Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Hitler's Sex Life

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

We all know how the song goes, the one about Hitler having one testicle.And whilst it's disarming to poke fun at someone so evil, there's an interesting and serious conversation to be had about how Hi...tler's relationships and sexuality could have shaped him.Today Kate is joined by Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, to find out more about Adolf Hitler's personal life, his views on sex, and whether there's any truth to the rumours.Did Hitler have a testicle bitten off by a goat? Was his interest in coprophilia true, or anti-Nazi propaganda? And who was the love of his life?Let's go Betwixt the Sheets to find out.This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.
Starting point is 00:00:25 Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Sleeper Twliper Twixters, it's me. It's Kate Lister. I am here. You are here. And really, that's the important bit of this whole thing. If you're not here, it's just me talking smut to absolutely nobody at all. But since you are here, and you are going to listen to this, I have to give you a warning. I have to give you the fair do's warning, because fair dues, you can't get mad at us if you get upset at what follows because fair dues we did warn you.
Starting point is 00:01:02 Here it is. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. Got that? I've certainly got that. Right, fair do's. Let's do this. It's the early 1940s, and while the horrors of World War II are raging on, here in the Bavarian Alps, bird song can be heard to the clean mountain air. At the Berghoff retreat, the mountain escape Hitler bought with money from his book Mine Camp, guests are entertained. His much, much younger partner, Ava Braun, practices yoga and parties with her friends, and political meetings are held late into the night, fueled by a cocktail of drugs. Hitler will leave the retreat in 1944, never to return,
Starting point is 00:02:01 before it's eventually demolished in 1952. But what really went on behind those doors, It's an uncomfortable thought, to put it mildly, but how might Hitler's private and sexual self have shaped his political and public self? And most importantly, did he really only have one ball? And if he did, where did those rumours come from? Is there any truth to them at all?
Starting point is 00:02:26 For someone whose influence was so substantial, I've got to tell you betwixtors, I'm intrigued to know more. Why do you look for any man? Oh, many, of course. supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry.
Starting point is 00:03:05 Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society. With me, Kate Lister. Arnold Hitler will always be a point of acute fascination, especially for us historians. And for someone as dark and complicated as, he was, his notions of sexuality form part of his makeup too. Hitler had a lot to say about other people's sexual expression. He was someone who prided himself on purity and sexual morality and abstinence, especially publicly. But what was he like privately? How did his drug use influence his sex life? And of course, are the rumours about his coprophilia tendencies to be believed?
Starting point is 00:03:48 We are joined by Norman Ola, author of Blitzed, Drugs Ine, Nazi Germany and the infiltrators, the lovers who led Germany's resistance, to find out more about the very personal side of this truly awful man. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Norman Ola. How are you doing? I'm sitting on my chair. I'm not in bed yet, but I'm a little bit tired because I had a wild Berlin night again. Did you? Yes, I certainly did. But I'm feeling very good actually. I might need to know what you were doing on your wild night out in Berlin before we go any further. I was meeting my best friend Gregor at his club, which is called the Club of Visionaries.
Starting point is 00:04:38 And yesterday was a holiday in Germany, so it was kind of a very, very, very long weekend. And now you're here talking to me. I am so grateful you could have just just gone to bed straight away. I'm very happy to talk to you. It's a curious subject, right? It's so curious. Hitler's sex life. And I suppose. is my first question to you as someone that studied Hitler is how do we know about his sex life? Because sex is one of those things that it can be used to enhance somebody's reputation. You know, they were a really prolific lover and they had lots of partners. But it can also be used to stigmatize someone's reputation.
Starting point is 00:05:19 And you get that a lot when you're looking at historical villains. It's like we want them to have had a weird sex life. and Hitler sort of falls into that. But how much do we actually know about Hitler's sex life? Well, I did study Hitler rather intensely, mostly through his doctor who recorded basically every fart that the dictator did. So I should know quite a lot about it. And also in Germany, we do not see Hitler as a normal person.
