August 16, 2023 • 12 mins
WW2 was raging onwards, with men fighting and dying each and every day. It was so delicately poised that there seemed to be no end to the fighting in sight.
Weeks and months dragged on into years, and with them came more and more plots of how to win the war. Some were impractical, some were impossible, and some were downright insane.
But every now and again, one of these plots would be just insane enough to work.
And so, out of this think tank came possibly one of military history’s greatest-ever schemes.
What if we turned Adolf Hitler into a woman?
-------------------
Please support me on Patreon for just $2 a month : https://www.patreon.com/foodhistorypod
-------------------
Sources for this episode's research:
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-fantastic-history-of-food--3591729/support.
Weeks and months dragged on into years, and with them came more and more plots of how to win the war. Some were impractical, some were impossible, and some were downright insane.
But every now and again, one of these plots would be just insane enough to work.
And so, out of this think tank came possibly one of military history’s greatest-ever schemes.
What if we turned Adolf Hitler into a woman?
-------------------
Please support me on Patreon for just $2 a month : https://www.patreon.com/foodhistorypod
-------------------
Sources for this episode's research:
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-15/allies-planned-to-make-hitler-a-woman/2839874
- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hitler-estrogen-hormone-plot_n_927281
- https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/book-claims-allies-tried-to-turn-the-fuhrer-into-a-female-464589
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025975/Hitler-hormone-plot-Bizarre-plan-British-spies-make-Fuhrer-fraulein.html
- https://theweek.com/articles/482449/bizarre-plan-turn-hitler-into-woman
- https://medium.com/the-collector/the-bizzare-plot-to-turn-hitler-into-a-woman-185bc837eba5
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8701024/Revealed-sex-hormone-plan-to-feminise-Hitler.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Has_Only_Got_One_Ball
- https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/hitlers-psychological-profile-shows-feminine-side/72P2CQ6HYWXN6NHH57GO57FMRU/?c_id=2&objectid=10118222
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-fantastic-history-of-food--3591729/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Wars have made up a significantly largeportion of our history as the human race.
And yet one war in particular,and in fact, one man in
particular, keeps cropping up amidst history'sweirdest stories. As you would have seen
in the title of this episode,yes, I am once again exploring a
bizarre food related story from history thenin some way involves Adolf Hitler. Now,
(00:24):
if you haven't already listened to theentire back catalog, you may get
a kick out of the episode aboutHitler's plan to harvest whales from the South
Pole in order to keep up GermanMargarine supplies, or his plot to assassinate
Winston Churchill with an exploding chocolate bar. And yet this story may in fact
be by far the strangest of themall. So let's roll into the intro
(00:48):
and any ads, if there areany, and in dive write in these
are the bizarre but true stories fromhistory that in some way involved food.
I'm Nick Charlie Key, and thisis the fantastic history of food. Do
(01:21):
you like candy? Do you likecandy? Do you like candy? If
you answered yes to any of theabove questions, then candy is dandy is
the right podcast for you. CandyIs Dandy is the world's only candy review
podcast, and we know that becausewe looked as deep as a third ozho
in a Google search. Every firstand third Wednesday of the month, we
pick a different candy, give youits history, taste it, live,
(01:44):
and review it and rate it.We've tried candy such as Snickers, Butterfingers,
Dailly Belly, Jellybeans, and we'vehad a cavalcade of celebrity guests such
as The Three Musketeers, Bazooka Joe, and comedy Bang Bangs Carl Tart.
So download and subscribe to Candy's Dandyanywhere podcasts are found. When I first
(02:07):
stumbled upon the story while conducting researchfor another episode, I thought I was
reading an out of date April Fool'sprank. Surely this couldn't rarely be true.
