hitler and psychohistory

Hitler and PsychohistoryAuthor(s): Hans W. GatzkeSource: The American Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Apr., 1973), pp. 394-401Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1861174 .

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Hitler and Psychohistory

A Review Article by HANS W. GATZKE

WALTER C. LANGER. The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report. Foreword by WILLIAM L. LANGER. Afterword by ROBERT G. L. WAITE. New York: Basic Books. 1972. Pp. ix, 269. $10.00.

ADOLF HITLER IS once again much in the news. The London Daily Mail calls this "one of the best years Hitler ever had," and according to Hamburg's Die Zeit, "Hitler is in." In England there. has been a veritable rash of movies, television series, and plays about the German dictator, and such "entertainment" will no doubt soon spread to this country.' At the moment at least five full-length studies of Hitler have been announced, including one entitled The Psychopathic God.2 Why, one wonders, this sudden quickening of interest? Is it, as some observers feel, because our age of highjackings, kidnapings, and murders can be traced back to "'Hitlerism" and its cult of naked force and ruthless aggression? Or is the Hitler boom merely due to the success of Albert Speer's memoirs3 and the realization that anything involving Hitler is sure of a large audience? The interesting part is that, with few exceptions, the preoccupation with the dead Fuhrer has thus far not produced anything that cannot already be fo-und in the still two best books about him, one of them written thirty years ago.4 Among the exceptions is the work of an American psychoanalyst, Walter C. Langer, entitled The Mind of Adolf Hitler. It, too, is not really new-it was first written in 1943 as a report for America's World War II intelligence agency, the OSS. But publication, though be- lated, is still valuable, if only for the debate it will cause.

Dr. Langer's book is not the only work dealing with Hitler's psyche; that subject has long fascinated historians and psychologists alike.5 But

1 Karl-Heinz Wocker, "Oscar fur Adolf. Hitler-Boom im englischen Film und Fernsehen," Die Zeit (American ed.), Sept. iO,, 1972.

2 By Robert G. L. Waite. The others are by Horst von Maltitz, John Toland, Rudolph Binion, and Joachim Fest.

3 Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (New York, 1970). 4 Konrad Heiden, Der Fuehrer (New York, 1944), which deals with Hitler's early years until

1934; and Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (rev. ed.; New York, 1964), which covers Hitler's whole career.

5 For a listing and discussion of some of the relevant literature, see Wilhelm Lange-Eichbaum and Wolfram Kurth, Genie, Irrsinn und Ruhm (6th ed.; Munich, 1967), 381-88, 653-54.

394



Hitler and Psychohistory 395

the book is the most detailed and, despite its many flaws, most thorough study of its kind published to date. The original OSS report was not declassified until 1968, and its existence was little known.6 Even William L. Langer, in a foreword to his brother's book, states that he only saw it some time after it was completed, a surprising fact considering the well-known historian's prominent role in the OSS and his interest in psychohistory.7 Also surprising is the fact that the published volume differs in many respects from the original Langer manuscript.8 In his introduction Walter Langer tells of the pressure under which he wrote his report in 1943, finish- ing just ahead of the deadline set by the OSS. "The first draft," he adds, "automatically became the one and only draft," and he regrets that a revision of that draft was impossible.9 Recent correspondence with the publisher, however, has revealed that the original manuscript was changed and edited several times by Dr. Langer and others, both in 1943 and again before publication. The claims made on the dust jacket, therefore, that "here is the secret psychological report written in 1943," and the statements by Walter Langer in his introduction and by Robert G. L. Waite in his afterword that the book presents a "historical document," are hardly justified.10 Serious students of Hitler will still have to consult the original OSS report in the National Archives, where they will also find the massive "Hitler Source-Book" containing the raw material from which the analysis of Hitler's mind was made."