Starting point is 00:05:50 So obviously his sex life cannot be normal. It has to be weird or it has to be absent. We could start maybe with how the Nazis themselves tried to project Hitler's sex life because they actually made a big deal out of it. I mean, they made a big deal of Hitler, obviously, because he was the so-called Fuhrer, the leader. So a leader cult was constructed through the mass media. And the leader cult basically said that Hitler has no private life.
Starting point is 00:06:17 Why? His only life is Germany. So when he wakes up, he thinks of Germany. When he goes to bed, he thinks of Germany. So there's no room, actually, for a... for a woman or for a man. So Hitler also was not married in contrast to Nazi ideology where, you know, man and woman should be married and have children. Hitler was the exception. Hitler had officially had no partner, but we all know that he actually did have a girlfriend.
Starting point is 00:06:44 The interesting fact about his girlfriend, I mean, there's a few interesting facts, but she was definitely much younger than him and much more attractive. Eva Braun was, I think, She was 19 years younger than him. And she was quite an attractive young woman. And, I mean, she would arouse sexual interest in a man, basically. And there's rumors that she had affairs with other people at the Berkov. She was mostly staying at the Berkov, which was Hitler's swanky mountain retreat in Bavaria, where he always went when, you know, the war got too stressful.
Starting point is 00:07:21 He went to the Berkhov and relaxed to the mountains. And Eva was always there. But often he was not there, and then there were rumors that she had affairs with SS officers, which were more handsome than Hitler, because Hitler was not really a handsome man. He was kind of weird looking with his mustache. I mean, he was physically fit. We have to give him that until he took too many drugs, which was quite late in the war. But in the beginning, he was physically at least fit.
Starting point is 00:07:46 He was exercising. He was basically going to the gym because even though there was no gym in our understanding of gym, but he did work out with like an expander. He tried to strengthen his arm muscle so he could have his right arm in the air for the Hitler greeting when, you know, the troops marched past. So he had his arm up for like an hour, which is kind of hard to do, but he managed. So he had, you know, physical, he was physically fit and certainly I think he should have been able to perform sexual acts. But there's all these rumors. I worked on Hitler and on, you know, other things.
Starting point is 00:08:24 things around the Nazis based on sources that are found in archives. And there is basically no sources in archives pointing to a sex life. But there were many rumors. There are rumors, for example, that when he was a boy that a goat bit off his right testicle or his left testicle. What? I haven't heard that one. You can find a lot of information on that. But the doctor, and I read all of, you know, examinations that he did, never made. mentions this. So he never like says, yeah, and then I examined Hitler and, you know,
Starting point is 00:09:00 except from his missing testicle. He was funny. He never writes anything about that. So I don't really know if it's really true. There are records of his personal, like the people who cleaned the bedrooms in the Berkhov, apparently they checked the sheets because they were curious and they said that they never, you know, found stains hinting at sexual intercourse between Hitler and Eva Braun. But I don't know if he had like sex once a week or if he had sex once a month or if he had sex like three times a night whenever he was in the back of. There's no record relating to that. The only record that I found was Eva Braun once goes to Morel because she wanted the same medications that her boyfriend received, Hitler. So she would be kind of on one wavelength with him.
Starting point is 00:09:50 and she once showed her scratched lower arms to Morel. So apparently Hitler had scratched them, but I don't know what sexual act. You actually scratch the lower arms of your partner. It sounds like maybe something weird was going on. But I could also imagine that they had like a totally boring normal sex life. We really don't know. We do know that they had an intimate relationship,
Starting point is 00:10:19 emotionally because every day when he was not at the Berkhov at 10 p.m. he would phone Eva, which I think really means that they had an ongoing real relationship. Because before that, like sometimes Eva is painted as like this girl in the Beirchho who has no real connection to Hitler, but I think they had a very deep connection. So they communicated every day, even, you know, in worst times of the war. It's actually funny records about these phone conversations because like Hitler was calling from his headquarters or his military, you know, the places where he was during the campaigns and the phone lines were sometimes not so good. And other people would involuntarily come into the conversation. Like some German dude would like pick up the phone and call whoever.
