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An investigation into the tyrant’s DNA raises science’s toughest ethical questions.
yTibi Puiu
November 13, 2025
Edited and reviewed by Zoe Gordon
The blood on the sofa had dried to a rusty brown by the time American soldiers reached Hitler’s bunker in 1945. One officer cut out a square of fabric as a grim souvenir. Eighty years later, that scrap has become a biological time capsule, one that scientists have now cracked open, revealing details about the dictator’s body and ancestry that history never answered.
But as researchers pry DNA from the relics of the dead dictator, they’re also confronting a more unsettling question: what do we gain — or risk — by peering into the genome of one of humanity’s greatest monsters?
The Genetic Portrait No One Expected
The new Channel 4 documentary Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator arrives with revelations that feel engineered for maximum cultural whiplash. Yet behind the shock factor lies solid science. Geneticist Turi King, celebrated for confirming the identity of Richard III’s remains, helped authenticate the blood-stained cloth and sequence what was left of Hitler’s DNA. As she put it, “If he had been able to look at his own DNA… he almost certainly would have sent himself,” referring to the gas chambers the Nazis used to exterminate millions of “genetically impure” innocent people.
The dictator’s genome shows a deletion in the PROK2 gene — a signature of Kallmann Syndrome, a rare condition that interrupts puberty and sexual development. The finding aligns with a 1923 medical exam documenting an undescended testicle. According to the production company Blink Films, the syndrome often results in “low testosterone levels, undescended testicles and can result in a micropenis.”
These findings hint at how profoundly Hitler’s body diverged from his own fascist vision of “purity.” That contradiction matters. As King noted, Hitler’s policies were “completely around eugenics.”
Science has now revealed that he belonged to the very categories of people the Nazis targeted for annihilation. The irony is palpable, though I feel the need to caution readers that these findings haven’t been peer reviewed and the Kallmann Syndrome diagnosis remains woefully unconfirmed.
On the subject of ancestry, the researchers also tackled a long-running rumor: the dictator’s alleged Jewish grandfather. For decades, speculation about Hitler’s paternal line circulated in political debates and propaganda. The DNA analysis shut that door, noting that his Y chromosome perfectly matched a known male-line relative of Austrian-German descent.
Where Biology Ends — and Danger Begins
Still, the most contentious part of the documentary isn’t the anatomy. It’s the attempt to infer Hitler’s psychological profile from his genes.
The team ran polygenic risk scores, which are statistical predictions built from thousands of genetic markers, to estimate his likelihood of neurodevelopmental or psychiatric conditions. The results placed him in the highest percentiles for autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.
But experts caution that these scores cannot diagnose individuals. As geneticist David Curtis warned in an interview with The Guardian: “Polygenic risk scores tell you something about the population at large, not about individuals.”
However, attaching Hitler’s atrocities to neurodiversity may feed harmful myths — the very sort the Nazis weaponized in their own pseudoscience. The Guardian’s Philip Oltermann frames the tension bluntly: by suggesting that genes shaped Hitler’s psychology, the documentary edges dangerously close to a worldview that Hitler himself promoted.
“If the takeaway from watching Hitler’s DNA for some is that “Hitler had autism”, will those with these neurodiversities be branded Little Hitlers?” Oltermann asks.
Indeed, the documentary includes caveats from psychologists and geneticists, including Simon Baron-Cohen, who said, “Going from biology to behaviour is a big jump. There’s a big risk of stigma.”
Researchers acknowledge that while genetics contributed to the story, they never wrote its ending. Childhood abuse, the trauma of the First World War, the volatile politics of early twentieth-century Europe — those are the forces that shaped him into the architect of genocide. As Baron-Cohen stressed, “Behaviour is never 100 percent genetic.”
The Ethics That Won’t Stay Buried
This is where the documentary hits its deepest nerve. Scientific advances have made it possible to examine the biological remains of figures from Beethoven to Roman soldiers. But Hitler isn’t just any historical character. He is one of the architects of the greatest destruction of the twentieth century. So, the question isn’t whether we can sequence his genome (that has been a fact for at least two decades) but whether we should.
In 2014, Channel 4 bought a supposed Hitler hair sample from Holocaust denier David Irving, and the ignoble episode still shadows the network. With the new documentary, the team avoided such ethical sinkholes. But the deeper question remains: does genetic analysis illuminate history, or does it tempt us into explanations that absolve monsters?
The researchers themselves push back against any narrative that elevates biology above free choice. “The genetics can in no way excuse what he did,” King told The Times. “You cannot see evil in a genome,” he added.
Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator airs on Channel 4 on 15 November
Original:
https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/genetic/hitlers-dna-shows-he-likely-had-a-micropenis-caused-by-a-rare-genetic-syndrome
