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MacGuffin · #6 07-16-2006, 01:37 AM

Interesting stuff.

They'll be dissecting Hitler for generations and may never quite know what made him tick. One of the best books I've ever read was Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives by Alan Bullock. It's a study of craziness.

I found it funny how Hitler was described as working 16 and 18 hour days. Bullock's book mentions that was the assumption at the time, though it was actually part of the Hitler myth.

Hitler would generally wake at noon, do some work in the afternoons, maybe have a dinner with lieutenants where he would hold court (another good book is Hitler's Table Talks, if you want a peek into how random and bizarre his philosophy was), watch a couple of movies, then do work sometimes until dawn.

There was also a myth at the time about Nazi effeciency. In retrospect, his administration has been described as "administrative chaos". Hitler set men up in positions of power, often with vaguely defined roles, and let them fight it out over policy. It suited his social Darwinist view of men. Basically, it was bureaucratic survival of the fittest. If the underlings couldn't sort it out, then Hitler would break the logjam.

Perhaps contributing to Hitler's myth as a workaholic was his propensity to show up somewhere by surprise and obsess about minute details. Another man described Hitler as interested only in the biggest and the smallest decisions. He noted this was unfortunate, since most decisions fall somewhere in between.

Hitler's daily routine changed with the war in Russia. He micro-managed the war plan, often with disastrous results, both for the German war effort and his own health.

As for Hitler's sexuality, it is as elusive as the man. I had a professor who insisted Hitler was homosexual, and there has been a book published in the past few years that backs up that notion. (The Hidden Hitler by Lothar Machtan)

That seemed to be a widespread rumor at the time. We're all aware of the rampant homosexuality of Ernst Rohm and the Stormtroopers.

In the book I've recently been reading, Paris After the Liberation, it is mentioned that a Frenchman was picked up by the secret police on (among other things) suspicion of homosexuality. The man defended himself by citing the case of the ancient Greeks, and added that the secret police's own Fuerher was a homosexual. They let the man go, afraid to report this accusation to their superiors.

There was a show on the History Channel once that cited the O.S.S. report in the link, and mentioned Hitler's bizarre sexual practices with Geli Raubel. It mentioned that in the days before Hitler came to power, an underling payed blackmail money. The underlings believed it was hush money for deviant sexual practices, be they along the Geli route or due to homosexuality. (By the way, I would hate to have been the blackmailer when Hitler came to power. Hitler had people murdered who had small roles in his arrest and trial during the Beer Hall Putsch.)

Perhaps the ambiguity might be explained by the fact that Hitler was probably impotent. High-ups in the Nazi party are in print saying as much, and even attributing Hitler's manic outbursts to sexual impotency. (I wish I could remember the names and all, but it's been years and I think it was a library book.) When the Russians disinterred Hitler's body and performed an autospy at the end of the war, the doctors noted he only had one testicle.

I find the O.S.S. report to be remarkably accurate, given the limited information they had to go on at the time. Perhaps a little too much emphasis was given to Freudian themes and sexuality, but that was the standard practice of the time. They pretty much nailed Hitler, when it came to predicting his future actions.