Inside Hitler

• Adolf Hitler: The Medical Diaries. The Private Diaries of Dr Theo Morell edited by David Irving
  Sidgwick, 309 pp, £10.95, May 1983, ISBN 0 283 98981 5

Adolf Hitler: The Medical Diaries consists of a translation of the medical records kept by Hitler’s physician, Dr Theodor Morell, and of Mr Irving’s extensive commentaries on those records. Morell, a fashionable Berlin GP specialising in venereal diseases, became the Führer’s personal doctor at Christmas 1936. The elevation, which took place during a visit to Hitler’s retreat on the Obersalzberg, was greeted by Morell’s wife with the oracular words: ‘What do we need with that!’ – a rendering, presumably, of ‘Wozu brauchen wir das?’