Adolf Hitler and vegetarianism

Near the end of his life, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until his death, followed a vegetarian diet. It is not clear when or why he adopted it, since some accounts of his dietary habits prior to the Second World War indicate that he ate meat as late as 1937. In 1938 Hitler's doctors put him on a meat-free diet, and his public image as a vegetarian and a lover of animals was fostered; from 1942 he described himself as a vegetarian.

Personal accounts from people who knew Hitler and were familiar with his diet indicate that he did not eat meat as part of his diet during this period, as several contemporaneous witnesses—such as Albert Speer (in his memoirs, Inside the Third Reich)—noted that Hitler used vivid and gruesome descriptions of animal suffering and slaughter at the dinner table to try to dissuade his colleagues from eating meat. An examination carried out by French forensic pathologists on a fragment of Hitler's mandible in 2018 found no traces of meat fibre in the tartar on Hitler's teeth.

Several eyewitness sources maintain Hitler was a vegetarian because of his concern for animal suffering, noting that he was often distressed by images of animal cruelty and suffering, and was an antivivisectionist. However, some modern-day analyses have speculated that Hitler's vegetarianism may have been for health reasons or for ideological reasons due to the composer Richard Wagner's historical theories, or even a psychological reaction to his niece's death rather than a commitment to animal welfare. Additionally, some historians and commentators argue that his vegetarianism was exaggerated or manipulated to bolster his public image. In The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (1973) the historian Robert Payne claimed that Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, portrayed Hitler as "an ascetic without vices," highlighting his avoidance of drinking, smoking, and eating meat to depict him as virtuous.