only euphoria but also constipation, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, drowsiness, dizziness, itching, dry mouth, and sweating. Serious side effects may include habituation and addiction, depression or mania, irritability or hallucinations, while tremors and other symptoms of Parkinson's disease were recorded in period chronicles about Hitler. Morell made this diagnosis just two weeks before Hitler's death.
When Adolf Hitler greeted members of the Hitler Youth on the occasion of his birthday on April 20, 1945, some looked confused, even horrified, as the Führer, with his coat sleeves rolled up and one hand trembling due to Parkinson's disease, made his way through the ranks of these doomed children. Most of them died that day defending the city against the Russians. It was also the last time Hitler allowed himself to be photographed before committing suicide in his Berlin bunker.
Adolf Hitler allowed Theodor Morell to leave the bunker, using a plane that flew out of Berlin on April 23. Morell, however, left Hitler the medicines that Hitler used until his bitter end.
On April 29, 1945, as Red Army troops fought their way into the government district in the center of the city, Adolf Hitler married his longtime companion Eva Braun in a short civil ceremony. She was 33 and he was 56. Less than 40 hours later, both committed suicide in the living room of the bunker. Braun killed herself by biting and swallowing a cyanide capsule, and Hitler by a gunshot to the head.
When Morell was captured by American units on May 18, 1945, and interrogated, one of his investigators expressed disgust at his obesity and labeled him fat and lacking hygiene habits. Morell was then briefly held in American captivity at the Dachau internment camp and interrogated about his closeness to Hitler.
There, investigators looked into whether he had committed war crimes or crimes against humanity, but the investigation could prove nothing. During interrogation, Morell stated that in the last days before the fall of Berlin, Hitler allegedly feared he would be drugged and forcibly taken from the capital.
During their last meeting, Hitler shouted at Morell and said: "Do you think I'm crazy? You'll try to give me morphine. Get out of here, you're fired. Take off that medical uniform. Go home and behave as if you never had anything to do with me."
On June 30, 1947, Theodor Morell was hospitalized at the district hospital in Tegel. The doctor who had for years administered psychoactive drugs and other substances to Adolf Hitler, turning him into a drug addict, had aphasia, a speech disorder resulting from brain damage. Severely obese and in broken health, he died at the age of 61 in the hospital in Tegel on May 26, 1948, three years after the death of Adolf Hitler.
As many later claimed, Morell provided his Führer with the kind of medical care he fully deserved until his end. Morell did not believe Hitler committed suicide, because, as he said, Hitler was not that type. For Theodor Morell, no tears were shed.