All language subtitles for hitlers.dna.blueprint.of.a.dictator.s01e01.1080p.web.h264-sylix_track3_[eng]

This programme contains images
of the aftermath of World War II
and the suicide of Adolf Hitler

In this room we have
a lot of World War II items.

This is where some of
the Hitler items are housed.

This is Hitler's tea set.

A lot of American soldiers sourced
very unusual artefacts.

We have some Eva Braun items down
there. We have a Hitler shirt.

This is the swatch,
and this is the blood stain.

That whole little corner here
is all Hitler's blood.

The American soldier just took
out a knife, cut a piece off,

put it in his pocket,
and off he went.

He didn't think a lot about it.

He didn't think, 80 years later,
people were going to

try to extract DNA off of it.

Responsible for some
of humanity's worst atrocities,

Adolf Hitler is one of the
most studied people in history.

But despite this,
he remains an enigma.

Because he's so guarded about
his own personal history,

there remain questions that
continue to puzzle historians.

His ancestry is shrouded
in mystery.

Hitler appears to have felt
ashamed about his family.

There's been this rumour for
a really long time that Hitler had

Jewish ancestry through
his grandfather.

His psychological state is
hotly debated.

There's a very long history
of trying to diagnose Hitler,

who is one of the most enigmatic
figures who ever lived.

Some have denied that he had
any illness at all.

I've always argued that there's good
medical evidence to the contrary.

His sex life is a secret
he took to his grave.

He didn't seem to have
the same libido

men of his age would have had.

And he remains the subject of
persistent rumours about his health.

Hitler felt uncomfortable
in his own body.

He didn't want to undress
in front of anyone ever.

Now, 80 years since his death,
can science provide answers?

Can a blood-stained piece
of fabric unlock

the secrets contained in
Hitler's DNA?

We've found something
really interesting.

When these findings emerged,
I was simply flabbergasted.

Can we finally understand history's
most notorious tyrant?

This was how Adolf Hitler
wanted to be seen in

the 1935 propaganda film,
Triumph of the Will.

This was a documentary film
commissioned by Hitler himself.

This is the staging of Hitler as
the Messiah, as the Chosen One,

as the person who's descending
from heaven to earth

in order to save Germany.

It's natural for people
to want a saviour,

and Hitler presented himself
as the Messiah.

He was the man who had the answers.

Promising to create a National
Socialist Reich that would last

a thousand years, Hitler led Germany
into its darkest chapter.

By April 1945, the thousand-year
Reich was in ruins.

His Nazi regime was collapsing,
and the Fuhrer himself

was a physical and mental wreck.

Hitler is increasingly faced
with the question,

what will his fate be?

He decides before the
Soviets take Berlin...

...to take his own life.

As the Third Reich crumbled,
Hitler's personal valet

Heinz Linge bore witness to
the tyrant's final moments.

Mr Linge, is Hitler really dead?

Yes. I was the last one who
said goodbye to him,

and the first, after his suicide,
to enter the room in the bunker.

And how did he kill himself,
Mr Linge?

He shot himself,
and Eva Braun took poison.

Hitler was determined that his most
intimate secrets would die with him.

He gave me the order five days
before to get gasoline

to burn the bodies.
We burned them in the garden.

Hitler made sure that his body
would be destroyed

so that there would be no traces
left that would contradict

the artificial version
of himself that had been created.

But while his body was destroyed,
Hitler left something behind

that at the time would have
seemed inconsequential -

his blood.

Now, an international team
of experts will test

the DNA in this
blood-stained swatch.

And if it does belong to Hitler,
they will attempt a world first...

...to sequence his genome.

I am a geneticist who specialises
in ancient and forensic DNA.

I'm probably best known
for having led the genetic

and statistical identification of
the remains of King Richard III,

who was found in a car park
in Leicester in 2012.

I'm a historian of Nazi Germany,
based in the University of Potsdam.

We already have historical
documentation about Hitler,

but we don't have something
like this - his DNA.

This will change the way
we think about Hitler,

add to our understanding of him
and be something that we'll be

talking about for a
long time to come.

I think this is going to be
a really interesting

and potentially difficult case.

I often collaborate
with people in Germany

and they would not touch this.

Anyone we went to in
Europe wouldn't touch it.

That gives us some idea of
the shadow that Hitler

still casts over Europe,
so we have to tread very carefully.

I really agonised about whether
or not I wanted to be involved.

And that's because of who it is.

But it's also an extremely
interesting project

because of who he is.

There's been huge amounts
of interest in his mental health.

