It’s September 18, 1931. Adolf Hitler has not quite turned into the
beast he will become known as, but the man sure does have a temper. He’s at his Munich apartment, screaming
and shouting, spit flying out of his mouth. The object of his fury is his half-niece,
Geli Raubal. Some people say this girl would be the only
love of his life, but on this day, the two are engaged in a tempestuous clash. Is it because he is the father she never really
had, and he just loves her dearly, so he doesn’t want her to leave? Or is she pregnant with his child, an embarrassment
to Adolf and the Nazi party? Is he just out of his mind on a cocktail of
hard drugs, or is she the one who’s deranged? This is still a mystery, but what isn’t
a mystery is that soon after this argument occurred, Geli was found with a bullet in
her dead body, with her uncle Adolf’s smoking gun at her side. That’s right. And many people thought Hitler had fired that
gun. The story became one of the biggest scandals
in Germany during that period. There’s just so much people don’t know
about Mr. Adolf Hitler. That’s why today we’re going to take a
look at his life and try and figure out why he was the way he was. This show is not so much about Hitler as we
know him, the man who waged war on the world, but the man himself. That’s why we’ll call him Adolf today. We’ll come back to the question of if he
murdered his niece a bit later, but first, let’s have a look at the little bundle of
joy that was Adolf the kid. He was born on April 20, 1889, which made
him a Taurus. Ok, so we know most of you don’t believe
in that kind of thing, but there’s no doubt that Adolf was the proverbial bull in a China
shop. He smashed up half of Europe! He was born in what is present-day Austria
to his father, Alois, and his mother, Klara. You’ll hear many unusual things today, including
that Klara was Alois’s third wife and also his second cousin. She became part of his household at the age
of 16 but first as a maid. At that time, Alois was still married to his
second wife. Klara left the household but came back when
Alois’s second wife died. She helped Alois bring up the children and
then got pregnant with him. As this was a sketchy business back then,
they had to go to the church and ask for permission to marry. What’s also strange is that she still called
him uncle when she was intimate with him. As you’ll see later in this show, in relation
to Adolf, we can invoke the expression: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree… The two were married in January 1885. Adolf was their fourth child. Klara absolutely loved him. He was a mommy’s boy, no doubt, which shaped
the man he would become. There has been some speculation that Adolf
was beaten by his father and shielded by his mother, but historians aren’t too sure just
how physical Alois got with Adolf. Still, it’s said that Alois was domineering,
aggressive, and sometimes cruel. The family at least wasn’t too badly off
since Alois earned decent money as a customs official. One of the reasons that Klara liked Adolf
so much was the fact that she had already lost two of her kids, Gustav and Ida, to diphtheria. Out of six children she had with Alois, only
two survived childhood: Adolf and Paula. Not surprisingly, Paula changed her name after
the Second World War. It’s safe to say that Adolf feared his father
and adored his mother. When his father died in 1903 when Adolf was
13, he didn’t seem overly troubled. Now he had his mother all to himself. Yes, this is all very Freudian. Just wait until you hear about his sex life
when he became an adult. Freud would have had a field day. Adolf was always a sickly child, so soon after
his father’s death, Klara pulled him out of school and told him he could concentrate
on his newfound love: art. He loved sketching, playing piano, and was
keen on other creative pursuits. This is why she was supportive when he told
her he wanted to go to Vienna to try and become a paid artist. Off he went, and oh boy, did he struggle to
make it. At times, he barely had enough money to feed
himself. Vienna was a nightmare. In 1906, Klara discovered a lump in her breast
and so went to the family doctor. It wasn’t good news. She had breast cancer. But it seems the doctor didn’t tell her
at first. It was Adolf that eventually told her what
was wrong. This devastated him. Klara underwent a mastectomy soon after, but
the cancer metastasized. The Hitlers were then informed that Klara
was not long for this world. Adolf returned from Vienna and became her
caretaker. He watched her suffer in pain as she was treated
with an experimental type of chemotherapy. This was almost impossible for him to watch. Her throat became seriously swollen, making
it difficult for her to eat and speak. This period in Adolf’s life would seep into
the very marrow of his bones. Klara died on December 21, 1907. Adolf was more than sad. He was stricken with grief to the point of
delirium. The family doctor said some years later, “In
all my career, I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler.” This doctor was actually Jewish, so when Adolf
was killing Jewish people in the millions, he allowed the doctor to emigrate from Austria
to the USA. This was his way of saying thanks for trying. We should say, it’s not certain it was Adolf
that helped the doctor to get away, but that’s the theory. During the war, when the doctor was in the
US, he was contacted by the Office of Strategic Services, an intelligence agency that was
a precursor to the CIA. They wanted to know what Adolf Hitler was
like as a child. What made the monster? The doctor said:
“While Hitler was not a mother's boy in the usual sense, I never witnessed a closer
attachment. Their love had been mutual. Klara Hitler adored her son. She allowed him his own way whenever possible. For example, she admired his watercolor paintings
and drawings and supported his artistic ambitions in opposition to his father at what cost to
herself, one may guess.” Even though Adolf had been loved by his mother,
you can’t argue with the fact that he had a pretty grim childhood. He grew up with a tyrannical father in a family
that had suffered the loss of four children. And just when Adolf was trying to enjoy adulthood,
he had no parents at all. As he grew older, he always carried a picture
of his mother around his pocket. In his house, he had pictures of her on the
wall. When he became the leader of the Nazi Party
and the Führer of Germany, he designated her birthday of August 12 as a “day of honor
for the German mother.” We can look to his sister, Paula, to know
more about Adolf. She wrote a diary when she was a child, and
it’s quite interesting. In it, she talked about how her brother bullied
her throughout her youth. In one entry, she wrote, “Once again, I
felt my brother's hand land on my face.” It seems she never joined the Nazi Party or
outwardly showed support for her older brother’s ambitions, although, in 2005, a historian
discovered that at one point during the war, Paula was in a relationship with a Third Reich
officer named Erwin Jekelius. This psychiatrist and neurologist was involved
with the terrible Nazi euthanasia programs. He ended up a prisoner of the Soviet Union
and later died from bladder cancer in a Soviet labor camp in 1952. Paula wanted to marry him, but Adolf wouldn’t
give his permission. You’d think she would have hated Adolf for
that, but it seems despite the bullying, she actually admired him. When the US Army interviewed her in 1945,
she outright didn’t believe that her brother would order the killing of millions of Jews. We can glean more about Adolf’s life from
the transcript of this interview. Paula said:
“My father, who was of great harshness in the education of his children and who only
spoiled me as the family's pet, was the absolute type of the old Austrian official, conservative
and loyal to his emperor to the skin. My mother, however, was a very soft and tender
person.” When her mother was sick with cancer, she
said Adolf did nothing but care for her and her mother. She said, “Assisting me, my brother Adolf
spoiled my mother during this time of her life with overflowing tenderness. He was indefatigable in his care for her,
want[ing] to comply with any desire she could possibl[ly] have and did all to demonstrate
his great love for her.” She said Adolf showed little interest in most
of his subjects in school and only ever seemed interested in artistic endeavors. She told the interviewer, “At school, he
was nothing less than a show boy. [He often] came home with bad school reports
and admonitions.” One thing she was adamant about was that her
dear brother could not have done all the wicked things he’d been accused of. “I do not believe that my brother ordered
the crime committed to innumerable human beings in the concentration camps or that he even
knew of these crimes,” she said. Although, she did add, “It may be possible,
however, that the hard years during his youth in Vienna caused his anti-Jewish attitude. He was starving severely in Vienna, and he
believed that his failure in painting was only due to the fact that trade in works of
art was in Jewish hands.” This is important. Adolf, while not a terrible artist, was a
failure. His dreams dissolved before his eyes. His stomach ached while others prospered,
and he was sure he was just as good as them. As an artist, he was very average, with one
critic rightly saying many years later, “If you walk down the Seine and see 100 artists,
80 will be better than this.” Adolf may have only been harsh with his sister
because, in some ways, he thought it was his responsibility to act that way. He always made sure she had money, at least. Maybe Adolf wasn’t always a monster, but
monstrous ideas formed somewhere in his warped head. What we consider evil doesn’t always look
monstrous. Evil often wears a suit and a tie and has
impeccable manners. This is why the political theorist Hannah
Arendt talked about the “banality of evil.” You can be a loving husband and father and
still go to work where you usher hordes of innocent people into a gas chamber. Lest we forget, normal people can do terrible
things. We must never forget that about Adolf Hitler. He wasn’t always a fiend. We can see this in his love for animals, especially
where his beloved dog was concerned. If you are wondering how Adolf could be so
fond of animals and yet send humans towards torture and death, you can turn to a book
that states: “For leading Nazis, animal protection and
crimes against humanity were not a contradiction in terms. On the contrary, they even felt they were
part of a moral elite.” It’s a difficult proposition to ask people
to accept that a man whose ideology classed certain people as sub-human could have a nice
side. He caused pain and anguish on a level that
put Nero and Ghengis Khan to shame, but he wasn’t always monstrous. His ideology was. An American journalist was once asked how
people can order bombs to be dropped on totally innocent civilians in modern conflicts and
then go to church and have family BBQs with the kids around. The simple fact is that they really think
they are morally on the right side of history. Isn’t that always the case when humans are
destroyed en-masse. Destroyers of worlds take the moral high ground. They say they are doing the killing for the
greater good when so often it simply boils down to power and economic interests. But with Adolf, as you’ll see, there were
also mental issues, severe mental issues, at a time when many Germans were looking for
a leader to bail them out from years of poverty and hardships. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We still have the younger Adolf to think about,
the man that came before those death camps and Blitzkriegs. Adolf Hitler fought in the First World War,
and for his bravery, he received the Iron Cross. He seemed to have some romantic notion about
war, despite just how bloody awful that war was. He once said war was “the greatest of all
experiences.” But man, was he bitter when Germany lost. Adolf, like many others in Germany, blamed
the capitulation on Jews and Marxists. He was sure that what he considered real Germans
wouldn’t have given up so easily. Although they hardly gave up easily. His thinking became quite clear when in 1919,
he wrote what is now referred to as the Gramlich letter. This is an important piece of history for
anyone who studies the Holocaust since it’s the first time we see Adolf Hitler’s antisemitism
on record. He wrote in the letter that the government's
aim “must unshakably be the removal of the Jews altogether.” We won’t talk too much about his rise to
power since this show is more about Adolf Hitler, the man, but we will say that he got
involved with politics and never turned back. He later wrote about that, saying, “I finally
came to the conviction that I had to take this step...It was the most decisive resolve
of my life. From here there was and could be no turning
back.” Soon he was filling beer houses and heads
with the hatred he preached, and people roared with delight when he spoke. He chose populist themes. He chose to use scapegoats. Everyone’s misery was the fault of these
people or those people. One person who watched those early speeches
later said: “We erupted into a frenzy of nationalistic
pride that bordered on hysteria. For minutes on end, we shouted at the top
of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil! From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler
body and soul.” Seig Heil means hail to victory if you didn’t
know. Adolf’s extreme views of a superior Aryan
race became the fundamental foundation of the National Socialist German Workers' Party,
aka, The Nazi Party. He was the one who actually designed the flag
of the party, the swastika, an ancient Sanskrit symbol that means something like “well-being”
and “prosperity.” Hitler rotated the symbol and made some changes
to creating a hooked cross, or “hakenkreuz”, now a symbol that reminds us of hate and genocide. He once said why he chose the ancient Sanskrit
symbol, writing: “In red, we see the social idea of the movement,
in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory
of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work,
which as such always has been and always will be anti-Semitic.” Again, we have to skip a bit of history. The Nazis attempted a coup and failed, which
is why Adolf ended up in prison. This is where he dictated his book, “Mein
Kampf” or “My Struggle” in English. This contained much of his hateful ideology. He compares certain kinds of people to germs
and parasites. That’s totalitarianism 101, always dehumanize
your enemy. That way, they’ll be easier to kill. He got out of prison, and later, he took full
advantage of the Great Depression. Many Germans were near-starving. People were so desperate for food they were
eating horses that had died in the streets. Well, they did that at least on one occasion. Folks were fed up, and when the public is
down, you can be sure the populists get going. Extremism is always at its most influential
when the populace is desperate. Adolf’s rise to power was almost certain,
in spite of how many enemies he had in Germany. He would soon put an end to many of them! As the Social Democrats and the Communists
were arguing with each other, Adolf Hitler was attracting larger and larger crowds when
he spoke at events. This ascension was watched by Adolf’s nephew. This guy can give us some more insights into
Adolf, the family man. Not many people know that Adolf had a nephew
born in the UK. He was the son of Adolf’s half-brother,
Alois Hitler Jr., and was named William Hitler. Ironically, William grew up in Liverpool on
102 Upper Stanhope Street, a house that was destroyed in the Liverpool Blitz during the
war. As William grew into adulthood, he saw his
uncle Adolf rise to power in Germany. He went to Germany to visit a few times and
ended up living there. On the back of Adolf becoming chancellor when
William was just 22, he landed a few jobs, one at an automotive factory. We don’t tend to think about Adolf Hitler
in terms of a man who had squabbles with his family, but as we said, monsters are always
all too human, as Hitler’s favorite philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche might have said. According to William, his uncle was often
a right royal pain in the backside, once saying, “I could not even go on an outing without
risking a summons to Hitler.” Adolf, as you have probably already figured
out, was very controlling. This might be the understatement of the century,
given he wanted to control half the world, but he was like that with his own family. He was petty, too, according to William, who
it must be said never really bought into all that Nazi ideology his uncle was screaming
about to desperate German citizens. Adolf didn’t like that his nephew was going
back and forth between England and Germany and no doubt spilling all the family secrets. Like any dictator to be, Adolf was trying
to build a kind of mythology around himself. He was trying to tell people he was leading
the Aryan race to better pastures, and he didn’t want anyone to know his weaknesses. So, Adolf got very upset when William started
talking about his uncle’s dandruff problem and his proclivity to lose his temper over
trifling matters. Then in 1939, he wrote an article for Look
magazine entitled, “Why I Hate My Uncle.” Talk about demythologizing the Fuhrer. The article dispelled any notion of the Fuhrer’s
almost god-like status. William wrote, “We had cakes and whipped
cream, Hitler’s favorite dessert. I was struck by his intensity, his feminine
gestures. There was dandruff on his coat.” Perhaps the whole purpose of this article
was just making a quick buck, but for a while, he’d been blackmailing his uncle, telling
him, “Get me a better job, or I’ll go to the press and let all the cats out of the
bags.” That must have taken some balls, considering
that he was blackmailing a man who ordered the deaths of millions of people. William didn’t risk going back to Germay
after that, and he’d even go on to fight against the Nazis for the Americans. No wonder Adolf referred to him as his “loathsome
nephew.” William talked about his final meeting with
Adolf, which again gives us some insight into Adolf, the family man. He wrote, “I shall never forget the last
time he sent for me. He was in a brutal temper when I arrived. Walking back and forth, brandishing his horsehide
whip… He shouted insults at my head as if he were
delivering a political oration. His vengeful brutality on that day made me
fear for my physical safety.” The reason why Adolf was so furious is that
William had opened his mouth again. He published some stories when he was in England
and again talked about his uncle. He said in the Look magazine article:
“I drove there with friends and was shown into the garden. Hitler was entertaining some very beautiful
women at tea. When he saw us he strode up, slashing a whip
as he walked and taking the tops off the flowers. He took that occasion to warn me to never
again mention that I was his nephew.” William said Adolf had a tendency to become
obsessed with women, after which he would become controlling. He’d intimidate people if he didn’t get
his own way, but he was also prone to bouts of deep depression. William said something important relating
to a mystery that still confounds people today. The answer to this mystery might explain a
lot about Adolf Hitler. William said he went back to Berlin in 1931,
and something big had happened involving his uncle. William wrote:
“The family was in trouble.” He said Geli Raubal, Hitler's half-niece,
was dead. William explained, “Everyone knew that Hitler
and she had long been intimate and that she had been expecting a child – a fact that
enraged Hitler. His revolver was found by her body.” As the story goes, and as Hitler told the
police, he had been with his niece at his apartment and then gone to a meeting. When he came back, she was dead with a bullet
inside her from his gun. As you know, Adolf wasn’t Geli’s real
father, but after her biological father died, her mother went to work as a housekeeper for
Adolf. Geli was 17 years old at the time. 19 years younger than Adolf. The question is, was Adolf overstepping his
boundaries? Was he, in fact, having a relationship with
her? It’s well documented that he was very controlling
of her, to the extent that some people said he kept her indoors and didn’t allow her
to date anyone. But that didn’t stop her as she ended up
dating Adolf’s trusted chauffeur, Emil Maurice. When Adolf found out, he put an end to the
relationship. He fired Maurice but allowed him to stay in
the SS. After this, he barely let Geli out of his
sight. Some people say, despite this, she was “the
only truly deep love affair of his life.” This sounds more believable when you hear
what Adolf’s right-hand man Hermann Göring said at the Nuremberg trials. “Geli’s death had such a devastating effect
on Hitler that it . . . changed his relationship to all other people.” Not many people knew Adolf Hitler like Goring
did. We can trust this remark for its truthfulness. Adolf was certainly obsessed with Geli, just
as he’d been obsessed with his mother. But is this why he killed her, if he killed
her? Many people thought Hitler was the killer,
after all, she was found with his 6.35-mm Walther pistol at her side. They said he’d done it and then laid the
pistol next to her. In 1931, Adolf might have been powerful, but
he still had a lot of enemies in Germany who were willing to accuse him of murder. Geli was given what one person called a “perfunctory
post-mortem,” and she was then quickly buried. Nazi Party propagandists got busy creating
tales about her depression, but some who knew her didn’t believe these stories. This became a huge scandal. Adolf, not surprisingly, was upset about what
some of the newspapers were saying about him. He called the stories a “terrible smear
campaign.” He then wrote a story in the Münchner Post
– an attempt to put the flames of the scandal out. The newspapers had said they’d had a big
fight because Geli wanted to go to Vienna to get engaged to a man, and Adolf had forbidden
her to go. In response to that, Adolf wrote:
“It is not true she was going to get engaged in Vienna or that I was against an engagement. It is true that my niece was tormented with
the worry that she was not yet fit for her public appearance. She wanted to go to Vienna to have her voice
checked once again by a voice teacher.” He also wrote”
“It is not true that I left my apartment on September 18 after a fierce row. There was no row, no excitement, when I left
my apartment on that day.” The Nazis then threatened anyone who was thinking
about writing more on this story with lawsuits. But one journalist, Fritz Gerlich, didn’t
back down. He was sure that Adolf had killed Geli. In March 1933, he was about to publish the
evidence he’d collected. Then one night that Spring, Nazi stormtroopers
burst into his office, beat him up, and took all the evidence. He was taken to prison and years later, executed
at Dachau concentration camp. He and others believed that Geli’s nose
had been broken before she died. It’s also said that she was pregnant, either
with Adolf’s child or someone else’s. Either way, this could have led to her death. There has been much speculation about Adolf’s
sex life. Some people have said that he didn’t really
have one. That he was asexual. Then there are the documents that have been
published in various newspaper articles and in one book called “The Hidden Hitler”,
that suggest that Adolf was a closeted homosexual, which might explain Nazi homophobia. There is some pretty strong evidence that
states he had relationships with men when he was fighting in WW1. There is also some convincing evidence that
he killed those who uncovered his secret due to fears of blackmailing. A lawyer who actually got to see Adolf’s
military files, Erich Ebermeier, told The Guardian, “Despite his bravery towards the
enemy, because of his homosexual activity, he lost out on a promotion to non-commissioned
officer.” Another writer said, “He allowed the persecution
of gays in order to disguise his own true colors.” But this doesn’t really gel with him having
a relationship with his half-niece. Maybe he didn’t, but he was definitely possessive
with her. One man, Otto Strasser, said he was probably
the only guy that Adolf allowed to take Geli to a dance. He said:
“I could feel how much she suffered because of Hitler’s jealousy. She was a fun-loving young thing who enjoyed
