Once again, the question of Hitler’s alleged undescended testicle has come into the public glare. Channel 4, a TV network in the United Kingdom, is broadcasting a documentary, Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator, where a blood-drenched piece of fabric from the sofa Hitler was sitting on when he blew his brains out is analysed for his DNA. And the documentary claims that it may offer proof that Hitler really did only have one ball (testicle).
DISCOVER: Ten weird facts about Hitler
During the Second World War (1939-1945), British soldiers sang a mischievous ditty:
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.
This inferred that Hitler suffered from monorchism, that is only one testicle is present. Or, he may have had cryptorchidism where both testicles are present in the body but one or both have failed to descend. There’s also a claim that the leader of the Third Reich was poorly endowed with a mere micro-penis.
Now, many historians believe this was just a way of mocking the enemy in wartime by suggesting that those in charge were less than masculine – especially as the Nazis liked to project a very macho image. So what better, to rile them, than to poke fun at their manhood.
However, there have been persistent attempts to prove, scientifically, that Hitler really did only have one ball. The latest purported evidence centres on this strip of fabric taken by an American soldier in the closing days of the war in Germany. The researchers collaborating with the new documentary believe they can show that Hitler had a rare genetic disorder called Kallmann Syndrome. This stops the sufferer completing, or even starting, the process of puberty.
Hitler’s surviving relatives have been, unsurprisingly, not very willing to share their DNA. Adolf Hitler is a family member they’d rather forget. And of course, some might ponder whether the sample is heavily contaminated as often happens with old DNA. With the new documentary, there have been assurances that there is no serious cross-contamination. The genome obtained has gaps but the Y chromosome matches a male relative of Hitler.
One other result of the analysis is that Hitler does not seem to have had Jewish ancestry after all.
