As a follow-up of the other post, here is more evidence I stumbled upon showing Hitler was indeed vegetarian.
Hitler at a meeting with the Strassers and General Ludendorff in 1920.
‘Bravo,’ said Ludendorff. Raising his clear green glass, which rested on a massive stem, he offered to drink with each of us. We all naturally responded to his gesture, but to my astonishment I noticed that Hitler’s glass contained nothing but water.
‘Herr Hitler is a teetotaler,’ Gregor explained, with a host’s smile. ‘He is also a vegetarian,’ he added, with a glance almost of apprehension at his wife.
The roast had just been brought in.
‘Herr Hitler will not offend me by refusing my cooking,’ my little sister-in-law said calmly, but at the same time challengingly.
An instinctive dislike of the guest who had been thrust on her was perceptible in her eyes and her whole attitude.
Else never approved of her husband’s intimacy with Adolf Hitler. She tolerated him during the years that followed without ever daring to express her revulsion aloud. But her hostility to Hitler never changed.
That day Adolf Hitler ate meat. I do not think he has ever done so since.
Otto Strasser. (1940).
Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 5-6.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasserRoehm had taken a year’s lease of a room at Wiessee. Immediately on receiving Hitler’s reply, he went to the village inn and booked a number of rooms for June 29. He even ordered a vegetarian lunch for Adolf. I learned these details from responsible witnesses.
Otto Strasser. (1940).
Hitler and I. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1940). Page 188.
https://archive.org/details/HitlerAndIOttoStrasserSo, we have Rauschning (an anti-Hitler rightist) and Otto Strasser (an anti-Hitler leftist) both finding Hitler's vegetarianism and disinterest in alcohol to be remarkable enough to mention it multiple times.
Wagener and Hitler's secretary (Christa Schroeder, who was hired in 1933) suggested his vegetarianism was influenced by the death of his niece Geli Raubal in 1931 for some reason. However, Strasser makes clear that Hitler's vegetarianism and teetotalism was already notable by 1920, and Rauschning writes Hitler had told him his principled conviction in vegetarianism was influenced by Richard Wagner and romanticist attitudes.
When I met him a week later [1931] in Nuremberg, it came to my attention that he ate no meat. Unfortunately, I myself had ordered goulash. I noticed Hitler fighting off nausea as I put the meat on my plate, though I did not make the connection. Suddenly he rose and said:
“I’ll sit over there. Please Join me when you’ve finished.”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978).
Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 222.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n265/mode/2upFrom the editor's narrative in the introduction. (They didn't do a very good job researching if they didn't find Strasser's and Rauschning's accounts!)
He provides an explanation for Hitler's becoming a vegetarian, a development about which little is otherwise known.[38]
[38] See chapter 35, where Wagener connects that step with the death of Hitler’s niece Geli Raubal. Hitler’s private secretary had also linked his becoming a vegetarian to Geli’s death, but without the details provided by Wagener: Albert Zoller, Hitler Privat: Erlebnisbericht seiner Geheimsekretärin (Düsseldorf, 1949), p. 91.
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978).
Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page xxv.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n27/mode/2upThe timeline of Hitler's teetotalism given by Wagener is consistent with Strasser's account, and it is consistent with Rauschning's account that Hitler did not do this for health reasons, but principle.
But Hitler denied himself even more. Early on, he had given up smoking and, soon after the war, any enjoyment of alcohol.
“People sometimes think,” he told me on the occasion of a trip we took together, “that I don’t like beer or wine. Oh! I really do like them. But every time I saw a bottle of wine, or even a quarter-bottle, or a mug of beer, I was reminded of my time in Vienna and later in Munich, when I had wanted it so much, I as well as my comrades—but we had not been able to afford it. All of us had had to think twice, three times, before we spent so much as a penny. And even then I had often enough put the money back into my pocket once more because somewhere I had seen a book that I wanted to borrow or buy because I felt an inner urge to have read it. And today, when there are so many people out of work who are living now as I lived in those days, I cannot bring myself to take a glass of wine or a mug of beer, since behind the glass I always see the sobbing expression of a head of a family or the satanic grimace of the plight afflicting the Volk.
“And so I gradually gave it up.”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978).
Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 34.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n63/mode/2up----
Ok, one more account. It was shockingly easy to find all this, given the number of random articles I've seen in the past desperately trying to claim Hitler being a vegetarian was just some myth.
The food was emphatically simple. A soup, no appetizer, meat with vegetables and potatoes, a sweet. For beverage we had a choice between mineral water, ordinary Berlin bottled beer, or a cheap wine. Hitler was served his vegetarian food, drank Fachinger mineral water, and those of his guests who wished could imitate him. But few did. It was Hitler himself who insisted on this simplicity. He could count on its being talked about in Germany. Once, when the Helgoland fishermen presented him with a gigantic lobster, this delicacy was served at table, much to the satisfaction of the guests, but Hitler made disapproving remarks about the human error of consuming such ugly monstrosities. Moreover, he wanted to have such luxuries forbidden, he declared.
[...]
Hess came to table about once every two weeks; he would be followed by his adjutant in a rather weird getup, carrying a tin vessel containing a specially prepared meal which was to be rewarmed in the kitchen. For a long time it was hidden from Hitler that Hess had his own special vegetarian meal served to himself. When someone finally gave the secret away, Hitler turned irritably to Hess in the presence of the assembled company and blustered: “I have a first-class diet cook here. If your doctor has prescribed something special for you, she will be glad to prepare it. But you cannot bring your food with you.” Hess, even then inclining to obstinate contrariness, began explaining that the components of his meals had to be of special biodynamic origin. Whereupon Hitler bluntly informed him that in that case he should take his meals at home. Thereafter Hess scarcely ever came to the dinners.
Albert Speer. (1969).
Inside the Third Reich. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1970). Page 119-120.
https://archive.org/details/inside-the-third-reich-memoirs-by-albert-speer-by-albert-speer-richard-winston-a/page/118/mode/2upFinally the conversation would revert to the quality of the food. He was highly pleased with his diet cook and praised her skill at vegetarian cuisine. If a dish seemed to him especially good, he asked me to have a taste of it.
[...]
Incidentally, even here at headquarters he would often make fun of meat-eaters, but he did not attempt to sway me. He even had no objection to a Steinhager after fatty food—although he commented pityingly that he did not need it, with his fare. If there were a meat broth I could depend on his speaking of “corpse tea”; in connection with crayfish he brought out his story of a deceased grandmother whose relations had thrown her body into the brook to lure the crustaceans; for eels, that they were best fattened and caught by using dead cats.
Albert Speer. (1969).
Inside the Third Reich. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. (1970). Page 301.
https://archive.org/details/inside-the-third-reich-memoirs-by-albert-speer-by-albert-speer-richard-winston-a/page/300/mode/2up