But the more I read into it, it turns out that it was
in fact a real plot that theAllies were cooking up as one more method
to turn the tide of the warin their favor. It reads like something
(02:28):
out of a comic book or anepisode of an old British sitcom with slapstick
caricatures. Of wartime shenanigans. Butagain I must assure you that the following
story was indeed a real military plot, cooked up, excuse the pun,
by Allied intelligence agencies. The SecondWorld War was raging onwards, with men
fighting and dying each and every day. It was so delicately poised that there
(02:50):
seemed to be no end to thefighting in sight. Days, weeks,
and even months dragged on into years, and with them came more more plots
of how to win the war.Some were impractical, some were impossible,
and some were downright insane. Butevery now and again one of these plots
would be just insane enough to work. And so out of this think tank
(03:15):
came possibly one of military history's greatestever schemes. What if we turned Hitler
into a woman? Well, notactually turn him into a woman, per
se, but what if we couldbring out more of his effeminate side,
turned down the volume on his tyrannicalranting, calmed down his wild gesticulating on
(03:36):
stage, and maybe even cause himto become more cautious from his clearly displayed
gung home military style to date.It was well known that Hitler had a
younger sister named Paula, who,by contrast to her megalomaniac brother, was
rather shy, reserved and quiet.While the hope amongst the Allies was that
these same tendencies lived deep within Adolftoo, if they could force him to
(04:00):
tap into them. Now that allsounded well and good, if a little
far fetched, But how would theygo about actually doing something like this now?
The idea was borne out of existingresearch being done in London around the
topic of sex therapy and the importanceof sex hormones on the body. They
were already popular sentiments swirling around theworld about the nature of Hitler's sexuality.
(04:24):
To begin with, there was infamousrumor subsequently proven to be true, that
he only had one testicle, madefamous by the comedy wartime Troop song,
whose lyrics include the lines Hitler hasonly got one ball, Gering has two,
but very small. Himler has somethingsimilar, but poor old Gebels has
(04:44):
no balls at all. In fact, why don't we have a quick listen
to a short clip of a betMiddler rendition of this famous old war ditty.
Hitler one Gary had too bad,they weren't small. Himmler had something
(05:08):
similer at all. Reading up totempo. Up to tempo for a second.
Here we go Hitler. He hadonly one baball Gary, and he
had to buy. Weren't small either, Imbler well. Along with his missing
(05:40):
testicle came accusations calling his sexuality intoquestion. He had started adult life as
an artist and a painter in theromantic style, and throughout his childhood he'd
been a rather sickly boy, neverengaging in sports or manual labor of any
kind. In the nineteen forties,this was essentially all the proof you needed
to cast any spursions you may careto choose upon your intended target. However,
(06:03):
a wartime report from nineteen forty three, written by a Harvard psychiatrist by
the name of doctor Henry A.Murray, the same psychiatrist who would go
on to examine and test the Unibummerin the late nineteen fifties, made some
interesting conclusions about Hitler's state of mindand the possible causal links to his aggressive
and world dominating ideals. Studying Hitler'sbiography Mind Coumph, as well as a
(06:29):
plethora of his other writings, itwas clear to doctor Murray that Hitler did
indeed struggle to come to terms withhis own sexuality in one way or another,
and that this struggle and his associatedphysical failings in the bedroom caused him
to express exorbitant cravings for superiority.Now, doctor Murray believed that right below
(06:49):
his grandiose surface was a terrified manstruggling to understand himself and the world around
him, and that the only thingthat made sense to him was to burden
all doubt. The Allied intelligence agenciesviewed this information with interest and began hatching
a plan to bring out that sideof him that they believed lay just beneath
the surface, and in doing sorob him of much of his image,
(07:13):
stature, and status amongst his Germansupporters. Their plan was simple. They
were going to lace Hitler's food withestrogen so that within a few months his
femininity would come to the foe,and more importantly, that his aggression levels
would drop, resulting in a slackeningoff of German military efforts. More so,
(07:33):
even than the military benefits of theplan was the possibility of this plot
embarrassing and discrediting the Nazi leader inthe eyes of those who looked up to
him. The Allies believed that thehormones in his food would aid in the
rapid onset of hair loss, andwould tamper with his infamous rally speeches by
altering his voice to a more highpitched soprano. Now you may be asking,
(07:57):
if you have access to his food, why not just poison it and
have him done with once and forall. Well, my friends, if
you're asking that question, you maynot be cut out for military counterintelligence just
yet. You see, Hitler wasa paranoid man. He had survived multiple
assassination attempts from both inside and outsideof his own military, and had long
(08:18):
since put in place measures to tryand mitigate against anything like that happening again.
