London — Adolf Hitler most likely suffered from the genetic condition Kallmann Syndrome, researchers and documentary makers said Thursday, following DNA testing of the Nazi dictator’s blood. According to the Cleveland Clinic in the U.S., the syndrome can “disrupt the process that drives puberty” and manifest in symptoms that include undescended testicles and a micropenis.
The research also quashes the suggestion that Hitler had Jewish ancestry, the researcher say.
Popular World War II songs often mocked Hitler’s anatomy but lacked any scientific basis. The findings by an international team of scientists and historians now appear to confirm longstanding suspicions around his sexual development.
“No one has ever really been able to explain why Hitler was so uncomfortable around women throughout his life, or why he probably never entered into intimate relations with women,” said Alex Kay of the University of Potsdam. “But now we know that he had Kallmann Syndrome, this could be the answer we’ve been looking for.”
The research findings are featured in a new documentary, “Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator,” due to be broadcast on Saturday.
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The testing was made possible after researchers obtained a sample of Hitler’s blood from a piece of material taken from the sofa on which he shot himself.
The testing found a “high likelihood” that Hitler had Kallmann Syndrome, though Britain’s Guardian newspaper said in a Thursday article critical of the upcoming documentary that, “in their attempt to authenticate the blood,” the research team “failed to get a fresh DNA sample from any of Hitler’s surviving relatives in Austria and the U.S., who are all understandably reluctant about media exposure.”
The testing of Hitler’s DNA showed “very high” scores — in the top one percent — for a predisposition to autism, schizophrenia and biopolar disorder, program makers Blink Films said.
The Guardian article, however, said that many scientists aren’t comfortable using the kind of genetic testing cited by the researchers, known as “polygenic risk scores,” to indicate an individual’s likelihood of developing such disorders.
“Polygenic risk scores tell you something about population at large, not about individuals,” honorary professor David Curtis, at University College London’s Genetics Institute, told the Guardian. “If a test shows you to be in the upper percentile of polygenic risk, the actual risk of acquiring a condition may still be very low, even for conditions that are strongly influenced by genetic factors.”
The research team stressed that such conditions, even if Hitler did have them, also could not explain or excuse the Nazi leader’s warmongering or racist policies.
Over 50 million people are estimated to have died in World War II, including six million Jews were who were systematically murdered.
Geneticist Turi King, known for identifying the remains of medieval king Richard III and who also worked on the project, said Hitler’s genes put him in a category of people who were often sent to the gas chambers by the Nazis.
“Hitler’s policies are completely around eugenics,” said the expert in ancient and forensic DNA at the University of Bath in western England.
“If he had been able to look at his own DNA … he almost certainly would have sent himself,” she said.
Analysis “debunks this myth” that Hitler had a Jewish grandfather
The DNA results additionally rule out the possibility that Hitler had a Jewish grandfather via his grandmother, who was rumored to have gotten pregnant by an employer in whose home she worked.
“Analysis of the DNA debunks this myth by showing that the Y chromosome data matches the DNA of Hitler’s male line relative. If he had Jewish ancestry (through an outside relationship), that match wouldn’t be there,” the production company added.
Russia’s top diplomat, long-time Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, cited the unsubstantiated theory of Hitler’s Jewish lineage in 2022 as he defended Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin baselessly claimed was intended to “denazify” the neighboring country, led by Jewish President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.