Because I have devoted my life to the study of two major topics: sexuality and radical politics like Nazism, and trying to understand the connection to both, it is both a fascinating and a taboo subject. In the past, the saying went: gentlemen simply did not discuss such subjects. As a historian and sociology for the past fifty-plus years, but also as a child survivor of the Holocaust, I have had a lifelong interest in Nazism and the mind of Nazis—both men and women. Usually most histories of the Holocaust or Shoah avoid the sex lives of Nazis and their victims.
I wrote...
The Genocidal Mind: Sociological and Sexual Perspectives
This is arguably the greatest book on the mind of Hitler. Written by a psychoanalyst, it was a secret psychological report that came out during World War II in 1943 expressly for “Wild Bill” Donovan, director of the OSS, forerunner of the CIA.
Though quite common today in understanding people like Putin, Kim Jung Un, and other pathological world leaders, this was the first book to apply psychoanalytic insight to warfare. It described not only Hitler’s sexual deviance and obsessions but also correctly predicted his eventual suicide. There are many other books in this genre that followed Langer’s book: Robert G.L. Waite, The Psychopathic God-- Adolf Hitler; Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Mind of Adolf Hitler, introduction to Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-1944; and Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler.
Rosenbaum is an excellent and readable introduction to this field—the sexological explanation of the mind of Adolf Hitler and his relationships with women.
This is the best book dealing with Hitler’s relationship with women in general—as well as several women in particular who were obsessed with him and vice-versa. One thing I noticed sociologically was the number of women who committed suicide after having an affair or a relationship with Hitler; even his own suicide included the suicide of Eva Braun as well as Magda Goebbels and her six children.
In fact, in my essay Holocaust Suicides, in my book, I discuss the idea that Nazism was a culture based on self-destruction and suicide. There was no other alternative except Armageddon and Gotterdammerung, the "twilight of the Gods" marked by world-altering destruction, extreme chaos, and out-and-out violence.
Hitler would die bringing down all of Germany (and the world if he could) at the same time. The Nazi women who committed suicide included Geli Raubal (more on her in the next book), Unity Mitford, and Maria “Mimi” Reiter, the first of a number of women who were driven to despair by Hitler.
However, all historians would agree with Alan Bullock, the great Oxford don: “…there is a strong presumption that Hitler was incapable of normal sexual relations” (Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, 1993, p. 373). Similar books include Jill Stephenson's Women in Nazi Society and Katharine Thomas's Women in Nazi Germany.
In part, this is the story of how ordinary women were wooed by the Nazis and married into the Third Reich, stabilizing and supporting the Fascist revolution and guaranteeing it survival into the next generation. But it is also the story of the women close to Hitler, such as Magda Goebbels, the high-profile wife of Hitler's minister of propaganda. What happened to this devoted mother os six, the poster-child of family values during the Third Reich, that led her to poison her children? Finally, "Nazi Women" looks at the background to Hitler's won relationships and attitudes to the opposite sex,…
Hayman is not a scholar or trained historian but a stage director and biographer; therefore, he writes wonderfully. In 1931, aged twenty-three, Geli Raubal was found dead in the Munich flat she shared with Adolf Hitler, his revolver on the floor and an unfinished letter on the table. Hitler was shattered by his niece’s death and never spoke of it for the rest of his life.
To this day, we are not sure if this was a suicide or a homicide. Was she killed by Hitler’s henchmen because she knew too much about his deviant sex life (He reached orgasm by women urinating, defecating, and humiliating him) or because she hated his micro-management control over her life? In any case, aside from Eva Braun, who he married before they both committed suicide, Geli was the love of his life, even if it was never consummated sexually in a normal way.
A companion piece to this is a novel by Ron Hansen, Hitler’s Niece: A Novel; Hansen is a professor of Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara (CA) University.
Few people know of the affair Adolf Hitler had with his niece, Geli Raubal. The couple shared a strangely intense, passionate relationship, but it was always dogged by Hitler's intolerance, his chauvinistic attitude to women, and his possessive jealousy.
In 1931, aged twenty-three, Geli Raubal was found dead in the Munich flat she shared with Hitler, his revolver on the floor, and an unfinished letter on the table. Hitler was shattered by his niece's death, and for the rest of his life couldn't speak of her without becoming emotional.
Hitler & Geli is the remarkable and little-known story of the…
While the title and even the prose are a bit off-putting, suggesting a dry academic account, it is actually quite readable. Mosse, the late Bascom professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was one of the great historians of Europe and of Nazism. See his classic book Nazi Culture: A Documentary History. Mosse presents a nuanced and complex analysis of nationalism and respectability.
He shows how concepts like sexuality “haunted” bourgeois society and European nationalism and led to society’s control over sexuality. The sexual excesses of the Weimar Republic between World War I and the rise of Nazism in 1933 were a threat to bourgeois society and thus had to be controlled or destroyed, especially “abnormal” behavior (Homosexuality, transvestism, sexual orgies, wild music).
We see the same thing happening in America and the West: a return to “respectable” authoritarianism (read: fascism) suppressing sexuality, birth control, and child-rearing..
This 1973 book got me started in this field over 50 years ago, and is still endlessly fascinating. Bleuel examines nearly every aspect of Nazi culture: male and female roles, the good wife and mother. There was even special medals (I have one) called Mutters Medal—a bronze for five children; a silver for 7; and a gold medal for 10 or more kids; divorce (actually quite common if the wife could not bear children); adultery (also quite common, as long as it produced babies); legal brothels; and of course “degeneracy” (perverted sex that did not produce Aryan blonds for the Fatherland (homosexuality, abortion, transvestism).
The movie and play Cabaret and the Roku series Berlin Babylon perfectly describe the forces of fascism trying to destroy “abnormal” sex.
Compare this book to Peter Gay’s Weimar Culture and Robert Beachy’s Gay Berlin.
My book offers unique and under-explored analyses of the Holocaust and the phenomenon of 20th-century genocide within a sociological framework.
With reference to contemporary scholarly work and using the latest in social structural, psychoanalytical, post-modern, chaos, and uncertainty theory, I attempt to explain why people dehumanize and kill other innocent people. I also probe the deviant, sexual side of the Nazi party, including the mind of Adolf Hitler.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
