Review: The Man Who Invented Hitler by David Lewis
In October 1918, Adolf Hitler is blinded in a gas attack on the western Front. Hitler presents with no physical damage to the eyes and is assessed to be suffering from a condition known as hysterical blindness. He is referred to Dr. Edmund Forster, an experienced army psychiatrist and neurologist known for his ‘shock treatment’ approach to curing patients. Forster successfully ‘cures’ Hitler. The premise of the book is that Forster’s treatment created a new psychologically very different Hitler and thus changed history.
While we do learn about Forster, the book heavily focuses on Hitler. We get a good overview of his formative political years and also the changing face of Germany post-WW1. The story ends with the suicide in strange circumstances of Dr. Forster in 1933 shortly after the Nazis assumed full control of Germany. The suicide removed someone who knew too much about Hitler’s past. An interesting ‘what if’ in the book is a verified account of an incident in which a British soldier had Hitler in his gunsights but opted not to shoot as Hitler was already wounded.
Asynchronists 