The Hidden Hitler

The Hidden Hitler

Cover of the first edition
Author Lothar Machtan
Original title Hitlers Geheimnis: Das Doppelleben Eines Diktators
Translator John Brownjohn
Language German
Subject Sexuality of Adolf Hitler
Publisher Basic Books
Publication date
 2001
Published in English
 2001
Media type Print (Hardcover)
Pages 434 pp
ISBN 0-465-04308-9
943.086/092 B
LC Class DD247.H5 M235 2001

The Hidden Hitler (German: Hitlers Geheimnis. Das Doppelleben eines Diktators; the title translates literally as "Hitler's Secret: The Double Life of a Dictator") is a 2001 book by German professor and historian Lothar Machtan. The German original was published by Alexander Fest Verlag, while the English-translated version was published by Basic Books in New York City. (ISBN 0-465-04308-9)

The book discusses Adolf Hitler's sexuality. Machtan argues that Hitler was a closeted homosexual. Among the evidence, he cites the allegedly homoerotic nature of his friendship with August Kubizek during Hitler's youth in Vienna.

The question of Hitler's homosexuality is also raised in Walter C. Langer's work The Mind of Adolf Hitler and in Waite's psychoanalytic history The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. However, most scholars dismiss these claims and believe Hitler was heterosexual.[1][2][3]

Industry reviews

The New York Times Book Review (12/16/01) - "... But the biggest problem with Machtan's book (which has been translated by John Brownjohn) isn't the reliability of his sources but his mode of argumentation. He accepts what fits his thesis and rejects what doesn't. One feels, at times, that one is reading an internal F.B.I. report from the J. Edgar Hoover era rather than an evenhanded work of scholarship in which the author is ready to be led by the facts. To interpret evidence his way, Machtan employs innuendo and insinuation ..."

However, the review (by Walter Reich, a psychiatrist and former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) also concedes that "though Machtan doesn't succeed in proving that Hitler was an active homosexual, he does demonstrate that his life, in both the personal and the political spheres, was suffused with homosexual themes and personalities. In some odd way, this may actually serve to humanize Hitler. But it doesn't serve to explain him."

See also

References

  1. ↑ Andrew Nagorski. Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 81.
  2. ↑ Ian Kershaw (2008). Hitler: A Biography. W. W. Norton & Company, pp. 22-23, 219.
  3. ↑ Anton Joachimsthaler (1999) [1995]. The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends – The Evidence – The Truth. Brockhampton Press, p. 264.
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