So poisoning his food was not anoption because he had a horde of
food tasters, just like the kingsof olden day history, to make sure
that his food was okay to consumebefore he himself would eat any of it,
Which brings us to the long termgenius of this plan. You see,
(08:41):
First of all, estrogen is tasteless, and so it wouldn't be picked
up by himself or any of histasters. Secondly, the plan was never
meant as a one and done solution. Rather, they would have agents on
the inside slowly smuggling the issue intohis meals over the course of a few
months. This was planned so thatthe changes in his personality and or body
(09:05):
would happen imperceptibly slowly until it wastoo late. Now, as wild and
out there as it sounds, thisplan was actually plausible. The Allies had
agents in the right places to administerthe hormones into his food, and they
had the means by which to smugglethe hormones to those agents. But for
whatever reason, when it came tocrunch time, they put the plan on
(09:28):
hold and ultimately found the war hadended before they could ever revisit it as
an idea. As the years passand more and more documents become declassified,
we are constantly being treated to abarrage of bizarre but brilliant stories from history
(09:48):
that have just been waiting to betold. In some of these documents,
we find that the British and Alliedforces were in fact not alone in their
food based wartime plotting. Recently discoveredNazi documents speak of their own far fetched
schemes to murder and maime Allied troopsin the event that Germany lost the war.
(10:09):
In their withdrawal of towns and villagers. They planned to leave behind poisoned
sausages, poisoned chocolate, and evenpoisoned coffee in the hopes that Allied troops
would find them and then consume them. They had even given out secret powders
to sympathetic supporters, and they occupiedtowns and villages in the event of their
withdrawal, that these supporters should pretendto welcome in the Allied forces, offer
(10:31):
to make them food, and thendust the powder over the meals. Upon
the consumption of the meal, theAllied soldier would die and agonizing death.
Now, there are no stories ofany of these sorts of things actually happening
towards the end of the war,as I believe for most of the soldiers
they were just too tired of fighting, killing and dying. But for a
(10:52):
while towards the end, after capturingGerman spies who spoke of these plans under
the name Operation Werewolf Commanders. We'reconcerned enough about the possibility of it happening
as to forbid any soldiers from eatingGerman food found in these towns, upon
the pain of very harsh consequences shouldthey not comply. As with all of
(11:15):
these sorts of bizarre stories from history, and especially these ones that so very
nearly happened. I've always left witha sense of wonder and amusement upon contemplating
the what ifs? Should any ofthese plans actually have gone ahead? And
maybe if all of these Marvel moviesare right, and there are infinite multiverses
just waiting to be explored well insome way, and at least one of
(11:37):
them, there's a very good chancethat Hitler grew breasts. Now that's a
Marvel movie I'd watch. This showis made entirely by me, Nick Charlie
Key, with our theme music havingbeen made by the enigma that is the
mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd liketo support the show, the simplest way
(12:05):
to do that is over on ourPatreon account. There's just one option,
so for just two bucks a month, you'll help me keep producing the show,
and in return, you'll get yourname forever etched onto our supporters Wall
of Fame over on our website,and then maybe listen out for your name
in an upcoming episode. So untilnext time, bu petit. Wow. Yeah,
Wars have made up a significantly largeportion of our history as the human race.
And yet one war in particular,and in fact, one man in
particular, keeps cropping up amidst history'sweirdest stories. As you would have seen
in the title of this episode,yes, I am once again exploring a
bizarre food related story from history thenin some way involves Adolf Hitler. Now,
(00:24):
if you haven't already listened to theentire back catalog, you may get
a kick out of the episode aboutHitler's plan to harvest whales from the South
Pole in order to keep up GermanMargarine supplies, or his plot to assassinate
Winston Churchill with an exploding chocolate bar. And yet this story may in fact
be by far the strangest of themall. So let's roll into the intro
(00:48):
and any ads, if there areany, and in dive write in these
are the bizarre but true stories fromhistory that in some way involved food.
