Author | Lothar Machtan |
---|---|
Original title | Hitlers Geheimnis: Das Doppelleben Eines Diktators |
Translator | John Brownjohn |
Language | German |
Subject | Sexuality of Adolf Hitler |
Publisher | Basic Books |
Publication date | 2001 |
Published in English | 2001 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
Pages | 434 pp |
ISBN | 0-465-04308-9 |
943.086/092 B | |
LC Class | DD247.H5 M235 2001 |
The Hidden Hitler (German : Hitlers Geheimnis. Das Doppelleben eines Diktators; literally "Hitler's Secret: The Double Life of a Dictator") 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).
The book discusses Adolf Hitler's sexuality. Machtan argues that Hitler was a closeted homosexual. Among the evidence, he cites the allegedly homoerotic nature of his friendship with August Kubizek during Hitler's youth in Vienna. The book was not well received by historians, who dispute Machtan's conclusion that Hitler was homosexual. [1]
The review in The New York Times Book Review (12/16/01) said "[T]he biggest problem with Machtan's book ... isn't the reliability of his sources but his mode of argumentation. He accepts what fits his thesis and rejects what doesn't. One feels, at times, that one is reading an internal F.B.I. report from the J. Edgar Hoover era rather than an evenhanded work of scholarship in which the author is ready to be led by the facts. To interpret evidence his way, Machtan employs innuendo and insinuation ..."
However, the review, written by Walter Reich, a psychiatrist and former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, also concedes that "though Machtan doesn't succeed in proving that Hitler was an active homosexual, he does demonstrate that his life, in both the personal and the political spheres, was suffused with homosexual themes and personalities. In some odd way, this may actually serve to humanize Hitler. But it doesn't serve to explain him."
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.
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, was the alleged culprit; the Nazis attributed the fire to a group of Communist agitators, used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government, and induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, and pursue a "ruthless confrontation" with the Communists. This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is a book by American journalist William L. Shirer in which the author chronicles the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1889 to the end of World War II in Europe in 1945. It was first published in 1960 by Simon & Schuster in the United States. It was a bestseller in both the United States and Europe, and a critical success outside Germany; in Germany, criticism of the book stimulated sales. The book was feted by journalists, as reflected by its receipt of the National Book Award for non-fiction, but the reception from academic historians was mixed.
Hermann Adolf Reinhold Rauschning was a German politician and author, adherent of the Conservative Revolution movement who briefly joined the Nazi movement before breaking with it. He was the President of the Senate of the Free City of Danzig from 1933 to 1934. In 1934, he renounced Nazi Party membership and in 1936 emigrated from Germany. He eventually settled in the United States and began openly denouncing Nazism. Rauschning is chiefly known for his book Gespräche mit Hitler in which he claimed to have had many meetings and conversations with Adolf Hitler.
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Sir Richard John Evans is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume The Third Reich Trilogy (2003–2008). Evans was Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge from 2008 until he retired in 2014, and President of Cambridge's Wolfson College from 2010 to 2017. He has been Provost of Gresham College in London since 2014. Evans was appointed Knight Bachelor for services to scholarship in the 2012 Birthday Honours.
Christopher Robert Browning is an American historian and is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). A specialist on the Holocaust, Browning is known for his work documenting the Final Solution, the behavior of those implementing Nazi policies, and the use of survivor testimony. He is the author of nine books, including Ordinary Men (1992) and The Origins of the Final Solution (2004).
Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. was an American historian of Germany who was a professor at Yale University for over forty years. He is best known for his book German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (1985) in which he challenged the common theory that industrialists in Germany were the Nazi Party’s most influential supporters.
This bibliography of Adolf Hitler is a list of some non-fiction texts in English written about and by him. Thousands of books and other texts have been written about him, so this is far from an all-inclusive list. It has been arranged into groups to make it more manageable.
Lothar Machtan is a German historian, writer, as well as professor of Modern and Current History at the University of Bremen.
Hidden Führer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality is a documentary film based on the research of German Professor Lothar Machtan for his 2001 book The Hidden Hitler that claimed Adolf Hitler was a homosexual. Aired by HBO's CINEMAX Reel Life, the 90 minute documentary was directed by Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato and Gabriel Rotello and was produced by Gabriel Rotello.
Brigitte Hamann was a German-Austrian author and historian based in Vienna.
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.
Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust is a 1996 book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen, in which he argues collective guilt, that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were "willing executioners" in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist antisemitism" in German political culture which had developed in the preceding centuries. Goldhagen argues that eliminationist antisemitism was the cornerstone of German national identity, was unique to Germany, and because of it ordinary German conscripts killed Jews willingly. Goldhagen asserts that this mentality grew out of medieval attitudes rooted in religion and was later secularized.
"Hitler's Table Talk" is the title given to a series of World War II monologues delivered by Adolf Hitler, which were transcribed from 1941 to 1944. Hitler's remarks were recorded by Heinrich Heim, Henry Picker, Hans Müller and Martin Bormann and later published by different editors under different titles in four languages.
The sexuality of Adolf Hitler, dictator of 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.
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.
Kurt Lüdecke was an ardent German nationalist and international traveler who joined the Nazi Party in the early 1920s and who used his social connections to raise money for the NSDAP. Before attending a rally at which Adolf Hitler was a featured speaker, Lüdecke had assumed that Hitler was simply "one more fanatic" but after hearing Hitler speak at a mass demonstration at the Königsplatz in Munich, he adopted Hitler as his hero: "His appeal to German manhood was like a call to arms, the gospel he preached a sacred truth." The next day, he spoke to Hitler for four hours and offered himself to Hitler and the Nazi cause "without reservation ... I had given him my soul."
Men, Heroes and Gay Nazis is a 2005 German documentary film directed, written and produced by Rosa von Praunheim. The film focuses on gay men who align themselves with hardcore authoritarian views, white power skinheads, and Nazis.
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.
To be clear, there are few reputable historians today who would argue that Hitler was gay, and their arguments have not been seen as persuasive... Lothar Machtan's The Hidden Hitler (New York: Basic Books, 2001) has not generally been well received by historians.