It has been claimed that Adolf Hitler suffered from monorchism, the condition of having only a single testicle.
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An alleged Soviet autopsy on Hitler's remains made shortly after the war claimed Hitler was monorchid, but some historians dismiss this reference as propaganda. This autopsy was released around 1970. In November 2008, the discovery of an eye-witness account by a World War I army medic, Johan Jambor, was announced in the press. According to these reports, Jambor intimated an account of how he saved Hitler's life after a groin injury in 1916 to a Polish priest and amateur historian, Franciszek Pawlar, in the 1960s. Pawlar's record of the conversation that was discovered by Pawlar's relatives and published by Polish author Grzegorz Wawoczny.[1] According to the German Bild tabloid, a surviving friend of Jambor's, one Blassius Hanczuch, has confirmed the story, adding that Jambor and his co-rescuers dubbed Hitler "screamer" (Schreihals) because, as they were carrying him away, they came under French fire and had to temporarily abandon him, upon which he began to scream very loudly, imploring them to come back and threatening them with court martial if they were to leave him behind.[2]
Records show that Hitler was wounded in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, and some sources describe his injury as a wound to the groin. Hitler's World War I company commander has said that a VD exam found that Hitler had only one testicle. Robert G.L. Waite in his book The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler (1978) accepts the accuracy of this evidence:
The autopsy performed by the Red Army pathologists on Hitler's body... [produced clear] findings:
There was some discussion of this issue for several weeks in the early 1970s in the letters column of the British magazine the New Statesman, although all correspondents accepted the Soviet autopsy as valid. One claimed that British intelligence had discovered that Hitler was monorchic and written the song in an attempt to drive him even further round the bend than he was already, with some elaborate theories about how they might have discovered this. Others thought that it was sheer coincidence, and one even claimed that there had been a similar song sung about Napoleon (this may not be true). One pointed out that most English speakers would not pronounce "Goebbels" correctly, they would pronounce it "Goballs", which suggests "no balls" and the rest would follow. (This correspondence came to a conclusion of sorts when one correspondent wrote a letter complaining about the conditions in which alleged illegal immigrants were being detained, adding that this was a more important issue than Hitler's balls.)
Unfortunately, the Soviet autopsy of Hitler cannot be accepted as authoritative. Hitler's death by suicide and the subsequent almost complete burning of his body would leave little for doctors to analyze — much less be able to focus on such a small body part. The autopsy is discussed in Ron Rosenbaum's book Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil (1998). He concludes that it was fabricated, based on information from Hitler's doctor and recantations by the compilers of the published form of the report.
The DVD version of the TV series The World At War has an interview with the Russian doctor Lt. Col. Faust Shkaravski, who led the autopsy, who claims that they unexpectedly found one testicle missing. This interview would have been conducted in the early 1970s. The programme presents dental evidence that an autopsy really was conducted, but also shows that the findings may have been distorted for political reasons. Specifically, Sherovski states Hitler was not shot in the head, but it is now known that he was.
During the 1980s, the Brisbane anarcho-punk scene included the band "Hitler's Other Testicle". They regularly played songs on the subject of Hitler's possible monorchism, including "Where Did It Go?" and "The Sadness of Autumn".
In 2002 controversial artist Takashi Murakami made a commissioned sculpture of Hitler's testicle for an unnamed bidder for an alleged $14.7 million. The testicle was rumored to have a diameter of 10 feet and was made of cast iron. Art critic Brian Sewell called the work "feeble".
During World War II, the song "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball" was created to bolster morale among British school children.
Before finding success with the Violent Femmes in the 1980s, band members Brian Ritchie and Victor DeLorenzo were members of a group called "Hitler's Missing Testis". [3]