The Freudian Analyst Who Became "Hitler’s Bedfellow"

Attempts to “explain” Adolf Hitler have consumed immeasurable hours of conjecture and spawned scores of books either partly or completely devoted to the task. These include Robert Waite’s “The Psychopathic God: Adolph Hitler, ” Jay Y. Gonen’s “The Roots of Nazi Psychology: Hitler's Utopian Barbarism,” Fritz Redlich’s “Hitler, Diagnosis of a Destructive Profit,” and George Victor’s “Hitler: The Pathology of Evil,” among others.

The extraordinary horrors associated with the Nazi leader’s twisted ideology are, of course, one reason for the widespread desire to understand Hitler from a psychological or psychiatric standpoint. Another is a desire to understand the pathology that leads to twisted ideologies that result in extraordinary horrors, so they may be avoided or averted.

Long before these books were written, Hitler’s wartime foes were trying to get some insight into his psychology. It is unlikely that any of the various attempts by British and American analysts to profile Adolf Hitler during World War II had much influence on political or military decisions made by Allied leaders. The best known of these psychological analyses, however, has had more influence on the “craft” ‘of psychological profiling of foreign leaders by government agencies than its lead author ever imagined it would.

Psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer, PhD, believed he was producing, with his co-authors, a quick analysis of a man he had never personally examined. Asked personally by “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the U. S. Office of Strategic Services, to prepare a report on Hitler that would tell “as much as possible about his psychological makeup—the things that make him tick.” General Donovan added, according to Langer, “In addition, we ought to know what he might do if things begin to go against him.”

The Boston-born Freudian psychoanalyst admitted he knew nothing about the Führer. But despite the difficulties the assignment entailed, Langer accepted the challenge. And so—as he recalled 30 years later--he became “Hitler’s bedfellow.”

It was wartime, and Langer had volunteered his services in 1941, two years before Donovan asked him to take on what turned out to be his most important assignment. Furthermore, he was forced to rely on information about his subject derived from speeches, films, books, newspaper and magazine articles, and interviews with people who knew or had encounters with the German leader. And, he recognized that the interviewees were not all reliable. Langer could not hope to psychoanalyze his subject in the Freudian manner, which was then very much in vogue and in which he was trained. (He had been psychoanalyzed by Anna Freud and spent time with her father, Sigmund). Despite lack of direct access to his subject and the information he wished he had, Langer nevertheless succeeded in the mission Donovan gave him.

In his conclusions, Langer dismissed, or rated as very unlikely, three options Hitler might choose if, as Donovan wanted to know, “things went against” him, as they did in 1945. Based on Langer’s impressions of his distant subject, the analyst concluded that it was not likely or was extremely unlikely that Hitler would die of natural causes before the war’s end, that he would flee to a neutral country, or that he would allow himself to be captured. He noted that Hitler’s mental state might deteriorate so much he could become insane. Not surprisingly, he noted that Hitler could be assassinated, a conclusion anyone following the collapse of Hitler’s armed forces under his incompetent leadership could reach without much study. Langer’s one miss was his belief that there was a realistic chance that Hitler might die in battle, falling heroically at the front leading his remaining troops. This possibility was in conflict with Langer’s conclusion that Hitler would not risk capture.

Langer’s overall remarkably accurate predictions were capped with his conclusion that of all the possible scenarios, Hitler taking his own life was the most plausible. Hitler, of course, shot himself in his Berlin bunker in April 1945 as Stalin’s Soviet forces took the city.

Langer’s report includes several unlikely and suspect psychological insights into the mind of Adolf Hitler. For example, the suggestion the Hitler was ''probably a neurotic psychopath bordering on schizophrenia” is highly questionable. It is important to remember, however, that Langer was dealing with limited source material and worked in a time when the definitions and our understanding of “neurotic,” “psychopath,” and even “schizophrenia” are not exactly the same today as they were nearly seven decades ago.

After considering Hitler’s likely responses to various wartime developments, the psychoanalyst accurately predicted the tyrant’s fate and set the stage for modern political psychological profiling.

Langer’s legacy is seen today in the common practice by intelligence agencies of preparing psychological profiles of foreign leaders. Its success reportedly even influenced the American Psychiatric Association to approve the practice of political psychological profiling of foreign and historical leaders, providing no diagnoses are made.

Future “Tyrannical Minds” blogs will discuss successful and some unsuccessful attempts to find out what makes tyrants “tick,” and the implications of such studies.