Hitler's shakey hand


What was that all about? Did he have a nervous twitch or something else?

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His doctors had prescribed him a cocktail of narcotics (ampthetamines, cocaine, morphine) which he'd been taking for years. That, and maybe Parkinsons disease or some other degenerative condition, probably caused his noticeable physical deterioration by the time this film is set.

It's impossible to tell exactly what caused it, since he ended up in a ditch covered in petrol and on fire.

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It's generally believed Hitler had Parkinson's Disease in his final years, which can cause shaking in the limbs particularly on one side of the body. It also tends to go with the kind of dark depressive moods that Hitler suffered from.

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The Parkinson's Disease sounds like it. I don't know why I didn't think of that because my dad had Parkinson's.

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I have hear only one mention of Hitler having Parkinson's Disease in all the documentaries that I have seen about him. But I think that you are right. I think that is why he was so erratic and took risks in fighting the war. He probably knew that his time was limited. The Nazis avoided the shaking hands scene by editing them out of their last propaganda films. They didn't want the German nation to know ill he had become by 1945. But some unedited footage remains and his shaking hands can be seen on film while he inspected a troop of German youths.

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