HITLER AND THE BLACK DOSSIER—

EMAILS to and from Rudy Binion

JUNE 2&3,2000

3/8/2022.

Today I looked in a file cabinet where I keep copies of emails to and from Rudolph Binion. I pulled at random a file of emails from June, 2000, when we were trying to figure out who delivered to Himmler the Black Dossier revealing that Hitler had tertiary syphilis and was in imminent danger of insanity or death. I was working on the Hitler chapter of my book Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis (Basic Books, 2003).

Rereading these emails I remember the complexity of the trail of clues. And I realize how unlikely it is that I will ever do such sleuthing again. Or have such a research partner. I was in San Anselmo, California and Rudy was in Brookline, Mass where he was a history professor at Brandeis.

Despite his troublesome knees, Rudy made numerous trips to the Hitler archive in the basement of his apartment building, where he kept the research materials for the book he had written years before. He had discovered the identities of the two authors of the report in the Black Dossier — two of Hitler’s doctors, Morrell and Brandt.

Below I have copied the emails we wrote on June 1 and 2, 2000 looking for the next clue.

Thursday 6/1/2000 7:45 am

Dear Rudy,

There are TWO documents involved in the Black Dossier story—first, the Pasewalk document—which itself could be Hitler’s hospital record (our first choice), the Forster case notes, or even the discharge paper for the army. Next, the commentary that brings the syphilis of Pasewalk days current with the information that Hitler had two episodes indicating neurosyphilis in 1937 and 1941— which means someone who was in a position to assess Hitler’s current stage of progression of disease. Rereading the material, I realize we had been looking for ONE document when there had to be TWO—Pasewalk (indication of secondary syphilis) and someone writing in 1942 (manifestation of tertiary disease.

So, who was in a position to assess that? Right— Morell - who else? (Maybe Brandt and Hasselbach—but certainly not like Morell. Morell, hired in 1936, patches up the skin lesions and tends to the tummy aches, and then within a year, Hitler illustrates a whole new textbook of signs and symptoms of tertiary neurosyphilis—not to mention cardiac syphilis, therefore imminent insanity or death.

Now— YOU came up with Morell and Brandt being the signatures on the file in the Black Dossier, the leak to Himmler, and we look back and ask, so wise now with that information, how could we have been so stupid to miss Morell as the obvious author of the Pasewalk dossier? Why indeed? How shocking it is to consider Morell as Himmler’s snitch. Rubert Ludlum couldn’t pull off a plot like that.

We were attending to the original Pasewalk document and the questions surrounding it, forgetting that the 1937 and 1941information would have had to have been added by someone else, someone with current medical information. Who else bur Morell, we ask now, once we see his wet ink on that document. Think about Morell’s position. He’s treating Hitler, watching the daily decline, and the results of Hitler’s actions. Brandt was convicted or war crimes and hanged. Morell was not. Did he want to kill Hitler, as Dr Giesing said he tried to do himself, Hippocratic Oath aside? Probably not: Morell was doing everything he could to keep Hitler alive and functioning, and doing pretty well considering the state of the body he was working on, the body falling apart organ by organ. Did Morell feel he had done what he could, signing his name to a document that would mean his death if found?—if Himmler turned him in? Why would Morell (and Brandt) trust Himmler, the true Heini, not to blow the whistle on them to the Chief? The negotiations resulting in the final twenty-six page Black Dossier had to be of the highest level, highest risk for everyone involved. Remember what Hitler did later t the conspirators of 20 April.

It would help to place everyone. In 1942, where was Hitler, where Himmler, where Morell? How far apart were their offices? Where was Field Headquarters in relation to the bunker? How much freedom of travel did Morell have? I haven’t been able to figure out how much time he spent with Hitler, how much with his wife and practice.

So we have established that the Gestapo—at least Canaris and Heydrich, but who knows who else? — had confiscated medical records from Hitler’s earlier days, and we have a mysterious “man whose integrity could not be questioned” being the courier from Morell/Brandt to Himmler, and presumably to Morell/Brandt before that. So far we have two documents and three conspirators. And that man-of-integrity had to trust all of them— Morell, Brandt and Himmler— not to rat to Hitler. That’s a lot of trust in a spy-thriller. That person had to be able to persuade whoever it was who was first approached- either Morell or Brandt — to read the Pasewalk document and then put a signature on a current diagnosis of rapidly developing neurosyphilis.

I’m assuming your footnotes on Canaris are enough to substantiate that he did have early medical records. He’s the leading candidate so far for the mysterious courier. His role as one of the conspirators in the 20 April assassination attempt argues strongly for his motivation to take the risk in going to Morell, possible right under Hitler’s nose. Heydrich, our other choice of a man who had confiscated health records, would be ruled out by his own assassination in June 1942—but maybe not so fast. Who went through his documents after his death?