Starting point is 00:11:06 And suddenly had Hitler and Eva on the line. Oh my God. And some people said, like, is this really the Fueren? And Hitler would say, shut up and get out of the phone line. This is private or something like that. Did people know about his relationship with Ava Bram? Because I'm interested in what you said earlier that the Nazis promoted this idea of family and getting married and the family unit.
Starting point is 00:11:28 But Hitler didn't have a family and wasn't married. So was his relationship with Ava Brom? Was that widely known or was that sort of hushed up? Yeah, that was hushed up. That was top secret because the only lover of Hitler was, you know, the German cause. So a wife would have been acceptable, but he never wanted a wife because he also said, it's better if I stand alone, you know, being this lone figure that was, you know, the Fuhracal cult that he also wanted to be portrayed to the outside world, which also, you know, for example,
Starting point is 00:12:03 included that he was living a very healthy life. Like he was portrayed as a vegetarian who did not drink coffee, didn't smoke cigarettes, didn't drink alcohol. He was portrayed as a teetotaler with no private life and only one passion, Germany. But he was taking a lot of drugs. I didn't realize how many drugs he was taking. Well, I mean, the term drug has to be defined what is really a drug. Like, you know, if you would have asked him, do you take drugs? He would have said, no, I don't take what are you talking about.
Starting point is 00:12:33 He was taking medications, but these medications were obviously, you know, highly potent drugs. because from 1943 onwards he took a lot of opioids especially. And we all know if you take, you know, Oxy, Canton, it's a medication, but it's basically a drug. So he became an opioid junkie. Also cocaine, he used quite a bit in 1944. But also it was labeled as a medication because he took it after the bomb attack by Stauffenberg when his eardrums were blown. So he basically took it as an anesthesia against his pain.
Starting point is 00:13:10 But he was basically taking it for the kick and for the thrill of being high because it was unbearable not to be high and losing the war. Did he have girlfriends before Ava Brum? I'm just trying to think of like a teenage Hitler. And did he have normal girlfriends and crushes? Or from his very youth, was he very much like, no, I'm not interested in this at all? No, he had one love of his life. And that's the big trauma in his love life is this woman.
Starting point is 00:13:39 Okay. Her name is Geli. Raubal. Geli is the first name. And she was actually related to him. She was, I think, his niece or his cousin. They were related. That's why they were not supposed to be together, but he was really in love with her. And she was also in love with him. And a tragic incident happened. She shot herself with his pistol. And it's unclear to this day what exactly happened, why she shot herself. Maybe they made love and then they felt guilty. And he was on the rise. So he made. He made. Maybe it's unclear, but she died through gunshots that she inflicted on herself with his pistol.
Starting point is 00:14:17 And that apparently traumatized him when she was dead. And maybe Eva reminded him of her. But I mean, Eva was that one big love of his life, but the one, you know, true passion that he had was for Gaylee. So maybe he never had sex with Eva. Because Eva was a cheerful young girl from Munich. She often had her girlfriends over at the Berkhov. They were like in the mid-20s and they did yoga and they went to the lake and went swimming and were naked and were like frolicking in nature. Like they were apolitical, you know, fun girls that enjoyed the luxury of the Berkhov and the luxury of the VIP treatment.
Starting point is 00:15:00 So maybe he just kept Eva as like a companion that was fun, you know, a woman that was not threatening to him. because she was not his age. And there was one woman who they said she should actually be his wife, but she was the wife of Goebbels. That was Magda Goebbels. She was like the number one. She was like the dame of national socialism. Like the Nazi lady was Magda Goebbels.
