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- [00:00]
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- [01:38]
Professor Turi King
This episode is.
- [01:39]
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- [02:10]
Podcast Host (Matt)
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Listeners in the UK might have seen headlines in recent days about a two part Channel 4 documentary, Hitler's blueprint of a Dictator, which uses ground evidence drawn from the Nazi leader's genetic makeup to put forward new analysis of his life and character. I caught up with two of the experts behind the documentary earlier this week and we'll be hearing from them in just a moment. But first, we want to hear your thoughts on this was testing Hitler's DNA a good thing? Do you have questions for the experts? Let us know. You can email podcastistoryextra.com and if we get enough questions, we'll see if we can get the experts back onto the podcast to talk some more about this. But for now, I'm delighted to say that I'm joined by those experts.
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Dr. Alex Kay
Hi, I'm Alex Kay. I'm a British historian based in Germany at the University of Potsdam, where I specialise in Nazi Germany and comparative research on genocide and mass violence.
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Professor Turi King
And I'm Professor Turi King. I'm an expert in ancient and forensic DNA and I am director of the Milner center for Evolution at the University of Bath.
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Podcast Host (Matt)
Thank you so much, both of you, for being with us. I wanted to get into some of the analysis and some of the findings that the programme makes in a minute. Before we do, though, I'm interested to hear from you both. How did you get involved in this project and did you have any concerns, I suppose, about getting involved?
- [03:36]
Dr. Alex Kay
So I got involved in this project. In March 2023, I was contacted by Dan Chambers from Blink Films. They'd already been working on this project for quite some time. I know that Toury was already involved and they were looking for a lead historian for the program and we met in London. I happened to be there doing some research and, you know, the project sounded fascinating, also the length of time they'd already been working on it. And my big concern was because there's so much out there about Hitler, so many documentaries, so many studies, so many books. It was important for me that this was going to be done in a serious way, not sensationally, really following the science and very much based on research and evidence. Everybody was involved with the project. They were clearly following science and really wanted to do a good job and make sure it was as ironclad as possible in terms of the research and the evidence. So that obviously reassured me.
- [04:34]
Professor Turi King
So I got brought on almost exactly four years ago. My kind of first question was, you know, I don't want to be involved in this if this is going to be done in a sensationalist way. And then I did actually agonize over it because of who it is. But then, you know, as an ancient DNA specialist, there have been thousands of individuals, you know, archeological and historical specimens that have had their whole genome sequenced, including Beethoven. And I was thinking, well, you know, why should Hitler be seen as this kind of mystical figure who we could never do this DNA analysis on, and who is it who makes those kinds of decisions? And I thought, okay, well, that seems wrong to me. And as Alex has said, I mean, he has been the subject of so many books and articles and television programs and so on and so forth. This would add a new layer of information that hasn't been available before. And the other thing was, is that the DNA sample, or rather the swatch, was being made available for DNA analysis. Somebody's going to do this at some point, so let's make sure it's done in an absolutely rigorous way. And my first question was, you know, is this actually Hitler's DNA? So my first kind of role in this was to go through the entire process about authenticating that DNA.
- [05:58]
Podcast Host (Matt)
So let's get into some of that, in case people haven't yet seen the documentary, to talk about the Swatch you mentioned there, and about how all of this process started coming into being. Can you talk, Alex, about the final days of Hitler's life and how they enabled the specific set of circumstances that have allowed all of this research to happen?
- [06:15]
Dr. Alex Kay
Yeah. Hitler spent the last weeks of his life in his Berlin bunker virtually the entire time, only very occasionally going up into the garden of the Reich Chancellery building. And by that point, the Soviets were attacking the city. Right. The Red army had already entered Berlin and was fighting its way to the centre of Berlin, where the government headquarters was, where Nazi power was based on, and of course, Hitler's bunker as well. And then at some point, Hitler realized that the war was definitively lost, that the Soviets would reach him within a matter of days. And then he took this decision to commit suicide, which we know from eyewitness accounts he did by shooting himself in his study on the now notorious Surfer. And it's from this Surfer that the piece of fabric was taken with the blood sample.
- [07:10]
Podcast Host (Matt)
And who took the sample from the sofa? And do we know why they did that?
