Werner Haase

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Werner Haase (2 August 1900 – 30 November 1950), German professor of medicine and SS officer, was one of Adolf Hitler's personal physicians.

Haase was born in Köthen, in Saxony-Anhalt. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and the SS in 1941. By 1945 he held the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer. From 1935 to 1945 he was Hitler's deputy personal physician. Hitler appears to have had a high opinion of him. The book Hitler's Death: Russia's Last Great Secret from the Files of the KGB, based on documents in the Soviet archives, reproduces a telegram from Hitler sent to Haase on his birthday in 1943, saying: "Accept my heartfelt congratulations on your birthday."^[1]

In the last days of the fighting in Berlin in late April 1945, Haase was working to save the lives of the many wounded German soldiers and civilians in the public air-raid shelter under the Reich Chancellery building in central Berlin, next to the Führerbunker. On 29 April he was summoned to the Führerbunker to administer poison to Hitler's dog Blondi, to ensure that the poison supplied by Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger was effective.^[2] He remained in the bunker until Hitler's suicide the following afternoon. He then returned to his work in the public shelter, where he remained until taken prisoner by the Soviet Red Army.

On 6 May Haase was one of those taken by the Soviet authorities to identify the bodies of the former Reich Propaganda Minister and (for one day) Reich Chancellor, Joseph Goebbels, his wife Magda Goebbels and their six children. Haase identified Goebbel's body, despite it being partly burned, by the metal brace which Goebbels wore on his deformed right leg.

Haase was made a Soviet prisoner of war. In June 1945 he was charged with being "a personal doctor of the former Reichschancellor of Germany, Hitler, and also treated other leaders of Hitler's government and of the Nazi Party and members of Hitler's SS guard." The sentence is not recorded. Haase, who suffered from tuberculosis, died in captivity in November 1950. The place of death is recorded as "Butyr prison hospital." Possibly this is a reference to the Butyrka prison in Moscow.

In the German film Downfall, Haase is played by Matthias Habich (who appears much older than the 44 which Haase was at the time). He is portrayed relatively sympathetically, as a dedicated and overworked doctor.

[edit] Source

All facts and quotations in this article are from V.K. Vinogradov and others, Hitler's Death: Russia's Last Great Secret from the Files of the KGB, Chaucer Press 2005; ISBN 1-904449-13-1.

[edit] References

1. ^ V.K. Vinogradov and others, Hitler's Death: Russia's Last Great Secret from the Files of the KGB, Chaucer Press 2005, 85
2. ^ Ian Kershaw, Hitler, Volume II, W.W. Norton 2000, 286