Dr. Langer's introduction also tells how the original report came to be written. It seems that the book is actually the result of a collaborative effort by Langer and "three experienced psychoanalysts."'12 The contribu- tions of Drs. Henry A. Murray, Ernst Kris, and Bertram D. Lewin seem to have been substantial. Dr. Murray of the Harvard Psychological Clinic in fact wrote his "Analysis of the Personality of Adolph [sic] Hitler" at about the time when Dr. Langer was writing his own report.13 Yet neither Dr. Murray's name nor those of his two colleagues appear in Langer's book. The Murray report upon examination proves to be an extensive document, in its conclusions and language not unlike Langer's. This

6 Walter C. Langer, "A Psychological Analysis of Adolph [sic] Hitler: His Life and Legend," in Un-classified Historical OSS Records, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

7 Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, vi. 8 Ibid. For example: page 155, the last sentence of the second paragraph is not in the original;

pages 18o-82, the material of the original has been rearranged and much of it omitted; page 206, the last two paragraphs, with their parallels between Hitler's psyche and that of the German people, have been added; page 211, most of section 7, dealing with the eventuality of Hitler's falling into Allied hands, is not in the original. To give a quantitative sample: of sixty-three pages (pp. 130-93) of the book, twenty-nine have major or minor changes to the original.

9 Ibid., 20-21.

10 Ibid., 25, 232. Equally unfounded is the subtitle of the book. 11 Walter C. Langer, "Hitler Source-Book." The "Source-Book" is part of the original Langer

report (see note 6). 12 Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 14. 13 Henry A. Murray, M.D., "Analysis of the Personality of Adolph [sic] Hitler, With Predictions

of His Future Behavior and Suggestions for Dealing with Him Now and After Germany's Surren- der," Oct. 1943. Copy in the President Secretary's File, John Franklin Carter Folder, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.



396 Hans W. Gatzke

similarity is especially striking in the final sections of the two reports, where the authors speculate on what possible fates might befall Hitler, from natural death to suicide.14 Since Dr. Murray wrote his paper at the time Langer did and since Langer states that pressure of time prevented him from showing his report to his collaborators, one cannot help wondering to what extent the Langer report is based on Dr. Murray's version. One wishes this relationship had somehow been clarified.

The collaboration between psychology and history, or psychohistory, has been the subject of much debate. I share many of the reservations held by some of my fellow historians about the fusing of these two disparate disciplines.15 But I also agree with William Langer's view that, in analyzing historical figures, "a good deal can be done to study their character and make their actions more meaningful by gathering all pertinent data and subjecting them to the dispassionate evaluation of qualified persons who have clinical experience to draw upon."16 I would merely add that such data, besides being pertinent, must also be reliable. Since most historians are not "qualified persons" with "clinical experience," they can hardly pass judgment on the conclusions the author(s) of The Mind of Adolf Hitler have drawn from the sources they have con- sulted. But historians can evaluate the soundness of these sources.

Dr. Langer is much aware of the issue just raised. "The literature [on Hitler]," he says, "although extensive, was mostly unreliable"; and he asks, "How does one screen the wheat from the chaff, fact from fiction, the relevant from the irrelevant, the significant from the insignificant, etc., without a point of reference or orientation?'"17 One obvious answer would be, "One consults a historian." The OSS, after all, employed some of the ablest scholars in this country on Hitler's Germany. But this solution does not seem to have occurred to Langer and his associates. Instead, drawing on the wealth of clinical findings that psychoanalysts have accumulated since Freud's day, they agreed among themselves "on the fundamental nature of the character structure [they] proposed to investigate" (that is, Hitler's). "A survey of the raw material, in conjunction with our knowledge of Hitler's actions as reported in the news, was sufficient to convince us that he was, in all probability, a neurotic psychopath. "18 That hurdle cleared, the rest was easy. "With this diagnosis as a point of orientation, we were able to evaluate the data in terms of probability. Those fragments that

14Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 209-13; Murray, "Analysis," 221-27. Note also the identical misspelling of Hitler's first name in the original OSS and the Murray reports.

15 See, for instance, Jacques Barzun, "History: The Muse and Her Doctors," AHR, 77 (1972): 36-64.

16 Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, vii. 17 Ibid., 10, 17. 18 Ibid., 17. In the main part of the book (p. 126), where this assertion is repeated, the text

differs from the comparable passage (pp. 127-28) of the original OSS report: "There was general [OSS: unanimous] agreement among the collaborators [OSS: four psychoanalysts who have studied the materiafl that Hitler is probably a neurotic psychopath [OSS: an hysteric] bordering on schizophrenia [OSS adds: and not a paranoiac as is so frequently supposed]." Italics mine.




could most easily be fitted into this general clinical category were tenta- tively regarded as possessing a higher degree of probability-as far as reliability and relevance were concerned-than those which seemed alien to the clinical picture."'19 In other words, instead of applying the basic rules of evidence that historians, lawyers, or for that matter any unbiased person would use to get at the truth, the Langer group judged the reliability of their sources by the way they fitted the group's preconceived image of Hitler.20 This approach, the careful wording of the passage just cited notwithstanding, does not fundamentally differ from what certain Nazi "historians" did when, by carefully selecting a different kind of evidence, they made the Fiihrer into the greatest German ever. It is an imaginative but hardly an exact mode of inquiry.

