Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun with their dogs at the Berghof.

Despite the Nazi Party's opposition to homosexuality and persecution of homosexuals, some historians have argued that Hitler himself was homosexual or bisexual. Some have argued that he was asexual, whereas others dismiss these claims and believe he was heterosexual. Believed to have had six female lovers, four of these women went on to commit suicide.

He met Eva Braun in 1929, and they married on 28 April 1945, a day before their suicide. He was also engaged to two other women earlier in his life.

History

In 1943, the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) received A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend, written by Walter C. Langer (with assistance from other leading psychoanalysts) for the purpose of helping the Allies understand the dictator, related to strategic purposes (including post-war purposes). It also appears as the mainstay of the fuller work that is available in book form as The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report, in which Langer's Wartime Report is accompanied by a foreword by his brother, historian William L. Langer, an introduction by Langer himself and an afterword by the Hitler psychoanalytic historian Robert G.L. Waite. The researchers performed a "psychological analysis ... in which an attempt is made to understand Hitler as a person and the motivations underlying his actions." The OSS report states that Hitler was an impotent coprophile. The report describes Hitler as having "possibly even a homosexual streak in him," although the researchers concluded that the evidence of Hitler's homosexuality was too thin to make any conclusions. One of Hitler's opponents in the Nazi Party, Otto Strasser, claimed that the Nazi dictator forced his niece Geli Raubal to urinate and defecate on him.

Historian Lothar Machtan argues in The Hidden Hitler that Hitler was homosexual. He argues basically on speculation, including Hitler's experiences in Vienna with young friends, his adult relationships with (among others) Ernst Röhm, Ernst Hanfstaengl and Emil Maurice, and the Mend Protocol, a series of allegations made to the Munich Police in the early 1920s by a soldier who served with Hitler during World War I. 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 is among those who regard the protocol as unreliable. The 2002 book The Pink Swastika, by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams, dealt with similar topics.

Jack Nusan Porter, of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, wrote:

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.

In the book, The Mind of Adolf Hitler, it is said: According to Hanfstaengl, Mrs. (Helena) Bechstein, the wife of the famous Berlin piano manufacturer, had groomed Hitler in the expectation that he would marry her daughter, Lottie, who was far from attractive. Out of sense of obligation, Hitler did ask Lottie, but was refused.

After the death of Winifred's husband, Siegfried Wagner, in 1930, Winifred had a relationship with Hitler grew so close that by 1933 there were rumors of impending marriage, but nothing happened.

Leni Riefenstahl was friends with Hitler for 12 years, and reports vary as to whether she ever had an intimate relationship with him. According to Ernst Hanfstaengl, who was a close friend of Hitler throughout the later 1920s and early 1930s, Riefenstahl tried to begin a relationship with Hitler early on but was turned down by him. Riefenstahl, however, categorically denied having any romantic interest in Hitler.

Female relationships

There is strong evidence that Adolf Hitler had relationships with a number of women. The most well-known are shown below.

Name	Life	Age at death	Cause of death	First contact with Hitler	Relationship	Reference(s)
Eva Braun	February 6, 1912- April 30, 1945	33	Double suicide with Hitler (age 56)	Met in 1929	Wife
Geli Raubal	June 4, 1908- September 18, 1931	23	Suicide (speculated murder)	Lived with Hitler in 1925	Niece, speculated lovers
Erna Hanfstaengl	1885- 1981	96	Natural causes	Met in 1920s	Engaged[citation needed]
Renate Müller	April 26, 1906- October 7, 1937	31	Suicide (speculated murder)[citation needed]	Met in 1930s	Engaged[citation needed]
Maria Reiter	December 23, 1911- 1992	81	Natural causes	Met in 1927	Lovers
Unity Mitford	August 8, 1914- May 28, 1948	33	Died eight years after attempting suicide from complications related to her suicide attempt[citation needed]	Met in 1934	Friends, speculated lovers[citation needed]

Further reading

• 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
• Download "The Young Hitler I Knew"
• Hitler's Lovers - slideshow by Life magazine