Hitler and Psychohistory Author(s): Hans W. Gatzke Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Apr.

, 1973), pp. 394-401 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1861174 . Accessed: 31/05/2013 12:03
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Hitler and Psychohistory

A ReviewArticleby HANS W. GATZKE

WALTER C. LANGER. The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report. Forewordby 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-lengthstudies 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 interestingpart 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 belated, is stillvaluable, ifonly forthe 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

2 By Robert G. L. Waite. The others are by Horst von Maltitz,John Toland, Rudolph Binion, and JoachimFest. 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 WolframKurth,Genie, Irrsinnund Ruhm (6th ed.; Munich, 1967),381-88,653-54.

Zeit (American ed.), Sept. iO,, 1972.

394

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Hitler and Psychohistory

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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 declassifieduntil 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.8In his introduction Walter Langer tells of the pressure under which he wrote his report in 1943, finishing 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 statementsby Walter Langer in his introductionand by Robert G. L. Waite in his afterwordthat the book presents a "historical document," are hardly justified.10Serious 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 effortby Langer and "three experienced psychoanalysts."'12 The contributions 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 PsychologicalAnalysisof 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 rearrangedand 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 eventualityof 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 subtitleof the book. 11Walter 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 Suggestionsfor Dealing with Him Now and AfterGermany'sSurrender," Oct. 1943. Copy in the President Secretary'sFile, John Franklin Carter Folder, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library,Hyde Park, N.Y.

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similarityis especially strikingin 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 thisrelationship 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.15But 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 consulted. But historianscan 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 significantfrom 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 findingsthat psychoanalystshave 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 to convince us that Hitler's actions as reported in the news, was sufficient "18 That hurdle cleared, he was, in all probability, a neurotic psychopath. the rest was easy. "With this diagnosis as a point of orientation, we were able to evaluate the data in terms of probability. Those fragmentsthat
14Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 209-13; Murray, "Analysis," 221-27. Note also the identical misspellingof Hitler's first name in the original OSS and the Murrayreports. 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 who have studied [OSS: unanimous] agreementamong the collaborators[OSS: four psychoanalysts 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.

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Hitler and Psychohistory

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could most easily be fitted into this general clinical category were tentatively 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."'19In 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 fittedthe 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 differentkind of evidence, they made the Fiihrer into the greatest German ever. It is an imaginative but hardlyan 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: fightalmost daily, their brutalityleaves nothing to the imagination; then the becomeapparentto the of such visual educationmustslowlybut inevitably results littleone. Those who are not familiarwith such conditionscan hardlyimagine the results,especially when the mutual differences express themselvesin the formof bru-t-al attackson the part of the fathertowardthe motheror 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 possiblyread into them:
Actually the material, which Launger's group initerprete(d in suchi a highly selective manner, had already been preselectedfor them. Accordingto Langer it was gathered by "thlee psychoanaresearch workers,"whose job it was "to comb the literatureoni file in the New lytically-traine(l 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: FurtherObservations,"Amtericant IimagO, 28 (1971): 290-91. 22 The best book on Hitler's childhood is Bradley F. Smith. Adolf Hitler: His Famlily, Childhloodand Youth (Stanford,1967). 23 Quoted in Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 143. Italics mnine.
20

Amonig the fivechildrenthereis a boy,let us say,of three.... When the parents

19 Ibid., 17.

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Among the fivechildrenthereis a boy,let us say,of three.. When the parents almost daily, with an inward rudeness(innere Roheit) which leaves nothfight ing to be desired,then the resultsof such visual education mustslowlybut inevitably become apparent in the little ones (bei den Kleinen). Those who are not familiarwith such conditions can hardly imagine the results,especially when express themselvesin rude outrages (rohe Ausschreithe mutual differences (Misshandtungen) of the fathertoward the motheror lead to mistreatments 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 complex, he points to the fact that as a child he must have discoveredhis parentsduring intercourse. An examinationof the data [i.e., the passagesjust quoted] makes this conclusion almost inescapable, and fromour knowledgeof his father'scharacterand past on thisoccasion it is not at all improbable.It would seem thathis feelings history 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 uncertaintydoes not last long. A few lines furtheralong what had been surmise 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 assertions: Their immediatepurIt is almost certainthat Adolf had tempertantrums. pose was to get his own way withhis mother.... There is reason to suppose that condoned behavior of which the fatherwould have disapproved. she frequently . . . Life withhis motherduringtheseearlyyearsmusthave been a veritableParadise forAdolf.... As he became older and the libidinal attachmentto his mother became undoubtedlyincreased.Inand fear [of his father] both the resentment stronger, in thisrelationship.26 sexual feelings wereprobablyquite prominent fantile 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 25 26

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

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Hitler and Psychohistory

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From what we know about his mother's excessivecleanlinessand tidinesswe may assume thatshe employedratherstringent measuresduringthe toilettrainingperiod of her children. Here, again, we may assutme that the experiencewas more intensein Hitler's case than in the averagedue to the strongattachment and spoilingof his mother in early infancy.Unaccustomed to minor frustrations that most children must learn to endure prior to the toilet training, he was poorlyequipped to deal witlh thisexperiencethat plays an important role in the life of all infants.Even now, as an adult, Hitler is unable to cope with frustrating experienceson a mature
level.27