One of the crucial events in Hitler's life, according to Langer and some other writers, was a primal scene between his parents that little Adolf supposedly witnessed at the age of three.21 The source for it is a passage in Hitler's Mein Kampf describing the unhappy life of an urban worker's family. There is nothing to indicate that the Fiihrer, always most secretive about his early life, intended the passage to be autobiographical, nor does the grim picture painted there agree with what we now know about Hitler's far from dismal childhood.22 Hitler's cliched account of lower-class life actually reads not unlike similar such descriptions found in second-rate antiurban novels of the time. But even if one accepts it as (perhaps unconsciously) autobiographical, the question remains whether it describes a primal scene:

Amonig the five children there is a boy, let us say, of three.... When the parents fight almost daily, their brutality leaves nothing to the imagination; then the results of such visual education must slowly but inevitably become apparent to the little one. Those who are not familiar with such conditions can hardly imagine the results, especially when the mutual differences express themselves in the form of bru-t-al attacks on the part of the father toward the mother or to assaults duie to (drunkenness.23

Thus the passage quoted by Langer. A sordid, buit hardly a sexual, scene. If we compare the passage with the original German version, moreover, we find that the key expressions (italicized above) lose some of the connotations one might possibly read into them:

19 Ibid., 17. 20 Actually the material, which Launger's group initerprete(d in suchi a highly selective manner,

had already been preselected for them. According to Langer it was gathered by "thlee psychoana- lytically-traine(l research workers," whose job it was "to comb the literature oni file in the New York Public Library and excerpt or abstract those sections that they believed might be pertinent to our project." Ibid., ii.

1 ibid., 143, 151. See also Gertrud M. Kurth, "The Jew and Adolf Hitler," Psychoanalytic Quarterly, i6 (1947): 28-29; and Norbert Bromberg, "Hitler's Character and Its Development: Further Observations," Amtericant IimagO, 28 (1971): 290-91.

22 The best book on Hitler's childhood is Bradley F. Smith. Adolf Hitler: His Famlily, Child- hlood and Youth (Stanford, 1967).

23 Quoted in Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 143. Italics mnine.



398 Hans W. Gatzke

Among the five children there is a boy, let us say, of three. . When the parents fight almost daily, with an inward rudeness (innere Roheit) which leaves nothing to be desired, then the results of such visual education must slowly but inevitably become apparent in the little ones (bei den Kleinen). Those who are not familiar with such conditions can hardly imagine the results, especially when the mutual differences express themselves in rude outrages (rohe Ausschrei- tungen) of the father toward the mother or lead to mistreatments (Misshand- lungen) due to drunkenness.24

To interpret this as a description of a sexual attack seems farfetched indeed. Yet this is what Langer does. In discussing Hitler's Oedipus com- plex, he points to

the fact that as a child he must have discovered his parents during intercourse. An examination of the data [i.e., the passages just quoted] makes this conclusion almost inescapable, and from our knowledge of his father's character and past history it is not at all improbable. It would seem that his feelings on this occasion were very mixed.25

The use of exact and assertive terms like fact, data, and knowledge, balanced by tentative expressions-must have, almost inescapable, not at all improbable, it would seem-gives the impression that the author is aware of the uncertain ground on which he finds himself. But such un- certainty does not last long. A few lines further along what had been sur- mise has become fact: "Being a spectator to this early scene had many repercussions." These are then spelled out.

The example just cited of unwarranted conclusions based on insufficient evidence is unfortunately not unique; it is the rule rather than the exception. Here are additional examples of similarly unfounded asser- tions:

It is almost certain that Adolf had temper tantrums. Their immediate pur- pose was to get his own way with his mother.... There is reason to suppose that she frequently condoned behavior of which the father would have disapproved. . . . Life with his mother during these early years must have been a veritable Par- adise for Adolf....

