The recent DNA investigation into Adolf Hitler’s genetic make up has thrown up a whole load of extra information about one of the history’s greatest monsters. The investigation has finally quashed rumours that Hitler might have had Jewish ancestry via an affair had by a family member with a Jewish man but it has revealed much about Hitler’s many and serious genetic problems.
None of these revelations excuse or even begin to explain why Adolf Hitler turned from confused, mother obsessed child into a mass murdering monster, as there are tens of thousands of people with similar conditions to those suffered by Hitler who don’t turn to crime or mass murder. What they do explain however is why Hitler was so different in his personal life from other Nazi leaders. Hitler never, until shortly before his death, married nor was he known to have affairs with women or men and what information and rumour we do have about Hitler’s personal life suggests he indulged in the sort of perversions such as incest, ephebophilia and coprophilia that immediate arouse feelings of ‘yuk’.
The results of the DNA analysis of a small sample of Hitler’s blood taken from a bit of cloth cut from the sofa on which he shot himself do not definitively show that he suffered from a rare condition that arrested his puberty and gave him a micropenis, but they do show that Hitler had the genetic makers for this condition. It’s unlikely in my view at least that having a micropenis and also being mocked for it by other soldiers whilst Hitler served in WWI, caused him to do what he did and be what he was, lots of people go through the experience of being mocked for physical deformities and don’t take the path that Hitler did. Hitler’s genes did not make him a monster, Hitler actively chose to be that way.
The online science magazine ZME said of the DNA investigation:
The dictator’s genome shows a deletion in the PROK2 gene — a signature of Kallmann Syndrome, a rare condition that interrupts puberty and sexual development. The finding aligns with a 1923 medical exam documenting an undescended testicle. According to the production company Blink Films, the syndrome often results in “low testosterone levels, undescended testicles and can result in a micropenis.”
These findings hint at how profoundly Hitler’s body diverged from his own fascist vision of “purity.” That contradiction matters. As King noted, Hitler’s policies were “completely around eugenics.”
Science has now revealed that he belonged to the very categories of people the Nazis targeted for annihilation. The irony is palpable, though I feel the need to caution readers that these findings haven’t been peer reviewed and the Kallmann Syndrome diagnosis remains woefully unconfirmed.
I agree that this finding is an massive irony. Hitler suffered or was likely to have suffered the sort of genetic conditions that would have condemned him to death under his own ideology of Germanic genetic purity. The findings do not confirm that Hitler suffered from a condition that gave him a micropenis, but they do show that such a condition might be likely. How this condition did or did not affect how Hitler formulated his ideology is likely to remain a mystery. I certainly very much doubt that having a micropenis made him a Jew hater, that Jew hatred was probably already present in Hitler’s mindset as it was with many other Germans in the time that Hitler was growing up and coming to power. The book ‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners’ which I reviewed some time back at https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2024/06/26/book-review-hitlers-willing-executioners/ shows that Jew hatred was so embedded in German society that people willingly joined Nazi police units that murdered Jews. Hitler didn’t create that attitude, it was already there in German culture and society at the time.
I have come to disagree with the idea that humans are born as a ‘blank slate’ but unlike some I also don’t believe that we are the sum total of our genes. Yes they play a major part in shaping who we are but they are not everything. The conditions that Hitler may have inherited might have played a part in his madness and his abandonment of any sort of functioning moral compass but they are not I believe the prime reason why Hitler turned from a failed painter to a megalomaniac monster. Hitler had agency, he could have taken different paths but chose not to. Hitler’s genes did not make Hitler what he turned out to be although any mental illness he may have suffered from might have influenced his conduct. He chose his path, could not be dissuaded from his path and he surrounded himself with those who would not disagree with his views. At numerous points in Hitler’s life he could have chosen different paths from that which he took but he didn’t and that’s down to his own decisions not his genes.
On a lighter note, the revelation that Hitler might have had a micropenis means that the famous satirical song ‘Hitler has only got one ball’ is going to have to be rewritten to include the micropenis revelation. The problem is including the micropenis news is going to mean that it will not fit into the tune of ‘Colonel Bogey’ as now it won’t scan properly although it could be rewritten to read ‘Hitler has only got one ball, and a micropenis that’s mocked by one and all’.
Link
ZME science magazine article on Hitler’s Genome
https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/genetic/hitlers-dna-shows-he-likely-had-a-micropenis-caused-by-a-rare-genetic-syndrome