The sexuality of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, has long been a matter of historical and scholarly debate, as well as speculation and rumour. There is evidence that he had relationships with a number of women during his lifetime, as well as evidence of his antipathy to homosexuality, and no evidence of homosexual encounters. His name has been linked to a number of possible female lovers, two of whom committed suicide. A third died of complications eight years after a suicide attempt, and a fourth also attempted suicide. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Hitler created a public image of a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission and the governance of Nazi Germany. His relationship with Eva Braun, which lasted nearly 14 years, was hidden from the public and all but his inner circle. Braun biographer Heike Görtemaker notes that the couple enjoyed a normal sex life. Hitler and Braun married in late April 1945, less than 40 hours before committing suicide together.
Two wartime reports by the Allies attempted to analyse Hitler psychologically. A 1943 report by Walter C. Langer for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) describes Hitler as having repressed homosexual tendencies and opined that he was an impotent coprophile. Psychologist Henry Murray wrote a separate psychoanalytical report for the OSS in 1943 that drew similar conclusions. Otto Strasser, one of Hitler's opponents in the Nazi Party, also told his post-war interrogators a similar story. British historian Ian Kershaw describes Strasser's statement as "anti-Hitler propaganda". [5]
In research following Hitler's death, a variety of claims have been made about Hitler's sexual orientation: that he was homosexual, bisexual, or asexual. Conclusive evidence is lacking, but most historians believe he was heterosexual. There is at least one claim that Hitler had an illegitimate child (named Jean-Marie Loret) with one of his lovers. Mainstream historians, such as Kershaw, dismiss this as unlikely or impossible. [6]
Hitler's sex life has long been the subject of speculation and rumours, many of which were invented or "spiced up" by his political enemies. [7] While the sexual preferences of many members of Hitler's inner circle are known, conclusive evidence of Hitler's sexuality is lacking. The evidence that exists about Hitler's private life is largely from people in his inner circle, such as his adjutants, his secretaries, Albert Speer, the Wagner family, and others. There is evidence that he had infatuations with several women, as well as evidence of his antipathy to homosexuality, and no evidence that he engaged in homosexual behaviour. [8] [9] [10] Kershaw describes him as being repelled by personal contact and sexual activity, including homosexuality and prostitution, especially as a young man in Vienna. He was afraid of contracting a sexually transmitted infection. [11]
Kershaw notes that as a soldier during the First World War, Hitler did not take part in discussions of sex with his comrades. When teased about his celibacy during this period, Hitler responded by saying "I'd die of shame looking for sex with a French girl," and "Have you no German sense of honour left at all?" [12] When asked by a comrade if he had ever loved a girl, Hitler replied "I've never had time for anything like that, and I'll never get round to it." [13]
Hitler created a public image of a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission. [14] [15] He considered himself to be attractive to women, partly because of his position of power. Speer recalled him stating a preference for unintelligent women who would not challenge him about his work or prevent him from relaxing in his leisure time. [16] Kershaw speculates that Hitler preferred younger women who were easy to dominate and mould. He notes that at least three of Hitler's close female associates (Eva Braun, Geli Raubal, and Maria Reiter) were far younger than himself: Braun was 23 years younger, Raubal was 19 years younger, and Reiter was 21 years his junior. [17]
Ernst Hanfstaengl, one of the members of Hitler's inner circle in the early years in Munich, wrote that "I felt Hitler was a case of a man who was neither fish, flesh nor fowl, neither fully homosexual nor fully heterosexual... I had formed the firm conviction that he was impotent, the repressed, masturbating type." [18] Nevertheless, Hanfstaengl was convinced enough of Hitler's heterosexuality that he unsuccessfully tried to encourage a romantic relationship between Hitler and Martha Dodd, daughter of the American ambassador. [19] According to Hanfstaengl, filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl tried to begin a relationship with Hitler early on, but he turned her down. [20] Magda Goebbels invited Hitler to parties to encourage him to meet women, but he showed no interest. When pro-Nazi foreign women like Unity Mitford visited, Hitler usually lectured them about politics. [21]
Hitler was deeply attached to his half-niece Geli Raubal, 19 years his junior. She began living at his residence after her mother became Hitler's housekeeper in 1925. Although the exact nature and extent of their relationship is unknown, Kershaw describes it as a latent "sexual dependence". [22] It was rumoured among contemporaries that they were in a romantic relationship. Geli committed suicide with Hitler's gun in his Munich apartment in September 1931. Her death was a source of deep, lasting pain for Hitler. [23]