As Hitler grew older, and especially after he entered the political limelight, informationabout 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 characterstructure. One side of Hitler's personality that always aroused much speculation was his sex life. After examining the mass of contradictoryrumors 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 gratificationfrom 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. Strasserobtained his informationfrom Hitler's niece, Geli Raubal, who allegedly spoke from firsthand experience. Elsewhere Langer tells of a differentkind 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 shortlybefore committing suicide.29What we have, then, are two accounts of differentevents, 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
Ibid., i63. Italics mine. Ibid., 134. This version again differsfrom the original OSS report (p. 138): "He is an extreme masochistwho 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.
27 28

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reallyin a positionto knowabout Hitler'ssexual activities, exceptperhaps his personaladjutant.Langer adds, "There are some who believe thathis Such a conclusion,however, sex life is perfectly normalbut restricted."30 seems to have been too simple. Instead Langer and his colleagues adopt a "where there'ssmoke there'sfire"approach and accept the perversion thatbestfits theirimageof Hitler.31 The examples here given, which could be multiplied many times, show that some of the most important conclusionsof Langer's book are based on nonexistent, unreliable,or misinterpreted evidence. No matter how plausible the resultsmay seem, theycannot be accepted unless corroboratedby more reliable information. In the case of Hitler's family and childhood,much new material not available to the Langer group has alreadycorrected thepictureof a drunkenand brutalfather terrorizing his wife and children.32 As for Hitler's sexual relations, nothingnew has come to light to confirm the account of his masochistic perversion, and fromwhat we know about his relations withEva Braun (who playsonlya minor role in the book) theymay have been more nearly normal than assumed.Still, the fact that this question has now been raised so openly and answered so explicitly maylead to further information. There are some less startling statements in Langer's book that since 1943 have been confirmed by additional evidence. This holds especiallytrue for the book's earlysectionson how Hitler saw himself and how otherssaw him, which contain some useful insights since borne out. If one bears in mind that much of the basic materialon Hitler,notablyhis "Table Talk," was not available to Langer and his colleagues,this part of theirworkcommands considerablerespect.To ridicule the book, as has been done,33 is as uncalled foras it is to claim that it has stood "the testof 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 a collaborative he and Walterhad "of attempting studyof some historical in whichpsychological or movement could be blended with figure insights historicaldata to yield a deeper understanding of its significance."35 Unfortunately theirschemenever materialized. As this book and subsequent
31 Another informanton Hitler's sexual aberrationswas 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 Hanfstaengl). At least one historian,Robert G. L. Waite, accepts Langer's evidence, though "after A Study in History and Psychoanalysis," great hesitation"; see his "Adolf Hitler's Anti-Semitism: in Benjamin B. Wolman, ed., The PsychoanalyticInterpretationof History (New York, 1971),

30 Ibid., 91.

225 n.63. Hitler's 32See Smith, Adolf Hitler: His Family, Childhood and Youth, and Franz Jetzinger, Youth (London, 1958). Sept. lo, 1972.
34 Robert G. 35 Ibid., vi.

33See, for instance, the review by H. R. Trevor-Roper in Book World, Washington Post, L. Waite in Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 232.

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nor hiswork on Hitler's psychology has shown, neither psychologists torians,workingindependently of each other,seem to produce mutually satisfactory results.36 Not only do theylack the necessary trainingin each in a novel others'disciplines, but in theireagerness to make a contribution and exciting field they often violatethebasicrulesofevidence. This latterfactholds true not only for psychologists but also forsome of the historians who have triedtheirhand at psychohistory. An example is Robert Waite, a historian long interested in Hitler's psyche, who contributed an afterword to Langer'sbook. There he mentions"one critically discoveredwhen Russian doctors,who performed an autopsyon 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 articleof his, where he quotes fromthe Russian autopsyreport: "In the scrotum, which is singed but preserved, only the right testicle and sugwas found."38 In a subsequentarticlehe goes quite a bit further geststhat Hitler's monorchism (the lack of a testicle)was due to "partial self-castration." "If mutilationhad taken place one would normallyexpect to findevidence of scar tissue on the scrotum.But in this case the whole area was singed and burned."39The point here is not Waite's suggestionof Hitler's possible self-castration; such speculation may be necessary and prove fruitful in psychohistory. The point is thatin making thatsuggestion he interprets the statement "singed but preserved"of the Russian autopsyreportto mean the same as "singed and burned." This change, be it due to carelessness or a (perhaps unconscious) desire to his notsounduse ofevidence.40 prove case,is certainly It is conceivablethatsome day theremaybe scholars equally well versed in both disciplines,historyand psychology, to write acceptable psychohistory. But in additionto being trainedpsychoanalysts theywill also need the "clinicalexperience"thatboth William and WalterLanger stress as an essentialprerequisite. Such personswill be hard to find.Until then,ProfessorLanger's suggestionof collaborationbetween scholars from both disciplinesremains the most promisingapproach if psychohistory is to take its place as a respectable fieldof scholarship.
36 For examples see the workscited by Kurth,"The Jew and Adolf Hitler"; Bromberg, "Hitler's Character and Its Development: Further Observations"; and Waite, "Adolf Hitler's AntiSemitism:A Study in Historyand 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 frommany similar instancesof inaccurate or impreciseuse 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 Abwdsseras "urine" is a bit free; and one wonders about the source for the assertion (p. 237) that when Hitler "flipped a coin to determinewhetherhe would go on a picnic, heads did not win. Heads invariablylost." There are many other examples.

important fact . . . that Langer did not know anything about. It was only

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