THE MIND OF ADOLF HITLER: The Secret Wartime Report

by Walter C. Langer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 22, 1972

It was sometime in the spring of 1943, as nearly as I can now recall, that it happened,"" reminisces Dr. Langer in his introduction. A psychoanalyst, he had been working with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, the war intelligence agency, and it was at that time that General ""Wild Bill"" Donovan, OSS chief, requested a psychological profile of the Nazi Fuhrer -- ""the things that make him tick,"" Thus Langer ""became a psychological bedfellow to Adolph Hitler."" The result -- this document, written in that year and until its recent declassification by the government, inaccessible to students. It is, quite simply, a startlingly accurate predictive analysis of the Hitler personality and a pioneering work in what has now come to be called psychohistory. Using secondary sources as well as interview data gleaned from informants and captured aliens, Langer pieced together the Hitler we have come to certify over the past quarter of a century, a complex Hitler who was more than ""the crazy paperhanger depicted in popular prints"" around the time of Munich. Hitler was, writes Langer in 1943, a hairline schizophrenic, probably a sexual impotent and certainly masochistic, a man with conflicting role models as a child (he hated his father and had Oedipal impulses toward his mother), an insecure and uncertain leader who exhibited ""all the earmarks of a reaction formation that has been created unconsciously as a compensation and cover-up for deep-lying tendencies that he despises,"" a character marked by psychological projection, perversion, and fear of contamination. All of this seems rather tame stuff today; but at the time it was revelatory. Nevertheless, Dr. Langer, who is now retired, has no illusions about the influence of his report on American war strategy -- ""I like to believe that at least some of our top policy makers gave it more than a passing glance,"" but ""I am afraid that it came too late. The die had been cast, and the tides of war were gradually turning in our favor."" The real value, therefore--and this has enormous value--is that Langer's ""effort set the pattern for later investigations of this type,"" as his brother William, the historian, comments in the foreword. Pathbreaking Gotterdammerung.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION