(ominous music)
- [Nazis] Sieg heil, sieg heil, sieg heil,
sieg heil, sieg heil, sieg heil.
- [Narrator] It's not hard to believe that Adolf Hitler,
the world's most hated man, also had a depraved sex life.
- The sadomasochistic element was really
such a prominent feature of his presentation.
- [Narrator] But even during his lifetime,
controversy raged about what exactly
Hitler was doing behind closed doors.
- Obviously it was never shown that he was using drugs.
- [Narrator] Some said he was a chronic masturbator
or that he got his sexual kicks from voyeurism.
Many believed he was impotent.
Others thought he was homosexual.
- Sex cruises through all Hitler's dysfunctional behavior.
- [Narrator] What is known is that Adolf Hitler
spun a tangled web of lies to hide the truth
about his twisted sex life.
- It was semi incestuous. It was his half sister's daughter.
(crowd cheering)
- [Narrator] Now extensive archival research
can reveal the squalid secrets
he lied and killed to protect.
- Hitler was a person of extremes.
So he either loved totally or he hated totally.
To him, everything in the end was death.
- [Nazis] Sieg heil, sieg heil, sieg heil, sieg heil.
- [Narrator] For most people, sex means pleasure,
but for Adolf Hitler, it was dirty and debased.
He once said that having sex with a woman was as risky
as fighting in the trenches of the Western front.
That attitude was reflected in his sexual behavior
that left a trail of dead bodies and shattered spirits.
The women who became ensnared
in Adolf Hitler's twisted world
were crushed by the shame and humiliation
of what he demanded of them.
A photo journalist who covered Hitler in the 1920s recalled
that everybody in Munich knew that Hitler
was some kind of sexual pervert,
but how true were the allegations?
Many historians refute claims
that Hitler was a sexual deviant.
They dismiss his accusers as disgruntled individuals
who had good reason to harbor grudges against the Fuhrer.
Some of those who sped the stories
were Hitler's sworn enemies,
like former Nazi comrade turned in former Otto Strasser.
And they would have said anything to smear his reputation.
Were they just tapping into the world's willingness
to believe the worst of this evil man?
Or was there more to it?
Psychoanalyst Walter Langer had no doubt.
In the summary report he wrote
President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1943,
he blamed Hitler's extremely perverse sexual psychopathology
on a dysfunctional relationship with his mother and father.
- Langer hit it right when he said Hitler was isolated
from the love of normal human beings.
And it refers to this theme that we've been pursuing
of Hitler's existential, inner emptiness.
Hitler couldn't form a bond with anybody
except his dog Blondi.
- [Narrator] Langer's conclusions were based on
over a thousand pages of source material.
And within those pages where graphic accounts
of deranged sexual practices that beggar belief.
As early as high school, Hitler's family doctor
described a troubling incident when a teenage Hitler
was found guilty of a sexual indiscretion.
The exact details of what happened have been lost.
But Dr. Block said it involved a girl
who was much younger than Hitler.
Adolf managed to escape expulsion,
but changed schools the following year,
it was the first sign of Hitler's nascent tendencies
towards sexual voyeurism and violence.
Not long after that incident,
Hitler became obsessed with another young woman.
Adolf first saw Stephanie Isak in 1905.
He was out walking the streets in Linz
with his childhood friend August Kubizek.
In his memoirs, Kubizek remembered the moment
Hitler first laid eyes on Stephanie.
Hitler had stood on the same street corner every day
at 5:00 PM, hoping to see her.
One day Hitler thought Stephanie
had deliberately avoided looking at him,
and it drove him mad.
He told his friend August he planned
to kidnap the young woman and drag her off the bridge
and into the Danube River in a violent murder-suicide.
- Hitler was a person of extremes.
So he either loved totally or he hated totally.
And this is an absolute recurring theme in his life.
If things don't work out, I will kill myself.
To him, everything in the end was death.
Everything came down, if I don't get my way, I kill myself.
And then look what you've lost.
- [Narrator] Hitler never acted on his insane plan,
but his obsession with Stephanie Isak
would last for four years.
