On this day in 1945 Adolf Hitler committed suicide, afraid of being taken prisoner and prosecuted for his war crimes.

On this day in 1945 Adolf Hitler committed suicide, afraid of being taken prisoner and prosecuted for his war crimes.

Although petty phobias are trivial in comparison to that kind of fear, Hitler did have one—he was terrified of going to the dentist.

By time he started World War II, Hitler was suffering the consequences of lifetime of poor dental hygiene and an aversion to dentists. He had abscesses, gum disease, chipped and broken teeth, and numerous unfilled cavities. The few teeth he had remaining were discolored and loose and he is known to have had extraordinarily bad breath.

During the war, the personal dentist for Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis was Hugo Johannes Blaschke, chief dentist of the SS. It was Blaschke who confirmed to American interrogators that the charred jawbone found in the ruins of Hitler’s Berlin bunker belonged to his former patient and fuehrer. While Blaschke was being held prisoner, his civilian dental practice was taken over by Theodor Bruck, a Jewish dentist who had survived the war hiding in Berlin. Bruck emigrated to the United States and brought his dental office records with him, including records of the treatment of Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis. In those records, which came to light in Menevse Deprem-Hennen’s 2009 book Dentist of the Devil, Blaschke noted Hitler’s dread of the dentist’s chair and how his delays in seeking treatment exacerbated his poor dental health (Blaschke notes that in 1944 Hitler had ten cavities that required filling). Among the Nazi leadership, Hitler wasn’t alone in his fear of dentistry. Blaschke’s records show that Hermann Goering “cried before he even got into the chair.”

American authorities released Blaschke in 1948 and he resumed private practice in Nuremburg, living until age 78. His dental assistant Käthe Heusermann was not so fortunate. Captured by the Soviets, after she positively identified Hitler’s dental remains for them and took them to Blaschke’s old office and showed them Hitler’s dental x-rays as proof, the Soviets arrested her and kept her in solitary confinement for six years. In 1951 they charged her with helping “the bourgeois German state to prolong the war,” by participating in Hitler’s dental care. (Interestingly, she had worked for Dr. Bruck before he went into hiding, and she helped conceal and feed him during the war.) She was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp in Siberia, an experience she barely survived. When she was finally allowed to return to Berlin she went back to work as a dental assistant. She died in 1995.

A final comment about Hitler and his hideous teeth: In 2018 a team of French pathologists led by forensic scientist Philippe Charlier were given access to the teeth and bridgework purported to have been Hitler’s, which are now held in the Russian archives. There has long been a popular belief/suspicion that Hitler escaped Berlin and that the remains found at his bunker were not his. After Käthe Heusermann had confirmed Hitler’s death for the Soviets, Stalin concocted a disinformation scheme called Operation Myth, to create the false belief that Hitler had actually survived and had been given refuge and was being hidden somewhere in the West. Charlier and his team were the first people ever allowed by the Russians to view the teeth (pictured) and their study confirmed with certainty that they were in fact Hitler’s and that he had indeed died in 1945.