- [07:15]
Professor Turi King
So this was Colonel Roswell Rosengran, who was a public information officer for Eisenhower during the war. And as Alex has been saying, you know, the Red army is in charge and apparently very few people are allowed to go into the bunker, but he is one of them. And I kind of have this image, I suppose, of, you know, youngish men. The war is over and this is where Hitler has killed himself. And they get into the bunker and they start to take souvenirs, essentially. And among those souvenirs that Rosengren takes is he cuts a sample out of the sofa, takes a swatch away, and rather crucially, what it's got on it is blood from where Hitler's killed himself.
- [07:53]
Podcast Host (Matt)
Did he have any idea when he took it that it was likely to specifically be Hitler's blood?
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Professor Turi King
Well, that you would have to ask the family, but my understanding is that yes. I mean, it was from the sofa. It's then brought back to the US and kept in the family for several decades, then passed down to his son, who I had the pleasure of talking to, who knew this entire story about how it had been brought into the family and then sold to the Gettysburg Museum of History a few years ago. And it was they who had been offering it for DNA analysis.
- [08:28]
Podcast Host (Matt)
And why has all this happened now, given that that sample was in this museum all this time?
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Professor Turi King
I think part of it has to do with genetic technology and what's become available over the last sort of 10 to 20 years. We are now able to do more and more in of sequencing. The field of ancient and historical DNA has kind of really taken off in the last 10 to 20 years. So we now have the ability to do this sort of thing, which is why kind of everything's kind of come together to make it happen.
- [08:57]
Podcast Host (Matt)
And one of the things the program explores is that there were multiple rejections from European institutions because they were uncomfortable with testing specifically Hitler's DNA. Did that cause you any concerns yourselves, or was it one of those things that you thought, well, it's necessary for us to do this, even despite that?
- [09:13]
Professor Turi King
Well, it was something where certain labs were. They would have a think about it. They might go to the kind of people who are on the board and they would go, no, we don't feel comfortable with doing this. I mean, this is something that Alex and I have spoken about. So I'm Canadian and I have a lot of colleagues in the US And I think for us, this sort of shadow of Hitler doesn't feel as close as it must do to people here. And that's going to be to do with geographical distance, I think, to some extent, in the end, the two labs that did the sequencing, because you want the sequencing done in two separate labs to make sure you're getting the same results in both labs. They're both in the US where the sample is.
- [09:55]
Dr. Alex Kay
Actually, I wasn't entirely surprised when I was told that a number of European labs had decided not to get involved. As I said earlier, I'm based in Germany, and there is a lot of awareness of the long shadow that Hitler still casts here, even 80 years after his death. There's a great reluctance to get involved with anything that could be used for kind of sensationalist purposes or where somebody could get hold of it and maybe.
- [10:25]
Professor Turi King
Distort the facts and that understandably, I think one of the things that's been really difficult about this project is, you know, trying to work to get the academic paper and the documentary to go out at the same time, over which I have no control. But there is an academic paper that accompanies this that I'm hoping will be able to kind of come out in the next few weeks, because understandably, people want to see the academic paper behind it. But, yeah, that was one of the other things that I said when I first got involved, is that this has to be part of an academic paper as well. It can't just be a documentary.
- [11:01]
Podcast Host (Matt)
I wanted to ask one question here, one about the history and one about the process of analysing this material. And I suppose, Chewie, how did you determine whether the sample that was taken stood up to scrutiny?
- [11:12]
Professor Turi King
So this is where I always say it's incredibly important that you don't just use genetic data on its own, you link it with the historical information. My first question is, what's the provenance of this sample? And actually, we do have a pretty nicely well documented provenance for it. If you have a look at the photos of the sofa from the time period and then you look at the swatch, there's a very distinctive pattern and those match. So that's another sort of tick that we can put into the box. The other thing we can then do is genetic analysis. Now I get interested because there's no kind of very close relatives that you can use for doing DNA testing and comparing against such as you would do in a forensic case, which is usually like a parent or a sibling or a child. They don't exist because Hitler didn't have any children. There's no close relatives who are alive today to be able to do that analysis. And this is where I get interested in a piece of DNA known as the Y chromosome. And that's because the Y chromosome is a segment of DNA which is just passed down through the male line. So if there's a male line relative of Hitler, then can look at the Y chromosome that's coming back from the DNA that's coming from the blood and see if that matches a male line relative. Now, I actually remember this from when I was doing my postdoc, that there was a study that had been done by John Paul Moulders and Mark Vermeer in, because my PhD was on the Y chromosome, and they had tracked down quite distant members of the Hitler family, male line members, including one that had given a DNA sample, and so the data from that was made available. We can then do the analysis of the Y chromosome. And there was a perfect match between them. The next thing you have to do as a geneticist is go, okay, but how common is this Y chromosome type? And actually, it's incredibly rare. It wasn't found in the Y chromosome forensic databases even then, because we're being careful as we kind of go, okay, so we want to know, like, how common is it in Europe, let alone worldwide, you know, no hits. So we can therefore say, yes, it's a rare Y chromosome type. And then we have to ask, okay, so what is the likelihood that a close male line relative of Hitler would have managed to get himself into the bunker, over to that sofa and bleed on it? And once you do all of that, and this is where Alex is, great, because I can turn to him and go, so what do we know about close male line relatives? And then once we can rule all of that out, it becomes vanishingly unlikely that this is not Hitler's DNA.