During that time, he never exchanged a single word with her.
- He was completely socially inept.
He just didn't know how to deal with people at any stage.
There's another report by the same friend of his,
August Kubizek, how they went to look for a house
and the land lady came out,
dressed in a rather loose fashion.
And Hitler was just staggered and said,
"We can't go in this house.
We can't go near this woman," a complete overreaction.
And you can see that in the relationship
with this woman that he followed around.
Devotion from afar would drive him round following her,
but never daring to break the spell by approaching her.
- [Narrator] Adolf Hitler declared that men
who succumbed to lust were weak and pitiful.
Of course, he was above such things.
Hitler claimed he abstained from sex
to preserve the thing he called "the flame of life."
And it was a sacrifice he was willing to make
for the motherland.
(trumpets playing) (crowd shouting)
His adoring followers lapped it up.
Hitler said that by preserving this flame,
he improved his energy and endurance.
And this meant he had more to give back to the Reich.
This played into the mythology
the Nazi propaganda machine constructed around him.
The German people believed their leader
was the model of self discipline.
He was impervious to all base human weaknesses,
including sex.
- Seig heil, seig heil.
- He was always shown and presented as an abstinent person.
People knew that the Fuhrer doesn't drink alcohol.
He doesn't eat meat. He walks with his dog every day.
He's in the clear mountain air.
Even the greeting, "Heil Hitler," heil means healthy.
So the greeting that people would say every day
to each other was always referring to the health of Hitler,
which was the health of the nation.
- [Narrator] As a young man, Hitler had no
conventional sexual contact with any woman.
During the first World War, Hitler's comrades
called him a muck and mocked him for his prudishness.
They taunted him for refusing to join
their banter about sex and women.
The truth was Adolf Hitler avoided sex
because it terrified him.
He dedicated 10 pages of his autobiography,
Mein Kampf, to an unhinged rant about the evils
of prostitution and venereal disease,
saying the struggle against syphilis and prostitution
is one of the most gigantic tasks of humanity.
One of the earliest laws passed in the Third Reich
declared prostitution a criminal activity.
Soldiers unfortunate enough to contract a venereal disease
found themselves facing criminal charges.
But what gave Hitler such a morbid fear
of what he called dirty sexuality?
- If you look in Mein Kampf,
you can see Hitler's racial views.
And the theory of degeneration was that there are people
of pure blood, in this case the Aryans,
but all these others have ways of pulling them down
by and polluting their blood.
Now one of them was syphilis and the other one prostitution
and prostitution was a particular bugbear for Hitler,
because in those days,
as Jews were fleeing persecution in Russia,
these young women would get scooped up
when they turned up in places like Vienna, London,
Berlin and forced into prostitution.
So it was strongly associated with Jews.
So that's a reason why he was particularly down on it.
- [Narrator] Hitler told August Kubizek
he would never have intimate relations with a woman
because he was too afraid of catching syphilis.
But just because he wouldn't touch
didn't mean he couldn't look.
Hitler and his friend visited the red light district
in Vienna, where August described walking along the street,
looking at prostitutes in their scanty and slovenly attire.
Hitler insisted on several turns
up and down the infamous street,
even though August had seen enough.
That experience whet Hitler's appetite
for the seedier side of life.
August Kubizek recalled Adolf ranting for hours
about depraved sexual habits.
- Hitler was reported to be voyeuristic.
The extent of this is still one of speculation,
but there's some quite credible accounts of this.
And I think this fits in with his personality
and his sexuality to distance himself
so he could enjoy it, but not reveal anything of himself.
- [Narrator] In the early 1930s,
as Adolf Hitler became the most powerful man in Germany,
the rumor mill began to crank into action.
Not everyone was convinced by the image of Hitler
as a selfless Puritan, wedded only to Germany.
For many, it could only mean one thing.
For much of the 20th century, it was thought
there was only one reason, other than a religious calling,
that a man would avoid heterosexual encounters.
And that was if he preferred men.
The rumors began in the trenches of the first World War.
The same comrades who taunted him for being a prude
declared Adolf Hitler gay.
