The Chaser Report - Island of Hitlers

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Charles and Dom look at a recent BBC clickbait article analysing Hitler’s DNA - how they got it, why they got it and what it reveals about the potentially tiny penised dictator.Order the 2025 CHASER ANNUAL: https://chasershop.com/products/the-chaser-and-the-shovel-annual-2025-preorderListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Chaser Report. Charles, I have here an article from BBC History magazine, the headline of which demands that it be considered on an episode of The Chaser Report. I don't think we've previously gotten any content from BBC History magazine, but we've talked about Apple News and how it's surfaced. This is content that we weren't aware of. And that's what it did for me. The algorithm decided that this is something that I wanted to know about today.

And so who am I to quibble with an algorithm? So I present to you the following headline, Charles, for your enjoyment and enlightenment. We analysed Hitler's DNA and what we discovered made us gasp. Again, this is BBC History magazine. This has been signed off by the world's greatest public broadcaster. So can I talk you through what they found after the ads? Yeah, yeah. Talk us through what you found out during the ads,

but I'd love to look up what David Attenborough's latest BBC documentary is called as well. It's probably something like, what I found out about whales, you know, the top five things that maybe, you know, gasp about whales, number four will appall you. You won't believe what's in snail slime. Yeah, David Edinburgh's latest listicle. That's right. Okay, so this is quite a long article, actually,

despite the very clickbaiting headline. I mean, that's just how things work. And as I say, it's from BBC History magazine. It's quite detailed. And it's written by actual scientists. How did they get Hitler's DNA, first of all? Oh, we're getting to that. That's the first point in the article.

So how do you, a few things we'll cover here in this very enlightening episode, how do you get Hitler's DNA? How do you know that it's Hitler's DNA at all? And what secrets does it hold that may or may not confirm some of the great rumours of our age? Have I hooked you?

Yeah, yeah. I'm definitely hooked. I've got it to the hook, yeah. It's a good hook. It's a good hook. And is it the sort of thing where, like, did they give it to 23 and me? Like, did they scrape it off Hitler's corpse

and then, is that how they did it? It was the method. You're not too far off. You're not too far off. I'm so glad you brought out the word methodology. All right. So 80 years after Hitler's death, of course, 1945, a groundbreaking documentary on Channel 4, admittedly not the BBC, strangely.

Hitler's DNA blueprint of a dictator. What they did was, there was a small piece of fabric, Charles, cut from the sofa on which Hitler died after he shot himself in the Fuhrer bunker in Berlin on the 30th of April 1945 there was a small square of it's a little bit like the kind of evil version

of the Stroud of Turin in a sense so the first question is could this square possibly be the very square now what happened was after Hitler killed himself the Soviets swarmed in

and controlled access to Berlin as you'll recall but they did let in Lieutenant Colonel Roswell P. Rosengren the most American name ever, Roswell P. Rosengren, who was Dwight Eisenhower's public information officer, apparently, and he took a number of souvenirs, as you would, from the Furibunker.

Yes. And one of the things that he did was he cut out a swatch of the fabric on the sofa. It was stained with blood. He then brought it back to America, kept it under lock and key, and passed it onto his son. Is this going to suddenly take a sort of Jurassic Park-style turn, and we're going to find out that there's an island of Hitler's, the coast of Costa Rica.

What I'm about to reveal, Charles, makes that not only possible, but given the way well, politics is evolving, I think there's every chance. However, what secrets will the DNA reveal? We'll find out in a moment. Anyway, okay, so he's got this square of fabric. They've found photos of the sofa, and it matches the same pattern. So that's a start. It clearly matches the patterns of the sofa.

Then you've got to go and do DNA analysis. This is science. Charles, this is science. So they've got the DNA from the sample, you've got to authenticate it with a relative. Long story short, Hitler had no kids. And they did, however, manage to trace some male line members of the family tree living in Europe. And a journalist over 10 years ago and a genealogist went and found some relatives. And here's the thing, because they were men, the Y chromosome apparently is quite similar

within members of the same family tree. specifically the Y chromosome you probably remember from genetics it's kind of weird the Y chromosome so basically there was a match between the Y chromosome in the fabric and Hitler's known relatives so there was a big match there wow the point that they're saying is the only way this could have been fabricated they reckon and there's supposedly a scientist is if close relatives for Hitler's male line made it into the bunker and bleed on the sofa so they I I'll quote the magazine, the blood sample and thus the DNA in it belonged to Hitler. We had his DNA.