And we know that there's
a genetic component

to psychiatric and
neurodevelopmental disorders.

But we know it's about environment
and upbringing and so on.

No matter what we find,
that would never excuse

anything that Hitler did.

People with psychiatric disorders
do not go on to do

the sorts of things that Hitler did.

My concern is that by not
approaching this,

it makes him and DNA almost like
a taboo, and I think that's wrong.

We need to demystify
what we can and cannot tell

from somebody's DNA.

80 years of scientific breakthroughs
have transformed our understanding

of human genetics.

The famous helix structure
of DNA was identified soon after

the end of World War II.

Over the decades that followed,
research progressed into its uses,

particularly in forensics.

And at the dawn of the 21st century,
the Human Genome Project

made a major breakthrough.

We are here to celebrate
the completion of

the first survey of
the entire human genome.

With the power of this
discovery comes, of course,

the responsibility to use it wisely.

Our individual genomes
contain countless clues

to our propensity for
physical features and disease,

for psychiatric
and neurodevelopmental traits

and to our ancestry.

And because DNA remains
long after we die,

geneticists can now shine new light
on figures from history.

So in terms of doing genetic
analysis like this,

provenance, understanding where
the sample has come from is key.

So does the sample said to
be from Adolf Hitler's sofa

stand up to scrutiny?

The grandson of the
American soldier who cut

the swatch from the sofa
has been traced to Italy.

So, Erik, this swatch that we
are trying to get DNA out of

was from your grandfather.
He was the one who got it.

My grandfather was the information
officer under General Eisenhower

during the war.

And so he had access to people
in places that very few people had.

When the allied forces
came together in Berlin,

he was there, and he
would have been, I believe,

in the first group of Americans
that entered Hitler's bunker.

I don't know how long after
Hitler killed himself

that visit would have occurred.

The bodies were gone,
but there was blood on the sofa.

My grandfather cut
the swatch of blood.

It's such a powerful memento.

For him, it was a true symbol
of the death of Hitler

and the end of the war.

80 years later, we're sitting across
the table from one another

talking about the possibility
of getting DNA.

You know, good on you, grandad.

ERIK CHUCKLES

It seems that the swatch itself
came from Hitler's bunker.

But does the blood on the fabric
belong to Hitler himself?

To find out, a forensic geneticist
will collect a sample.

We like to call ourselves
the Island of Misfit Cases,

where all the most difficult things
go when they're stuck.

So over here is the swatch
and right there is the blood.

Excellent, yeah, you can definitely
see the discolouration. Yeah.

I've done a lot of
sampling in my life,

but this one brought me
some anxiety.

I'm not going to even lie about it.

Yeah, classic red-brown staining.
It looks like a real solid sample.

When you're working on something
with historical relevance,

it's a destructive process.

You want to take a sample
that is likely

to give you some information,
but with every kind of

increase in size of that,
you're destroying more and more

of the original object.

I'm going to take
just a small little...

About that, is that OK? Yep.

When he handles something
this historic, you know,

when you see it happen, it's, um...
It's definitely stressful.

What we need is going to
vary on the sample type,

how diluted it was, how old it was.

Just making sure that
everything's sealed.

We don't want anything
to get in or get out.

You can certainly tell that you
had a blood stain there.

It's just how much is that
impacted by the age?

You're talking about
a very small sample.

In theory, everything will
work out just fine,

but until you get in the lab,
you just don't know.

So is it really Hitler's blood?

And if it is, will the DNA
reveal anything

after degrading for 80 years?

A swatch of blood-stained fabric
cut from a sofa in 1945

has been taken for analysis
to determine if it is

Adolf Hitler's blood.

What we're desperate
to know is whether or not

we've got enough DNA that we
can even do the analysis,

because without that,
that's the end of the project.

After multiple rejections from
European institutions,

uncomfortable testing anything
associated with Hitler,

an American forensics lab will
work on identifying any DNA in

the sample taken from the museum.

We have had samples much older
than 80 years that we've tested

and been able to obtain
really good results from.

But at the same time,
if it is not kept well,

we have samples five or six
years old that are so degraded

that it is very difficult to get
usable information from.

So our extraction process begins
with adding specific chemicals

that reveal DNA from deep
within the nucleus.

We want DNA and water and that's it.

So far, this looks like a sample
that could have some blood on it.

It's more red than the fabric is.

Oh, my gut feeling is that there's
something there that is not just

an empty piece of fabric.

It's ready to go on our instrument.

So this will tell us how much
DNA is present in our sample.