The supposed smoking gun
was discovered by Herman Rauschning.
Rauschning resigned from the party and fled Germany in 1936.
Before he did, Rauschning tracked down
Hitler's military record.
He said he discovered the real reason
Hitler was never promoted, despite being a brave soldier.
According to Rauschning, Adolf Hitler was court martialed
for having homosexual relations with a senior officer,
although many historians caution
that no proof of this claim has ever been found.
The lack of evidence doesn't come as any surprise.
- [Reporter] Adolf Hitler had seized control
of a floundering government in a time of national crisis.
- [Narrator] Once he seized power, Hitler made sure
all the murky chapters of his life were whitewashed.
In recent years, researchers investigating
Hitler's alleged homosexuality
have drawn attention to the so-called Mend Protocol.
Hans Mend fought in the same regiment as Adolf Hitler.
After writing a sycophantic memoir
about their time in the army together,
Mend had a falling out with the Fuhrer.
Furious, he revealed to a member of the German resistance
what he said was the truth
about Hitler's sex life during the war.
He claimed Hitler was caught in the act
with a fellow soldier.
Mend was arrested and convicted of what he claimed
were trumped up child sex charges.
He died in prison in 1940.
Hans Mend was an unreliable witness
and these are contentious claims.
Many of the most senior experts in the field
flatly refuse to believe Adolf Hitler was gay,
but there are plenty of reports
that seem to back up the theory.
Hitler's translator claimed to have overheard
a Nazi general reading from a police record.
It contains shocking allegations about the Fuhrer.
The file contained statements from underage boys in Munich,
who said Hitler paid them to spend the night with him.
More circumstantial evidence came from the boarding house
Adolf Hitler lived in between 1910 and 1913 in Vienna.
Meldemannstrabe Dormitory was notorious
for all the wrong reasons.
It was frequented by older men who went there
in search of much younger male prostitutes.
This early exposure to Vienna's gay subculture
seemed to have a surprising effect on Adolf Hitler.
In the early days of the Nazi Party,
gay men were welcomed into his inner circle.
And no one tried to hide it.
In fact, it was so widely known that in the early 1930s,
the party was called "a brotherhood of poofs"
in an anti-Nazi newspaper.
Hitler didn't care.
He wanted only one thing of party members,
to be unconditionally obedient and faithful to him.
What happened in their private lives was their business.
Some gay Nazis would rise to the party's highest levels.
(Hess speaking German)
Many claimed that Hitler's Deputy Fuhrer
Rudolf Hess was homosexual.
It was alleged that he was a leading light
in Berlin's thriving gay subculture between the wars.
Among his comrades, he was affectionately called
Fräulein Anna, or Black Emma.
Hess and Hitler served together
in the same regiment during World War I,
and after the failed 1923 attempt by the Nazi Party
to overthrow the government,
the two men were incarcerated together in Landsburg Prison.
Their intimacy surprised Ernst Hanfstaengl.
He suggested this period of isolation
crystallized an affinity between Hess and Hitler
that might have bordered on the sexual.
The Nazi party's most prominent, openly gay figure
was a man named Ernst Rohm,
who co-founded the infamous Nazi militia,
the SA or Stormtroopers.
- If ever Hitler had a best buddy,
you might describe it as Ernst Rohm.
They'd been together, you know,
right from the foundation days of National Socialism.
Rohm called Hitler Addie I think,
was one of the only people that didn't,
was very easy in his company.
Rohm was also very and overtly homosexual.
The SA was a bit of a sort of hotbed
of uber masculine Nazi gay sex.
Ernst Rohm was right into that,
and so were some of his associates.
- [Narrator] Rohm was tried five times
for violating laws against homosexual activity.
He walked free, even after admitting he was bisexual
during police interrogation.
Adolf Hitler didn't care about Rohm's sexual identity.
Even when the militia leader was accused of corrupting
Germany's youth, and offered his resignation
for the good of the party, Hitler turned him down.
But the Alliance between the two men
came to a sudden and very brutal end.
Siding with the homophobic SS commander, Heinrich Himmler,
Hitler conspired to have Rohm murdered
in 1934 during the bloody purge
known as the Night of the Long Knives.
- A big meeting of all the SA people was called.
Hitler turned up and a whole lot of police
and army people came up and arrested nearly everyone there.
It must have come as a terrible shock to Rohm,
and the relationship ended that day.
Rohm was given the opportunity to suicide.
He said, you know, if Hitler wants to kill me,
he can do it himself,
and he was later executed that day, I think.
- [Narrator] Nazi propaganda claimed
that a coup had been averted,
but historian Luther MacDone disputes this.
He believes Hitler killed Rohm
to hide evidence of his own homosexuality
and Ernst Hanfstaengl thought the same thing.
He claimed the homosexual SA leader
had hinted that it would only need
a few words from him to silence Hitler.
Perhaps that is why he was shot.
- The interesting thing was that if Hitler existed today,
if he was safe, he would become a figure
of gay iconography and S&M iconography.
If you look at the intense effort
he put into designing the Nazi regalia,
the black uniforms, the silver linings, the Swastika,
the coloring of red around it.
These are all deeply sadomasochistic themes,
but they also appeal to a lot of German homosexuals.
And we know that homosexuality was very ripe
below the top echelons where they couldn't get away with it,
regardless of their predilections.
- [Narrator] The truth about Ernst Rohm's execution
may never be known, but it represented
a declaration of war against Germany's gay community.
Adolf Hitler had a complete about face
and declared homosexuality as infectious
and dangerous as the plague,
and under Himmler's merciless SS, the ruthless Nazi campaign
against homosexuality ran unchecked.
- The homosexuals were seen as, you know,
not part of the family structures
that they wanted to promote,
or part of the Germany that they wanted to promote,
and they, like communists and Jews and a whole lot of people
were sent away and killed.
- [Narrator] Gay men were sent to concentration camps.
As many as 10,000 were murdered under Nazi rule.
(Hitler speaking German)
Adolf Hitler may have been waging war on homosexuality
as a way to deflect from his own urges,
but it wasn't enough to stop people gossiping.
Taking a wife would've been an easy way
to shut down the rumors,
but that was the last thing on Hitler's mind.
He gave many reasons for not marrying.
He was too busy or would it upset his female voters,
but was there a darker reason
behind Hitler's refusal to wed?
Was it connected to his messy family history?
Although it's never been proven without a doubt,
it's been suggested that Hitler suspected his own father
was the illegitimate son of a Jewish man.
If Hitler were ever to marry,
the expectation would be
that he and his wife would start a family.
But if he believed there was a chance
the rumors that a Jewish grandfather were true,
Hitler knew he would be passing
Jewish blood onto his children.
And he could never allow that to happen.
- Hitler was a racial fanatic.
And as somebody espousing the purity of the Aryan race,
all of this was totally antithetical to the image
Hitler promoted for Germany and of course himself.
It would've been highly embarrassing.
The different arguments about whether it's possible
that he could have had a Jewish ancestor,
I think the weight is leaning
towards the fact that he didn't.
What's more important is whether he thought
he had a Jewish ancestor.
So I think the fact that he had a fear about it
is very important.
- [Narrator] Hitler was a master
of keeping his private life to himself.
Even the one official relationship he had with a woman
is shrouded in secrecy.
- Eva Braun was Hitler's girlfriend for quite a long time.
They already met in the early '30,
and they had a very intimate, strong relationship.
When Hitler was not at the Berghof,
which was his mountain retreat,
where Eva Braun was during the war,
when he was in his military headquarters,
he would phone her every night at 9:00 PM.
- It was a long relationship in that
it was it close to 13 years.
It was very difficult for her.
She was hidden away, but it turns out
when they all got together at the Berghof,
she was quite clearly the mistress of the house.
Now there was some things Hitler wouldn't let her do.
She wasn't allowed to smoke.
She had to be careful what bathing costume she wore.
He had this prudish kind of attitude.
- Well, there is a controversy actually
about Hitler's sex life.