Hitler's relationship with Eva Braun, which lasted nearly 14 years, was hidden from the public and all but his inner circle. [24] Within that circle, he was open about Braun, and they lived together at Berchtesgaden as a couple. Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, stated in his memoirs that Hitler and Braun had two bedrooms and two bathrooms with interconnecting doors at the Berghof, and Hitler would end most evenings alone with her in his study before they retired to bed. She would wear a "dressing gown or house-coat" and drink wine; Hitler would have tea. [25] Braun biographer Heike Görtemaker notes that the couple enjoyed a normal sex life. [26] Braun's friends and relatives described her giggling over a 1938 photograph of Neville Chamberlain sitting on a sofa in Hitler's Munich flat with the remark: "If only he knew what goings-on that sofa has seen." [27]
Hitler's letters provide evidence that he was fond of her, and worried when she participated in sports or was late returning for tea. [28] His secretary Traudl Junge stated that during the war, Hitler telephoned Braun every day. He was concerned for her safety when she was staying in the Munich home he had bought her. Junge further asked Hitler once why he never married. Hitler replied, "...I wouldn't have been able to give enough time to my wife". [29] Hitler told her that he did not want children, as they would have had "...a very hard time, because they're expected to possess the same gifts as their famous parents and they can't be forgiven for being mediocre." [29] In the end, Hitler and Braun married in the Berlin Führerbunker in late-April 1945, less than 40 hours before committing suicide together. [30]
Ernst Röhm was Hitler's closest friend—one of the few people who called him "Adolf". [31] Hitler continued to support him during the Röhm scandal in 1931–1932 in which the Münchener Post disclosed Röhm's homosexuality, but historian Laurie Marhoefer argues that this is not evidence of Hitler's homosexuality. [32] Historian Andrew Wackerfuss argues that Hitler had no personal discomfort with homosexuality, but that he found it convenient politically to instrumentalise homophobia to justify the 1934 Night of the Long Knives. [33]
Despite the fact that Hitler had previously tolerated the homosexuality of Röhm and other SA leaders, the charges of immorality were effective in gaining the support of the German population for the political murders in 1934. [34] In August 1941, Hitler declared that "homosexuality is actually as infectious and as dangerous as the plague", [35] and supported SS leader Heinrich Himmler's efforts to remove gay men from both the military and the SS. [36] Homosexuality was not one of Hitler's priorities, compared to the Jewish question. [37] The Nazi Party held anti-homosexual views, declaring in 1928 that "anyone who even thinks of homosexual love is our enemy." [38] Hitler's regime persecuted homosexuals, sending an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 to concentration camps; some 2,500 to 7,500 of these died. [39]
Hermann Rauschning claimed to have seen in Hitler's First World War military record an item concerning a court-martial that found Hitler guilty of pederastic practices with an officer. Rauschning also claimed that in Munich, Hitler was found guilty of a violation of Paragraph 175, which dealt with pederasty. No evidence of either of these two charges has been found. [40]
In 1943, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) received A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend by Walter C. Langer, commissioned to help the Allies understand the dictator. [41] The report, later expanded into book form as The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report (1972), [42] describes Hitler as having repressed homosexual tendencies [43] and states that he was an impotent coprophile. [44] Psychologist Henry Murray wrote a separate psychoanalytical report for OSS also in 1943, entitled Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler: With Predictions of His Future Behavior and Suggestions for Dealing with Him Now and After Germany's Surrender. [45] He also dealt with Hitler's alleged coprophilia, but overall diagnosed Hitler a schizophrenic. [46] One of Hitler's opponents in the Nazi Party, Otto Strasser, told OSS interrogators that the Nazi dictator forced Geli Raubal to urinate and defecate on him. [47] Kershaw contends that stories circulated by Strasser as to alleged "sexual deviant practices ought to be viewed as... anti-Hitler propaganda." [5]
In research following his death, a variety of claims have been made about Hitler's sexuality: that he was gay, bisexual, or asexual, or may have engaged in sexual activity with Geli Raubal. [22] Jack Nusan Porter of the University of Massachusetts Lowell wrote in 1998: "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." [48]
Historian Lothar Machtan argues in The Hidden Hitler (2001) that Hitler was homosexual. The book speculates about Hitler's experiences in Vienna with young friends, his adult relationships with (among others) Röhm, Hanfstaengl, and Emil Maurice, and includes a study of the Mend Protocol, a series of allegations made to the Munich police in the early 1920s by Hans Mend, who served with Hitler during World War I. American journalist Ron Rosenbaum is highly critical of Machtan's work, saying his "evidence falls short of being conclusive and often falls far short of being evidence at all." [49] Most scholarly works dismiss Machtan's claims. [8] [9] [10] In 2004, HBO produced a documentary film based on Machtan's theory, titled Hidden Führer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality .
Volker Ullrich proposes that Hitler occasionally had sexual relations with women but he was unskilled, unexperienced as a lover, and mostly uninterested or unable to relate to the experience of his female lovers in bed, and therefore not particularly prolific romantically. [50] He notes some comments: "He couldn't kiss," said Charlotte Bechstein, the 15 year old daughter of one of Hitler's patronesses in the early 1920s; [51] Maria Reiter commented, "He didn't know what he was doing." [52]
Hitler's name has been linked romantically with a number of women:
Name | Life | Age at death | Cause of death | Contact with Hitler | Relationship, Reference(s) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stefanie Rabatsch | 1887–1975 | 87 | Natural causes | 1905–09 | Rabatsch was an Austrian woman who, according to Hitler's childhood friend August Kubizek, was an unrequited love of the teenage Hitler. [53] Kubizek's memoir is the only source for this story. [54] |
Charlotte Lobjoie | 1898–1951 | 53 | Unknown | 1916–17 | Alleged lovers; her son Jean-Marie Loret claimed that Hitler was his father. [55] The dominant view, expressed by historians such as Anton Joachimsthaler, [56] Ian Kershaw, [6] and Belgian journalist Jean-Paul Mulders, [57] is that Hitler's paternity of Loret is unlikely or impossible. |
Erna Hanfstaengl | 1885–1981 | 96 | Natural causes | 1922–23 | Erna was the elder sister of Ernst Hanfstaengl and an acquaintance of Hitler. In the days following the failed Beer Hall Putsch, it was rumoured that they had sex at a country house in Uffing and that they were to be engaged. These allegations were later proven false. [58] |
Geli Raubal | 1908–1931 | 23 | Suicide | 1925–31 | Raubal, who was Hitler's half-niece, lived in his apartment from 1925 until her suicide in 1931. It is speculated that they were lovers. [59] [2] |
Maria Reiter | 1911–1992 | 81 | Natural causes; attempted suicide by hanging in 1928 | 1925–38 | Reiter may have been romantically involved with Hitler in the late 1920s. [3] [60] His sister Paula Hitler allegedly later said that Reiter was the only woman who might have curbed his destructive impulses. [61] |
Unity Mitford | 1914–1948 | 33 | Complications related to her 1939 suicide attempt [62] | 1934–39 | Mitford was a British socialite and member of the Mitford family. She was a prominent supporter of Nazism, fascism, and antisemitism, and was a member of Hitler's circle. [63] |
Winifred Wagner | 1897–1980 | 82 | Natural causes | 1923–45 | Wagner was a friend and supporter of Hitler, and the two maintained a regular correspondence. Around 1933, there were rumours that she and Hitler were to marry. [64] |
Eva Braun | 1912–1945 | 33 | Double suicide with Hitler | 1929–45 | Braun was the longtime companion of Hitler and briefly his wife. They met in Munich when she was a 17-year-old assistant and model for his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. She began seeing Hitler often about two years later. [65] |
The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic. Approximately two thousand Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, but were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 15 Nazis, four police officers, and one bystander.
Ernst Julius Günther Röhm was a German military officer and a leading member of the Nazi Party. Initially a close friend and early ally of Adolf Hitler, Röhm was the co-founder and leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing, which played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power. He served as chief of the SA from 1931 until his murder in 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives.
Angela Maria "Geli" Raubal was an Austrian woman who was the half-niece of Adolf Hitler. Born in Linz, Austria-Hungary, she was the second child and eldest daughter of Leo Raubal Sr. and Hitler's half-sister, Angela Raubal. Raubal lived in close contact with her half-uncle Adolf from 1925 until her presumed suicide in 1931.
Angela Franziska Johanna Hammitzsch was the elder half-sister of Adolf Hitler. She was the mother of Geli Raubal by her first husband, Leo Raubal Sr.
Emil Maurice was an early member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and a founding member of the Schutzstaffel (SS). He was Hitler's first personal chauffeur, and was one of several persons of mixed Jewish and ethnic German ancestry to serve in the SS.
Lothar Machtan is a German historian, writer, as well as professor of Modern and Current History at the University of Bremen.
The Hidden Hitler is a 2001 book by German professor and historian Lothar Machtan. The German original was published by Alexander Fest Verlag, while the English-translated version was published by Basic Books in New York City (ISBN 0-465-04308-9).