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Dr. Alex Kay
Yeah, Hitler had very few close male line relatives, so he had no surviving brothers. For example, he'd lost four of his five siblings during his childhood. The only other surviving child was his sister Paula. But he did have a half brother from his father's previous marriage. However, I was able to determine that his half brother at the end of the war was in Hamburg, not even in Berlin. So that ruled him out. And then this half brother himself had two sons. One of those sons, however, had been killed in combat during the Second World War. So he was no longer alive in 1945. The other son had actually emigrated and wasn't even in the country. We were able to rule out in this way that any other close male relative of Hitler's could have been anywhere near the bunker in April 1945.
- [14:36]
Podcast Host (Matt)
And once you had started to become more and more convinced that this might actually be Hitler's DNA, what did that feel like?
- [14:44]
Professor Turi King
So that is a bit of a moment, because you can go, okay, great, we can be confident that we've got Hitler's DNA. The next stage then is to do the whole genome sequencing. But the other thing about going into that is we genuinely had no idea what we would find, you know, as a geneticist, like, well, possibly he has a very boring genome or he has a slight genetic predisposition towards something like coronary heart disease or something. Didn't know at all what we were going to find going into the project.
- [15:13]
Dr. Alex Kay
Yeah, that was obviously the crucial first point is the big question to begin with, is this even Hitler's blood? Is this even his DNA sample? Had it turned out not to be, then everything else that might have followed would have been moot. So that was obviously a big moment for both of us, this discovery. We've got it and we can really now test it and see what we find.
- [15:37]
Podcast Host (Matt)
Just before we get into what you did find, a couple of questions that listeners might be wondering about, I suppose one of which is what happened to Hitler's body?
- [15:46]
Dr. Alex Kay
Yeah, Hitler's body was burned, so he actually gave instructions to some of his members of staff who were still in the bunker, gave very explicit instructions for his body to be doused in petrol and burned so that no remains were left, because Hitler was very concerned that he would fall into the hands of the Soviets, dead or alive. He was very much still under the impression of stories that had been told to him about Mussolini's death. Mussolini had been killed by Italian partisans and his body, his corpse had then been strung up in a market square and abused by people, you know, spat on, hit. And Hitler very much wanted to avoid this, let's say, demeaning fate. So he gave his members of staff in the bunker very explicit instructions to get rid of his body, to destroy it completely. Now, this didn't happen. The wear attempts made the body was partially burned, but not completely. So parts of his, some bones did survive and so the Soviets did have access to that, but there was no body left to speak of.
- [16:54]
Podcast Host (Matt)
And Cherie, one thing that listeners might be wondering about is the amount of time between his death and the time the analysis was done. How big a factor is the degradation that happens to samples such as this over time, and does it affect the validity of the results in any way?
