Adolf Hitler. No other figure in contemporary history is associated with such far-reaching historical impact and such monstrous crimes. His name alone is emblematic of world war and Holocaust. If only because of the barbarity for which he is responsible, Adolf Hitler has become an anxiety neurosis, a vision of horror. And that is why he remains even now as he was to many of his contemporaries: an incomprehensible mystery. In the half century since his death, he has been the subject of over 120,000 publications, and yet the historian John Lukacs, who has tried to impose some sort of order on the chaotic jumble, comes to the significant conclusion that "We are far from done with Hitler."

What Hitler did in history has been amply documented in the monumental work of historians and biographers such as Alan Bullock, Joachim Fest, Hans Mommsen, and Ian Kershaw. Who Hitler was, however, as a person, what anchored him emotionally, has either eluded or been of little interest to writers who often burden themselves with the search for the origin of his evil as the explanation for his life and its consequences. Drawing from a wealth of archival sources, much of which has been long overlooked by historians, The Hidden Hitler focuses on Hitler the man. Lothar Machtan's controversial thesis is that Adolf Hitler was homosexual, and that one cannot begin to understand him, his entry into politics, and the early Nazi movement without a clear understanding of this aspect of his identity.

The Hidden Hitler documents the homosexual milieu in which the young Hitler lived and thrived from his early years in Vienna, through the beginnings of his political career in Munich, and during his years as the Führer. Machtan documents a succession of homosexual and homosexually inclined men among Hitler's most intimate friends and supporters, including August Kubizek, Reinhold Hanisch, Ernst Schmidt, Ernst Röhm, Dietrich Eckart, Rudolf Hess, Emil Maurice, "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, and Kurt Ludecke. Of these, Eckart and Röhm were pivotal to his entry into politics. Machtan also unearths surprising new documents that attest to Hitler's homosexuality in those early years. Of particular importance is the "Mend Protocol," portions of which appear for the first time in this book. While it is doubtful that Hitler was sexually active in any way (gay or straight) after 1933, his homosexual past, nevertheless, was his Achilles' heel. It threatened him politically and left him open to blackmail by his most intimate associates. The assasination of Ernst Röhm, along with roughly 150 other men over a four day period in 1934, served as a chilling message to all with knowledge, or access to knowledge, about the Führer's past life.

Recent books on the Nazi movement have argued that the Third Reich was a fundamentally sordid regime. Machtan provides powerful new evidence in support of this view. This side of Hitler and his "Munich clique," as Goebbels put it, has never been so vividly evoked. As an intimate portrait of Hitler and as a surprising portrait of the homoerotic nature of the early Nazi movement, The Hidden Hitler is a major and certainly controversial contribution to the biographical literature. Anyone who has read any previous biographer of Adolf Hitler will read The Hidden Hitler and wonder, "How could they have missed entirely the homosexuality of Hitler and his entourage?"

Machtan (modern and current history, Bremen U., Germany) contends that not only can it be conclusively proven that Adolf Hitler was homosexual, but that this is a historical fact that is, if not the key, central to any reinterpretation of the character of the high command of the Nazi regime. He suggests that earlier consideration of this possibility has been precluded by a post-war taboo, related to both homosexuality and to a dismissal of personal information as irrelevant to historical inquiry. Central to the argument is the case of Ernst R<:o>hm, who had been left the leadership of the Nazis in the early 1920s, only to be recalled by Hitler and later killed on Hitler's orders as allegations of R<:o>hm's sexuality began to surface. This incident and the Nazi's vicious campaign against homosexuals both represent, according to Machtan, Hitler's efforts to protect his political legitimacy against allegations regarding his own sexuality.
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"This professor of modern history at Bremen University in Germany argues, with persuasive power, that to fully understand the Third Reich, one must realize that Hitler was homosexual and understand the homoerotic nature of the Nazi movement. No question — this book will be heavily requested and stir much debate." Brad Hooper, Booklist

"[T]he circumstantial evidence Machtan offers is just that — circumstantial. And the hard evidence seems far less reliable than he would have us believe....But the biggest problem with Machtan's book...[is] 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 employes innuendo and insinuation. He asks rhetorical questions designed to lead the reader to answer them in a manner that supports his argument, even when alternative explanations are at least as plausible. He introduces possibilities that are then assumed to be probabilities and, indeed, certitudes....In short, he has written a tendentious book that is more a brief for the prosecution than a work of balanced history." Walter Reich, The New York Times Book Review

"The Hidden Hitler works better if the reader is willing to disregard the author's often aggressive tone in pushing his argument and simply consider the evidence....[A]nyone interested in knowing the truth on this subject ought to grant Machtan credit for assembling so many persuasive strands of evidence. Evidence, of course, is not proof, but merely the building blocks which must be considered in constructing the truth, and as Machtan's critics are insisting, most of his is circumstantial. But if Machtan's hard evidence isn't as hard as he insists, neither is his soft evidence so soft as his critics contend....In and of themselves, perhaps none of Machtan's points prove his thesis....But is it possible that all of these stories, all these possibilities, all these indications are wrong, that they are simply the concoctions of sick or vengeful or headline-seeking minds? The flaws in Machtan's presentation should not be confused with errors of research. It will probably fall to those better qualified than Machtan in areas of sex and psychology to take the next step and tell us how Hitler's homosexuality (or at least his frustrated homosexuality) affected his political doctrines, but from here on historians are going to have to contend with Machtan's conclusions." Allen Barra, Salon.com

"Right from the start the book is explicitly argumentative, and Machtan often resorts to tortured twists in buffering his case. When evidence is missing, it is because Hitler destroyed it. When evidence of Hitler's homophobia is addressed, we learn that Hitler was simply protesting too much. Sweeping conclusions about Hitler's personal life and personal actions are based on the argument that nothing else could explain the fact pattern, even when the data is sketchy at best....The discussions of [Hitler's youthful relationships with two men] are particularly troubling. Throughout, Machtan emphasizes that Hitler lived in men's hotels (which early homosexual advocate Magnus Hirschfeld identified as hotbeds of homosexual activity), that all three men were close to their mothers, and that all were devotees of Wagner. The author's argument that all of these characteristics of homosexual life were identified in Hirschfeld's writings does not alter the fact that they are slender stereotypes on which to draw broad conclusions. Machtan's book makes abundantly clear what has been pretty much a given in Hitler historiography — that the man who led Germany into heinous crimes led a puzzling and undoubtedly dysfunctional personal life. But, he comes nowhere close to demonstrating that Hitler was homosexual." Paul Schindler, LGNY (The Newspaper for Lesbian & Gay New York)

The historian Lothar Machtan was born in 1949, got his Ph.D in 1978, and became a professor in 1989. He is an associate professor of Modern and Current History at Bremen University in Germany. In 1998, he published the acclaimed book, Bismarcks Tod und Deutschlands Tränen [Bismarck's Death and Germany's Tears]. He has also authored numerous publications on the social and political history of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Acknowledgments....................................................vii
Introduction.........................................................1
1 The Would-be Aesthete: Hitler, 1905-1914..........................27
2 Comrade Hitler: Blackmail with Fatal Consequences.................65
3 Private Phases in a Public Career................................105
4 Love's Labor's Lost..............................................141
5 The Röhm Campaign................................................181
6 Posthumous Revelations: Erich Ebermayer and His Sources..........231
7 Dangerous Machinations: Kurt Lüdecke and Ernst Hanfstaengl........................................................265
Epilogue...........................................................313
Postscript.........................................................319
Notes..............................................................323
Bibliography.......................................................403
Index..............................................................419