Was Adolf Hitler a Paedophile and/or Child Molester?
Recently one Matt Wallace claimed on X (formerly Twitter) that Adolf Hitler was a paedophile and/or child molester. (1) Since the charge was made and it is linked to the claims of prominent jewish ‘anti-Nazi journalists’ like Konrad Heiden; (2) I thought it appropriate to answer Wallace’s charges thoroughly on Semitic Controversies.
The basis of Wallace’s claims is threefold and regard Hitler’s relationships with children and young women. Even the most violently anti-Hitler of his biographers such as Walter Langer in his notoriously vicious ‘psychological report’ on Adolf Hitler for the American OSS from World War II didn’t think his relationship with children was anything other than benign and that he was just a very kind man who loved the innocence of children. (3)
As already stated, the ‘pervert Hitler’ claim is an old one and largely based on gossip and unsupported claims from former associates turned enemies of Hitler such as Otto Strasser and Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl with Hitler’s modern biographers stating they are unsupported and unreliable claims which almost certainly simply aren’t true. (4)
So, with the issue of the dubious sourcing of these sorts of claims address let’s move on to the three things Wallace claims and correct his shoddy historical knowledge with the verifiable truth.
In the first instance Wallace cites Hitler’s famous relationship with his niece Geli Raubal – daughter of his sister Angela Raubal (nee Hitler) – the problem with Wallace’s claim concerning Raubal is that she was 17 when Hitler first met her when she came with Hitler’s sister Angela Raubal to help Hitler keep up his house (the Berghof) in Obersalzberg in 1925. (5)
So clearly while she was young when she met Hitler for the first time; she was certainly no child and cannot actually be used to allege any kind of paedophilia and/or child molestation on Hitler’s part (she’s often portrayed as being much younger than she was on the big and small screen such as in ‘Hitler: The Rise of Evil’).
Another rarely discussed or disclosed fact which really blows the alleged sexual relationship between Hitler and Geli Raubal out of the water is the fact that Angela and Geli were not alone when they came to up the Berghof in 1925 but also bought Geli’s younger sister Elfriede (Friedl) Raubal. (6)
Friedl Raubal (born in 1910) was 14-15 at the time and if Hitler was a paedophile and/or child molester of any kind then he’d naturally go after the younger Raubal daughter not the older one!
The entire relationship between Adolf Hitler and Geli Raubal is almost certainly a case of history being read to suit an agenda in the first instance because there is absolutely no evidence of a sexual relationship whatsoever. (7)
In the second; the popular and heavily promoted ‘Geli committed suicide to get away from Hitler’s loathsome sexual advances’ narrative is actually the wrong way around and this narrative comes from the SPD (the German Socialist Party) aligned ‘Münchener Post’ in the immediate aftermath of her death – probably as a way to make political capital out of Geli’s suicide - and was immediately explicitly denied publicly by Hitler. (8)
Indeed, one of Hitler’s contemporaries and earliest biographers John Toland performed extensive interviews with people who had known Hitler very well at the time (not just relying on Strasser and Hanfstaengl’s anti-Hitler gossip as so many have since) and concluded that Geli likely committed suicide because she wanted a sexual relationship with Hitler not Hitler with Geli and committed suicide because Hitler rejected her advances (preferring to stay as her kind caring uncle). (9)
More important historical context usually excluded from the equation is that Hitler was often photographed with beautiful women who found him very attractive in the 1920s and 1930s and this appears to have severely upset Geli as well as caused other problems in Hitler’s love life. (10)
This is known to have been the case since Hitler’s Vienna years between 1907 and 1913 and merely represents a continuation of Hitler’s love of women and their love of him. (11)
More immediate context to support Toland’s argument was discovered only in 1959 when Mimi Reiter’s relationship with Hitler from 1926 to 1931 came to light. (12) The relationship between Mimi Reiter and Hitler reveals Hitler (at worst) to be completely normal sexually (13) as well as the fact that Reiter was completely infatuated with Hitler. (14)
That Reiter and Hitler’s relationship occurred at almost exactly the same time at the alleged one between Geli Raubal and Hitler lends significant force to Toland’s argument that Geli committed suicide in Hitler’s flat with his pistol on 18th September 1931 not because she wanted to marry someone else or because she couldn’t bear Hitler’s sexual advances, but rather because Hitler didn’t reciprocate Geli’s feelings and desire for something more than a close uncle-niece friendship (remember Adolf and Angela Hitler’s father and mother were also uncle and niece) as even Kershaw admits. (15)
Thus, we can see that Hitler’s relationship with Geli Raubal was not remotely paedophilic or in any way child molestation and actually significantly debunks both Wallace’s claims as well casts a huge amount of doubt on similarly ahistorical claims that Hitler was homosexual.