- [17:08]
Professor Turi King
That's a very good question. So one of the things I was actually looking for as part of the authentication process is does this DNA look like it's degraded? Because if it's a hoax and somebody's recently bled on this, first of all, you wouldn't get the DNA match, but second of all, the DNA would look quite different. So this is something that happens and we have to consider with all ancient and historical samples whilst we're alive, we actually have really, really lovely long strands of DNA and we do have things that come along and nick it, but our body has mechanisms for fitt fixing those DNA strands back together again after death. That's not happening and the DNA ends up in shorter and shorter strands until there's nothing left to sequence and the DNA is quite damaged. People often have this idea that, oh, there's kind of a time thing in terms of how long it would be that we would be able to be able to obtain DNA. It's actually time. But also the condition as to how the sample has been kept cold and dry is best for preserving DNA, which is why you can have some samples that are only a few years old, but if they've been kept in warm, damp conditions, you can't get DNA out of them. But other samples, I mean, they've managed to get nearly 2 million year old DNA out of permafrost. So it was one of those things that until we started the project and started having a look at this, we didn't know quite whether or not it would be usable. The DNA is degraded, as would be expected, but we've got enough sequencing from two separate labs to get enough, it's called coverage of the gene, so that we can have a look at. There's still gaps, but there's enough that we can still do the analysis that we've been doing in it. And I think one of the things that's really important is that when we started this project, one of the things that was very important to kind of say and to still say is that nothing that we would ever find in Hitler's DNA would excuse what he did. I think if I can get that message across, I think that's super important, because no matter what we found, it's not going to excuse what Hitler did in his lifetime.
- [19:05]
Podcast Host (Matt)
Alex, do you want to come in on that at this point?
- [19:07]
Dr. Alex Kay
Yes, I would like. So we've got to keep in mind that genetics, as Touri has just said, is only one small piece of the puzzle. Hitler was very much a product of his times, it was a product of the First World War, it was product of post war revolution in Germany. It was a product of a particular political radicalisation that took place in Germany in the 1920s. He was also the product of a very traumatic childhood, losing four of his five siblings and birth his parents by the age of 19. So we have to keep in mind all of these factors when trying to understand the man Hitler became and how it was possible for him to do what he did. And also in assessing how important are these genetic findings in the bigger picture. And we've also got to emphasize that Hitler was a central figure in what then happened in the Second World War, in the Holocaust, but it was only one man, right? So there were hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian perpetrators who committed the most horrific crimes. There were many millions of people who followed Hitler and profited from the Nazi regime. So we've got to emphasize that we can't explain what happened just by looking at Hitler, and certainly not just by looking at Hitler's genes.
- [20:31]
Podcast Host (Matt)
That we have to place this back into the wider context of the history that was surrounding it.
- [20:36]
Professor Turi King
Yeah, I mean, one of the things I sort of say when we're chatting about this is we need to put the results both within the context about what we know about DNA and what we know about the results, but also within the wider historical context. Because, and we'll chat about this, I'm sure, is that, you know, there's a number of genetic conditions where it is not just about your genetic predisposition. It's multifactorial in terms of not just your DNA, but environment, upbringing, lifestyle, this kind of thing.
- [21:09]
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- [21:59]
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- [22:13]
Dr. Alex Kay
And.
- [22:15]
Podcast Host (Matt)
Let'S get into some of the stuff you did discover then we'll get to some of that specific part of the story in a minute. Before we do, one of the claims that the programme specifically debunks is the idea that Hitler might have had Jewish heritage. Which is a claim that's been sort of swirling for almost a century, I believe. How did you go into looking into this? And how specifically did you debunk it?
- [22:39]
Professor Turi King
So I'm gonna let Alex talk about the history side of it. Cause he's. He said, I can give you the genetics. So essentially my understanding is that the query was really about who Hitler's paternal grandfather was. Now Hitler's paternal grandfather will have the same Y chromosome type as Hitler would have done. And if Hitler had Jewish ancestry as is, and this is where Alex is going to be way better at the than I am. If Hitler's paternal grandfather had a Y chromosome type that didn't match the Hitler family tree, then that would be something that would help lend support towards Hitler's paternal grandfather being Jewish. But as it is, Hitler's Y chromosome type matches the Hitler family tree and so suggests that his paternal grandfather was a Hitler.
- [23:31]
Dr. Alex Kay
Yeah. Rumors that Hitler might have had some Jewish ancestry, as you say, might have been around for the best part of a century. They were already circulating in the 1920s. Some people believe that his paternal grandmother, Maria Schicklgruber, who had worked for a period of time in a Jewish household, had gotten pregnant as a result of that. And foreign press got hold of these rumours and made a lot out of them. I think it's very important that we've been able to debunk that, because I think this has been something that both scholars and the general public alike have been very interested in, understandably, because of Hitler's rabid antisemitism and his crucial role in the extermination of 6 million European Jews. So I think that's a very important finding that we can finally say, no, that was just a rumour. There's no truth in this. Hitler did not have Jewish ancestry.
