The long-held urban legend that Adolf Hitler—perhaps the most reviled human of the 20th century—had but one testicle, has been confirmed as true. Newly resurfaced medical records say he had cryptorchidism.
Upon his imprisonment in 1923 after a failed coup, a newly discovered medical exam reported that Adolf Hitler had but one testicle. There has long been speculation that this indeed was the case as rumors circulated that he lost the other one during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War. But the identification of cryptorchidism confirms that future fascist was born that way.
Popular among Allied troops during World War II—and with generations of British school children—was the song “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball.”
Sung to the tune of the “Colonel Bogey March,” lyrics include:
Hitler has only got one ball, Göring has two but very small,
Himmler has something sim’lar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.
After the so-called Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler was arrested on November 9, 1923 in Utting am Staffelsee and, late that evening, then taken to Landsberg. Dr. Josef Steiner Brin examined him the next day.
Steiner described in the “Record Book for Protective Custody” that the future global villain was “healthy, strong” and weighed 78 kilograms, or 172 pounds. Significantly, the doctor also declared that his patient carried a bonafide case of “right-side cryptorchidism.”
Mayo Clinic defines the condition as “Undescended testicle (cryptorchidism) is a testicle that hasn’t moved into its proper position in the bag of skin hanging below the penis (scrotum) before birth.”
The rumored notes from Dr. Brin were missing for decades, but appeared at an auction in Bavaria 2010. The documents were reportedly not allowed to be sold and were, instead, “seized by authorities.”
The document resurfaced again when historian and director of the Munich Central State Archive, Peter Fleischmann, brought it to the attention of German newspaper Bild.