Starting point is 00:15:23 Okay. So she was like an intelligent, imposing, you know, they could have been equal partners and they had a liking to each other, but she was married to Goebbels. So she was already taken. But Hitler never wanted an equal. So Eva for him was like in a way a play thing. But then again, the daily phone calls also show
Starting point is 00:15:42 that he was actually getting very much attached to his toy to Eva. But what they really did between the sheets, I think no one will ever actually know. Hi, it's Kate. Just jumping in here quickly, I wanted to find out more about Hitler's supposed first love, his niece, Geli Roble. So we've done a little bit of,
Starting point is 00:16:06 dig in and we found a clip from an upcoming episode of Dan Snow's history hits Hitler series where historian Franco Dono talks about her. We'll be back with Norman to talk about whether or not Hitler was a coprophiliac. That's a feces fetish by the way, after this. She's about 19 when he first meets her and then he develops a very close relationship with her. He rises up, doesn't he? After 1930s he become a major politician then. It's very famous. And she kills herself. She lives in Hitler's Flash apartment. He's also got an apartment in Munich.
Starting point is 00:16:43 And she lives with him. People can have close relationship with their nieces and nephews. You know, probably we all do in a way. I think people have just extended it into this. It's always got to be sexual in some way. I think he was just over-possessive of her as an uncle. Don't do this. Don't see him.
Starting point is 00:17:01 Don't do that. You know, she wanted to break out of this. And she wanted to be a singer. so she wanted to go for lessons in Rome. People said they heard arguments between them. You're not going to Vienna. You know, Hitler's shouting at her, things like this. And the evidence is that Hitler's got an alibi
Starting point is 00:17:17 for the day that she killed herself. He left the flat to go on a speaking engagement. The people who were in the flat at the time, housekeeper, her mother, and another servant also was there at the time. They say that definitely Hitler left the appointment, apartment and she was still alive. And then we've got trail of him being with these two close AIDS for the next 24 hours. He even got issued with a speeding ticket, getting back to Munich
Starting point is 00:17:47 after he found out she was dead. So his alibi is kind of watertight. And I suppose in the modern world, this probably was a rectum modern politician. You know, your niece has been found dead in your apartment. And people were hinting, you know, the socialist press was saying, that, you know, he was having a sexual relationship with her and that he'd beaten her and being covered up and stuff like that. It's a strange situation that he got away with it, really. It didn't really affect his image at that time. I'll be back with Norman after this short break.
Starting point is 00:18:49 One of the rumours, the many rumours that I've heard about Hitler was that he was a copropheliac, that he was someone who was into urination and defecation. And is there any evidence for this? And where did that rumor come from? I don't know. I think this is a rumor probably also propaganda by anti-Hitler forces, which obviously, you know, is all of us except the Nazis.
Starting point is 00:19:17 But I don't think this is actually true because these reports by the people who cleaned the rooms, they never said anything like it. Maybe they would have covered it up. It's quite possible because it would have probably been dangerous for them to report that there's shit in the bed or something like that. But I think Hitler was way too busy to actually have such a fetish. He was also working, always late at night. He was like ruminating and talking.
Starting point is 00:19:44 And like he went to bed like at 6 a.m. And then he took sleeping pills so he could sleep till 10. And then he took an upper to be able to get up. He was not really focused on his sex life. I think his sex life was really the party, was the movement, was leading so many people, was death, launching war, launching genocide. I think that was actually his perverse sexuality or his not sexuality, but his way of communicating.
Starting point is 00:20:16 I think that's the shit. I don't think the shit is real shit. That is true, isn't it? Even if he was a coprophiliac, I mean, would that really sway anyone's opinion of him by this point? He had a reputation, if I understood it correctly, in the First World War for being celibate and for defending his celibacy when his fellow soldiers were running off to the brothels.