- [24:28]
Podcast Host (Matt)
And cherry, as you mentioned, work also began on sequencing the entire genome of Hitler's DNA. Before we talk about the potential this has for revealing new information about Hitler's health, what do we need to be cautious about when we're talking about this kind of research?
- [24:44]
Professor Turi King
That's a really good question. I think a little kind of genetics lesson here is kind of important, because when you're looking at genetic predisposition towards particular health conditions, there's kind of two types of kind of health condition that you can look at. So, for example, there are particular health conditions where we know it actually it goes back to a single gene. So if something is wrong with a particular gene, you will develop this condition. And then there's other conditions where we know it's both polygenic, meaning many genes, and also multifactorial. So genetics is just a component of it. But then there's all kinds of other factors that are involved. So one of my kind of things I use as a regular thing is that, you know, you could be genetically predisposed towards heart disease, for example, if you are being healthy and Eating well and exercising and so on and so forth. You're less likely to go on to develop this than if you are very sedentary and you're sitting on the sofa and you're eating donuts all day. So you've got to think about, like, there's. And things like smoking is chemical factors that come into it. We know the smoking is making means that you're more likely to. About things like lung cancer, for example. So when we're looking at these two particular types of conditions, what we were doing with his DNA is that we're running it through kind of like the standard NHS pipelines. But also because there's been so many medical biographers over the last years, and also during his lifetime who had suggested particular conditions, we did send the DNA to experts in particular fields to say, is there anything here that stands out to you? And this is where we found that there's a deletion in a gene known as PROC2, which is strongly associated with Kalman syndrome, which has implications for things like testosterone levels and development of sexual organs. And then we also found that he is in the top 1% for polygenic scores for schizophrenia, bipolar and autism. And it's probably a good idea that I give a quick kind of thing about how polygenic scores work. So this is where you have geneticists, and they will go, right, we've got all of these people over here with this particular condition. What are the genetic variants that they seem to have in common with one another, that these people over here without the condition don't seem to have, are at much lower frequencies? And then what you can do is you can take somebody's DNA and you go, well, where do they sit on this particular distribution? And this is where Hitler came in, as being in the top 1% for these three particular conditions. And that is incredibly rare. So we did the calculations, and the likelihood of him being diagnosed with any one of these disorders based on his polygenic score and is only 5%. But what's really interesting for Hitler and really striking, is that this is the only individual, as part of that analysis, who came up in the top 1% for all three of those.
- [27:40]
Podcast Host (Matt)
And this is one of the areas in which the documentary enters into territory where we need to be very careful about what we're talking about. Did either of you have concerns about making connections between Hitler and specific conditions, however delicately phrased and couched, that might make unfortunate or problematic connections for people today?
- [28:01]
Professor Turi King
I think that's something that is super important, because in the documentary, what we do is we put all of the caveats in because we do talk about how this is not diagnostic. Just because he's getting these scores, this is not diagnostic. It is talking about a genetic predisposition towards. And you can't do a straight line from this particular polygenic score to this particular condition. And I think the other thing that's very important to say is that people with these conditions who do have these conditions, it's incredibly rare that they go on to commit sort of violent acts, let alone genocide. They're more likely to be on the receiving end of violence. And as Alex was saying, you know, Hitler was not active on his own. You know, there were hundreds of thousands of people who were helping him. They're not all going to have the same genetic makeup as one another. So that is something that's really important to put out. There is the caveats, and that's in the documentary about how these are not diagnostic. And we cannot say that he had any of these particular disorders, but there is a genetic predisposition towards them.