I'm Nick Charlie Key, and thisis the fantastic history of food. Do
(01:21):
you like candy? Do you likecandy? Do you like candy? If
you answered yes to any of theabove questions, then candy is dandy is
the right podcast for you. CandyIs Dandy is the world's only candy review
podcast, and we know that becausewe looked as deep as a third ozho
in a Google search. Every firstand third Wednesday of the month, we
pick a different candy, give youits history, taste it, live,
(01:44):
and review it and rate it.We've tried candy such as Snickers, Butterfingers,
Dailly Belly, Jellybeans, and we'vehad a cavalcade of celebrity guests such
as The Three Musketeers, Bazooka Joe, and comedy Bang Bangs Carl Tart.
So download and subscribe to Candy's Dandyanywhere podcasts are found. When I first
(02:07):
stumbled upon the story while conducting researchfor another episode, I thought I was
reading an out of date April Fool'sprank. Surely this couldn't rarely be true.
But the more I read into it, it turns out that it was
in fact a real plot that theAllies were cooking up as one more method
to turn the tide of the warin their favor. It reads like something
(02:28):
out of a comic book or anepisode of an old British sitcom with slapstick
caricatures. Of wartime shenanigans. Butagain I must assure you that the following
story was indeed a real military plot, cooked up, excuse the pun,
by Allied intelligence agencies. The SecondWorld War was raging onwards, with men
fighting and dying each and every day. It was so delicately poised that there
(02:50):
seemed to be no end to thefighting in sight. Days, weeks,
and even months dragged on into years, and with them came more more plots
of how to win the war.Some were impractical, some were impossible,
and some were downright insane. Butevery now and again one of these plots
would be just insane enough to work. And so out of this think tank
(03:15):
came possibly one of military history's greatestever schemes. What if we turned Hitler
into a woman? Well, notactually turn him into a woman, per
se, but what if we couldbring out more of his effeminate side,
turned down the volume on his tyrannicalranting, calmed down his wild gesticulating on
(03:36):
stage, and maybe even cause himto become more cautious from his clearly displayed
gung home military style to date.It was well known that Hitler had a
younger sister named Paula, who,by contrast to her megalomaniac brother, was
rather shy, reserved and quiet.While the hope amongst the Allies was that
these same tendencies lived deep within Adolftoo, if they could force him to
(04:00):
tap into them. Now that allsounded well and good, if a little
far fetched, But how would theygo about actually doing something like this now?
The idea was borne out of existingresearch being done in London around the
topic of sex therapy and the importanceof sex hormones on the body. They
were already popular sentiments swirling around theworld about the nature of Hitler's sexuality.
(04:24):
To begin with, there was infamousrumor subsequently proven to be true, that
he only had one testicle, madefamous by the comedy wartime Troop song,
whose lyrics include the lines Hitler hasonly got one ball, Gering has two,
but very small. Himler has somethingsimilar, but poor old Gebels has
(04:44):
no balls at all. In fact, why don't we have a quick listen
to a short clip of a betMiddler rendition of this famous old war ditty.
Hitler one Gary had too bad,they weren't small. Himmler had something
(05:08):
similer at all. Reading up totempo. Up to tempo for a second.
Here we go Hitler. He hadonly one baball Gary, and he
had to buy. Weren't small either, Imbler well. Along with his missing
(05:40):
testicle came accusations calling his sexuality intoquestion. He had started adult life as
an artist and a painter in theromantic style, and throughout his childhood he'd
been a rather sickly boy, neverengaging in sports or manual labor of any
kind. In the nineteen forties,this was essentially all the proof you needed
to cast any spursions you may careto choose upon your intended target. However,
(06:03):
a wartime report from nineteen forty three, written by a Harvard psychiatrist by
the name of doctor Henry A.Murray, the same psychiatrist who would go
on to examine and test the Unibummerin the late nineteen fifties, made some
interesting conclusions about Hitler's state of mindand the possible causal links to his aggressive
and world dominating ideals. Studying Hitler'sbiography Mind Coumph, as well as a
(06:29):
plethora of his other writings, itwas clear to doctor Murray that Hitler did
indeed struggle to come to terms withhis own sexuality in one way or another,
and that this struggle and his associatedphysical failings in the bedroom caused him
to express exorbitant cravings for superiority.Now, doctor Murray believed that right below
(06:49):
his grandiose surface was a terrified manstruggling to understand himself and the world around
him, and that the only thingthat made sense to him was to burden
all doubt. The Allied intelligence agenciesviewed this information with interest and began hatching
a plan to bring out that sideof him that they believed lay just beneath
the surface, and in doing sorob him of much of his image,
(07:13):
stature, and status amongst his Germansupporters. Their plan was simple. They
were going to lace Hitler's food withestrogen so that within a few months his
femininity would come to the foe,and more importantly, that his aggression levels
would drop, resulting in a slackeningoff of German military efforts. More so,
(07:33):
even than the military benefits of theplan was the possibility of this plot
embarrassing and discrediting the Nazi leader inthe eyes of those who looked up to
him. The Allies believed that thehormones in his food would aid in the
rapid onset of hair loss, andwould tamper with his infamous rally speeches by
altering his voice to a more highpitched soprano. Now you may be asking,
(07:57):
if you have access to his food, why not just poison it and
have him done with once and forall. Well, my friends, if
you're asking that question, you maynot be cut out for military counterintelligence just
yet. You see, Hitler wasa paranoid man. He had survived multiple
assassination attempts from both inside and outsideof his own military, and had long
(08:18):
since put in place measures to tryand mitigate against anything like that happening again.