Edmund Heines was a German Nazi politician and Deputy to Ernst Röhm, the Stabschef of the Sturmabteilung (SA). Heines was one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party and a leading member of the SA in Munich, participating in the Beer Hall Putsch and becoming a notorious enforcer of the party. He held several high-ranking positions in the Nazi administration until he was executed during the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934.
The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party is a 1995 pseudohistorical book by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. Drawing on Samuel Igra's 1945 book Germany's National Vice, Lively and Abrams argue that the crimes committed by homosexuals in the Nazi Party exceed the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and that homosexuality contributed to the extreme militarism of Nazi Germany. They contend that only feminine homosexuals were persecuted by the Nazis, while "butch" homosexuals formed the leadership cadre of the Nazi party. Historian Andrew Wackerfuss criticized the book for lack of accuracy and "outright homophobic charges". The claim advanced by Igra, Lively, and Abrams that homosexuals were responsible for Nazi atrocities is rejected by most historians.
Eva Anna Paula Hitler was a German photographer who was the longtime companion and briefly the wife of Adolf Hitler. Braun met Hitler in Munich when she was a 17-year-old assistant and model for his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. She began seeing Hitler often about two years later.
The Hitler family comprises the relatives and ancestors of Adolf Hitler, an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party, who was the dictator of Germany, holding the title Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state as Führer und Reichskanzler from 1934 to 1945. Adolf Hitler had a central role in the rise of Nazism in Germany, provoking the start of World War II, and holding ultimate responsibility for the deaths of many millions of people during the Holocaust.
Erna Hanfstaengl, was the elder sister of Ernst ("Putzi") Hanfstaengl and was an acquaintance of Adolf Hitler. She also befriended Unity Mitford, who lived with Erna for a period.
The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report, published in 1972 by Basic Books, is based on a World War II report by psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer which probed the psychology of Adolf Hitler from the available information. The original report was prepared for the United States' Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and submitted in late 1943 or early 1944; it is officially entitled A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend. The report is one of two psychoanalytic reports prepared for the OSS during the war in an attempt to assess Hitler's personality; the other is Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler by the psychologist Henry A. Murray who also contributed to Langer's report.
Margarete Berta "Gretl" Berlinghoff was one of the two sisters of Eva Braun. She was a member of the inner social circle of Adolf Hitler at the Berghof. Gretl became the sister-in-law of Hitler following his marriage to Eva, less than 40 hours before the couple killed themselves.
Leo Rudolf Raubal Jr. was an Austrian half-nephew of Adolf Hitler who served in the German Luftwaffe during World War II.
Hitler: The Rise of Evil is a Canadian television miniseries in two parts, directed by Christian Duguay and produced by Alliance Atlantis. It stars Robert Carlyle in the lead role and explores Adolf Hitler's rise and his early consolidation of power during the years after the First World War and focuses on how the embittered, politically fragmented and economically buffeted state of German society following the war made that ascent possible. The film also focuses on Ernst Hanfstaengl's influence on Hitler's rise to power. The miniseries, which premiered simultaneously in May 2003 on CBC in Canada and CBS in the United States, received two Emmy Awards, for Art Direction and Sound Editing, while Peter O'Toole was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
Hitler is a 1962 black and white American film by Stuart Heisler. The film stars Richard Basehart in the title role of Adolf Hitler; Cordula Trantow stars as Geli Raubal, Maria Emo as Eva Braun and John Banner as Gregor Strasser. According to film critic and historian Leonard Maltin, Basehart "gives a cerebral interpretation" of Hitler during the timeframe he was the leader of Nazi Germany. For her performance, Cordula Trantow was nominated for a 1962 Golden Globe in the category: Most Promising Newcomer - Female. The film was produced by Three Crown Productions, Inc. and distributed by Allied Artists Pictures.
Adolf Hitler's Munich apartment was an apartment owned by Adolf Hitler, located at Prinzregentenplatz 16 in the German city of Munich, the birthplace and capital of the Nazi Party which was formed in Munich in 1920.
There is a widespread and long-lasting myth alleging that homosexuals were numerous and prominent as a group in the Nazi Party or the identification of Nazism with homosexuality more generally. It has been promoted by various individuals and groups from before World War II through the present, especially by left-wing Germans during the Nazi era and the Christian right in the United States more recently. Although some gay men joined the Nazi Party, there is no evidence that they were overrepresented. The Nazis harshly criticized homosexuality and severely persecuted gay men, going as far as murdering them en masse. Therefore, historians regard the myth as having no merit.
The Röhm scandal resulted from the public disclosure of Nazi politician Ernst Röhm's homosexuality by anti-Nazis in 1931 and 1932. As a result of the scandal, Röhm became the first known homosexual politician.