There's like scholars who say he didn't have a sex life.
And others say he had a normal sex life.
- [Narrator] After the war, Eva's hairdresser
was questioned under oath.
He swore she told him no coital activity
ever took place between them.
This was backed up by Eva Brown's gynecologist,
who said her vagina was so narrow that sexual intercourse
would've been excruciatingly painful.
Even her own diary hints at what was
and wasn't going on with Adolf Hitler.
In her diary, she wrote,
"He uses me only for certain purposes.
Nothing else is possible."
But Eva did have her needs,
and what she did next suggests
Adolf Hitler couldn't satisfy them.
She lobbied Hitler's personal medical,
Dr. Theodor Morell, to give the Fuhrer
something to jumpstart his sagging libido.
US military records show that the medication
Morell gave him was testafiryn.
Its active ingredient? (bull mooing)
Bull semen.
- Morrell really was a quack.
He couldn't have made a good diagnosis
if it had been pasted on his forehead.
He believed in organ extracts.
So he took a thyroid gland or pancreas from an animal,
mulched it up and gave it.
- Theo Morrell was a celebrity doctor in Berlin.
He was known for treating patients with diseases
that don't exist, so basically you didn't go
to Morell when you had a severe illness,
but you actually went to him when you wanted to feel better.
So he was a kind of Dr. Feelgood,
an early Dr. Feelgood.
He was in favor of giving you injections.
He believed that injections are the best way
to apply a medicine, 'cause it's the quickest way.
And he was quite knowledgeable
about vitamins and probiotic medicine.
So in a way he was an avant garde type of doctor.
- As the war went on, he was pumping Hitler
full of all sorts of things:
vitamins, glucose, amphetamines, and the list goes on.
Arsenic and strychnine preparations.
Most of them were harmless.
You give somebody an injection
and they pee it out in 30 minutes.
- He was happy to experiment
and always happy when the patient felt happy.
So he didn't really look for the source of a problem.
He just wanted to cure the symptoms.
- [Narrator] It wasn't long before Dr. Morrell
began treating Eva.
She wanted some of what Hitler was having.
- Hitler was Morell's patient A
and Eva Braun was his patient B,
and from his notes about patient B,
we can see that she actually requested
similar medications than her boyfriend,
so she would be on the same chemical wavelength
when they did meet at the Berghof.
The only exception was that Hitler
was receiving male hormones like testosterone.
She obviously didn't receive those.
She received female hormones, so for example
that she wouldn't have her period
while Hitler was at the Berghof.
So my conclusion is that she probably
didn't want to have a period so they could have sex.
- [Narrator] Whatever Hitler was up to with Eva,
his sexual appetites were varied.
He didn't like to be touched.
So he found a predictable outlet to satisfy his hunger.
Hitler liked to watch.
Strippers, dancers, acrobats, peep shows.
He would ogle women performing at the circus,
watching them closely through opera glasses.
A favorite pastime was watching the strippers
he invited to perform at his mountain retreat
in Berchtesgaden.
But the German public knew nothing of any of this,
because Adolf Hitler set himself up as a model of virtue.
- It was an important part of the cult
that the party created around Hitler
to portray him as basically a health saint,
someone who didn't have any vices, not even a private life,
someone who was just kind of a pure channel,
doing nothing else that than work for the German nation.
- [Narrator] And he expected his people to follow his lead,
to do as he said, not as he did.
(jazzy music)
The truth was Hitler itched for all the things
he was condemning.
Along with his countless other sins,
Adolf Hitler was a world class hypocrite.
(ominous music)
Hitler's bent for voyeurism blossomed
into a full blown porn addiction.
Once his foul regime was in power,
he co-opted the official Nazi party photographer,
Heinrich Hoffman, to supply graphic stag films
and pornographic photographs.
They played most nights in Hitler's private theater
in the chancellery.
He also found a way to make use
of his questionable artistic skills.
A portfolio of intimate drawings by the Fuhrer
reportedly found its way into a blackmailer's hands.
The Nazi party traitor Franz Schwarz
paid a ransom to retrieve them.
The young woman depicted was Hitler's niece, Geli Raubal.
(Hitler speaking German)
All the while he was publicly scolding the German public,
Hitler's own private life was anything but spotless,
but this was all behind closed doors.
The most overtly sexual thing Adolf Hitler did in public
was to speak.
- Sex courses through Hitler's interaction with the world.
What made Hitler into the figure he was
is that he was the greatest demagogue
in the history of the world.
And in those pre-television days, how did he do it?
He did it through his speeches.
(Hitler speaking German)
We know he used, was it a comedian or a mime?
And he took some lessons or some tricks.
And he used to practice before the camera,
particularly the hand gestures.
He went to great lengths to work out
how to use his hands and he became extraordinarily animated.
So I think sex cruises through
all Hitler's dysfunctional behavior.
(Hitler yelling in German)
(crowd cheering)
It's well recorded that adult women,
not screaming teenagers, would wet themselves
and throw themselves, you know,
held back by the guards and that.
You have this contrast between a person
who is internally empty
and somebody who then gets on stage,
stands before a microphone and pours out words,
the ultimate charismatic prophet
that people just go wild about.
(Hitler speaking German) (crowd cheering)
The basis of charisma, it's not only the charismatic figure,
but it's the charismatic audience.
It's a two way process.
So they are getting, can we put it this way, turned on?
And of course it comes back to him and he comes out ranting,
sweating, but coming almost close to a climax.
(Hitler yelling in German) (crowd cheering)
Like somebody who's just had sex, he's soaked in sweat.
he's exhausted, and well, he didn't smoke,
but he probably would've asked for one.
- [Narrator] He ranted about the dominance of man over woman
saying if you go to a woman, don't forget your whip.
- One of the ways in which he enhanced his public image,
he carried whips.
He loved to carry a whip.
And if he could, he'd have one of his big dogs with him
and with people around him, especially his women,
he wanted them to call him Wolf.
Now Wolf is not a very peaceable character
to be introduced into your sex fantasies.
So I think the sexual, the sadomasochistic element
was really such a prominent feature of his presentation,
but everything in public was the most crude way
of saying I am powerful, I am big,
I am the ultimate weapon as a human being.
- [Narrator] But in his private life,
it was another matter all together.
Many believe the only way out of Hitler found gratification
was when he took a submissive role in sexual encounters.
He wanted the whip turn back on himself.
And if the accounts are to be believed,
his desires would take him to some extremely dark places.
One of the most famous German actresses of the day,
Renate Muller, was an unfortunate witness to this.
When Hitler became a regular visitor to film sets
after he met a American born German movie producer
and director Alfred Zeisler
asked him to send actresses over
to join him at the chancellery.
It was only a matter of time
before the beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed Renate Muller
caught the fewer eye and they began spending time together.
After one evening at Hitler's apartment,
Renate told her producer Zeisler
a shocking and disturbing story.
Zeisler claimed that Hitler had begged Renate
to kick him while he lay on the floor.
She finally gave into his wishes and kicked him
and kept kicking him as he begged for more.
He became more and more excited
and finally climaxed by masturbating in front of her.
He then thanked her warmly for a pleasant evening.
- Connection between sexuality and violence is not uncommon
because it's really,
if you look at the basis of sadomasochism,
the two are so totally entwined,
not just what you do sexually, but how you carry it out.
You only have to look at some of these
ghastly serial killers who go in for that.
The rumors about Hitler engaging
in extreme sadomasochistic practices
fits perfectly in with his personality.
He internalized everything that he didn't like,
the losses in his life.
And he sadistically projected his rage out on everybody.
And it's quite feasible that somebody like that
would have these kind of sexual practices.
- [Narrator] Not long after that,
Renate Muller fell to her death
from the upstairs window of her sanatorium
during a visit from the Gestapo.
No one knows if she was pushed or if she jumped.
But the question remains, did that evening with Hitler
drive Renate Muller to her death?
Renate wasn't the only woman to experience
Hitler's extreme appetites.
