The evil of Nazism was so totalizing that we’ve been collectively struggling ever since to imagine how so many people could be led down such a dark path and how best to make the person we disagree with at the cocktail party seem like someone who hides a pair of slick, Swastika-heeled jackboots under his or her bed.

There have been many attempts to try and impose explanatory frameworks upon Hitler, attributing his actions to everything from childhood abuse to my personal favorite, the failed artist theory. If only Hitler had been given undeserved recognition for his crappy watercolors, then he could have sublimated his genocidal tendencies. Under this theory, art schools should admit everyone who applies lest they turn away someone whose only two life choices are serial strangler or sculptor.

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato tackle the thorny underwear drawer of Hitler in their documentary, Hidden Hitler.  Barbato and Bailey attempt to build the case that Hitler was homosexual through stories of trench warfare blowjobs, a hidden rap sheet where Hitler tried to score some public action, and even tales of Hitler renting out his money-maker to randy old guys. The problem in isolating Hitler’s sexuality for analysis comes from the fact that, when it comes to minorities, questions of individual psychology have a way of morphing into group conjecture. Throughout Hidden Hitler, a hazy line between exploring a hot-button historical issue and attributing homosexuality to Hitler’s broader pathologies gets inadvertently crossed.  Though it’s certainly intriguing to examine topics that might have been avoided for political reasons, it’s also irresponsible to take an unproven claim and thread that assertion back into a portrait of Hitler’s unknowable motivations.  

The anecdotal evidence does indeed pile up, leaving one to wonder if Hitler perhaps liked man-on-man action when he wasn’t busy keeping the death trains on time.  But the question ultimately won’t be the talisman that unlocks Hitler’s sociopathic rule any more than the genocide can be reduced to German nationalism or to some adolescent bully trauma involving a Jewish kid who took Hitler’s lunch money.  Despite all the potential paths of exploration, it seems to me that the crucial duty of any filmmaker is to make sure that in the end, the viewer understands that all the forces that may have colluded in creating a certain personality environment do not exonerate the most crucial factor in Hitler’s personal history:  his ability to make choices, truly evil and abominable ones.  

Terry Sawyer