So, one of the big questions about Hitler has always been, you know, there were all these rumors and speculation going on, was Hitler Jewish? Because that would be, to say the least, historical. Ironic. Yes. Yes. The answer is no. Hitler was not Jewish.

There's no evidence that Hitler was Jewish at all. That's just the kind of baseless rumor that happened. around one of the world's great supervillains, right? There's just nothing in it. He wasn't Jewish, okay? But there were some interesting things in his DNA, which will reveal after the ads. None of the medical advice contained in the Chaser report

should legally be considered medical advice. The Chaser Report. Okay, and you can pay to get rid of those ads, by the way, if you don't want this incredible... Although I think the incredibly annoying throws to the ads still remain, just not the actual ads. Yeah.

Now, there are some genetic conditions you'll remember, Charles. that are very complicated. They've got multifactorial. There's a whole lot of different genes that influence them and then there's lifestyle and so on. Things like coronary art in disease

that's the example they give. There's no one gene that says whether you'll get that or not. Yes, it's a sort of multiplicity. There are what? Some conditions which are what's called monogenic, right? So cystic fibrosis is the example that they give. There's just one gene,

either you have it or you don't, right? So what they did was, they sent the genetic results to experts in different fields and they got it screened for medical conditions. They also ran it through apparently the standard medical pipeline for known genetic variants

associated with various conditions, okay? So basically you're going through and you're going, well, we hated Hitler because he was a eugenicist. So why don't we look at his genes to find out what wrong with him? That's right.

Let's use eugenics to discover. Why? Interesting point, Charles. Yes. Look, there's another debate about whether this research should have been conducted at all, which we will get to, I'm sure. Anyway, they sent the DNA around the place.

Well, hey, hang on, Dom. Don't we need to have another ad break? It feels like there's a bit of suspense here. Yes, I know. They put in some extra ads. Come on, let's do this. They sent it to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Louis Pasteur, famous scientist. That's a good brand name here.

It says the results were striking. Firstly, Hitler had a well-known deletion in a gene that is associated with Coleman syndrome and the elaborately named, I'm just quoting the article here, congenital, hypogonatotropic, hypogonadism. Oh, so he had no balls. He had no balls. Do you remember the difference between, yes, hyper and hypo? Hypo means none and gonad means balls.

No balls. He's got no balls. Well, all very small. So let's get onto this. So that condition, congenital hypogonatotropic hypogonadism, can cause, for instance, low testosterone production, low libido, abnormalities in the development of sexual organs and a disrupted reproductive function. Yes, because when you look at Hitler, you just go, God, I wish you'd had more testosterone. I wish you'd just been a little bit more, you know, aggressive. Aggressive.

It does actually... His outlook in life. Cause doubts as to whether testosterone is linked to, I don't know, being a murderous dictator. But anyway, so this is the thing. Okay. So he had low testosterone. Is that what you're saying? He did.

Yeah, right. And so... Probably made him very frustrated. Exactly. Frustrations in life. Just sort of make you feel... What does not enough testosterone do? Oh, it makes you invade Poland.

Apparently. So there was it. There was a physical examination of Hitler that was, do you remember when he was locked up in Landsberg prison after the Munich Putsch? They actually locked him up in prison. So they did a physical examination. Yeah, 1923, I think it was. Sorry, the Puch might have been 22, but the examination was in 23.

Yep. They only found this since 2010, and he had right-sided cryptorchidism, which is an underscended testicle. Oh, right. So that was true. Meaning that the song, Hitler has only got one ball, was true. I don't think that the other one being in the Albert Hall, that wasn't correct. How did they know?

How did the British know that he only had one ball? I can only imagine that whoever conducted that examination. Yes. Basically, one beer in now telling a story of Hitler's single ball. It's the sort of rumour that would spread. Like, that's good tea that you've got. It's the type of rumour. that would, it's a viral idea.