- [29:06]
Dr. Alex Kay
I think as a historian, I would say we have to approach this like we would approach any other historical source, namely with care. We have to double check it. We have to compare it against other sources of information, other evidence that we have, other things that we know that would be the first step in any approach in dealing with this. And in this case, as Touri has already wonderfully explained, this is an indication of predisposition. Right? We do not know whether Hitler had any of these disorders. And therefore, for me, this finding, whilst fascinating, is less important than the findings on potential Jewish ancestry, because we now know those things, whereas the polygenic scores, the findings there are merely an indication. I do think it's striking, as Toury just said, that Hitler had this top 1% predisposition in all three of these categories and all three of these disorders, which my understanding is that this is highly unusual. So we're not saying, oh, look, Hitler might have had one of these disorders. He's actually in the top 1% for all three. So I think potentially this kind of explosive mix that makes it, as I say, quite a quite remarkable finding. The. It's no proof of anything yet, because it's just an indication. I would also say, you know, we're talking a lot about what responsibilities the makers of the program have and the people involved in it. And I agree with that completely. And. But Turi and I, and, you know, everybody else involved in the program takes these responsibilities very seriously. But I also think by the same token, that anybody watching this documentary and then commenting on it, or particularly journalists reporting on it equally have a responsibility to report on it in a serious and well founded way, to place it in context, not to emphasize one particular aspect of the exclusion of everything else, not to remove all the caveats that we have put in. So I think that responsibility works both ways. And during the kind of media frenzy of the last few days and the way that some journalists have emphasized certain findings of the program or certain indications in the program to the exclusion of others, or when people have talked about the risk of stigmatization, I have asked myself, would people have, or would some people have preferred us not to reveal certain findings, just to reveal some findings, but hold back other findings? Would some people have preferred that? Surely if we'd done that and it had come out at some point in the future that we'd actually held back some of the findings, that would have been a good reason to actually reproach us for it.
- [31:57]
Professor Turi King
Just to echo what Alex has said, I do think it's been really interesting to see how some of the journalism has gone, you know, they haven't bothered to take on board everything that Alex and I talk about about how it's so important that you take this in the context of what we know about DNA and in the context of the historical kind of setting for all of this. Again, and also to echo that, I think our role as scientists is we lay out what we have found and we try to put in all of the caveats. Well, we don't even try. We do put in all of the caveats about what it can and cannot say. But I think again, as Alex was saying, if we held back information, that would be seen as kind of gatekeeping and elitist. And I would not feel comfortable with that. I think the importance is to lay out our findings, put all of the caveats around it. I think it would be inappropriate to withhold information.
- [32:57]
Podcast Host (Matt)
So to get into this a little bit more, among the research's findings is the fact that Hitler's DNA bears evidence of a genetic mutation that in some cases can result in abnormalities, including a micropenis. And lots of the more salatus reporting on the documentary has focused on this. Given that, do you have any regrets about its inclusion and the fact it's overshadowed the rest of the research?
- [33:19]
Professor Turi King
So I think this is again where it's in the documentary, it's in the paper because we talk about how the DNA cannot tell us what Hitler's genitalia looked like. All we can do is report that it is known to be strongly associated with Kalman syndrome. He will have had some form of Kalman syndrome. These are the various known, it's called phenotypes. So how it's kind of manifests itself in somebody. These are the known ways that it manifests itself. And all we can do, again, is put the caveats in. And this is where Alex is, again, really important to have this historical context, because there are historical documents around what we already know about Hitler's genitalia. And it's when you put the genetics and the history together where you get a better understanding of this.
- [34:14]
Dr. Alex Kay
Yes, it was slightly predictable the way that some newspapers and some media outlets have reported on this. For me, it's not particularly interesting what Hitler's genitalia looks like. What is interesting is that the discovery that he had Kalman syndrome, which is a genetic disorder, actually explains a lot about Hitler's private life, or more accurately said, his lack of a private life. Because Kalman's is associated with low testosterone levels, low sex drive, its impacts on the development of the reproductive features and the reproductive functions. So it tells us a lot about how Hitler felt about intimate relationships, how he felt about himself, his level of self consciousness, thereby go some way to explaining why he devoted himself completely to politics, to the exclusion of any kind of private life or relationships. And, you know, Hitler is obviously not the only political figure to have foregone kind of intimate relationships or sexual relationships or romantic relationships. But if we compare him to all the other leading Nazi figures, he's the outlier. All the other senior Nazis had wives, had children, often had extramarital affairs. So Hitler is the odd one out here, is quite unique in that respect. And historians have puzzled over why this was for a long time. And I think this finding of Kalmann syndrome is really very significant and striking because it adds that final piece of the puzzle in explaining why Hitler basically didn't have a private life.
- [35:59]
Podcast Host (Matt)
So as a historian, you do think there are real findings here that help explain his personality and even his actions?
- [36:07]
Dr. Alex Kay
Absolutely. Now, they don't explain all of his actions by any stretch. And we talked earlier a lot about environmental and social factors and the context of the times in which Hitler lived and his childhood experiences. And all those factors are equally, if not more important than any genetic findings. However, they contribute. These genetic findings contribute to our understanding of Hitler, also about why he behaved in certain ways. Yes.
