The Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler was gay and in his youth, he is said to have had cultivated close, affectionate relationships with a number of men that had heavily erotic overtones, according to a new book by respected German historian, Dr Lothar Machtan.
"We can say that Hitler had several homoerotic friendships up through the 1920s," Machtan told Die Welt newspaper.
"Many of them would be described by people today as homosexual."
He said Hitler during this period belonged to a circle of male friends in the southern German city of Munich that had a "homosexual orientation."
The sensational new biography titled, Hitler's Secret - The Double Life of a Dictator, is reported to contain eyewitness accounts from Hitler's former lovers, and historical documents that for the first time illuminate rumours that have circulated for decades.
The professor of history at Germany's University of Bremen even claims in his book that Hitler ordered the deaths of several high-ranking Nazis to prevent the secret of his homosexuality from surfacing.
The book revealed that the nearly as infamous Ernst R�hm, was murdered when he tried to blackmail Hitler by threatening to reveal his sexuality. R�hm, the leader of Hitler's Sturm Abteilung or Storm Troopers, who had been very instrumental in Hitler's rise to power, was also gay.
Police reports from Munich after the First World War also suggest that Hitler was pursued by police because of his sexual orientation. According to a Munich police protocol from the early part of the 20th century, several young men told the police that they had spent the night or accompanied him. An 18-year-old Michael, told the police: ?I had been unemployed for months, and my mother and my brother were always hungry, so, at his request, I accompanied the man to his home.?
The police reports were collected by Otto von Lossow, a German army general who took part in suppressing the Hitler putsch in 1923. He kept the Munich police file for years, as he described it, ?a form of personal life insurance.? He said he intended to blackmail Hitler if the need arose. Machtan suggested that the startling information remained largely overlooked by historians as the book which was published in Rome by Hitler's interpreter, Eugen Dollmann, never appeared in German.
According to 52-year-old professor, in Hitler?s earlier days, one of his fellow soldiers, Hans Mend, wrote in his memoirs: ?At night, Hitler lay with Schmidl, his male whore.? Schmidl, otherwise known as Ernst Schmidt, and Hitler were ?inseparable lovers? for five years.
Machtan also wrote that Hitler's relationship with Eva Braun, his companion during the length of his rule whom he married one day before their double suicide in 1945, was a sham and probably never consummated.
While the dictator himself never condemned homosexuality, he allowed the persecution of gays ?in order to disguise his own true colours,? Machtan wrote. Between 1933-1945, approximately 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality in Nazi Germany, half of whom were imprisoned while an estimated 10,000-15,000 were sent to concentration camps. By 1945, only 4,000 survived, according to an award winning documentary, Paragraph 175, referring to the German Penal Code which criminalises homosexuality.
The book will be presented this week at The Frankfurt Book Fair from October 10-15. The event which is the largest of its kind, will draw more than 6,600 exhibitors from 105 countries to Germany's financial capital.