Was Adolf Hitler a Homosexual?

A subject of historical and scholarly debate is the sexuality of Adolf Hitler.

Though the Nazi Party opposed homosexuality and persecuted homosexuals, some historians argue that Hitler himself was a homosexual. The assertions of Hitler’s active or latent homosexuality, are not new. Many biographies of Hitler mention it. The accusations dogged Hitler during his rise to power and even after he gained it.

Lothar Machtan, author of The Hidden Hitler. (Source: wikipedia.com)

In the book, “Hitlers Geheimnis. Das Doppelleben eines Diktators” (“Hitler’s Secret: The Double Life of a Dictator“) published in 2001, German-Jewish professor and historian Dr. Lothar Machtan argues that Hitler was homosexual. John Maxwell Brownjohn has translated the book into English titled “The Hidden Hitler.” Though he acknowledges that some of the evidence is only circumstantial, this legacy of assertions and speculations is historical evidence.

Machtan teaches history at the University of Bremen in Germany. He suggests that in 1908 Hitler probably had a gay relationship with his friend August Kubizek, with whom he lived in Vienna; that during World War I, Hitler had a conspicuous sexual affair with a fellow soldier; that after the war he may have had homosexual contacts with young men in Munich; and that he may have engaged in homosexual activities right up to his assumption of political power in 1933. Machtan speculates on Hitler’s experiences in Vienna with young friends, his adult relationships with Ernst Röhm, Ernst Hanfstaengl and Emil Maurice. Machtan speculates on Hitler’s experiences in Vienna with young friends, his adult relationships with Ernst Röhm, Ernst Hanfstaengl and Emil Maurice.

Machtan further suggests that Hitler’s opposition to homosexuality and persecution of homosexuals while in power was not to rid himself of a political or military threat but to expunge potentially damaging evidence of his homosexual past. He accomplished it by silencing or eliminating the people who might reveal “disreputable secrets” of his ingrained homosexuality. For example, Hitler ordered the killing of Ernst Röhm, an affirmed and well-known homosexual among many others. Röhm was his longtime colleague and head of the SA paramilitary organization.

Machtan states that many documents have been dismissed or ignored without any grounds. One such main document is the so-called “Mend Protocol.” It is a statement made in 1939 by Hans Mend, a dispatch rider who had served with Hitler during World War I.

Hans Mend joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) before it came to power. In 1931, the NSDAP owned Huber Verlag. It published a book authored by Hans Mend titled “Adolf Hitler im Felde 1914-1918.” Mend wrote:

“In this book, I want to give the German people true and unvarnished information about Adolf Hitler as a front-line soldier. As a comrade I had many opportunities to hear his pronouncements on the war, witness his bravery, and became acquainted with his brilliant traits of character… I aim to prove that he was just the same in the field as he is today; courageous, fearless, outstanding… Everyone who knew him in the field had to admit that he was a model front-line soldier… who… as a combat orderly in static warfare performed super-human feats in a dangerous and responsible position.”as a combat orderly in static warfare performed super-human feats in a dangerous and responsible position.”

Ernst Schmidt and Adolf Hitler (c. 1933). (Source: spartacus-educational.com)

In December 1939, when Friedrich Alfred Schmid Noerr, a member of the German Resistance, interviewed him, Mend told a different story than the one that appeared in his book. Mend claimed that Hitler had a homosexual relationship with Ernst Schmidt:

“We noticed that he never looked at a woman. We suspected him of homosexuality right away, because he was known to be abnormal in any case. He was extremely eccentric and displayed womanish characteristics which tended in that direction. He never had a firm objective, nor any kind of firm beliefs. In 1915 we were billeted in the Le Febre brewery at Fournes. We slept in the hay. Hitler was bedded down at night with Ernst Schmidt, his male whore. We heard a rustling in the hay. Then someone switched on his electric flashlight and growled, Take a look at those two nancy boys. I myself took no further interest in the matter.”

Schmidt was a dispatch-runner along with Hitler. In his book Machtan has pointed out:

“Employed as regimental runners, they jointly delivered one message with such efficiency – or so we are told – that from November 1914 on they were permanently assigned to regimental headquarters as so-called combat orderlies. As such, they had more freedom within the military hierarchy than other enlisted men… They were invariably to be seen as a couple, not only when jointly delivering regimental orders to brigade or battalion, but off duty behind the lines.”

Machtan also cites the notes left by Eugen Dollmann, German Diplomat and a member of the SS. Dollmann wrote that he had heard Otto von Lossow, a Reichswehr General in Munich after World War I, read from what Lossow claimed was a police file containing statements by young boys in Munich. Those boys, according to Lossow, said that Hitler had paid them to spend the night with him.

In 1943 the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) received a commissioned report titled “A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend,” written by Walter C. Langer assisted by other leading psychoanalysts. The report was to help the Allies understand Adolf Hitler. According to that report Hitler was an impotent coprophile – one who gets sexual pleasure out of playing with excrement.

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