Sex Under the Swastika

This week's excerpt reveals how Hitler lost his sex drive as the war turned against him - as told by Eva Braun's sister

A fine example of Allied anti-Hitler propaganda originating from the Allied Special Operations Executive (SOE). This appears to be linked to the appearance of German radio-controlled glider bombs during the Allied invasion of Italy.

Tim Heath has written several enlightening books on women's lives under the Nazis. I have previously featured Hitler’s Housewives. This volume takes this focus on the social history of Nazism even further. Although not written exclusively from women’s perspective, most of the first-hand accounts contained here are by women. Many of them are very explicit and detailed.

He begins with the very liberated experiences of some Germans before the Nazis took over and progresses to life under the Nazi regime. In a broad survey he includes the experiences of girls in the BDM, the girls’ equivalent of the Hitler Youth - where they were indoctrinated in their duty to produce babies for the Reich - through to some of the disturbing treatment suffered by Jewish women and women in occupied countries.

Sex Under the Swastika: Erotica, Scandal and the Occult in Hitler's Third Reich also includes a range of personal accounts from women who had encounters with Goebbels, Heydrich, Bormann and other leading Nazis. And, in what appears to be an exclusive, an intimate account of Hitler’s sexual life - as related by the sister of Eva Braun - Margarete. The isolated Eva would often confide in Margarete - there can be no closer witness than this. It appears that Eva Braun had an unexceptional sex life with Hitler - and the rumours of various abnormal practices and physical deformities put about by Allied propaganda were without foundation.