| The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report | |
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The Mind of Adolf Hitler contains Walter C. Langer's wartime report on Hitler's personality plus additional material. |
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| Author(s) | Walter C. Langer |
| Subject(s) | Adolf Hitler |
| Publisher | Basic Books |
| Publication date | 1972 |
| ISBN | 0465046207 |
| Dewey Decimal | 943.086/092/4B |
| LC Classification | DD247.H5L29 |
The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report, published in 1972 by Basic Books, is based on, and contains as its core, a World War II report by psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer which probed the psychology of Adolf Hitler from the available information. The report was prepared for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and submitted in late 1943 or early 1944;[1] it is officially entitled "A Psychologial Profile of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend". The report is one of two psychoanalytic reports prepared for the OSS during the war in an attempt to assess Hitler's personality; the other psychoanalytic report is "Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler".
The book contains not only Langer's report, but also a foreword by his brother, the historian William L. Langer, an introduction by Langer himself and an afterword by the psychoanalytic historian Robert G.L. Waite.[2][3]
Contents |
The wartime report was commissioned by the head of the OSS, William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan. The research and investigation for it was done in collaboration with three other clinicians – Professor Henry A. Murray of the Harvard Psychological Clinic, Dr. Ernst Kris of the New School for Social Research, and Dr. Bertram D. Lewin of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute – as well as research associates[4] Langer notes in his introduction to the book that one of the three essentially dropped out of the project because he was too busy with other work, but he gives no names. "He promised, however, to write down his views and conclusions and submit them ... Unfortunately, not a word was ever received from him" although he did apparently confirm to Langer by telephone that he agreed with the diagnosis of Hitler's perversion.[5]
The report was classified as "Secret" by the OSS, but was eventually declassified in 1968.[6] After receiving some encouragement from fellow scholars, particularly Professor Henderson Braddick of the Department of International Relations at Lehigh University[7] Langer decided to publish the report in book form. The original report is in the public domain and is available on the Internet on a number of sites.[8]
The report used many sources to profile Hitler, including a number of informants, including Ernst Hanfstaengl, Eduard Bloch, Hermann Rauschning, Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, Otto Strasser, Friedlinde Wagner, and Kurt Ludecke. The so-called "Hitler Source Book" which was appended to the wartime report, ran over one thousand pages and was indexed against the report. The groundbreaking study was the pioneer of offender profiling and political psychology, today commonly used by many countries as part of assessing international relations.
In addition to predicting that if defeat for Germany was near, Hitler would most likely choose suicide,[9] Langer's report stated that Hitler was "probably impotent"[10] as far as heterosexual relations were concerned and that there was a possibility that Hitler had participated in a homosexual relationship. The report stated that:
[t]he belief that Hitler is homosexual has probably developed (a) from the fact that he does show so many feminine characteristics, and (b) from the fact that there were so many homosexuals in the Party during the early days and many continue to occupy important positions. It is probably true that Hitler calls Foerster "Bubi", which is a common nickname employed by homosexuals in addressing their partners. This alone, however, is not adequate proof that he has actually indulged in homosexual practices with Foerster, who is known to be a homosexual.[11]
Langer's report also concluded that Hitler loved pornography and masochistic sex, and in particular that he had "coprophagic tendencies or their milder manifestations" in his heterosexual relationships, and masochistically derived "sexual gratification from the act of having a woman urinate or defecate on him."[12] Langer concluded that Hitler was "probably a neurotic psychopath bordering on schizophrenia."[13]
The report briefly mentions some claims that a Rothschild fathered Alois Hitler – Adolf's father, who was illegitimate – when Hitler's paternal grandmother, Maria Schicklgruber, supposedly worked as a house servant in Vienna, but concludes "[f]rom a purely scientific point of view ... it is sounder not to base our reconstruction on such slim evidence but to seek firmer foundations." While there are numerous statements in the report that have proven, on further investigation, to be erroneous,[14] it is nevertheless an invaluable study piece for any serious historian of the Third Reich. The bibliography of the report contains close to 400 entries.
In a review of The Mind of Adolf Hitler for The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Martin Waugh concluded that Langer's work was important "because of its value to the historian; because it was a 'first' for this country's intelligence services; and because of the official recognition of psychoanalysis the assignment implied."[15]
[H]e is not insane in the commonly accepted sense of the term, but a neurotic who lacks adequate inhibitions. He has not lost complete contact with the world about him and is striving to make some kind of psychological adjustment that will give him a feeling of security in his social group. It also means that there is a definite moral component in his character no matter how deeply it may be buried or how seriously it has been disturbed.