Adolf Hitler Enjoyed Special Treatment in Prison New Documents Reveal

Hitler and his associates were incarcerated in 1923 following the Beer Hall Putsch, the Nazi leader's failed attempt to capture Munich and use it as a base for a march against Germany's Weimar Republic government. The future dictator ended up in Landsberg prison, where he wrote most of the material for the first volume of "Mein Kampf" and, while there, received as many as 330 visitors.

Newly published historical documents reveal that Hitler and his followers were treated much more amiably than socialists or communists, also imprisoned for the attempted coup. Prison guards and officials who sympathized with Nazi nationalist ideology provided Hitler with plentiful supplies of beer. The self-described "complete anti-alcoholic" purchased 31 liters of beer in July 1924, and similar amounts in the following months of his sentence.

"Formally it was the same kind of sentence, but in practice it was completely different," German historian Peter Fleischmann, who heads the Bavarian state archives in Nuremberg, explained. "The leftists… were mistreated while the rightists had their path greased for them."

Prison treatment that Hitler and his associates enjoyed was "far beyond the norms of the time," according to Fleischmann.

Fleischmann's book appears to confirm a British WWII-era joke about Hitler. Prison medical records show that Hitler, 35 at the time of his arrival in Landsberg, was healthy and strong, but had a right cryptorchidism. The congenital condition can increase the chances of infertility.

Hitler was released from Landsberg on December 20, 1924, after allegedly showing good conduct.