Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler are two names that are infamous in world history, but surprisingly little is known about their private life. In an era when public figures and their sex lives are thrown into the spotlight via video and social media, the idea that there are still things we don’t know about Hitler has piqued the interest of at least one man.
Author Martin Amis says that his new book, Zone Of Interest, delves into what the dictator’s sex life might have been like, saying he was so “fanatical” about cleanliness that he refused to take his clothes off during intimate moments and likely never even touched Braun.
“Sexuality is one of the ways we recognize each other. Knowing whether someone is married or gay or whatever it might be, you recognize that. I don’t want to be reductive, simplistic or frivolous but I am convinced one of the reasons why Hitler is an unrecognizable figure is that sexually he is a void. With Stalin or Mao there is clear pattern seigniorial behaviour – of having a big appetite – but with Hitler there is absolutely nothing,” Amis said at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature.
Though Amis says it’s likely that Hitler was asexual, rumors throughout the years have speculated on whether he may have been homosexual, and he reportedly had a sexual relationship with his niece, Angela Raubal.
“Historians and psycho-historians who adduce perversion all come up with the filthiest stuff you could possible imagine – coprophilia, coprophagia, all things to do with excretion. But there are no real clues about his sexuality – except that he wouldn’t take his clothes off, even for his physician and he was almost fanatical about cleanliness, which suggests to me asexuality plus,” Amis claimed.
Braun was Hitler’s longtime companion and swore her loyalty to him when the Third Reich began to collapse. The two were married for less than two days when they committed suicide together in a bunker in 1945.
