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Pre-War Recruitment

Four months before Pearl Harbor, Donovan had enlisted Langer to put together a nationwide network of analysts to study the morale of the country's young men, who, it was widely feared, were not enthusiastic about fighting a foreign war. Pearl Harbor seemed to solve this morale problem, but Langer stayed with Donovan as a part-time psychoanalytic consultant.¹

The Hitler Profile

With a small research staff, Langer examined everything he could find on Hitler and interviewed a number of people who had known the German leader. Aware of the severe limitations on his information, but left no choice by General Donovan, Langer plowed ahead and wrote up a final study. In the wording of the 1972 book it pegged Hitler as a "neurotic psychopath" and proceeded to dissect the Führer's psyche. John D. Marks wrote that Langer, since retired to Florida, believed he had come "pretty close" to describing the real Adolf Hitler, and that he was particularly proud of his predictions that the Nazi leader would become increasingly disturbed as Germany suffered more and more defeats and that he would commit suicide rather than face capture.¹

The OSS report of 1943, A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend, stated that there was "unanimous agreement among the four psychoanalysts who have studied the material that Hitler is an hysteric bordering on schizophrenia and not a true paranoiac as so frequently supposed."² The 1972 book prints the same passage as "general agreement among the collaborators that Hitler is probably a neurotic psychopath bordering on schizophrenia."³ The report's eighth prediction read: "Hitler might commit suicide. This is the most plausible outcome."⁴ Langer wrote in 1972 that Donovan had asked, "What light could psychoanalysis shed on these pressing problems?"⁵ The report names as collaborators Henry Murray, Ernst Kris and Bertram Lewin on its title page.²

Operational Applications

Langer's profile noted Hitler's "large feminine component," "extreme sentimentality," and masochistic tendencies. He wrote that Hitler was "masochistic in the extreme inasmuch as he derives sexual pleasure from punishment inflicted on his own body. There is every reason to suppose that during his early years, instead of identifying himself with his father as most boys do, he identified with his mother." He added that Hitler's "extreme sentimentality, his emotionality, his occasional softness, and his weeping, even after he became Chancellor, may be regarded as manifestations of a fundamental pattern that undoubtedly had its origin in his relationship to his mother."¹

Stanley Lovell seized upon one of Langer's ideas, that Hitler might have feminine tendencies, and got permission from the Office of Strategic Services hierarchy to try to push the Führer over the gender line: "The hope was that his moustache would fall off and his voice become soprano." Lovell used OSS agent networks to try to slip female sex hormones into Hitler's food, but nothing apparently came of it.¹

The Mind of Adolf Hitler: Publication and Specific Predictions

The full report, titled "A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend," remained classified for nearly three decades. Basic Books published it in 1972 as The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report, edited by Walter C. Langer himself, with an introduction explaining its original context and subsequent history. The 1972 publication became a bestseller.

The report's most famous predictions proved accurate. Langer's central conclusion was that Hitler would "become more and more neurotic" as Germany's military position deteriorated and that suicide was "the most plausible outcome" when defeat became undeniable. He predicted Hitler would show increasingly rare public appearances, intensifying emotional outbursts, and would contemplate no surrender, capitulation, or peace negotiations. He also identified the possibility of a military coup against Hitler well before the failed July 1944 assassination attempt. The 1972 book gives the diagnosis as "neurotic psychopath bordering on schizophrenia."⁶

Gittinger's Extension of Langer's Methods

Langer's indirect analytical method, conducting psychological assessment without direct access to the subject, would later be refined by John Gittinger within the CIA. Gittinger built an office that extended Langer's approach into a systematic tool for evaluating foreign leaders and planning covert operations, making personality analysis an integral part of Agency tradecraft.¹

Footnotes

John D. Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, Chapter 1. ↩︎
Langer, Walter C. A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend. Office of Strategic Services, 1943, title page and p. 86 as paginated in the CIA copy (CIA Reading Room C02571145). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-02571145 ↩︎
Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report. Basic Books, 1972, chapter on the collaborators' diagnosis. ↩︎
Langer, 1943 report, p. 155 as paginated in the CIA copy; same text in the 1972 book, section "Hitler's Death." ↩︎
Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler, 1972, chapter on the OSS request. ↩︎
Langer, Walter C. The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report. Basic Books, 1972. (Original OSS report: "A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend," 1943, available at https://archive.org/details/APsychologicalAnalysisofAdolfHitler); Exploring Your Mind, "Psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer and the Mental Study of Hitler." https://exploringyourmind.com/psychoanalyst-walter-c-langer-mental-study-of-hitler/ ↩︎

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