Hugo Johannes Blaschke was a German dental surgeon notable for being Adolf Hitler’s personal dentist from 1933 to April 1945 and for being the chief dentist on the staff of Reichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler.
Life
Blaschke was born in Neustadt in West Prussia and studied dentistry in Berlin and at the University of Pennsylvania. He trained as a dental surgeon in London and opened his own practice in late 1911. During World War I, he served as a military dentist in Frankfurt/Oder and in Berlin. After the war ended, he went back to private practice in Berlin. After treating Hermann Göring in 1930, Blaschke began seeing other top Nazi leaders for dental work. Blaschke then joined the Nazi Party on 1 February 1931. Göring recommended him to Hitler in 1933. After the successful treatment, Blaschke became Hitler's personal dentist. As well as Hitler, he also treated Eva Braun, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. He joined the SS on 1 May 1935 and was appointed chief dentist of the SS on 31 August 1943. He was promoted to the rank of SS-Brigadeführer on 9 November 1944. In 1945 as the end of Nazi Germany drew near, Blaschke accompanied Hitler to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin and later the Führerbunker. As the Red Army was closing in on Berlin, on 20 April, Hitler ordered Blaschke, Albert Bormann, Admiral Karl-Jesko von Puttkamer, Dr. Theodor Morell, secretaries Johanna Wolf, Christa Schroeder, and other staff to leave Berlin by aircraft for the Obersalzberg. The group flew out of Berlin on different flights by aircraft of the Fliegerstaffel des Führers over the following three days. Blaschke's longtime dental assistant Käthe Heusermann had been offered a chance to fly out of Berlin with the others, but declined and stayed behind with Hitler until his death. Heusermann left on 1 May in one of the break-out groups and made her way back to her apartment by the morning of the following day.
Post-war
In early May, Soviet Red Army soldiers captured both Heusermann and Blaschke's longtime technician Fritz Echtmann. By 11 May, the Soviets confirmed through Heusermann and Echtmann that a dental bridge and part of a lower jawbone found outside the Führerbunkerbelonged to Hitler, and another dental bridge was Braun's. Before her visual inspection, Heusermann had been required to give a detailed description of Hitler and Eva's bridges and make detailed drawings of them. They were both separately shown the dental remains, which they confirmed. Heusermann went on to spend the next ten years in a Soviet prison and was released in June 1955. Echtmann, also spent several years in Soviet prisons until being released in December 1953. While in Austria, Blaschke was arrested by US Army forces on 20 May 1945. He was interrogated by the Americans after the war about Hitler's dental treatment in the hope that this would lead to the identification of his remains. Blaschke stated that he had been called in to examine Hitler in October 1944. He discovered that Hitler had a substantial gum infection in tooth number 6, which formed part of the fitted large dental bridge Blaschke had made for him in 1933, and Hitler wanted it to be dealt with quickly. Blaschke went on to recount that he carried out surgery to cut off part of the bridge and remove tooth number 6 due to the infection causing the severe toothache. After his release from captivity in December 1948, Blaschke continued to practice as a dentist in Nuremberg. Blaschke reconstructed the dental records of Martin Bormann from memory, and these were later used to identify his skeletal remains, which were discovered in Berlin in 1972. Hugo Blaschke died in Nuremberg at age 78 in 1959. He is buried in St. Peter Cemetery in Nuremberg, but the gravestone stood till 1977 and the gravesite is since 1980 occupied by the family Gossler.
