The answer for both questions posed is simple. Hitler was and wasn't a vegetarian. Or, to be precise, he turned to vegetarian diet later in his life. The contemporary accounts vary, but they usually are consistent in that prior to mid-30's, was eating meat, predominantly poultry and fish, but on occasion he enjoyed Bavarian and Austrian staples such as fried pork sausages or liver dumplings. Biographers usually note that he almost completely abstained from meat (first from red meat, then from almost every form of it) somewhere in mid-1930's. Foreign diplomats who were dining with Hitler in Germany between 1937 and 1939 also noticed that he is abstains from meat as well as from alcohol and tobacco.

Robert Payne suggests that Hitler's dietary habits were an attempt at propaganda showing that the Fuhrer joins the people in the ascetic life necessitated by economic troubles and later by war. This is however contradicted by memoirs of Gertraud Junge, Hitler's secretary who noted, that when the cook was trying to add a red-meat products (usually animal fat) to prepared meal, Hitler was usually reacting by stomach ache and indigestion, what may suggest gallbladder or liver problems. Accounts of Marlene von Exner, and Theodor Morrell, Hitler's physicians, also corroborate the informations of Hitler's almost strictly vegetarian diet.