Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler's sexuality has been the subject of much speculation and controversy. Some historians argue that Hitler was completely heterosexual, others argue that he was either homosexual or bisexual. The reason for this great deal of speculation may be the fact that Hitler presented himself publicly as a man without an intimate domestic life, dedicated to his political mission.

In 1943, the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) published A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend. In the course of the 281-page report, the authors describe Hitler "(1) as he appears to himself, (2) as he has been pictured to the German people, and (3) how he is known to his associates." Using this information, they then perform a "psychological analysis ... in which an attempt is made to understand Hitler as a person and the motivations underlying his actions."

The authors describe Hitler as "possibly even a homosexual streak in him."

In the report, Carl Jung went farther, saying Hitler had "characteristics of a man with...feminine instincts."

Journalist Ron Rosenbaum, in his book Explaining Hitler, interviewed the psychologists who contributed to that OSS report (but were not acknowledged in it), and found that they denied ever making such diagnoses or claims about Hitler's paraphilias. According to his interviews, Rosenbaum found that many of the claims in the OSS report were apparently made up by its author, Langer. Rosenbaum suggested that Langer may have written such claims for entertainment value, noting that in the preface of the original report, Langer admitted that by the time he wrote it (1943), the Allies already considered the war against the Axis won, and as such, the report may not have had much strategic value. In Explaining Hitler, Rosenbaum sarcastically remarked that theories concerning Hitler's mental state and sexual activity shed more light on the theorists than on Hitler.

Somewhat more credible arguments that Hitler may have been homosexual were put forward in a book by historian Lothar Machtan called The Hidden Hitler, based primarily upon the "Mend Protocol", a series of allegations made to the Munich Police in the early 1920s by a former soldier colleague of Hitler's. In 2004, HBO produced a documentary film based on Machtan's theory, titled Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality. Mend was a convicted fraudster, and historian Anton Joachimsthaler (TV interview for BBC2 in 2002) is among those who regard the protocol as unreliable.

A controversial book, The Pink Swastika, written by religious-right writer Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams, released in 2002, dealt with similar topics. A line-by-line rebuttal, the Annotated Pink Swastika, outlines in detail numerous alleged factual inconsistencies in Lively and Abrams' book.

Jack Nusan Porter, from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, writes: "Did Hitler despise homosexuals? Was he ashamed of his own homosexual identity? These are areas of psychohistory that are beyond known knowledge. My own feelings are that Hitler was asexual in the traditional sense and had bizarre sexual fetishes."

Supposed masochism

On page 138 of the dubious OSS report, Hitler is described as "an extreme masochist who derives sexual pleasure from having a woman squat over him while she urinates or defecates in his face." According to interviews with Otto Strasser, Hitler had one of his female partners "squat over his face ... [and] demanded that she urinate on him and this gave him sexual pleasure; probably his half-niece Geli Raubal."

Incest claims

There have been claims that Hitler had an incestuous affair with his half-niece, Geli Raubal. This has been fuelled partly by the fact that Adolf's own mother Klara was his father Alois's cousin. Geli died young, either by suicide or an assassination, and this has caused much speculation.

The 2005 film Uncle Adolf, starring Elaine Cassidy as Geli, and Ken Stott as Adolf Hitler is about Hitler in the Fuhrerbunker reminscing about his relationship with Geli. In this fictional portrayal, it is suggested that there was a sexual element.

References

• Rosenbaum, Ron. Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil. New York: Harper Perennial, 1999. ISBN 006095339X.

External links

• A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend