The documentary Hitler’s DNA: A Dictator’s Blueprint (Hitler’s DNA: Archetype of a Dictator) broadcast on the British channel Channel 4 was destined to arouse controversy and sensational headlines, no matter how much effort its authors made to create a rigorous or sober work. While some of the conclusions presented definitively put an end to harmful legends and superstitions, such as that of the dictator’s alleged Jewish descent (absolutely false), others allow for a dose of sensationalism, such as the idea that Adolf Hitler actually had a micropenis or that he was missing a testicle. And others open up important ethical debates, such as the bold deduction made by researchers according to which the character who most symbolized evil in the history of humanity apparently had a predisposition to suffer from neuronal syndromes such as autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The story behind the making of the show, which consists of two episodes, is as fascinating as its conclusions. Reliable scientists participated, such as the British historian Alex Kay, currently at the University of Potsdam, specializing in Nazi Germany, or the geneticist Turi King, responsible among other important discoveries for the identification of the remains of the legendary Richard III in an open-air car park in Leicester in 2012. “I had an agonizing debate (about whether or not to participate in the documentary),” admits King in the first minutes of the broadcast. But he was aware that the investigation would sooner or later be continued and he decided to join it to provide the necessary prudence and seriousness.
Hitler’s DNA was obtained from traces of blood found on the sofa of the bunker where the Nazi dictator committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, shortly after the entry of the Allied troops into Berlin. Colonel Roswell P. Rosengren, of the US Army, was able to access the shelter and was able to cut out a piece of the tapestry, which has been on display for years at the Gettysburg History Museum.
None of Hitler’s living relatives offered the possibility of comparing their genetic material with that of the blood remains to confirm their authenticity. But the researchers had a male sample collected by a Belgian journalist ten years ago, while investigating rumors that the future dictator had fathered an illegitimate child during the First World War.
The comparison gave a perfect identification of the Y chromosome. It was Hitler’s DNA. From there, the deductions and discoveries about the character’s ancestry, pathologies, biology and mental health open up a range of few certainties and many conjectures of more or less scientific solidity.
Kallmann syndrome
The part that for many will be the most positive conclusion of the documentary is the categorical rejection of the idea that Hitler had Jewish origins, a hoax propagated for decades by Holocaust deniers and history revisionists, which we still hear about recently. In 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov used the argument that Hitler “had Jewish blood” to justify his accusations of Nazism against the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who is of Jewish origin.
But the program’s most disturbing discovery is the absence of a letter in a gene called PROK2. From this absence it can be deduced that Hitler suffered to some extent from a genetic disease known as Kallmann syndrome, which affects, among other things, puberty and the development of the sexual organs. It may happen that one of the testicles cannot descend into the scrotum or that the size of the penis is very small.
The connection is immediate. During World War II, the song was popular among British soldiers. Hitler only has one ball (Hitler has only one egg). “Hitler only had one egg, the other is in the Albert Hall (London’s concert hall), his mother, that dirty creature, cut it off for him when he was little,” the choir said.
The idea of the small size of the dictator’s genitals seemed to coincide with medical records from Landsberg prison, where Hitler was locked up after the failed Munich coup of 1923, discovered ten years ago by German researchers. The doctor who examined him then indicated in the report that the prisoner had cryptorchidism in his right testicle, which had not completely descended. In no case was there mention of micropenis, nor is it possible to deduce this condition from the DNA results. What Kallmann syndrome produces is a lack of libido and low testosterone production.
“It helps us understand a lot about his private life. Or rather, his lack of private life,” explains historian Alex Kay in the documentary. This condition, he believed, would predispose Hitler to focus on politics rather than personal matters.
Many scientists, however, believe that an exercise like the one carried out in the documentary is reductionism and an oversimplification. Professor of forensic genetics at King’s College London, Denise Syndercombe Court, for example, told the BBC that the program’s authors “went too far in their conclusions” and that “as far as (Hitler’s) character or personality was concerned, the exercise proved completely futile.”
Ethical issues
Because beyond the hoax about the dictator’s Jewish origins or the discussion about his genitals, the authors of the program have proposed approaches that pose serious ethical problems. Based on a polygenic test, which evaluates a person’s chance of developing complex diseases by comparing it with the DNA of a large sample of the population, the documentary comes to the conclusion that Hitler showed a predisposition to suffer from autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or ADHD.
While the authors are careful to clarify that this predisposition does not mean the dictator has developed any of these conditions, linking him to them has scandalized organizations such as the UK’s National Autism Society, which described the program as a “cheap publicity stunt”.
Both Channel 4 and production company Blink Films they tried to tone down the controversy, highlighting the opinion of experts such as Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, of the Autism Research Center at the University of Cambridge, who participates in the documentary, and states that “a person’s behavior is the product of many factors, not only genetics, but also the environment, their childhood, their life experiences, the way they were raised, their access to education and the cultural and economic factors that surrounded them”.
