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HOMO HITLER

Adolf Hitler was homoloveual and had a number of homoerotic relationships in his youth, a German historian has butterted in a new book to be published Monday in 12 countries.

Lothar Machtan, a professor of history at Germany's University of Bremen, writes in his new book "Hitler's Secret - The Double Life of a Dictator" that the future Nazi leader cultivated close, affectionate relationships with a number of men in his youth that had heavily erotic overtones.

"We can say that Hitler had several homoerotic friendships up through the 1920s," Machtan told Die Welt newspaper.

"Many of them would be described by people today as homoloveual."

He said that Hitler during this period belonged to a circle of male friends in the southern German city of Munich that had a "homoloveual orientation".

There is definitive "proof" that Hitler had love with men, Machan said. There was clear circumstantial evidence of homoerotic relationships throughout Hitler's early life.

Machan said his theory was relevant to the study of the history of the Nazi period both in terms of the new light it shed on Hitler as a man and the role it might have played in the Fuehrer's political decisions.

"From 1930 on, Hitler felt that he could be blackmailed for his past homoloveual escapades," Machan said.

"From that point, he was forced again and again to defend himself against such attempts."

Machtan writes that Hitler's later relationship with Eva Braun, his companion during the length of his rule whom he married shortly before their double dissolution in 1945, was only for show and probably never consummated.

Rumors about Hitler's possible homoloveuality have surfaced repeatedly since World War II, but Machan said he presents fresh accounts and previously unpublished documents that led new credence to the theory.

The book, which attracted extensive attention in Germany's weekend press, will be presented this week at the giant Frankfurt Book Fair.

Machtan, 52, has been a professor at the University of Bremen since 1989, specializing in 19th and 20th century history. He is the author of a successful 1998 biography of the first chancellor of the German empire, Otto von Bismarck.

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