So poisoning his food was not anoption because he had a horde of
food tasters, just like the kingsof olden day history, to make sure
that his food was okay to consumebefore he himself would eat any of it,
Which brings us to the long termgenius of this plan. You see,
(08:41):
First of all, estrogen is tasteless, and so it wouldn't be picked
up by himself or any of histasters. Secondly, the plan was never
meant as a one and done solution. Rather, they would have agents on
the inside slowly smuggling the issue intohis meals over the course of a few
months. This was planned so thatthe changes in his personality and or body
(09:05):
would happen imperceptibly slowly until it wastoo late. Now, as wild and
out there as it sounds, thisplan was actually plausible. The Allies had
agents in the right places to administerthe hormones into his food, and they
had the means by which to smugglethe hormones to those agents. But for
whatever reason, when it came tocrunch time, they put the plan on
(09:28):
hold and ultimately found the war hadended before they could ever revisit it as
an idea. As the years passand more and more documents become declassified,
we are constantly being treated to abarrage of bizarre but brilliant stories from history
(09:48):
that have just been waiting to betold. In some of these documents,
we find that the British and Alliedforces were in fact not alone in their
food based wartime plotting. Recently discoveredNazi documents speak of their own far fetched
schemes to murder and maime Allied troopsin the event that Germany lost the war.
(10:09):
In their withdrawal of towns and villagers. They planned to leave behind poisoned
sausages, poisoned chocolate, and evenpoisoned coffee in the hopes that Allied troops
would find them and then consume them. They had even given out secret powders
to sympathetic supporters, and they occupiedtowns and villages in the event of their
withdrawal, that these supporters should pretendto welcome in the Allied forces, offer
(10:31):
to make them food, and thendust the powder over the meals. Upon
the consumption of the meal, theAllied soldier would die and agonizing death.
Now, there are no stories ofany of these sorts of things actually happening
towards the end of the war,as I believe for most of the soldiers
they were just too tired of fighting, killing and dying. But for a
(10:52):
while towards the end, after capturingGerman spies who spoke of these plans under
the name Operation Werewolf Commanders. We'reconcerned enough about the possibility of it happening
as to forbid any soldiers from eatingGerman food found in these towns, upon
the pain of very harsh consequences shouldthey not comply. As with all of
(11:15):
these sorts of bizarre stories from history, and especially these ones that so very
nearly happened. I've always left witha sense of wonder and amusement upon contemplating
the what ifs? Should any ofthese plans actually have gone ahead? And
maybe if all of these Marvel moviesare right, and there are infinite multiverses
just waiting to be explored well insome way, and at least one of
(11:37):
them, there's a very good chancethat Hitler grew breasts. Now that's a
Marvel movie I'd watch. This showis made entirely by me, Nick Charlie
Key, with our theme music havingbeen made by the enigma that is the
mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd liketo support the show, the simplest way
(12:05):
to do that is over on ourPatreon account. There's just one option,
so for just two bucks a month, you'll help me keep producing the show,
and in return, you'll get yourname forever etched onto our supporters Wall
of Fame over on our website,and then maybe listen out for your name
in an upcoming episode. So untilnext time, bu petit. Wow. Yeah,
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