FEMMES FATALE
Stalking ‘perfect Aryan’ teen, warped sex acts and sinister death of niece, 16, after affair… Hitler’s sick love life
The evil German dictator's twisted relationships followed a grisly pattern... that too often had fatal consequences
HE was courted by the doyennes of Germany's high society but Adolf Hitler's own dark obsession and warped sexual fantasies revolved around much younger women.
The Fuhrer, hailed as a rockstar politician by wealthy women who sought to refine him, bedded a series of teens including his own 16-year-old niece - who met a tragic death as consequence.
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Behind closed doors, he also indulged extreme sexual fantasies - getting one naked lover to put on his own boots and savagely kick him.
His deadly affairs also led to at least one other mysterious death and the attempted suicide of a 17-year-old, who was 20 years his junior.
Now, a new Sky History documentary, Hitler’s Handmaidens, details the Fuhrer’s secret sex life and relationships with the women he wanted to keep hidden.
Author and historian Jane Thynne says: “What is interesting about many of the women that had relationships with Hitler is that they either attempted or, or committed suicide, and he patently had a very, very potent traumatising and almost desolating effect on women to cause them to try and kill themselves.”
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Experts believe that Hitler’s bizarre relationships with women began with the very first one in his life - his mother.
When Hitler was born in Austria in April 1889, he was his mother Klara’s fourth child - but the only one to live - and she was determined that little Adolf would not only survive but thrive.
While he was doted on and spoiled by his devoted mother, he was brutalised by his alcoholic father. Historians have been left wondering if Klara loved her son too much, and this is what warped his future relationships with women.
Psychologist Anna Motz says: “Hitler’s relationship with women appears to have been extremely complicated. So we know from the records that he had this enmeshed, over-involved relationship with a loving, protective mother.
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"And he was brutalised by a man who appears to have been sadistic and violent. So, on the one hand, he’s seeking this maternal comfort. On the other hand, he doesn’t seem able to relate to women who are his equals.”
But Klara’s never-questioning love for her son gave him one thing - huge self-belief. He had an unswerving faith in his opinions and thought of himself as devastatingly handsome and intelligent.
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Disturbing fantasies
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Hitler was convinced he was meant for greater things, and his steadfast ambition would eventually cast a shadow over Europe.
But his first teenage crush didn’t go how he planned. An awkward Hitler became enthralled with 19-year-old Stefanie Isak, a tall, blonde and wealthy music student a couple of years older than him.
Historian Phil Carradice explains: “He worshipped her. She was the ideal Germanic woman, the Aryan woman. And for two years, two years, Adolf Hitler followed her, stalked her, for want of a better word, but never spoke to her.”
Disturbingly, he told his friend he wanted to kidnap her and marry her, followed by fantasies that they would kill themselves by jumping off a bridge together.
Thankfully, he never carried out his twisted plan, and shortly afterwards, his mother died, leaving him devastated.
Every day for the rest of his life, he carried a picture of her in his pocket. But the young Adolf was rejected by the Austrian army and found himself homeless and destitute.
So, he joined the Germans fighting against the Western allies.
One story claims that in the summer of 1917, Hitler was on leave from the war and met a 16-year-old French girl in the countryside. They had a brief sexual encounter, which resulted in the birth of his illegitimate child.
Later analysis showed that the men who could be father and son shared the same unusual handwriting, but experts say the patronage is impossible to prove.
Cruellest Nazi women
Herta Oberheuser
When American soldiers liberated the Ravensbruck concentration camp for women, they saw evidence of unimaginable atrocities.
But one person in particular haunted the survivors. They told of a “beast masquerading as a human”— female doctor Herta Oberheuser.
Historian Wendy Lower explains: “She’s been assigned to experiments to test the effects of wounds on the human body. If they can see how a wound that’s inflicted by shrapnel is going to affect an ordinary German soldier and all the ways that could be treated.
"She’s putting sawdust in there, putting glass shards, putting various chemicals and rubbing that in.
Pauline Kneissler
In late 1939 Hitler turned his attention to euthanasia in the pursuit of racial purity. His sinister secret T4 programme was an opportunity for him to murder anybody who they thought of as disabled.
Pauline Kneissler was one of the nurses hand-picked to make Grafeneck Castle, near Stuttgart, an efficient killing site.
She would travel to different institutions with a list of names and then bus them back to the castle and murder them - with Lower estimating she killed as many as 70 a day.
Irma Grese
There was one woman whose crimes were so brutal and sadistic that the Nuremberg judges had no choice but to order her execution - Irma Grese.
Known as the Hyena of Auschwitz, she had a reputation for stomping on prisoners or setting her attack dogs on them.
She was the lover and accomplice of the camp’s ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele, helping him with the selections where prisoners were chosen for monstrous medical experiments or sent to the gas chambers.
As well as her affair with Mengele, Grese was also believed to have had flings with male guards, and it was alleged she even raped female prisoners.
Hermine Braunsteiner
Despite Irma Grese’s death penalty, most of the female concentration camp guards escaped justice, and many went on to live long and happy lives.
One of these was Hermine Braunsteiner, the woman known as the “Stomping Mare” - a camp guard at Majdanek who liked to stomp on prisoners and was known for her particular sadistic tendencies.
She married an American in her native Austria after the war and moved to the US. However, she was later discovered living in New York and was extradited.
