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Friday, Nov 27, 2009
If Machtan's tone toward his evidence in "The Hidden Hitler" is defensive, one must grant him at least a modicum of sympathy. Virtually anyone in Hitler's life who might have supported Machtan's argument with harder evidence was ruthlessly exterminated (such as his longtime colleague and head of the paramilitary SA group Ernst Rohm, a known homosexual who appointed known homosexuals to positions of power within his organization), while many others disappeared or committed suicide (including Eva Braun, Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goering).
By no means all of these potential witnesses died by Hitler's order or under suspicious circumstances, but the sheer number of the ones who did, particularly those cronies from Hitler's early years about which we know remarkably little, is staggering. "Hitler himself," writes Machtan, "tore the crucial pages out of his life story. In this he was no different from other prominent homosexuals. What was peculiar to his conduct was simply the ultra methodical and unscrupulous way in which he eliminated every threat of exposure."
It can and is being argued that the absence of material on Hitler's past stands as proof of no particular thesis, let alone as proof of his homosexuality, and this is true (though there can be no doubt that Hitler was frantically trying to cover up something in his past). But "The Hidden Hitler" works better if the reader is willing to disregard the author's often aggressive tone in pushing his argument and simply consider the evidence.
Machtan's most intriguing contribution to the subject is the so-called "Mend Protocol," testimony from a dispatch rider named Hans Mend who had served with Hitler in the First World War and swore that he witnessed Hitler engaging in homosexual acts. This evidence isn't as solid as the author thinks it is; Mend was later discovered to be a liar and blackmailer. But one is entitled to point out that anyone who would be involved with Hitler would almost certainly be some kind of liar or scoundrel (and in any event Mend seems to have had no reason to lie about Hitler several decades later).
More to the point, though, is that anyone interested in knowing the truth on this subject ought to grant Machtan credit for assembling so many persuasive strands of evidence. Evidence, of course, is not proof, but merely the building blocks which must be considered in constructing the truth, and as Machtan's critics are insisting, most of his is circumstantial. But if Machtan's hard evidence isn't as hard as he insists, neither is his soft evidence so soft as his critics contend. For one thing, most important criminal cases, to say nothing of most great historical judgments, are decided on the basis of circumstantial evidence, so we should not be quick to deride all judgments based on it.
In and of themselves, perhaps none of Machtan's points prove his thesis. Perhaps it means nothing that as a youth in Vienna Hitler frequented the same areas that were notorious for homosexual activity. It may simply be coincidence that Hitler and his best friend lingered around Bayreuth, worshipping Wagner along with gays from several European nations. It may be a failure of historical research that we can't place Hitler in anything resembling a normal relationship with a woman prior to Eva Braun. Perhaps we are misreading Hitler's boyhood infatuation with August Kubizek to suggest it was homosexual in nature. Perhaps Mend and numerous other witnesses who swore that Hitler had homosexual tendencies were seeking revenge or trying to sell sensationalistic stories to the international press. But is it possible that all these stories, all these possibilities, all these indications are wrong, that they are simply the concoctions of sick or vengeful or headline-seeking minds?
The flaws in Machtan's presentation should not be confused with errors of research. It will probably fall to those better qualified than Machtan in areas of sex and psychology to take the next step and tell us how Hitler's homosexuality (or at least his frustrated homosexuality) affected his political doctrines, but from here on historians are going to have to contend with Machtan's conclusions. As John Lukacs was fond of saying, "We are not finished with Hitler."