Your first steps are doing
the DNA extraction

and then you want to determine
is this human blood

and is it from a male?

It is one of the most nerve-racking
parts of this process.

So, results are...

...there is human DNA.
It appears to be male.

Degradation shows that it
has failed, which is expected.

We expect DNA from 80 years ago
to be degraded.

So that is a good sign that
this is very likely the DNA

that you're expecting it
to be and not some new

and fresh contaminant.

So the initial findings
seem positive.

The sample is blood,
it is from a man,

and the DNA is not recent.

But how can genetics confirm it
to be Hitler's blood?

So the piece of DNA that we use
to do the identification

that this is Hitler
is the Y chromosome.

We humans, we have got
23 pairs of chromosomes.

You get one half
of each pair comes from mum

and the other half comes from dad.

Chromosome pairs number one to 22,
they're the same between

men and women and they're
known as our autosomes.

But we've got chromosome pair
number 23 here,

those are known as are
sex chromosomes.

So women have got two copies
of this rather large X chromosome.

Men have got an X chromosome,

but they've also got this
tiny little Y chromosome.

But it's going to be really
important for this project,

because the Y chromosome
that a man has,

it comes down to him down
through the male line.

So if we can find
a male line relative of Hitler

and look at their
Y chromosome type,

we can see if it matches that from
the DNA from the sample.

In Belgium, journalist Jean-Paul
Mulders has spent years

tracking down Hitler's
blood relations.

About 15 years ago, I read that
strange story of a man who,

during the '70s,
claimed to be Hitler's son.

My initial thoughts was this
must be bullshit, in fact.

People lie, but DNA doesn't.

I had to find out whether
it was true or not.

Using stamps licked by
Hitler's supposed son,

Jean-Paul obtained a DNA sample.

Having the DNA of Loret
is one thing,

obtaining the DNA of
Hitler relatives is another one.

Working with a genealogist,
Jean-Paul began to identify

living male relatives of Hitler.

You cannot contact them.

If you call them by phone,
they simply do not answer.

So I started to visit relatives
of Hitler in Austria

and ask them for a DNA sample.

Some of them react
aggressive and said,

"I don't want to have anything
to do with this."

I thought at that moment,
it won't succeed.

We are here for nothing and we
will go back with empty hands.

We visited one more relative
of Hitler.

He was very friendly and he said,
"Oh, a bit of saliva?

"Is that all you want?"

He took the swab
and put it in his mouth

and gave it back. "Here you are,
have a nice day."

And it was a nice day, because
I had the DNA of the relative.

The results were crystal clear.

It didn't match with the saliva
on the stamps belonging

to Jean-Marie Loret.

So Jean-Marie Loret was not at all
the son of Adolf Hitler.

Now, many years later, this sample
provides a definitive way

to test whether the blood from the
sofa is in fact Hitler's.

So let me show you
the Y chromosome results.

This is the male line relative from
JP Mulder's sample.

And then let's bring you
the one in from the swatch.

Look at that.

There's an exact match between
the male-line relative

and the DNA from the sample
from the swatch.

They're identical.

So does that mean that

the blood sample really does belong
to Hitler?

This is a really important moment
in any investigation like this.

You know what, Alex?

It looks like we've got
Adolf Hitler's DNA.

When you can kind of go,
yep, it's him.

We've got him.
I'm so pleased with the result.

I feel like we can go forward
with confidence, really.

For the first time in history,

Adolf Hitler's DNA
has been identified.

The question now,

is there enough DNA left
after 80 years

to reveal anything useful about
history's most studied man?

Once we're alive,
we have got really nice,

long strands of DNA,

and we can sequence modern
DNA incredibly easily.

After death,
our DNA starts to degrade.

It starts to be cut into smaller

and smaller fragments until
eventually there is nothing

left to sequence.

Can DNA offer answers
where historians have

so far failed?

And will this ground-breaking

evidence reveal what Hitler
was so keen to hide?

After several rounds of sequencing,

the Hitler DNA sample has been
rebuilt into this,

a reconstruction of the whole genome
of history's most enigmatic tyrant.

So this is it,
this is Adolf Hitler's genome.

So this reconstruction is
an incredible achievement.

How close do you think it
is to the entire thing?

We have got some gaps,

but we've managed
to get pretty good coverage for

the genome,
so I'm as happy as we can be.

And we can start
to get information about his health.

You cannot see evil
in somebody's DNA,

but you can say things about whether
or not they are genetically

predisposed towards
certain conditions.