Whether or not he did father that child, it is a fact that throughout his adult life, Hitler sought out maternal figures, perhaps to replace his own mother.
To these older, rich women - many of whom shared his extremist political and anti-Semitic views - Hitler appeared charming and destined for greater things despite being rough around the edges.
Most of these women were married, which also suited Hitler because his vow to be only married to Germany gained him adoration from the millions of young German women who were sending their sons off to war.
To them, he was the rockstar politician who expects have likened to the Elvis figure of his day.
Women like socialites Helene Bechstein from the piano-making dynasty, real-life princess Elsa Bruckmann, and Winifred Wagner, daughter of composer Richard, took Hitler under their wing and taught him how to kiss a lady’s hand and eat lobster in public.
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Historian Phil Carradice explains: “Hitler was a rough and tumble country boy. But suddenly, these women took him over and said, we will show you how to carry on, how to live, how to be successful in society.
"Because if you want to make it big, that’s where you need to put your effort. That’s where the money lies. And you need to, uh, to get people on your side. We will teach you how to eat and drink in public.”
Hitler knew he needed these aristocratic families on his side to be taken seriously politically.
And while he would lay his head on these ladies’ bosoms and let them stroke him, their relationships remained purely platonic. His sexual tastes lay with women much younger.
Twisted sexual demands
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In 1926, Hitler gave a speech in Bavaria, where he met a 16-year-old blonde girl called Mitzi. He was 37. This age gap would become a theme for his future lovers.
Mitzi was just 17 years old when she began a sexual relationship with Hitler, which he abruptly called off to devote his life to his politics. A distraught Mitzi tried to kill herself.
Author and historian Jane Thynne says: “What is interesting about many of the women that had relationships with Hitler is that they either attempted or, or committed suicide, and he patently had a very, very potent traumatising and almost desolating effect on women to cause them to try and kill themselves.”
While Mitzi survived, some of Hitler’s other young secret lovers would not.
Hitler became infatuated with his 16-year-old niece, Geli Raubal. She wanted the bright lights of Munich, so when it was suggested she could live with him in the city, she quickly agreed.
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But her move provided the perfect cover for Hitler’s sinister intentions.
Their relationship became intimate, and Hitler became more controlling, jealous of the attention the teenager got from other men. It got to the point where she could barely do anything without his say-so.
But in September 1931 Geli was found dead in Hitler’s apartment - with a bullet in her chest and his gun by her side.
Phil Carradice says: “During the nights, Geli locked herself into her room. She took Hitler's Mauser pistol with her, and she shot herself and killed herself. Possibly. The body was found the next day by the housekeeper.
"But I have doubts about that one. If you're going to kill yourself with a gun you normally would aim there, into the, into the head. That's guaranteed. Geli shot herself in the heart.”
Police quickly ruled her death as suicide, and Geli was quickly buried, while a distraught Hitler considered giving up politics altogether.
Sinister death
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But a year later, he met another young lover - 26-year-old movie star Renate Muller.
Again, Hitler’s sexual depravity was to be her downfall. She claimed that one night, when they were both naked, he asked her to put her boots on and kick him, which she did.
But Renate did not keep this salacious information to herself, and that brought her to the attention of the Gestapo.
She was put under surveillance, and when she took a Jewish lover, she was blacklisted, and her career was over.
The young woman developed a morphine addiction and was sent to a sanitorium in Berlin for treatment in late October 1937.
A team of SS officers were seen entering the building, and a few minutes later, she was dead. The cause of death was ruled as suicide, but rumours of foul play persisted.
“Ultimately Renate had a terrible end in that she was being treated as, in a clinic for quotes depression and fell out of a window,” says Jane Thynne.
“But falling out of a window was a way that very many enemies of the regime met their end. It wasn't an unusual way actually to be murdered in the Third Reich.”
Despite these suspicious deaths, women still idolised Hitler. At his rallies, women would be seen in tears, idolising him and wanting to get near him.
Fuhrer's wife
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But there was one woman who fell so completely under his spell that, in the end, she gave her life to join him in death - Eva Braun.
Hitler was entranced by the young photography studio assistant, but at first, she spurned his advances, which only spurned him.
But she soon fell for him - despite him being more than two decades older - and longed for their affair to be made public.
When Hitler ignored her or didn’t call, she fell into depression and even tried to take her own life on two occasions.
But this forced Hitler’s hand. Robert Kaplan explains: “Hitler’s relationship with Eva has been much speculated on.
"But there were two suicide attempts, and in a sense, he was then trapped because after Geli, if he had a partner who killed themselves again, his public image would be shot.”
Eva had always wanted to be the wife of the Fuhrer. And as the war in Europe is in its last throes, they marry in his bunker - just 36 hours before they took their own lives.
Jane Thynne says: “They got married on the last day. So it was a kind of death wish, but in a way, her entire relationship with Hitler had been a death wish, but it was the culmination of that.
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“I think what Hitler did in marrying Eva, right at the end, is a way of not seeing her as a person yet again. It’s not a way of saying how can I answer your needs, her needs really would be to get in, to escape by any means possible. It’s a way of saying, ‘You have served me loyally and here is your reward.’
Hitler’s Handmaidens is on Sky HISTORY every Tuesday at 9pm
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