Steven G. Kellman: Hitler's Physician

1940 By Jay Neugeboren Minneapolis; Two Dollar Radio. $15. 276 pp. Mary Shelley describes how Dr. Victor Frankenstein created his infamous monster. But what about real-life monsters? What accounts for the malignity of Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin? Young Adolf Hitler was, according to his childhood physician, "quiet, well-mannered and neatly dressed."["My Patient, Hitler," Collier's, March 15, 1941] If we knew what caused him to metamorphose into a genocidal maniac, might we prevent future Holocausts? A few historians and psychoanalysts have suggested that that physician was himself responsible in part for Hitler's violent obsession with Jews. A dedicated and compassionate professional, Dr. Eduard Bloch made house calls, and one of the houses he called upon in Linz, Austria during the first decade of the 20th century... [read full story]