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The Hidden Hitler by Lothar Machtan. Trans. by John Brownjohn. New York: Basic Books (Perseus Books Group), 2001. 321 pages hardback. $26.00. ISBN 0-465-04308-9.
Fortunately, serious historians will see through this book, but their thoughtful objections will undoubtedly be drowned out in the media debate. In a nutshell, was Hitler history's ultimate closet queen? Machtan states affirmatively that Hitler was indeed gay and that his fear of public disclosure in a homophobic society formed the basis for many political decisions both before and after he assumed control of Germany in 1933. To back his claims, he's unearthed a mountain of documentation, a good deal of it actually quite interesting, not to say enticing. Hitler had a psychotic fear of losing face. If he were gay, he certainly would have had cause for concern. But has Machtan found the key to Hitler's erratic personality? Sorry: that key won't open that door. We would be the first to proclaim Hitler gay if the research were irrefutable. Let the cards fall where they may. But Machtan is dealing from a 51-card deck. Main problem, of course, is the near impossibility of proving any historical figure's homosexuality (or heterosexuality, for that matter). Until the 1950s, after Kinsey and others came out with their studies, few felt comfortable discussing sexual acts. Try to prove that anyone had sex before 1945 and you'll repeatedly run into blind alleys: people just didn't write about sex a whole lot. About the only proof we have is crime reports, scandals, and children. Hitler's associates and enemies did leave suggestive letters, documents laced with innuendo, wink-wink photographs, and a plethora of second- and third-hand information that would make a religious right "researcher" like Paul Cameron drool with envy. Unfortunately, nearly everything Machtan uses is suppositive. At times he's blinded by spurious facts. At others he indulges in half-baked interpretations of statements by Hitler's associates. He ought to know not to place much reliability on people with grudges. When worse comes to worse, he trots out individuals who simply thought Hitler was gay. In today's terms, everyone "knows" Tom Cruise is gay, but that doesn't make him so. How embarrassing! It's no fun watching a professional try to fit facts into an obviously preconceived theory. Machtan is guilty of reading too much into his material. He didn't weigh his evidence enough. At numerous turns he fails to address alternative interpretations: de rigeur for any historian. You have to read this one carefully to understand just how thin Machtan's argument is. He uses every rhetorical trick in the book to build his house of cards. For instance, Machtan tells us that Munich--Hitler's favored stamping ground--was "a regular Eldorado for homosexuals" in the 20s. So? Was everybody there gay? When Hitler talks about yearning to have "absolute exclusivity" with a childhood friend, August Kubizek, Machtan writes that such language "would do justice to a love affair." Give me a break. Kubizek's own account of his friendship with Hitler "coincides," Machtan writes, "in many respects with contemporary descriptions of homosexual friendship." Oh, puke! Another friend, Reinhold Hanisch, was for a time a manservant, "a positively classical form of homosexual occupation." So how does it show Hanisch was gay, and what does that have to do with Hitler? When his close friend Dietrich Eckart gets married, Hitler acts as if jealous, but did he feel spurned or was he simply giving into his notoriously pathological misogyny? Sometimes Hitler slept in the same bed with another man, but that signifies nothing. Such sleeping arrangements were pretty common in the days before furniture and roomy apartments became more affordable. At other times he traipsed into the woods alone with a friend. What transpired during such lurid walks, Machtan for the most part can't tell us. When he can, the account of the sojourn is innocuous: for the most part Hitler simply ranted.
But what about Hitler's legendary laziness or his disagreeable demeanor: traits not calculated to put him on a fast track. Or his lack of social skills or his knack for attaching himself to only one friend at any given time? Machtan fails to explore these and other possible explanations. It's not likely we'll get much closer to this issue at this late date: too many documents have been lost or destroyed. For now we'll give Machtan a close hit, but nothing more. More telling if it weren't third-hand information are reports the Munich police reputedly collected about Hitler while he was living there after World War I. In 1949, Eugen Dollman wrote that one evening in 1923, after Hitler's failed "Beer Hall Putsch," Gen. Otto von Lossow, a Reischwehr commander in Bavaria, assembled a few guests privately after dinner and read juicy tidbits from a dossier on Hitler. Dollman says that, among other things, it contained various reports by starving teenaged boys who, enticed by money, accompanied Hitler back to his apartment and stayed the night. His recollections were quite precise. When Hitler came to power, the dossier was confiscated and presumably destroyed, but von Lossow intimated he'd sent copies overseas somewhere. Dollman seems to have been a reputable sort not given to fantasy or revenge. His statements could yet prove Machtan's arguments. Too bad they're third-hand information based on documents which he apparently didn't see (they were read to him) and are no longer available for crosschecking. If the dossier is ever found, it could help solidify Machtan's theory. For now, we have to wonder how Dollman remembered the exact names and ages of the boys after 26 years. In general, The Hidden Hitler is full of half-assertions. "Perhaps" Hitler said this, or Hitler "would have undoubtedly" done that, or "we might presume" that he wouldn't have allowed this. Casual readers may not pick up on such red flag language. The book is replete with circumstantial evidence that fails to prove anything. Indeed, Machtan admits this twice but then goes on to affirm several times that Hitler really was gay. You can't pound that nail for long if you don't have a hammer. Machtan's theory is intriguing, to be sure, and he provides us with a great many tantalizing clues. He may yet be on to something. But like the alleged homosexuality of many other historic figures from Shakespeare to Beethoven to Lincoln to Hillary Clinton, we may never really know. The proof is in the pudding. Unfortunately, Machtan's book, though nourishing, is in the end little more than mush. The Hidden Hitler by Lothar Machtan. Trans. by John Brownjohn. New York: Basic Books (Perseus Books Group), 2001. 321 pages hardback. $26.00. ISBN 0-465-04308-9. Available in the region at Carmichael's, Crazy Ladies Bookstore, Out Loud Books, Out Word Bound, Pink Pyramid, Planet Proud, and other fine stores. Also in the Williams-Nichols Collection at the University of Louisville. Be sure to tell them you saw it in The Letter! |
Christian fundamentalists are going to have a field day with The Hidden Hitler, Lothar
Machtan's investigation into the question of whether Adolf Hitler was gay. Unable as they are to distinguish good research from bad, we may not hear the end of this for some time.