Starting point is 00:20:40 And he wouldn't. And he became quite angry and sort of was just like he would never have sex with a French woman. He was disgusted it, the idea. I'm just trying to sort of get an idea of how this man views sex. And it's, you know, like he seems to be,
Starting point is 00:20:54 have a sort of almost an aversion to it. Like he's trying to protect himself and stay pure. But then also, as you really said, that it's coming out as, mass genocide and starting wars. Was he celibate in the First World War? I think basically he was a prude and he was repressed. And I think he was celibate in the First World War.
Starting point is 00:21:13 And then he had the crush on Geli Raubal and then it didn't work out and she killed herself. And he even more became withdrawn. And it's even possible that he never had sex in his whole life. Really? I think it's absolutely possible. I mean, it would be weird because if you have a 19-year-old younger pretty girlfriend
Starting point is 00:21:30 who does yoga every day, and just kind of waits in the warm bed of the Berko for you to return from your war, you know, adventures. It would be easy for him to have had sex with Eva. A very normal, conventional sex would have been, you know, the most easy thing for him. I would rule out as a Hitler drug expert that he had some kind of weird fetish. I don't think it's true. I never found any source for that.
Starting point is 00:21:57 I think it's more plausible that he had a very normal kind of boring sex life. I mean, if he's off his head on opium and methamphetamine and cocaine, I mean, that would kind of stack up as that maybe he just didn't have sex because he wasn't physiologically able to. Could you tell us a bit more about the Berghoff retreat? What was that? Because you're saying there that, you know, they were doing yoga and that there were soft beds, but also there were Nazis.
Starting point is 00:22:23 It sounds like quite a mad place. What was the Berghoff retreat? Well, the Berkhov retreat was catering to the, Nazi ideal of the mountains, especially the German mountains, the Alps. It was this picture perfect house, quite a big house. In the south of Germany, in Bastis Garden, you had to go up the mountain and then there was the Berghof. It was kind of like a wellness hotel or a country house. I guess you could call it a luxurious country mansion. But not only Hitler stayed there and Eva stayed there, but also other Nazi bigwigs had houses around there.
Starting point is 00:23:04 So, for example, Goring had his own house next to Hitler's Berkhof. And Speer, the architect, had his own kind of studio a little bit down the hills. So it was this kind of Nazi-Otwale mountain celebrity spots where also guests from England would come there. I think Chamberlain went there once. I mean, he didn't have a lot of state guests except the ones that were his friends, you know, later in the war. But they all would come to the Berghov and then they would, you know, get a nice room and then they would, you know, but the Berghoff was also very political. Like they would discuss things there. Like they would, you know, make politics there.
Starting point is 00:23:42 Hitler always made politics. He never went on vacation, basically. But if you were there, I mean, it was famous for its cake. There were a lot of women there. Like all the wives were always at the Berghove and then they were sitting on the terrace. you can find videos of the Berkhov, which circulate on, you know, you can just Google them. And you can also find videos that Eva did herself because she had a camera. So she filmed a lot.
Starting point is 00:24:07 You can see like the Easter celebrations where the kids come. That was kind of the Berkhov. But back to the drug taking in the Berkhov, because the drug taking probably had effects also on the sex life of the Berkhov. I mean, the Berkhov had a big sex life because, you know, maybe not by Hitler and Eva, but, you know, people who went there had, you know, a lot of sex life. because it was the good air, the good food, the great view, the nice rooms. It was furnished very well. It had, you know, paintings on the walls.
Starting point is 00:24:34 I mean, it had everything, basically. You were chauffeur up there. And it had drugs. And drugs obviously enhance your sex life. Some of them at least, for example, methamphetamine is a very good sex drug. But Hitler didn't take methamphetamine. He took opioids. Ah.
