German Leadership

He inspired pure terror ...

Carried by Daily Mail newspaper - source unclear.

Brigadefuhrer-SS Dr. Hugo Johannes Blaschke, a man so feared that his appearance would reduce the highest leaders of the Third Reich to a state of shivering terror. Was he a dangerous SD officer ? An unreliable Gestapo psychopath ? A regade SS judge ? Well, no - he served Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Bormann et al. as their ... dentist. His bridgework on Hitler was used to help identify the Fuhrer's skull after things got a bit toasty in the Fuhrerbunker garden at the end. Apparently, Hitler was a very, very nervous dental patient, and getting any work done on him was a severe trial to the good dentist. It was perhaps inevitable that it was difficult enough to get the Fuhrer into the dentist's chair in the first place. My wife may feel happy to nag me into getting that sore tooth looked at, but I suspect that Eva had a bigger propblem - all-powerful dictators are less open to persuasion on such points. As a result, apparently, Hitler enjoyed pretty poor dental hygiene, and his treatments, when he finally submitted to them, were more painful and distressing than they might otherwise need to have been. Best regards, JR.