Was Hitler Molested?
June 16, 2016
by William P. Meyers

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Is it possible Adolf Hitler was a Pedophile Priest Victim?

What bent Adolf Hitler out of shape to the point that he became responsible for the deaths of perhaps 50 million people? Why do we Americans know so little about his childhood? Was he abused by a Catholic priest?

I just finished reading Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, which raises the large issue of "violent faith." It made me think about my Roman Catholic upbringing, Catholic history, my personal history with the extreme left, the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump campaigns, and the like. The book is ostensibly about a particular murder by a tiny fundamentalist Mormon (Latter Day Saints) splinter group, but it also looks deeply at LDS history, which is pretty violent.

And for the first time it occurred to me that since Hitler was raised (and remained until his death) Roman Catholic, that part of his nature could be a reaction to a priest. In particular, to a pederast priest. I don't know if that is an original idea, but I am pretty well read when it comes to Hitler, Nazis, and fascism, and I have never heard it.

Yet it is a piece that causes a much larger pattern to immediately fall into place. If true, it explains a lot, including Hitler's ambivalent attitude to his own religion.

Many Americans don't even know Hitler was Roman Catholic. That became an inconvenient truth after World War II when the Vatican teamed up with the imperialist powers to take on the communist states. There are some valid arguments over exactly how Catholic Hitler was, but the myth that he was not Catholic does not hold up to fair scrutiny. For my own view see Hitler's Catholicism and my Adolf Hitler page.

Hitler's Youth

He was born in Austria on April 20, 1889. His youth was spent at various towns mostly near the German border, and at times in Germany itself. Both Austria and southern Germany (Bavaria) are predominantly Roman Catholic.

Presumably at each town he lived in he attended the local Catholic Church. As the son of a petty bureaucrat, he would have had the status to be invited to be an altar boy, but if he was, there is no record of it that I know of. At that time pederasty would have been kept secret by both the Church and the victims. Despite the difficulties, it would be interesting to see if any records exist for the various priests at churches young Adolf would have attended.

According to William Shire (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p 11-12):

By the time the son was fifteen he could remember seven changes of address and five different schools. For two years he attended classes at the Benedictine monastery at Lambach ... There he sang in the choir, took singing lessons and, according to his own account, dreamed of one day taking holy orders [becoming a priest]

We do know Adolf attended a public school in Fishlham and then the Realschule (high school) in Linz. Hitler's father Alois died in 1903. In 1905 Hitler graduated from the Realschule in Steyr. He had never done well in school. He did not go to college, but in those days just having a high school diploma was a sign of status.

Of course, having an authoritarian father like Alois can bend a child out of shape, and so can constantly switching schools and so always being the new kid. Or Adolf might have been born evil. Yet he showed no obvious signs of being evil until after serving in World War I.

Hitler's Feuds with the Catholic Church

That the Catholic Church, right on up to the Pope, helped elevate Hitler to power is well-documented. [See, for instance, The Vatican in World Politics by Avro Manhattan and Hitler and the Vatican by Peter Godman. Or my summary Pius XI and the Rise of Adolf Hitler]

On the other hand, Hitler was certainly not an ordinary church-going, follow-the-Pope's-orders Catholic. Hitler put German nationalism above Catholicism. He also was an astute politician in a nation that was majority Protestant (mostly Lutheran) with a sizeable number of atheists and agnostics (who tended to belong to the Socialist and Communist parties). He also had no issue with recruiting from the lunatic fringe, in particular if they were promoting German pagan mythology.

Every person who joined the Nazi Party had to declare that they were Christian. Even the pagans and agnostics. The top leadership of the Nazi Party were diverse, but many besides Hitler were Catholic, and some were church-going. There was even a group called "SA of Jesus Christ." [Karl Bracher, The German Dictatorship, page 380]

Centeral to my thesis that Hitler may have been abused by a priest while a child is the Nazi clampdown on pederast priests.

Often described as a politically motivated campaign to bring the Churches (Lutheran and Catholic) into line, after signing a deal with the Pope in 1933, "During the next years thousands of Catholic priests, nuns and lay leaders were arrested, many of them on trumped up charges of immorality." [Shire, page 235]

But we now know that pederasty has had a home in the Catholic priesthood for centuries if not millennia. The immorality Shire refers to was pederasty. Maybe Hitler really did not like pederasty. Maybe the charges were not "trumped up." Given that most priests were left alone, and many were supporters, even ardent supporters of the Nazi regime, it would be interesting to know exactly who selected priests to be arrested and whether the charges were true. Presumably there are trial transcripts to sort through. Bracher states there were "show trials" of Catholic priests and bishops conducted in 1935. Just because we don't like Nazi's doe not mean that priests were not guilty of some of the charges brought against them.

And if these "persecutions" show Hitler did not like pederast priests, perhaps he or his childhood friends had encountered them. Sadly, that would be hard to prove or disprove at this point.

If anyone can spare some grant money, I would be happy to do the research. Or maybe some German graduate student in history would like to take this on.