A secret recording of Adolf Hitler’s voice helped experts who studied his DNA conclude that he did go through puberty as normal despite having a serious condition which affects sexual development.
The clip, made by a Finnish sound engineer in 1942 without the Nazi dictator’s knowledge, is the only known recording of Hitler’s normal speaking voice.
It was listened to by leading geneticist Professor Turi King for a two-part Channel 4 documentary.
Professor King was part of a team of international experts who used a blood-stained strip of fabric taken from the Nazi dictator’s sofa to study his DNA.
The results showed that Hitler had a rare condition called Kallman Syndrome.
Symptoms include abnormal genital development and low testosterone, and most sufferers do not go through puberty. Up to ten per cent are left with a micro-penis.
In the second episode of Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint Of A Dictator, Professor King listens with fellow expert Professor Jorma Toppari to the chilling audio of Hitler’s musings to Carl Mannerheim, the chief of Finland’s military forces.
Professor Toppari, a physiology expert, concludes after listening: ‘It shows he had gone through puberty and he had his voice break.’
Professor King adds: ‘So that sounds like a grown man’s voice…his voice is quite deep really.’
A secret recording of Adolf Hitler’s voice helped experts who studied his DNA conclude that he did go through puberty as normal despite having a serious condition which affects sexual development
The new research also found that Hitler was in the top one per cent of people at risk of having schizophrenia, bi-polar and autism.
Hitler may also have had a ‘micro-penis’. Up to 10 per cent of boys with Kallmann Syndrome end up with very small genitalia.
It is though more common for sufferers to end up with testes that ‘don’t descend normally to the scrotum’, Professor Jorma Toppari says.
Whatever was wrong with his genitals, Hitler is known to have been bullied by his army comrades in the First World War.
Professor Bret Kahr, of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, tells Channel 4: ‘When he was a young man, in the army and got… undressed in front of his fellow soldiers, the other men would make fun and say to him, your penis is smaller than everybody else’s.
‘That is potentially more psychologically traumatic for a young boy, a young man, than anything else.’
The notion that Hitler only had one testicle has been one delightedly repeated by successive generations.
It was the subject too of one particularly mischievous wartime song.
The clip was made by a Finnish sound engineer in 1942 without the Nazi dictator’s knowledge, during a meeting (pictured) with Finnish military chief Carl Mannerheim
The famous British tune went: ‘Hitler has only got one ball,
‘Göring has two but very small,
‘Himmler is rather sim’lar,
‘But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.’
In the 1941 meeting with Mannerheim, Hitler was recorded by Finnish sound engineer Thor Damen.
Damen had been present as part of a team to record an official reception and speeches, but he then kept his equipment running over lunch.
The dictator says in the clip: ‘If somebody had told me a nation could start with 35,000 tanks, then I’d have said: “You are crazy!”‘
The Channel 4 programme also examined the records of Hitler’s doctor, which show the dictator was given testosterone injections – a standard treatment for people with Kallman Syndrome.
Adolf Hitler as a baby with his mother Klara, who died of cancer when he was 18
Explaining the condition, Professor Toppari, a specialist at Finland‘s Turku University, adds: ‘Most of the ones with Kallman syndrome don’t enter puberty because they don’t produce testosterone.
‘The severity of the syndrome can be very variable.’
The impact on Hitler was not severe enough to stop his body producing the testosterone he needed in adolescence to go through puberty.
But diminished levels in later life may explain his strange relationship with women.
Professor Topari adds in tomorrow’s documentary: ‘He might not have had sexual desire because that is the specific symptom of lack of testosterone.’
‘Women were of course also idolising him, bringing him flowers and screaming and everything like a popstar but he doesn’t seem to take that as a hint to anything else.
‘He is not interested in sex.’
Christa Schroeder, Hitler’s trusted secretary, believed he never had sex, not even with Braun.
According to one expert, of the seven women Hitler was romantically linked to, three took their own lives and at least three more – including his long-term partner Eva Braun, attempted it.
Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister, in his memoir Inside the Third Reich, remembered Hitler’s strange relationship with women.
‘He spoke more about their figures than their charm or cleverness, and always there was something in his tone of the school-boy who is convinced that his wishes are unattainable’.
That view echoed what his former comrade Joseph Goebbels had recorded in his diary: ‘He really is very lonely. Has no luck with women.’
Among the women Hitler was close to was his half-niece Geli Rauabal. She ended up shooting herself with his gun in 1931.
Professor Kahr also hints that Hitler’s sexual issues may have affected his twisted character and fuelled his rage.
The expert says: ‘He really did struggle to feel comfortable with women and that in itself can be an act of great shame.
‘And the earlier that shaming exercise takes place, the more rage, fury and murderousness will develop in one’s psyche.’
The second part of Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint Of A Dictator, is screened on Channel 4 at 9.05pm on Saturday.