Moving on to Wallace’s next claim is that Hitler’s relationship with Eva Braun was paedophilic or something akin to child molestation. Even Wallace admits that Braun was 16 when Hitler met her but tries to get around the obvious problem that a 16-year-old is barely a child and such age gap relationships between older men and schoolgirls were not that unusual at the time (for example Elvis and Priscilla Presley in 1959 [Elvis was 24 and Priscila was 14] and Dr. Fred Schwartz of the ‘Christian Anti-Communist Crusade’ and his future wife [who was 14 when he started dating her in his 20s] also in the 1950s) and not thought remotely ‘creepy’.
Wallace even (correctly) notes that Eva was working at the time which further adds to the impression Wallace is grasping at straws for things to buttress his claim that Hitler was a ‘paedophile’ and/or a ‘child molester’, but what do we know about Hitler and Eva Braun’s relationship?
The reality is that we know relatively little for certain (16) but from what we do know it is clear that Hitler cared deeply for Eva and made sure she was well-looked after from early on. (17) We also know that they met when Eva was working in Hitler’s long-time friend and photographer Heinrich Hoffmann’s photography shop in Munich in the autumn of 1929 when – as before stated – Eva was 16. (18)
Hitler and Eva’s relationship is often styled as ‘cold’ (19) and sometimes as ‘asexual’ by proponents of the ‘Hitler was a homosexual’ theory in order to downplay the idea that Hitler and Eva had a normal heterosexual romantic and sexual relationship. (20)
Modern biographers such as Kershaw however have argued that in the absence of actual evidence to the contrary, we have to assume that Hitler and Eva’s relationship was both a love match (also indicated by Hitler marrying Eva in the Fuhrer Bunker before their deaths in 1945) and included a healthy amount of sexual intercourse. (21)
This also fits Hitler’s relationship with Mimi Reiter – which may have also been sexual – that was going on at the same time as Hitler’s relationship with Eva and also further adds to the picture of a Geli Raubal desperate for Hitler’s attention and for him to go beyond an uncle-niece and into a sexual relationship with her.
We also know of other women that Hitler seems to have been dating on and off at this time such as Jenny Haug (daughter of an early NSDAP member who was at one time Hitler’s chauffeur) and even Winifred Wagner. (22)
Still others Hitler may or may not have had romantic and/or sexual relationships with at this time include Helene Hanfstaengl (wife of Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl; who is one of the sources for much the spurious claims about Hitler’s sexuality which may have been triggered by such a cuckolding scenario) and Henrietta Hoffmann (daughter of Heinrich Hoffmann; who was later to marry Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach in 1932). (23)
Thus, we can see in the foregoing discussion that despite the usual claims that Hitler was not particularly interested in sex – only heightened by Hitler’s own documented strident aversion to public discussion of sex and desire for women to be traditional wives and mothers – (24) are simply wrong and that while Hitler wasn’t like Julius Streicher (then Gauleiter of Franconia) and frequently propositioning any woman he met for sex (albeit frequently successfully). (25)
It is very clear that Hitler had numerous female admirers and that these predate even World War One as well as that Hitler appears to have a rather tumultuous private life and seems to have been dating at least two young women (primarily Mimi Reiter and Eva Braun) at the same time between 1929 and 1931 (as well as probably between 1926 and 1929) as well as that these relationships may well have also been sexual.
Thus, we can see the more we fill in our biographical portrait of Hitler; the more we can see that Wallace’s claims (as well as those who make similar claims) are based on a tiny amount of (often incomplete and/or incorrect) information about Hitler that is then projected into a grotesque image that looks nothing like the man who appears when we but bother to read the standard biographies of him.
Moving on to Wallace’s last point which he doesn’t make directly but instead uses a photo of Hitler with a little girl – possibly Bernile Nienau – to ‘prove’ Hitler was a paedophile and/or a child molester.
It doesn’t any more than photos of politicians kissing babies at political rallies proves they are paedophiles and/or child molesters.
We’ve already noted that even the most violently anti-Nazi of Hitler’s biographers don’t agree with Wallace’s claims and think his relationships with children were perfectly normal (26) and that ‘Hitler was a pervert’ claims are just old bad wartime anti-Hitler propaganda that is still being used to vilify Hitler to this day even though these charges have long been considered utter nonsense by his biographers. (27)
This isn’t helped by the common use of Hitler in popular literature as a symbol of ‘evil’ (28) and repeated stupid attempts to psychoanalyse him without any apparent knowledge of the biographic literature. (29)
However, the story of Rosa Bernile Nienau (usually known as Bernile) is an interesting one to discuss in the context of Wallace’s claims given that Nienau is rarely mentioned (30) but is yet an interesting peripheral figure in Hitler’s life in the 1930s given that she was a quarter jewish (via her maternal grandmother Ida Morgenstern) (31) which was known to Hitler as early as 1933. (32)
Nienau shared her birthday with Hitler (20th April) and her half-jewish mother Karoline Nienau deliberately pushed the then seven-year-old Bernile into Hitler’s path while he was out walking near Obersalzberg to get his attention in the spring of 1933 – originally in order to lobby Hitler for her widow’s pension as it happens – (33) which sparked a deep admiration from Bernile for Hitler as well as for Hitler’s chief adjutant Wilhelm Brückner with Bernile writing at least 17 surviving letters to Hitler and Brückner between 1933 and 1939 showing her deep admiration for both men and for National Socialism as well as their fatherly love for her. (34)
Indeed, from what we know Bernile continued to actively admire Hitler and National Socialism up until her early death at age 17 from polio on 5th October 1943 (35) after Martin Bormann forbade Karoline and Bernile to come to Berghof sometime in 1938 because of their non-Aryan origins and also because photos of Bernile and Hitler were being sold by Heinrich Hoffmann in his book ‘Youth around Hitler’ and could prove to be a significant political embarrassment for the Fuhrer and the Third Reich. (36)
There has never been any claim of impropriety between Hitler or Bernile by either those who knew both of them nor Hitler’s biographers nor the limited literature around Bernile herself.
So, Wallace is simply promoting easily verifiable lies which are not only not based on evidence but run directly counter to the biographical literature on Hitler. Therefore, we cannot but conclude that Adolf Hitler was most certainly not a paedophile nor a child molester.
We can however conclude that Matt Wallace is a liar who doesn’t do any research whatsoever and probably has ulterior motives for his claims.
References
(1) See: https://twitter.com/MattWallace888/status/1768727286570741849 and https://twitter.com/MattWallace888/status/1768580253490831725
(2) Ron Rosenbaum, 1998, ‘Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of his Evil’, 1st Edition, MacMillan: London, pp. 128-134
(3) Walter Langer, 1972, ‘The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report’, 1st Edition, Basic Books: New York, p. 56
(4) Rosenbaum, Op. Cit., pp. 128-134; Ian Kershaw, 1998, ‘Hitler’, Vol. 1, 1st Edition, Penguin: New York, pp. 46; 352
(5) Alan Bullock, 1954, ‘Hitler: A Study in Tyranny’, 1st Edition, The Companion Book Club: London, p. 358
(6) Ibid.; John Toland, 1977, ‘Adolf Hitler’, 1st Edition, Book Club Associates: London, p. 229
(7) Bullock, Op. Cit., p. 358; Kershaw; Op. Cit., pp. 352-354; Toland, Op. Cit., p. 229; Lothar Machtan, 2001, ‘The Hidden Hitler’, 1st Edition, Perseus: Oxford, pp. 161-162
(8) Kershaw, Op. Cit., pp. 353-354
(9) Toland, Op. Cit., pp. 273-275; Rosenbaum (Op. Cit., p. 126) and Kershaw [grudgingly] (Op. Cit., p. 354) agree.
(10) Toland, Op. Cit., p. 274
(11) J. Sydney Jones, 1983, ‘Hitler in Vienna 1907-13: Clues to the Future’, 1st Edition, Blond and Briggs: London, p. 67
(12) Kershaw, Op. Cit., pp. 284-285
(13) Rosenbaum, Op. Cit., p. 110
(14) Kershaw, Op. Cit., p. 284
(15) Ibid., pp. 284-285
(16) Ibid, p. 352
(17) Bullock, Op. Cit., pp. 359-360
(18) Ibid., p. 359
(19) Ibid.
(20) Machtan, Op. Cit., p. 170
(21) Kershaw, Op. Cit., p. 352
(22) Ibid., pp. 351-352
(23) Ibid.
(24) Jones, Op. Cit., p. 75
(25) Randall Bytwerk, 2001, ‘Julius Streicher: Nazi Editor of the Notorious Anti-Semitic Newspaper Der Stürmer’, 2nd Edition, Cooper Square Press: New York, pp. 38-39; 42; 49
(26) Langer, Op. Cit., p. 56
(27) Kershaw, Op. Cit., pp. 46; 352; Rosenbaum, Op. Cit., pp. 83-84; 128-134; 181
(28) For example, Peter Kreeft, 2008, ‘Because God is Real: Sixteen Questions, One Answer’, 1st Edition, Ignatius: San Francisco, p, 53
(29) For example, Joe Navarro, 2014, ‘Dangerous Personalities’, 1st Edition, Rodale: New York, pp. 176; 182
(30) Kershaw (both Vols) contains no reference to her for example.
(31) https://www.jewishpress.com/news/global/europe/germany/photo-of-hitler-embracing-child-of-jewish-descent-auctioned-for-11520/2018/11/15/
(32) https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/11/13/the-fuhrers-child-how-hitler-came-adore-girl-with-jewish-roots/
(33) https://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/programmkalender/sendung655480.html
(33) https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/11/13/the-fuhrers-child-how-hitler-came-adore-girl-with-jewish-roots/
(34) Ibid.; also https://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/programmkalender/sendung655480.html
(35) Heinrich Hoffmann, 1974, ‘Hitler wie ich ihn sah: Aufzeichnungen seines Leibfotografen’, 1st Edition, Herbig: Munich, pp. 165-167