We're looking for something
about Hitler's ancestry,

and we're looking for mutations in
his DNA, insertions, deletions.

It brings a completely new slant,
a new angle,

on someone who was responsible for

the most terrible crimes committed
in modern history.

It's really an irony that Hitler,

who had his own body destroyed,

did not manage to conceal his DNA,

and that now in the 21st century,

we can try to recover some of

the secrets that Hitler wanted
to conceal himself.

So how does this new genetic
information interact

with what we already know?

Can the genome shine new light
on the dimmest reaches of

the Hitler story, his early life?

Hitler was born in
a place called Braunau am Inn,

on the border of Germany
and Austria.

He wrote in his memoir
slash manifesto,

Mein Kampf, that this was fate,

that it was his destiny
to unite these two nations,

Austria and Germany.

He famously started Mein Kampf

with this sanitised version
of his childhood,

while in reality,

he really had a lot
of adverse life experiences.

He was surrounded by death
from an early age.

When he was 13 years old,
his father died

and at the age of 18,
his mother died.

Hitler's mother, Klara,
had to bury not one,

not two, but four of her children
who died at very,

very young ages from diphtheria.

Adolf and his younger sister, Paula,

were literally the only
two survivors.

Combined with that,
his father, Alois Hitler,

was a very physically violent
alcoholic, and he beat Adolf.

Alois took every opportunity

to exert his authority relentlessly
on the young Adolf.

We don't want to say anyone who's
been abused or anyone who has

experienced neglect in
their early life is

going to end up doing
terrible things.

That's not the case.
But these early adverse life

experiences do play
a critical role.

Hate often does come from this sense
of feeling angry,

feeling badly treated,
feeling alienated from society,

maybe as a result
of early negative experiences.

This is the former village

of Dollersheim in Lower Austria,

where generations
of Hitler's ancestors lived

and died. Today,
almost nothing remains.

We're here in what is left
of Dollersheim,

which as you can see is now
a military training area,

but up until 1938,
was a thriving community.

One of the descendants
of this community is Bernhard Lehr.

Despite its importance in
Hitler's family story,

the German army was ordered
to forcibly resettle all 2,000

villagers before bombing their homes
as part of training exercises.

Could it be that Hitler was trying

to destroy evidence around
his true ancestry?

So where does this rumour come from
that Hitler had Jewish ancestry?

It's been around for
a very long time,

since the late 1920s, early 1930s,

that Hitler's grandmother,
Maria Schickelgruber,

had worked for a period of time
in a Jewish household

and had got pregnant.
Foreign media got hold of this,

made a big thing out of it,

and Hitler was clearly quite
concerned about

the potential damage it would do.

And therefore he took steps
to publish

an official version
of his family tree,

which made clear that there was no
Jewish ancestry.

Can Hitler's DNA shed light on
the ancestry of his grandfather?

This is where the Y chromosome data
actually backs up that Nazi version

of his family tree, because
the Y chromosome

is showing that Hitler is indeed
Hitler,

or he wouldn't get
that DNA match with

the male line relative.
If he had Jewish ancestry,

that match wouldn't be there.

So we can actually put that rumour
about Jewish ancestry

to bed based on the DNA.
Exactly, now we know for certain.

DNA has answered one of

the biggest questions
about Hitler's ancestry.

But can it offer new insights into
why he may have behaved as he did?

About 20 years ago,
I studied Hitler's life.

There's a vast amount

of information available
that was collected

and I was absolutely convinced
at that time that he had

a whole variety
of neurodevelopmental conditions,

and I published on this.

Many people obviously challenged me,

they didn't like it,
they disagreed with it.

So are there any clues as

to whether he was affected by any
conditions and if so,

what they might have been?

This is Linz, Austria's third city,

and the closest thing that
Hitler had to a hometown.

This is a plaque that commemorates
that this hotel was once a school

and that one of its most famous
schoolchildren was

the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

However, this plaque fails
to mention

the other most famous schoolchild

to attend this school,
Adolf Hitler.

Hitler had dreams of being
an artist,

and he talks about this from
something like

the age of 12.

He said his father was absolutely
adamant that this would not be

the case. As a school pupil,
he was quite idle and lazy.

He didn't make any effort in school,

he didn't concentrate,
he didn't do his homework.

He was unteachable.
Nobody could tell him anything.

So whilst he was quite intelligent
and clever,

if the subject didn't interest him,
he just entirely neglected it.

Was Hitler just an unhappy,
absent-minded child?

