The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report

New York: Basic Books, Inc, 1972. Second Printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. ix, [1], 306 pages. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Foreword by William L. Langer. Afterword by Robert G. L. Waite. Walter Charles Langer (February 5, 1899 - July 4, 1981) was an American psychoanalyst who prepared a detailed psychological analysis of Adolf Hitler in 1943. Langer studied psychoanalysis at Harvard University, where he worked as a professor upon completion of his education. Langer was later employed by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), where in 1943 he prepared a psychoanalysis profile of Hitler. In this analysis, Langer accurately predicted that Hitler would commit suicide as the "most plausible outcome", and the possibility of a military coup against Hitler well before the assassination attempt of 1944. Following Langer's analysis and Hitler's subsequent death, Langer turned the report into a book about Adolf Hitler, The Mind of Adolf Hitler: A Secret Wartime Report. This book was Langer's best-known; however, he also wrote the books Psychology and Human Living, A Psychological analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend, and Dissecting the Hitler Mind. Langer worked as a psychoanalyst at Harvard University. Following his graduation, Langer was accepted into the American Psychiatric Association (APA). However, Langer was accepted into the APA against common practice as he was the first to be admitted without obtaining an M.D. Despite many controversies, the profile has been influential in the field of profiling political leaders. The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report is based on a World War II report by psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer which probed the psychology of Adolf Hitler from the available information. The original report was prepared for the United States' Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and submitted in late 1943 or early 1944; it is officially entitled A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend. The report is one of two psychoanalytic reports prepared for the OSS during the war in an attempt to assess Hitler's personality; the other is Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler by the psychologist Henry A. Murray who also contributed to Langer's report. The book contains not only a version of Langer's original report but also a foreword by his brother, the historian William L. Langer who was Chief of Research and Analysis at the OSS during the war, an introduction by Langer himself, a Foreword by his noted historian brother William L. Langer, and an Afterword by the psychoanalytic historian Robert G. L. Waite. The wartime report was commissioned by the head of the OSS, William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan. The research and investigation for it was done in collaboration with three other clinicians - Professor Henry A. Murray of the Harvard Psychological Clinic, Dr. Ernst Kris of the New School for Social Research, and Dr. Bertram D. Lewin of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute - as well as research associates Langer notes in his introduction to the book that one of the three essentially dropped out of the project because he was too busy with other work, but he gives no names. The Langer report was classified as "Secret" by the OSS, but was eventually declassified in 1968. After receiving some encouragement from fellow scholars, particularly Professor Henderson Braddick of the Department of International Relations at Lehigh University, Langer decided to publish the report in book form. The original report is in the public domain and is available on the Internet on a number of sites.[citation needed] Numerous substantial unexplained differences were noted by Gatzke, however, between the report as published in 1972 and a separate copy of the 1943/44 report. Gatzke writes "Recent correspondence with the publisher...has revealed that the original [OSS report] manuscript was changed and edited several times by Dr. Langer and others, both in 1943 and again before publication. In a review of The Mind of Adolf Hitler for The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Martin Waugh concluded that Langer's work is important "because of its value to the historian; because it was a 'first' for this country's intelligence services; and because of the official recognition of psychoanalysis the assignment implied." Historian Gasket agrees that the original document is of historical interest.