the Mardi Gras excitement in Munich but was never able to persuade Hitler to accompany
her to any of the many wild balls. Finally, during the 1931 Mardi Gras, Hitler
allowed me to take Geli to a ball.” He said after the ball, they both sat down
in a quiet place in an English garden where there was a Chinese Tower. She wept uncontrollably, telling him that
her uncle Adolf was madly in love with her, but his jealously drove her around the bend. She wanted to escape. She told Strasser that Adolf asked her to
do things that repulsed her, and when Strasser inquired what those things were, all she said
was they were the kinds of things you can find in a book called “Psychopathia Sexualis.” Some of the other things she said are too
X-rated for YouTube. After she died, he kept a portrait of Geli
next to a portrait of his mother in every one of his rooms, according to the researcher
Robert Waite. The thing is, there have been many people
like Strasser who’ve told stories about Adolf Hitler’s strange life, and many of
the stories just don’t match up. But if there is a recurring theme, it is that
he was possessive, sometimes paranoid, short-tempered, obsessed with women (starting with his mom),
and was at least a tad strange regarding his close relations. Can it be a coincidence that the few women
that knew Adolf Hitler in perhaps an intimate way suffered from bouts of depression and
obviously didn’t want to live anymore? One such woman was actress Renaté Mueller,
who may have been on intimate terms with Adolf. We say may, because again, this is speculation. In 1937, her body was found broken on the
street many stories below the room where she’d been staying. Her death certificate said the reason for
her death was epilepsy, but several people later said they saw Gestapo officers enter
her apartment building that night. Had she been in a relationship with Adolf? Some people think she had. Her film director. A. Zeissler, later confirmed this rumour in
communications with the American Intelligence, and that she was becoming severely distressed
over what kinds of things he was asking her to do. Zeissler said that Adolf once “fell on the
floor and begged her to kick him. . .condemned himself as unworthy . . . and just groveled
in an agonizing manner. The scene became intolerable to her, and she
finally acceded to his wishes. As she continued to kick him, he became more
and more excited.” But can we trust these stories? After all, propaganda works both ways, and
there are enough people in the world that wanted and still want to make Adolf Hitler
look like a sex-crazed beast. On the other hand there is a lot more evidence
regarding Adolf’s addiction to various drugs, including powerful opiates and methamphetamines. He didn’t drink booze; he didn’t eat badly,
but he did like his drugs. This is not speculation. We can see what drugs he took from the notes
and journals of his doctor, Theodor Morell. If Adolf did have some strange sexual desires
at times, these may have been episodes while he was out of his mind of the Nazi version
of crystal meth. Maybe he came down from the meth high with
the Nazi version of the opioid Oxycodone, called Eukodal. Adolf was very likely addicted to Eukodal. He at least took it a lot. Addicts of strong opiates and methamphetamines
have their thinking and rationing skills profoundly changed due to the composition of those drugs. Add to this that he was said to have taken
a lot of barbiturates, meds that are like really ruthless Xanax pills, and well, all
we will say is getting off those things would have driven Adolf half mad. It’s said he also dabbled with cocaine,
so we also think he took a bunch of chill pills for the comedown. In this regard, it’s not really surprising
that Adolf Hitler was a bit off his rocker. This is all detailed in the book “Blitzed:
Drugs In The Third Reich.” With all this in mind, there is no doubt that
Adolf Hitler was incredibly unhinged. You knew that from the things he did in his
political life, but we hope today you’ve learned some things you didn’t know about
his personal life. For sure, some of the rumors may not be true,
but there’s just too much evidence against him to suggest he lived anything close to
a normal life when he was behind four walls. In fact, psychiatrists have tried to diagnose
him over the years, and the list of conditions is as long as one of the dead Fuhrer’s arms. The conditions include hysteria, histrionic
personality disorder, schizophrenia, paranoia, sadistic personality disorder, narcissistic
personality disorder, psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder, bipolar disorder, Asperger's
syndrome, and schizotypal personality disorder. We will end this show here and let you diagnose
Mr. Adolf Hitler. Now you need to hear the truly amazing full
story about his nephew, “Why Hitler's Nephew Was His Worst Enemy.” Or, lest you forget, “Sewing Twins - Nazi
Camp Experiments.”
