One of the most brutal tyrants in history has been diagnosed with a schizophrenic on a mission to avenge his childhood of repressed anger, according to Henry Murray, an American psychologist and professor at Harvard.
In 1943, the United States Strategic Services Service, a predecessor to the CIA, commissioned Murray to investigate the identity of Adolf Hitler to try to predict his behavior. In its 229-page report, “Analysis of the personality of Adolf HitlerMurray described Hitler as a paranoid “complete wreck” who was “incapable of normal human relations.”
“It is forever impossible to hope for any mercy or welfare on his part,” Murray wrote.
After a disappointing childhood, Hitler felt compelled to exercise supremacy in all things.
Hitler suffered from an unbearable sense of inferiority, largely due to his small, fragile, and painful physical appearance as a child.
He refused to go to school because he was ashamed that he was a bad student compared to his classmates.
His mother reassured him by letting him drop out.
“He never did manual work, never did athletics and was rejected as forever unfit for enlistment in the Austrian army,” Murray wrote.
Hitler managed his insecurity by worshiping “brute force, physical force, ruthless domination and military conquest.”
Even sexually, Hitler is described as a “full-fledged masochist” who humiliates and abuses his partners.
Much of his anger stems from a heavy Oedipus complex.
As a child, Hitler experienced the Oedipus complex – love of mother and hatred of father – which he developed after accidentally seeing his parents have sex, Murray’s report said.
Hitler obeyed and respected his father, but saw him as an enemy who ruled the family “with tyrannical sternness and injustice.” According to the report, Hitler envied his father’s masculine power and dreamed of humiliating him in order to restore “his mother’s lost glory.”
For 16 years, Hitler showed no form of ambition or competition because his father had died and had not yet found a new enemy.
Hitler often felt discouraged.
Another blow to Hitler’s manhood: he was “incapable of consuming in a normal way,” according to old sexual partners with Murray.
“We must acknowledge this weakness as a stimulus to an unquenchable longing for superiority. Unable to demonstrate masculine power to a woman, he is forced to compensate by showing unsurpassed power to men in the world at large, “he wrote.
As mentioned, when Hitler did have sex with a woman, he behaved masochistically. Hitler is said to have many partners, but eventually married his longtime mistress Eva Brown, hours before the two committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.
He suffered from indecision and collapsed under pressure.
Even at the height of his power, Hitler suffered from frequent emotional collapses from a guilty conscience.
“He has nightmares of bad conscience and has long spells when the energy, confidence and strength of decision abandon him,” Murray wrote.
According to Murray, Hitler’s cycle from utter despair to reaction followed this pattern:
• Emotional outburst, anger and accusatory indignation, ending in tears and self-pity.
• There are periods of inertia, exhaustion, melancholy and indecision.
• Followed by hours of acute depression and anxious nightmares.
• Leading to hours of recovery.
• Finally, a confident and decisive solution for a counterattack with great force and ruthlessness.
The five-step evolution could last from 24 hours to several weeks, the report said
He is ashamed of his mixed heritage.
Hitler valued the “pure, unmixed and uncorrupted German blood” he associated with aristocracy and beauty, according to Murray.
He offered the following explanation for Hitler’s contempt for mixed blood:
• As a twelve-year-old boy, Hitler was caught participating in a sexual experiment with a little girl; and later appears to have developed syphilophobia, with a diffuse fear of blood contamination on contact with a woman.
• It is almost certain that this irrational fear is due in part to the association in his mind with sexuality and excretion. He thought of sex as extremely dirty.
Hitler denied that his father was born illegally and had at least two failed marriages, that his grandfather and godfather were Jews, and that one of his sisters was the mistress of a wealthy Jew.
He directed his hatred of the Jews because they were an easy target.
Murray explains that Jews are a clear demographic feature for Hitler to project his personal disappointments and failures because “they do not retaliate with fists and weapons.”
The Jews were therefore an easy and unmilitarized target that he could blame for almost anything, including the catastrophic consequences after Treaty of Versailles.
Anti-Semitic cartoons also link Jews to several of Hitler’s antipathies, including business, materialism, democracy, capitalism, and communism. He was eager to deprive some Jews of their wealth and power.
He was grim, awkward, and complimented on the color of his eyes.
According to Murray’s report, Hitler received frequent compliments for his gray-blue eyes, even though they were described as “dead, impersonal and invisible.”
He was slightly below average height and had a receding hairline, thin lips, and well-shaped arms.
Murray notes that the ruthless Nazi leader was known for offering a weak handshake with “wet and sticky” palms and uncomfortable making small conversations.
Sources claim that Hitler appeared to be shy or gloomy when meeting people and was uncoordinated in his gestures. He was also incredibly picky about his food.
Here is Murray’s full report:
Analysis of the personality of Adolf Hitler from Amanda macias of Scribd