As he became older and the libidinal attachment to his mother became stronger, both the resentment and fear [of his father] undoubtedly increased. In- fantile sexual feelings were probably quite prominent in this relationship.26

It should be noted that while we know a good deal about the outward events of Hitler's early life, we know next to nothing about its more intimate circumstances. But this does not inhibit Langer. Where information is lacking, imagination takes over. A few pages later we learn of another important event in Adolf's early life and of that event's ultimate consequences:

24 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (276th ed.; Munich, 1937), 32-33. 25 Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 151. Italics mine. 26 Ibid., 150. Italics mine.




From what we know about his mother's excessive cleanliness and tidiness we may assume that she employed rather stringent measures during the toilet training pe- riod of her children.

Here, again, we may assutme that the experience was more intense in Hitler's case than in the average due to the strong attachment and spoiling of his mother in early infancy. Unaccustomed to minor frustrations that most children must learn to endure prior to the toilet training, he was poorly equipped to deal witlh this experience that plays an important role in the life of all infants. Even now, as an adult, Hitler is unable to cope with frustrating experiences on a mature level.27

As Hitler grew older, and especially after he entered the political lime- light, information about him became more plentiful until it turned into a veritable flood. But the more material there is, the more difficult it becomes to separate fact from fiction. Between the adulation of his admirers and the abuse of his antagonists, where is the true Hitler? Leafing through the close to a thousand pages of the "Source-Book" that accompanied the original OSS report, one can find evidence to support almost any image of the man-from repulsive, dirty, lazy, and sexually perverted psychopath to attractive, neat, hardworking, and sexually normal statesman. More than ever, therefore, it becomes necessary to scrutinize every bit of evidence before fitting it into Hitler's character structure.

One side of Hitler's personality that always aroused much speculation was his sex life. After examining the mass of contradictory rumors on this subject, Dr. Langer and his collaborators concluded that Hitler was subject to "an extreme form of masochism in which the individual derives sexual gratification from the act of having a woman urinate or defecate on him.'"28 As source for this revelation Langer cites Otto Strasser, a prominent Nazi who, after breaking with Hitler in 1930, became one of his most ardent opponents. Strasser obtained his information from Hitler's niece, Geli Raubal, who allegedly spoke from firsthand experience. Elsewhere Langer tells of a different kind of masochistic incident involving a well-known Germnan movie actress, variously referred to as Rene or Renarte Mueller (actually her name was Renate). The authority in this case was her American director, Zeissler, to whom she told her story shortly before committing suicide.29 What we have, then, are two accounts of different events, both secondhand, one by an enemy of Hitler's, the other by a man who does not even remember the correct name of his alleged informant. Historians would not accept such evidence as valid, especially when there are equally "reliable" accounts of other possible perversions and when Langer himself states earlier that nobody was

27 Ibid., i63. Italics mine. 28 Ibid., 134. This version again differs from the original OSS report (p. 138): "He is an

extreme masochist who derives sexual pleasure from having a woman squat over him while she urinates or defecates on his face." It should be noted further that Strasser only spoke of urination, not defecation. Langer, "Hitler Source-Book," gig.

29 Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, gi, 171.



400 Hans W. Gatzke

really in a position to know about Hitler's sexual activities, except perhaps his personal adjutant. Langer adds, "There are some who believe that his sex life is perfectly normal but restricted."30 Such a conclusion, however, seems to have been too simple. Instead Langer and his colleagues adopt a "where there's smoke there's fire" approach and accept the perversion that best fits their image of Hitler.31

The examples here given, which could be multiplied many times, show that some of the most important conclusions of Langer's book are based on nonexistent, unreliable, or misinterpreted evidence. No matter how plausible the results may seem, they cannot be accepted unless cor- roborated by more reliable information. In the case of Hitler's family and childhood, much new material not available to the Langer group has already corrected the picture of a drunken and brutal father terrorizing his wife and children.32 As for Hitler's sexual relations, nothing new has come to light to confirm the account of his masochistic perversion, and from what we know about his relations with Eva Braun (who plays only a minor role in the book) they may have been more nearly normal than assumed. Still, the fact that this question has now been raised so openly and answered so explicitly may lead to further information. There are some less startling statements in Langer's book that since 1943 have been con- firmed by additional evidence. This holds especially true for the book's early sections on how Hitler saw himself and how others saw him, which contain some useful insights since borne out. If one bears in mind that much of the basic material on Hitler, notably his "Table Talk," was not available to Langer and his colleagues, this part of their work commands considerable respect. To ridicule the book, as has been done,33 is as un- called for as it is to claim that it has stood "the test of time."34 In its as yet unpublished original version the Langer report is an interesting historical document-no less, but also no more.

