Title says it all, huh? Any way, I was having my daily lesson in wrong thinking with the UPS guy and he said something to the effect of: “The nazis invented steroids (conversation started because of current events)” because they secretly admired the male body, and "Hitler had lots of naked male statues with huge muscles (to make up for the size, or lack thereof, of his male appendage). He also said the “SA was massacred because they were about to OUT Hitler.” He said much, much more, but I figure this is more than enough. I did do a search for this, but found nothing here.
Any takers?
Wow. That’s a new one.
Anyway, the Nazis definitely did not invent steroids.
Oddly enough, the UPS guy may be partially right on one count, the German synthesis of steroid hormones, but not on the reason why. The did synthesize testosterone during the 1930’s but it was not because they admired the male figure. It was to help malnourished soldiers regain weight.
http://www.steroidinformation.com/history.htm
Anyway, to be picky nobody invented steroids. They are naturally produced in the body and include testosterone, estrogen, HGH, DHT. The anabolic steroids are what he is talking about and there are many of them and the Germans certainly didn’t invent many of the ones that athletes use today.
Oh, if you want to google further, make sure you search for “anabolic steroids”. I searched for “anbabolic steroid history”.
I don’t know about the steroids, but there have been a couple of books claiming that Hitler was gay. Hitler’s Secret Life by Glenn Infield (1979) was the first. The idea was revived a couple of yers ago by a history professor from Germany, Lothar Machtan, in Hitlers Geheimnis (translated as The Hidden Hitler). I don’t think either book is taken very seriously by most historians.
The SA was massacred because they were considered out to get hitler, but that was due in large part to Goering (I think it was Goering) trying to get rid of the SA so the SS would be the only paramilitary organization. Plus the SA was becoming too rowdy.
http://www.t-nation.com/findArticle.do?article=180ana
t-mag had a better article going into depth about how steroids were first theorized by doing things like removing testicles from chickens and sewing them back on or injecting dogs with testosterone, but I can’t find that article. Suffice it to say that article said the same thing ultrafilter is saying (maybe he read the same article) that the nazis tried to invent steroids to help make soldiers recover from malnutrition and to make them more aggressive. But the US, Nazis and communists all played a role in the development of steroids.
When I hear accounts of Hitler’s sexual deviancy and his fascination with the occult, I wonder if his actual, well-documented misdeeds are somehow inadequate to the task.
Eva Braun was Hitler’s mistress, and history records that they got married just before they killed themselves as the Allies were closing in. If Hitler were gay, why at the very end marry Eva? And, Eva was hardly symbolic and around just for image. If that were the case, Hitler would have married her early, kept her around for show, while having male lovers.
However, this doesn’t preclude that Hitler could not have been bisexual.
It is quite doubtful Hitler was gay in any important way. It was not noted at the time. It was not noted by any reliable source since.
Further, sexuality does not seem to be an important part of the makeup of people “like Hitler.” Think of analogs like Napoleon, Franco, Mao or Stalin. Was their Homo- or Heterosexuality an important part of who they were?
These sorts of people seem to be driven by a lust for power. While they have more normal sexual appetites, these do not seem to be a central part of their personalities.