Then there is Rudolf Brandt’s role. We were thrown off the track initially, when Kersten was speaking to “Brandt” who went pale with terror when Kersten mentioned the Black Dossier to him — What! You know the greatest state secret— you are in grave danger! —assuming he meant Karl Brandt. I wondered in passing if it was likely that Himmler’s masseur was chummy with Hitler’s surgeon, thinking not, but then I found that note that Himmler’s secretary was Rudolf Brandt, so I checked the index, and sure enough, the Brandt mentioned throughout was Rudolf, not Karl. Kersten switched at the end of the memoir from “Brandt” to “Dr. Brandt” making me wonder if he was talking to BOTH Brandts, which would mean that Himmler’s secretary, Rudolf, was someone who would be called “Doctor” and that Kersten’s Brandt is consistent throughout. We have to find out more about this Rudolf Brandt, because he, as Himmler’s secretary, was privy to a lot of information, and reading all the references to him from the Kersten memoir index, he and Kersten gossiped a lot, which would make sense: Kersten was treating Himmler almost daily and so would have gotten to know his secretary very well.And note that when Kersten mentioned the dossier, R. Brandt was all too well aware of it, and knew the identity of the courier, the mysterious gentleman of integrity.

Sum: we have the Morell/Brandt signature on a document stating that Hitler had episodes of teritary neurosyphilis in 1937 and 1941, we know the Pasewalk document noting signs of secondary syphilis in Hitler’s soldier days was in the hands of the Gestapo, and we know that at least one of the assassination conspirators had those health records. It would be lovely—not necessary but lovely — to know the identity of the gentleman of integrity. Maybe his identity is somewhere in your dungeon, or in the Hoover Hitler collection, or maybe in David Irving’s half-ton archive.

Enough for now,

Deb

Friday 6/2/2000 9:18 am

D,

Better late than never? Here are some random thoughts about the matters that preoccupied you below way back when.

First, an emphatic repetition: each of the Brandts in question was a “Dr. Brandt”, but the signataory of the hot document as per Besgen was unquestionably Karl: Besgen would never, never, never have let anyone else index that crucial reference to “Karl” as against all the other references indexed to “Rudolf”.

Next, although I cannot imagine that Besgen would have supplied the names of the two signatories of the Hot Doc without proof positive, I also have trouble figuring out why Kersten would have referred o a single signatory in his published diary and would have omitted that single signatory’s name at that. Conceivable the answer lies with some German copyright law or other making it legally impossible for him to cite a document signed by Morell as such without Morell’s ok while Morell was alive (was he alive when Kersten published and dead when Besgen published?) or some other silliness but you MUST check out that documentary basis in the Kersten estate or through his erstwhile publisher. Remember: you will have every, repeat: every Hitler scholar except your collusive e-pal out to get you, and taking Kersten’s mere word for anything, let alone Kersten’s apologetic biographer;s, is an invitation to wrongful dismissal. I just asked a dissertation student of mine now researching in Munch to inquire at the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte there about the whereabouts and accessibility of the Morell papers if he gets a change, and I’ll keep asking, But with your deft web fingers you may turn up the answer via the Finnish consulate or the Hoover Library or . . .

Friday 6/2/2000 9:33

cont.

Next, I would rule out any copy of Forster’s own case notes on AH at P having come into Gestapo hands—not altogether categorically, as I remember a Gestapo goon in THE EYEWITNESS getting at least a look at those notes (or am I misremembering?), but pretty nearly, as they never figured in the Greifsald file on Forster’s hounding to death where his prior trip abroad did, and his son never mentioned them though he did say he had heard from his mother at the time of his father’s suicide that his father had diagnosed Hitler as a hysteric. (My research reminded him of this: he had suppressed the memory till then—and was relieved to learn that the cause of suicide was not “endopsychic” as he put it, as this would suggest a nutty gene; it just occurs to me that he may have gone into forensic psychiatry, of which he as professor in Frieburg, in reaction to this unconsciously nagging doubt about his father’s cause of death!) Surely those personal notes never came into Brandt’s/Morell’s hands or there would have been much more Pasewalk detail in the Hot Doc. Conversely, they likely had what Hoegner had kept from the Putsch trial days till it was confiscated from him by the Gestapo in 1933, and this was more than the summary paper still in the military files that I gave you, as what Hoegner remembered it saying as per his memoirs and his later letter to me was not in the summary military document (his reclassification as fit for active duty with only burning mucous membranes left from the gassing). What puzzles me here is that Hoegner, as best I recall, never said it had Hitler’s blindness diagnosed as hysterical; on the contrary, those burning membranes contradicted the hysterical diagnosis hence it wouldn’t have been drawn up by Forster—and even makes me wonder how Forster can have called his blindness hysterical if indeed he showed burning mucous membranes.

Friday 6/2/2000 10:10

cont.

I see no need for a courier other than Brandt or, alternatively, Morell himself. The presumption behind alerting Himmler would have been not just that the SS would be needed to prevent leaks or trouble should Hitler be put under psychiatric surveillance none too consentingly, but primarily that Himmler with his SS could be expected to be ready to take control of Germany should Hitler be relieved of power. I remember lots of signs that Himmler toyed with the contingency plans for succeeding Hitler all through the last years, so the risk of his snitching to Hitler wasn’t that great—as indeed the sequel proves it wasn’t, for Himmler didn’t act but didn’t snitch either. I expect the tone of the Hot Doc was roughly: “We find it our duty to bring a matter of the utmost gravity to your urgent attention in your capacity as chief of the services guaranteeing internal order and security within the Reich. As you know the Fuehrer is in our medical care, privately in the one case and officially in the other. As you cannot know, however, the Fuehrer’s health is dangerously precarious, including above all his mental health, and this at the present crucial juncture of the world war now raging. He suffers from syphilitic infection manifestly contracted in his youth which, uncured at the time, evidently flared up again in October 1918, when . . .”

New mail from you, hence I break off