Hitler's Fatal Sickness and Other Secrets of the Nazi Leaders

Book excerpt: The author was a U.S. Army surgeon who had access as a consulting urologist to the Nazi leaders tried for war crimes at Nuremberg. This book records his professional impressions of those men and their medical conditions. Included is a lengthy chapter on Adolf Hitler's health problems, with a resulting (and surprising) diagnosis of advanced Parkinson's disease. More important than the text are the photographs, many showing personal artifacts of the Nazi leaders. More than 400 are reproduced, many from the author's collection and not available elsewhere. Hitler had parkinsonism, Lattimer posits, probably the "faster moving post-encephalitic" sort, and he cites reports of Hitler's tremors, first in the left hand, then spreading to other limbs; his well-documented attacks of rage; and the discontinuation of his "powerful public appearances" after 1940 as chief among many clues supporting his thesis. As for the fuhrer's sidekicks, Lattimer reveals how Goring's tailors coped with his ponderous and fluctuating physique and presents photographic evidence of his daughter Edda trying to avoid the fuhrer's attentions. Jodl, Keitel, the insufferable Ribbentrop, Speer, and Streicher all receive Lattimer's scrutiny, but there are no chapters on Himmler and Goebbels, who both cheated justice--and this book based on discoveries of the Nuremberg trials--by committing suicide before they could be tried.