[A] Hitler male-line relative’s swab collected … yielded a perfect Y-chromosome match. Whether they got the relative’s permission to use his DNA for this purpose is unclear. Still, they knew they had Hitler’s blood, and could squeeze it for genetic information.
The researchers … found robust evidence – the deletion of a letter from a gene called PROK2 – that Hitler had some form of a well-known but rare genetic disorder known as Kallmann syndrome, which prevents a person from starting or fully completing puberty. This chimes with medical records from Landsberg prison … [An] examining doctor certified Hitler with a “right-side cryptorchidism” – not quite the missing ball of the British second world war song, but an undescended right testicle. Up to 10% of people with Kallmann syndrome also have a “micropenis”; more prevalent symptoms are low or fluctuating testosterone levels.
Did he transform a sense of personal deficit, perhaps influenced by fluctuating testosterone levels, into an ideological cause? Did the Nazi führer have an inability to establish sexual connections that he compensated by marrying himself to the Fatherland?
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