It's a viral room. There's no universe where that doesn't get out. Like, we know from having gone, particularly to an all-boys school, anything like that gets jumped on. Yeah. Okay. This matches the account of August Kubizek, who is Hitler's closest and perhaps only friend,

it says he, during his adolescence. They shared a room in Vienna in 1908. Hitler apparently was indifference to the opposite sex. Ooh. And Kubizek rather clinically observes that he refrained from masturbation. Oh. curiously enough and found favour with the opposite sex

but apparently never took advantage of it at all and so basically no shags at all for Hitler is the idea but also no one ever no one ever saw him naked except for as one of his confidants in the 20s and 30s

who said that he had a lot of shame about displaying himself because his gender organs and again I quote this scientific article were almost freakishly underdeveloped wow so he had like a small dick we had small dick energy

wow and the rumour that he got syphilis from a Jewish prostitute another one that they quite hear untrue he hadn't suffered from that but it's entirely possible that the Coleman syndrome could have caused a disturbed and repressed sexual development

and then we get into all the psychology stuff about Hitler and all the stuff that he went on to do now should this research of being conducted is interesting. And this is where I read the caveat for Korman syndrome here. The scientists would want me to include this, Charles, I think, and I'm quoting again. It's important not to stigmatise people with these conditions. It is rare

for anyone with any of these conditions to go on to commit violent acts, let alone genocide. So there you go. So don't demon, don't demon-in-is-mind-you. I've only ever encountered one person with Kohlman syndrome in my entire life. And that person did commit genocide, so I kind of feel like that's, I mean, it's good that the BBC includes that little caveat, but, like... You're saying it's a one-to-one correlation. Yeah, one-to-one ratio, like 100% of the time, well, in terms of my personal experience, I've only heard of Coleman syndrome like 10 minutes ago.

Yes, so... In the one person I've heard about it, it's a complete correlation. He happened to get genocide. Yeah. So I don't know whether it seems a bit like a bit to sort of hedging your bets there, BBC. So having issued that disclaimer, they then go on to very much lean into, but for this condition, Hitler wouldn't have done any of this stuff. It's World War II only happened because of Hitler and he didn't have,

he didn't even have a sex life or anything like that. It was just this is a result of his condition. So while giving the disclaimer, they're completely leaning in. into it. I think that's exactly the sort of thing Hitler would have done. Remember when he killed all the people with autism and stuff? Well, I think if your point is that DNA isn't destiny, I think that's something that they begrudgingly concede

amidst the extremely sensationalist reporting of all this stuff. That said, can I say, I'm sort of glad that it was done, even if it was slightly unethical, because it is quite interesting, isn't it? Like, it's actually genuinely interesting to find out of this stuff. Very interesting. Oh, look, I should also mention the other thing which, so an article saying that this shouldn't have necessarily been done also said that the DNA study found he's in the top 1% for a predisposition to autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This doesn't mean he had any of those conditions. And there's a, yeah, there's a huge ethical question as to whether this should have been done.

But also, Charles, as you note, these people scanned DNA and centered around the world for people. to scan. So Hitler's DNA is out there, the full sequence. It's probably on Reddit. It's probably on telegram and the dark web already. You can probably download it. You probably can. So this is genuinely quite concerning because I'm not sure we want another one.

We have Jurassic. What would it be called? It wouldn't be called Jurassic Park. It would be called... I can't think anything. It's not a really insensitive pun. Yeah. Yeah.

No. Fill in your own cancelable joke. Well, our anti-Semitic park, I suppose it could be. Anti-Semitic park, yeah, yeah. Dictator Park. It's not really a pun, is it? No, it's terrible. Look, I've got to go.

I've just got to download some DNA that I've just found on the dark web. But before we do go, Dom, I think we should just have one more ad break, just, you know. It's clearly, like, this is fun with you out of class. These episodes for the clicks. This is clearly just for the, you know, audience. baiting. Look, if even the venerable, if even the venerable BBC can do it, why can't we? That's what I say.

Exactly. So here's some ads. Okay, and then, oh, no, we should have, sorry, before we go to an ad break to say, and we're going to tell you something absolutely stunning after this ad break. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. Okay, well, the stunning revelation is, that's the end of the episode. We're part of the Aconiclass Network. Thank you for enduring this far.

See you next time with even more quality journalism from the British Broadcasting Corporation. I look forward to that documentary appearing on SBS just before the news on a Sunday night.