His 23 year old half niece, Geli Raubal,
with whom he had had a relationship for six years,
found herself on the receiving end
of Hitler's darkest sexual urges.
It seems his perversion was an extreme form of masochism
in which he derived sexual gratification
from having a woman urinate or defecate on him.
It's a contentious claim,
in part because the source of the information
was Otto Strasser, whose acrimonious falling out with Hitler
meant he had an ax to grind.
But US analyst Walter Langer believed him,
in part because it matched
Hitler's deviant psychosexual profile
Langer had drawn up for the US government.
There were also other unnamed sources
that backed up Strasser's story.
Strasser claimed to have heard the story from Geli herself.
And he didn't hold back.
He said Geli had told him that Hitler demanded things of her
that were simply repulsive.
Strasser asked her why she didn't just sleep with her uncle.
And her explanation was shocking.
Geli told him that Hitler made her undress,
squat over his face, and when he became sexually excited,
urinate on him and that gave him sexual pleasure.
Geli said the whole performance
was extremely disgusting to her.
- This brought out every aspect of himself
that he normally tried to hide.
So it's no surprise that if the rumors have any basis,
that what you can call a basic S&M practice,
being humiliated in the most personal way with body fluids
of the worst kind are fitted into the skin
inside the masochist, outside the sadist.
- [Narrator] It's possible
that her uncles warped preoccupation
contributed to Geli's demise.
She died soon after she spoke with Otto Strasser.
She was found in Hitler's apartment
with a shotgun wound to the chest.
The official cause of death was suicide,
but many doubted the lively young woman
would've taken her own life.
- Hitler's relationship with Geli
was definitely the most important relationship of his life.
If you jump to the fact that after she killed herself,
he her room locked up, nobody was allowed to enter,
and he was reputed to go in there
once a year on the date of her death.
So you could see that this summed up
everything he wanted in a relationship.
And when you look at it, you're a bit taken aback.
It was semi incestuous. It was his half sister's daughter.
There was a very big age difference
and it ended so badly that she killed herself.
- [Narrator] Whatever Adolf Hitler did
or didn't do to his niece,
he mourned Geli for the rest of his life.
After she died, her portrait hung by his bed.
Beside it was a likeness of Hitlers beloved mother Klara.
Geli Raubal's death remained a mystery,
but in the face of public pressure,
the prosecutor reopened his investigation.
Today, there's no way of knowing what he discovered
because the case file is missing.
When Hitler became chancellor,
one of the first things he ordered
was the destruction of any records
that cast the Nazi leadership in poor light.
He made sure that any incriminating evidence
against him was destroyed,
but Renate and Geli's stories have a common thread.
Both describe acts of extreme masochism.
And they came from two different sources.
One of them, aggrieved former Nazi Otto Strasser,
despised Hitler.
He made it a personal mission to discredit the Fuhrer.
But the American film director,
Alfred Zeisler, had no such agenda.
And there's no suggestion
that there was any collusion between the two men.
These claims remain shrouded in controversy,
but there is a bigger question.
Why even bother trying to untangle the truth
about Hitler's sex life?
- We cannot guarantee that another Hitler will not arise.
You need certain circumstances
and you need a particular type of person.
But when you look at what is the greatest crime in history,
namely the Holocaust,
you need to do everything you can
to understand the perpetrator.
- [Narrator] Great minds have struggled to understand
Adolf Hitler's twisted Genesis.
Many of those who grapple with the question
can't fathom the public's obsession with Hitler's sexuality,
because let's face it,
it's a side show compared with the unassailable truth
of the horrors he unleashed on the world.
But the morbid fascination with Adolf Hitler's sex life
reflects a burning need.
We want assurance he was nothing like us,
that he was an outlier, an abomination.
The more depraved his personal life, the better.
The truth is we want no part of whatever club
was unlucky enough to have Hitler as a member.
That's how we cast him out of the human race.
So we grasp at anything that proves he was a freak.
And the more proof we have, the safer we feel.
The world needs to think that after Adolf Hitler was made,
they broke the mold because then we can believe
we'll never see his like again.
(dramatic music)