How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Hitler did not care, as long as they were useful to him. When he emerged from prison he found not only that they were at each other's throats but that there was a demand from the more prim and respectable leaders such as Rosenberg and Ludendorff that the criminals and especially the perverts be expelled from the movement. This Hitler frankly refused to do. (2.5.16)
Ah yes, the more "respectable" leaders of the Nazi movement. Don't go reading this passage and walking away with the thought that Hitler was an early supporter of LGBTQ+ rights. He wasn't. He really, really wasn't. What's interesting about his actions during the early days of Nazism, though, is that when push came to shove, he seemed much more interested in a man's usefulness to the movement than in his sexual identity. Or at least, that seems to have been the case for certain select members of his entourage. Maybe he thought he could blackmail them if they didn't support the party line.
Quote #8
Nor was he lucky in love, though all his life he mistook his philanderings, which became notorious in his years of power, for great amours. His diaries for 1925-26, when he was twenty-eight and twenty-nine and just being launched into Nazi politics by Strasser, are full of moonings over loved ones—of whom he had several at a time. (2.5.32)
Hitler spends a considerable amount of time in Mein Kampf dwelling on the sexuality of Jewish men, and Shirer points out that their alleged vices were among the would-be Fuehrer's "morbid" fascinations. But throughout The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer himself seems fascinated by the sex lives of powerful Nazis.
Quote #9
There are dark hints too that she was repelled by the masochistic inclinations of her lover, that this brutal tyrant in politics yearned to be enslaved by the woman he loved—a not uncommon urge in such men, according to the sexologists. (2.5.79)
Don't think that Hitler himself escapes Shirer's fascination with the sex lives of the Nazis. Shirer seems thrilled to share some of the seedier aspects—from his perspective, at least—of Hitler's love affair with Geli Raubal.