In 1943, psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer wrote a psychological report in layman's terms titled "The Mind of Adolf Hitler." Commissioned by "Wild Bill" Donovan, the director of the newly formed OSS, the report was intended to shed light on the hard-to-predict German leader's character for the Allied intelligence community.

Utilizing all the information he could scrounge, including speeches, documents, Mein Kampf, and interviews with many who'd known Hitler, Langer drew a fairly comprehensive picture of Hitler the psychotic. The report contains probably more biographical detail than had yet been assembled (Hitler took great pains to hide his family history), and its conclusions regarding the Fuehrer's likely actions in response to the war going against him are eerily accurate.

Among other things, the report concludes that Germany was for Hitler a mother figure whose disgrace in WWI he must avenge in a particularly convoluted and political Oedipal complex. Also, it was Langer's conclusion that Hitler suffered from a rare but quite real form of masochism in which he derived guilt-ridden sexual pleasure from having women defecate and urinate on him, though he was otherwise impotent.

The report contains no information regarding that other great facet of Hitler legend, that he only had one testicle. That remains unfounded, as far as I know.

A good read for anyone interested in psychology, WWII, and/or fanatical movements with insane leaders.

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