11 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Was Hitler a virgin?
I’m a bit confused.
As a German, the only rumor I’ve ever heard of Hitler’s sex life, even despite reading multiple contemporary books on his personal life, were that of his illegitimate son, begotten in WW1.
Why does your commentary at no point address this?
I know Kershaw finds the legitimacy of Loret’s claims dubitable, but it does seem worth mentioning in a commentary on Hitler’s sexuality, doesn’t it?
Comment by Georgy_K_Zhukov at 03/11/2024 at 21:46 UTC
34 upvotes, 0 direct replies
To be honest? No. To call the claims about Jean-Marie Loret dubitable would still be overly credulous given how resoundingly rejected they are. I went back to check just what Kershaw uses to describe it, and he relegates it entirely to a footnote, where he note the "extreme unlikeliness" of it. The claim is almost entirely the product of Werner Maser, who, to be fair, was an historian and biographer, but an *extremely* problematic one who is considered to be very unreliable in general, and when it comes to Hitler's heirs, he had an absolutely *bizarre* conflict of interest because he somehow actually managed to get appointed the administer of Hitler's will at some point in the '70s by some of his heirs so he had some strange personal involvement going on in the whole thing, and possibly stood to have financial gain in supporting Loret's claim (I've never been able to find out *how* he got into that position, and the legality of his appointment is apparently in question as the legal department of *Stern* reviewed it during the *Hitler Diaries* fiasco and decided they could ignore him, but main point is, dude was bizarrely intertwined with the Hitler family).
Off hand, aside from Maser (who, again, should be considered someone *involved* rather than an outside observer) I can't think of *any* historian who gives any meaningful credence to the claims, so while it is an interesting enough side note in the broader genre of "weird things people claim about Hitler", it wasn't a claim being made *at the time*, so doesn't offer any real commentary on what we know about Hitler, or what people were claiming to know at the time, and only really speaks to the weird claims that crop up many, many years after his death.