- [36:37]
Podcast Host (Matt)
So something else that people might wonder about is obviously Hitler did have a relationship with Eva Braun. Does this finding shed any new light on or help us think in different ways about that particular relationship.
- [36:50]
Dr. Alex Kay
Not specifically about that relationship as such, but it tallies with what we know about that relationship, I would say. So everything that we know suggests that Hitler and Eva Braun were companions as much as anything else. We have numerous eyewitness statements from people who were close to them, from people who spent a lot of time with them. You know, Hitler's caretaker of. Of eight years at the Berghof, his mountain retreat, Herbert during. He said there was never any evidence that Hitler and Eva Braun had sex. Christa Schroeder, she was one of Hitler's secretaries for 12 years. She said exactly the same. Heinrich Hoffman, who was the photographer who introduced Hitler and Eva Braun in the first place, said that their relationship was always platonic. We also know that they didn't share a bedroom. They never shared a bedroom. So at the Berghof, in Hitler's bunker in the final weeks of the war, also in Hitler's suite of rooms in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, they always had separate rooms. So everything points to the fact that this was a platonic relationship and not a sexual relationship. And therefore these new findings do tally with that, even if they don't shed new light specifically on that relationship.
- [38:11]
Podcast Host (Matt)
So again, it's about setting these findings back within their wider context.
- [38:15]
Dr. Alex Kay
100%.
- [38:16]
Podcast Host (Matt)
On that note, one of the experts at documentary features is Professor Simon Baron Cohen, who's director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University. And he says to me, the experience of neglect and abuse which you've talked about, Alex, in Hitler's childhood would be much more relevant to understanding why someone grows up with hate and anger rather than the genetics. The two interplay. I wondered if either of you had any more sort of comments you'd like to add to that.
- [38:40]
Professor Turi King
Well, as a geneticist, I'm the first person to say that genetics is just a part of the puzzle of who somebody is. And so this is where, again, it's marrying it up with the history to kind of talk about, well, we know that what appears to be a genetic predisposition, but we've got to set that really in context of who was this individual, how did he grow up, what was the time that he was growing up in the genetics is only gonna give you a very small part of who somebody is and goes on to become.
- [39:12]
Dr. Alex Kay
Simon Baron Cohen is obviously in a much better position to comment on the relative importance or impact of genetics versus upbringing or childhood. However, I would be inclined overall to agree with him that environmental and social factors, particularly neglect and Abuse during childhood have a huge impact on the adult a person becomes. And therefore, as I said earlier, are at least as important as genetic factors. And I would be inclined to say more important. However, obviously, as we've been stressing, the genetics is only a part of the jigsaw puzzle and it doesn't explain and cannot explain everything.
- [39:59]
Podcast Host (Matt)
We are talking in the middle of a week where you've been at the centre of a media storm in many senses. Has the reaction to the documentary, has the backlash, I suppose in some quarters to it been along the lines of what you expected? Or has anything here come as a surprise?
- [40:13]
Professor Turi King
I think going into it, I think, I don't know, I don't want to speak for Alex. We knew it was going to be controversial and so this is where for me, the entire time, the most important thing for me to do is to talk about this is what the DNA can say, this is what the DNA cannot say. And just constantly putting in those guardrails, we knew that there will be some aspects of the media who are not going to listen to that, but all we can do as scientists is just keep the guardrails in about what we can and cannot say from somebody's DNA. And also really importantly so these guardrails about what we can say about the DNA. But again, it's placing all of this within the historical context and around what we understand about Hitler.
- [41:03]
Dr. Alex Kay
I think we did all in anticipate that this would be big, that this is a major project and it's a world first analysis of Hitler's DNA. Right. So we all anticipated that it would be big. We all knew that it would be controversial because of who this is. That's perfectly understandable. I think we all also expected some dissenting voices. I personally have been a little surprised at just how huge it's been and how global the response has been in the media. I wasn't entirely expecting this magnitude of.
- [41:42]
Professor Turi King
Response, but I think it goes back to what Alex was saying is that there is a responsibility in the media to report accurately. And while we knew that to some extent some people are not going to do it, but I suppose in some ways just the magnitude of how been portrayed was something that I don't think any of us were quite expecting.
- [42:04]
Podcast Host (Matt)
One specific criticism that some people have raised is the subtitle Blueprint of a Dictator. Do you feel that that title is fair and do you think there are things we can draw from this particular evidence that tell us about other historical dictators?