In the foreword to his brother's book, William Langer tells of an idea he and Walter had "of attempting a collaborative study of some historical figure or movement in which psychological insights could be blended with historical data to yield a deeper understanding of its significance."35 Un- fortunately their scheme never materialized. As this book and subsequent

30 Ibid., 91. 31 Another informant on Hitler's sexual aberrations was Ernst ("Putzi") Hanfstaengl (see the

anonymous report, "Adolf Hitler, Dec. 3, 1942," in President Roosevelt's Personal File [PPF], 5780), Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, that from internal evidence appears to be by Hanf- staengl). At least one historian, Robert G. L. Waite, accepts Langer's evidence, though "after great hesitation"; see his "Adolf Hitler's Anti-Semitism: A Study in History and Psychoanalysis," in Benjamin B. Wolman, ed., The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History (New York, 1971), 225 n.63.

32See Smith, Adolf Hitler: His Family, Childhood and Youth, and Franz Jetzinger, Hitler's Youth (London, 1958).

33 See, for instance, the review by H. R. Trevor-Roper in Book World, Washington Post, Sept. lo, 1972.

34 Robert G. L. Waite in Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 232. 35 Ibid., vi.




work on Hitler's psychology has shown, neither psychologists nor historians, working independently of each other, seem to produce mutually satisfactory results.36 Not only do they lack the necessary training in each others' disciplines, but in their eagerness to make a contribution in a novel and exciting field they often violate the basic rules of evidence.

This latter fact holds true not only for psychologists but also for some of the historians who have tried their hand at psychohistory. An example is Robert Waite, a historian long interested in Hitler's psyche, who con- tributed an afterword to Langer's book. There he mentions "one critically important fact . . . that Langer did not know anything about. It was only discovered when Russian doctors, who performed an autopsy on Hitler's body in May 1945, found that he was sexually malformed," that is, he had only one testicle.37 Waite had already mentioned this fact in an earlier article of his, where he quotes from the Russian autopsy report: "In the scrotum, which is singed but preserved, only the right testicle was found."38 In a subsequent article he goes quite a bit further and sug- gests that Hitler's monorchism (the lack of a testicle) was due to "partial self-castration." "If mutilation had taken place one would normally ex- pect to find evidence of scar tissue on the scrotum. But in this case the whole area was singed and burned."39 The point here is not Waite's suggestion of Hitler's possible self-castration; such speculation may be necessary and prove fruitful in psychohistory. The point is that in making that suggestion he interprets the statement "singed but preserved" of the Russian autopsy report to mean the same as "singed and burned." This change, be it due to carelessness or a (perhaps unconscious) desire to prove his case, is certainly not sound use of evidence.40

It is conceivable that some day there may be scholars equally well versed in both disciplines, history and psychology, to write acceptable psychohistory. But in addition to being trained psychoanalysts they will also need the "clinical experience" that both William and Walter Langer stress as an essential prerequisite. Such persons will be hard to find. Until then, Pro- fessor Langer's suggestion of collaboration between scholars from both disciplines remains the most promising approach if psychohistory is to take its place as a respectable field of scholarship.

36 For examples see the works cited by Kurth, "The Jew and Adolf Hitler"; Bromberg, "Hitler's Character and Its Development: Further Observations"; and Waite, "Adolf Hitler's Anti- Semitism: A Study in History and Psychoanalysis."

37 Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 227. 38 Waite, "Adolf Hitler's Anti-Semitism," 227. Italics mine. 39 R. G. L. Waite, "Adolf Hitler's Guilt Feelings: A Problem in History and Psychology,"

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1 (1g71): 236 n. 33. Italics mine. 40 Waite's work suffers from many similar instances of inaccurate or imprecise use of evidence.

In the article just quoted, the statement (p. 231) that Hitler "took special pains to dictate the precise language of the November Racial Laws of 1935" is not supported by the source cited; nor is the fact that Hitler would "gaze . . . apprehensively" at the blood drawn from him by his doctor; the translation (p. 235) of Abwdsser as "urine" is a bit free; and one wonders about the source for the assertion (p. 237) that when Hitler "flipped a coin to determine whether he would go on a picnic, heads did not win. Heads invariably lost." There are many other examples.



hitler and psychohistory

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