Starting point is 00:24:51 And opioids, I think they make you very content. without actually having sex. Definitely a downer, isn't it? Yeah, it relax. You don't really want to have sex when you're on opioids or opiates or heroin. And that was Hitler's drug of choice. So I think that probably Eva was, I don't know if she wanted to have sex with Hitler, but when she requested from Morrell that she wants the same drugs that he's taking,
Starting point is 00:25:18 so they're in the same wavelength. Maybe that was another way of saying, give me the opioids as well. because if I don't take them, I'm too horny, and he doesn't get it up because he's on Oikodal, which was the brand name at the time for Oxycontin, oxycodone. So I think the drugs probably muffled his sex urge. One thing that it might have fed out into, I mean, you're sort of painting a picture here of Hitler who has a very repressed attitude to sex. He might not have ever had sex, and that all of these rumors that surround him are probably untrue.
Starting point is 00:25:53 But the Nazis had very clear views on sex. And they legislated and they had morality around sex. I'm thinking that sex workers and gay men and lesbians were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Do you think that some of Hitler's anti-sex stance or his attitudes around it influenced Nazi policy? Probably. I mean, the Nazi movement in the 20s was a movement. that was directed against certain excesses of the Western culture or the German culture at the time. And one of these excesses was the queer community in Berlin, which was quite large and very expressive.
Starting point is 00:26:39 And they had their clubs where women would openly love women and men would openly love men. And there was an Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Sciences in Berlin was a big, big. hub for the queer community. And interestingly enough is that part of the Nazi movement was also part of the queer community because Röhm, who was the head of the S.A., which was the leading Nazi mass organization before the SS became very popular, it was the S.R. first. And Röhm was a homosexual, quite openly homosexual. And he was in the queer community and he was recruiting a young man and he was forming the SR as a type of
Starting point is 00:27:27 men's community where women were not needed because men have everything that they need, they can give everything that they desire to themselves. So this S.R became quite big in the Nazi movement and very powerful and Röhm
Starting point is 00:27:46 was seen as a threat by others for example by Himmler who was heading the SS. And then on June 30th, 1934, it was the night of the long knives. That's the nickname of this operation. When Röhm was killed, not by Hitler's hand, but basically by Hitler's orders and hundreds of SR people were killed. And the reason for this was then officially that the SR is morally degenerate, they're homosexuals. We have to cut down on them. They will, you know, destroy the pure Nazi movement. And then the SS became, you know, very powerful. And the SS under Him
Starting point is 00:28:22 had this strict moral code of just, you know, heterosexuals being thrown into concentration camps. Is this connected to Hitler's own celibate or abstinent sex life? Probably, I mean, Röhm, his best friend, was kind of openly sexual and was, you know, talking about it and was seen with young men. And probably bothered Hitler. He just had a different vision of what national socialism should look like. and that's where this purge comes from. And with this purge, I guess it was a purge against sexual desires and sexual openness. So it's actually a move by Hitler against sexuality this night of the long night. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:04 Can I ask you the question that everybody is dying to know? Can I ask you, did Hitler really only have one ball? I really don't know. I mean, he had a friend. They were boys. And this friend said that the goat actually bit off his ball. but maybe he just made it up later on because he wanted to have revenge. For me, he had no balls because he was acting cruelly against defenseless people,
Starting point is 00:29:29 and that's a very cowardly act. So he had no balls, basically. Why do you think there are so many myths around Hitler's balls and his penis? Is it just something that we like to do when we really, really dislike someone, we have to make them weirder? Because I've heard that he had a micro penis. I've heard that he had a medical condition where he has an understended test. I've heard so many rumors about this man's testicles.
Starting point is 00:29:54 And I'm just, why? Where did he even come from? Well, we know that he did not want to be seen naked. And the Germans, they all love to be seen naked. Like they always go to the sauna together and take off their pants. But Hitler wasn't, he also wasn't German. I mean, he was Austrian. So he was more Catholic, more ashamed.
