The Allies Believed They Could Help Defeat Hitler by Giving Him Estrogen

Dark and strange times call for dark and strange measures. In the middle of World War II, with no end in sight, Allied forces came up with some very strange plots to try to bring down Hitler. It’s uncertain if a rather sexist plot could have quelled the deaths of more than 60 million during the war, but it is interesting to contemplate. Allied spies wanted to give the dictator female sex hormones. They thought it might calm him down.

A study at the time by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (the organization that came before the CIA) claimed that on the gender spectrum, Adolf Hitler was near the middle—”close to the male-female line,” wrote the OSS’s director of research and development, Stanley Lovell. The Allies then decided if they could tip him over the line into “female” territory, he would lose his hold on Germany and the war could be won.

Rumors also often floated around about Hitler’s sexuality. Since hormone therapy research was in the beginning stages, people also thought the hormone could swing him in the direction of homosexual, and again, possibly make him less aggressive. This was all due to the rumor, since disproven, that one of Hitler’s testicles was blown off during his service in World War I. At the very least, there were hopes that the hormones might cause his voice to increase in pitch, perhaps making him a laughing stock in his own country, or that he might even grow breasts.

The Allies Believed They Could Help Defeat Hitler by Giving Him Estrogen — Google Networks

Hitler had much more embarrassing problems already than potentially sprouting breasts. He had chronic flatulence. He took a myriad of medications to fight it. He also had an irrational fear of cats. More seriously though, his people never actually elected him. He lost the presidential election, but the Nazi party formed a coalition that got them enough seats to demand the position of Chancellor for Hitler. In the midst of death and war, it does seem becoming more feminine might be the least of his problems.

Nonetheless, agents planned to put estrogen in his food. They thought it could turn him into a more docile creature. His sister, Paula Hitler, was said to have a docile personality and worked as a secretary. She was actually Hitler’s only sibling to survive to adulthood. Hitler gave her financial support until his suicide in 1945.

It’s a bit unclear on what the ultimate end goal was with the estrogen plan, and exactly how a feminized Hitler would help Allied forces, but this plan still floated around for quite a while, and at the time sex therapy was becoming popular in London.

Professor Brian Ford of Cardiff University uncovered this strange plot. Ford said of his discovery: “There was an Allied plan that they would smuggle estrogen into Hitler’s food and change his sex so he would become more feminine and less aggressive.” Ford also stated: “The Americans put it rather well. They said, ‘take away his mustache and give him breasts’.

Ford went on to reveal that Allied forces were indeed close enough to Hitler that the execution of the plot would have been possible. Hitler did have poison testers, but estrogen doesn’t act immediately, and it would’ve been pretty much impossible to detect. It is also tasteless. Specifically, Allied forces wanted Hitler’s gardener to inject the hormone into his carrots.

Believe it or not, the estrogen plot wasn’t even close to some of the very weird ideas that Allies came up with to end the war. Forces wanted to drop glue on Nazis to stick them to the ground. One idea included disguising bombs as fruit tins. Even stranger, some thought dropping poisonous snakes on troops could help bring about victory. One of the strangest hair-brained schemes included launching a Panjandrum, or a Catherine wheel full of explosives from the Normandy coast. Forces nearly a million dollars testing the wheel to no avail.

On the flip side, the Nazis had plenty of bizarre schemes of their own. The Nazis planned to poison sausages, chocolate and Nescafe if they found themselves on the losing side of the war. They would leave the products where Allied troops would find them. Another Nazi plan involved a cigarette that would give an Allied spy a headache. They would then be offered a poison aspirin that would cause them to drop dead.

In the end, there’s no evidence that there were specific plans to carry out the estrogen plot. In fact, none of these zany plots took hold. So we will forever be left to wonder what would’ve happened had Hitler received the hormone.