- [42:20]
Professor Turi King
So as a geneticist, blueprint is not Something I would use, but I am aware that people still, non geneticists still feel that this is a kind of term that people use for. For people's DNA. It's something which, as geneticists we're really trying to move away from because it kind of. It suggests that DNA is deterministic and that's something which we're really. The message that we're really trying to get across is that's not actually the case. So, yes, it's not something that I would have used for a title. I think this is when science, sometimes, obviously they're trying to make it simplified and accessible. Not personally, what I would have chosen.
- [43:00]
Dr. Alex Kay
Yeah. I can only echo what Turi has just said. Obviously we are prominent figures in the documentary, but we did not have the final word by any means on the title of the documentary, as I'm sure you realise.
- [43:13]
Podcast Host (Matt)
Matt, what do you hope is the next stage for understanding about Hitler and the period of history in which he was a part?
- [43:20]
Professor Turi King
I suppose from a geneticist point of view, we have done this analysis and I keep coming back to this. Guardrails. Guardrails about what DNA can and cannot say about it and also the guardrails about placing it within a context. It's another layer of information that historians such as Alex can draw on in terms of how they sort of understand Hitler.
- [43:46]
Dr. Alex Kay
Yeah, I'm still trying to digest the reactions to this step in understanding Hitler. To be honest, Matt, I think I say somewhere in the documentary that this will change the way we think about Hitler in the future and that we'll be talking about it for a long time. I stand by that. I do think that it has added very significant new information and to use a phrase that Turi used earlier, added a new layer of understanding. I don't know if this is realistic, but I would actually hope that maybe in the future we can treat Hitler a little bit more not as this mythical figure or as this monster, although he was certainly guilty of monstrous acts. And instead of doing that kind of try to understand how a human being can get to the point where they do this kind of thing. I've always been a little bit concerned when people dismiss Hitler and the Nazis as monsters, because if we dismiss the somebody as a monster, then were not obliged to explain them or understand how they could commit the acts that they committed. But the fact of the matter is, and the scary fact of the matter is that Hitler was a human being and all of those hundred thousands of Nazi perpetrators who did monstrous, horrific things were human beings. Right. So sadly we need to understand how this was possible. So I would actually like to get to the point, and I hope we'll get to the point at some time in the future where more of us will take this approach in our attempts to understand evil.
- [45:18]
Podcast Host (Matt)
And finally, what other opportunities are there, do you think, for analysing the DNA of other historical figures?
- [45:24]
Professor Turi King
Well, I think the first thing to say is there has to be a proper research question involved. I'm not one of these people who thinks that we should be going around digging people up willy nilly just because we fancy it. I think if it is going to be done, first of all, you try and answer the questions in a way whereby you don't have to go around digging anybody up. Is there any other way of answering this question? And then if there isn't, you have to kind of think about, well, you know, what's the research question here and does it warrant doing this kind of analysis? It is interesting, of course it's interesting because, for example, they recently done the genome of Beethoven and they've been trying to understand about his health, health from that. And it's where you can marry the genetics up with the history. But I think for all of these things there has to be a proper research question involved.
- [46:16]
Dr. Alex Kay
Yeah, I think this kind of thing has to be decided on a case by case basis. And as Tori has just said, we need to at least assume that carrying out such a DNA analysis will bring new findings so that there has to be a justification for carrying out this research and doing this testing. And yeah, as Touri said, a clear research question and there definitely was in Hitler's case, but I wouldn't like to, you know, make a blanket statement when it comes to other historical figures. I think that's got to be decided on a case by case basis.
- [46:50]
Podcast Host (Matt)
Ciri and Alex, thank you both so much for your time. The second part of the two part documentary, Hitler's Blueprint of a Dictator airs on Channel Channel 4 on Saturday 22nd November. What do you think of this research? Send us your thoughts to podcastistoryextra.com and as I mentioned, if we get enough comments, we'll see if we can invite Cherry and Alex back on for a bonus episode to talk them through. And we're going to see if we can cover more on this subject later on next year by talking to some more historians and experts about Hitler and about the Nazi regime. And if you've enjoyed this episode and want to find out more about the history behind today's news, don't miss our fortnightly series History behind the Headlines. All of the details of how to find out more about that and subscribe today are in the description for this episode. Here we have the Limu Imu in.
- [47:50]
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- [48:02]
Professor Turi King
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
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Dr. Alex Kay
Cut the camera.
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