Starting point is 00:30:14 And I don't know if he didn't want anyone to see his weird genitalia. or whether they were weird or I don't know. I mean, we are interested in Hitler, like in all aspects of Hitler, because he probably changed history more than any other man, at least in the 20th century. He caused so much, you know, change in the world, not for the better, unfortunately, but for the worse. So we're fascinated with how could this one little man, you know, do so much, like, why?
Starting point is 00:30:47 And so it's kind of understandable that we kind of look at, all aspects, but I think the drug aspect is much more interesting than the statistical aspect, but maybe that's just my personal interest. How much, so I'm going to say, how many drugs was Hitler taking by the time he took his own life? What do you see that as having an influence in how the war went? Well, Hitler was all about charisma because his leadership was not rational. I mean, it was not like we elect a leader because he's the best man or person to me. the right choices. I mean, this was never the case in national socialism. He was just there as this
Starting point is 00:31:26 like Lido had fallen out of the sky and everyone had to admire him. So it was also, you know, you could imagine that it was also a lot of pressure on him. Like he always had to perform. Like he could never say, sorry guys, I don't know the answer. You know, the whole world of national socialism would have collapsed because he always knew the answer. It's like God. So this extreme pressure that he created himself, you know, because he created this dictatorship, was only bearable when he was successful because then his support came naturally. People admired him and the masses cheered for him and, you know, women fainted, like they would faint only, you know, 20 years later for the Beatles. The first pop star was actually Hitler, where the women would just, you know, see him and because he had this extreme
Starting point is 00:32:18 charisma. Like he was a very charismatic man, even if he had no testicle, you know. He came into a room and he was the center of the room. So that's also very sexual, you know. He was probably would have been a very interesting sexual partner for Eva, I would imagine, you know, because he had this, you know, magnetism and he could, you know, influence other people. But there was a time after 1941 with the attack against the Soviet Union when his successes started to dwee. Windle and his failures became more and more obvious because the whole thing was a big failure. I mean, he destroyed not only the world, but also Germany, like the country that he wanted to, you know, build up and make the leading force in the world. He basically totally destroyed it.
Starting point is 00:33:04 And the Germans who were, you know, were following his orders, the generals who were coming back from the front and, you know, trying to convince him to, for example, change the strategy or maybe look at reality for a change because battlefields are quite real phenomenon. They don't exist in the dream world. So when his charisma dwindled or his failures grew and people around him noticed that and obviously he started talking about that, he had a problem. And he tried to solve his problem by doping himself up, especially with Eukodal, which was this euphoric-making opioid,
Starting point is 00:33:48 especially if you injected it intravenously, which is what he did. If you injected 20 milligrams into your vein, you basically were on top of the world. And I spoke to people who have injected that very substance in those very quantities to kind of research. I haven't taken it myself, but people that I know and have credible sources have reported that it's like the greatest high you can have. So he kind of substituted his natural charisma, which was not working anymore with the chemical charisma.
Starting point is 00:34:20 Absolutely. Norman, you have been fascinating to talk to today. Thank you so much for joining us. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Not literally. They can try to find me in the nightclubs of Berlin. Don't do that, anyone. They can just go to their favorite bookshop and buy either.
Starting point is 00:34:43 are the Bohemians, which is my book about the most interesting and biggest resistance group against Hitler. It basically gives you a picture of what went down in Berlin in the late 30s and early 40s, the Bohemians. The infiltrators, I think it's called in the UK. Or of course, you can read Blitz, which is the big book about Nazis and drugs, which is, I guess, a fun read. That's how you find me. Read the books. Thank you so much, Norman. And I suppose the message from today is don't do drugs, kids, don't do them. Thank you so much for talking to me. You've been an absolute treat. It was my pleasure. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Norman for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow
Starting point is 00:35:34 along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you want us to explore a subject, perhaps you just fancied saying hello, you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. We have got episodes on everything from the history of asexuality to the history of the witch, all coming your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society,
Starting point is 00:36:00 a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

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