Or does his DNA indicate
something more fundamental

that might help
explain his behaviour?

Hitler's DNA results
have been sent to

a world-leading team
at Aarhus University

to assess his genetic propensity
for psychiatric

and neurodevelopmental conditions.

We are doing genetic analysis where
we are looking at thousands

of individuals with
a psychiatric condition by using

something called
the polygenic score.

A polygenic score assesses
an individual's genetic markers for

a certain condition or disease.

It compares these with
a large population sample

to chart the individual's likelihood
of having the condition.

We were very surprised when we saw
that he was such

an outlier on several conditions.

We found that actually
very astonishing.

So we have been looking at his score

for childhood neurodevelopmental
onset conditions.

We can maybe start with
the score for ADHD.

So what you can see here is the
distribution of the score.

You can see you have
this bell curve.

And in the middle, you have a lot of
individuals with an average score.

And then you can also see
for ADHD, he's towards the end.

So he has a score that is higher
than the average

with common variants that associates

with ADHD or increases
the risk for ADHD.

Hitler's possible genetic propensity
for ADHD seems

to be reflected in his poor
performance at school.

But what about evidence from his

adolescence as his personality
became more clearly formed?

With ADHD, those people are usually
described as being lazy.

But it's a question of interest.

When the person with ADHD focuses on
something of interest,

then they have the capacity
to hyper-focus.

That profile does fit with Hitler,

particularly in school, and indeed,

you can find evidence
of ADHD throughout his life.

He was hyperactive,
he was impulsive,

he always on the go.

You can see how disastrous
the management of

the war would be for somebody
who had ADHD like Hitler.

Evidence of Adolf
Hitler's behaviour,

before his reinvention
as the Nazi demagogue,

is relatively scarce.

But August Kubizek's account
of his teenage friendship

with Hitler is an invaluable source

for psychiatrists interested in
the dictator's state of mind.

The benefit of the Kubizek memoirs
is that they are

the only source about
Hitler in his childhood

and teenage years,

and a very good source,

in the sense that Kubizek himself
was not politically active.

Kubizek and Hitler's first encounter
was here at

the Municipal Theatre, where

the two of them discovered their
shared love of music and the opera.

"He was a remarkably pale,
skinny youth,

"about my own age,
who was following

"the performance
with glistening eyes.

"Once after the performance,
I accompanied him home.

"When we took leave of each other,
he gave me his name - Adolf Hitler."

Hitler and Kubizek's mutual passion
for music created

a strong bond and they
became close friends.

He was totally obsessed with opera.

He spoke to his friend
August endlessly about opera.

But Hitler was very controlling
and dominating.

He would talk in monologues,

he would harangue his friend.

It was a genuine friendship,
but the only one in his life.

"He was always convinced
that he was right.

"He would talk for hours,
heatedly, passionately,

"often violently,

"and I would listen,
completely under his spell."

Hitler clearly struggled
with social relationships.

Can this be explained simply by

the higher than average likelihood
of ADHD found in his genome?

For a lot of neurodevelopmental
disorders,

we see very often, and if
you have one condition,

there's a high probability
of also having another condition.

So we have also been looking
at Hitler's score for autism.

If we look here at
the distribution of autism in

the population,
you can see that Hitler is really,

really lying high at the right end.

He has a very high score,

and he actually belongs
to the top 1%.

Top 1?%

This suggests that I would say quite

a high probability that he might
have had some autistic behaviours

or symptoms of autism.

What's really interesting seeing
these high polygenic scores is that

people were already speculating
about whether or not he had these

conditions.
They're really striking results.

I can hardly express how staggered
I was to find support

for my findings from genetics,

because I had taken quite
a lot of criticism

for describing Hitler
as having autism,

for ADHD, for...
And for other things.

We can't reduce his behaviour
to these diagnoses.

Autism is a disability
and a difference.

It's a disability in

the sense that people who are
autistic struggle

with social relationships
and communication.

They struggle with that first kind
of empathy.

We call it cognitive empathy,

which is just the ability

to recognise what someone
is thinking or feeling.

Autistic people have excellent
attention to detail

and excellent pattern
recognition skills.

And they tend to kind
of focus on particular topics,

sometimes called obsessions.

So they go into great depth
in a very systematic way.

Long before politics,

Hitler's obsessions
were music and art.

And in 1907,

he moved to Vienna

to pursue his dream of becoming
a painter.

He'd already left school,

he'd given up on everything
in his life to that point

and only had this one idea in mind,

which is taking
the entrance exam for

the Academy of Fine Arts.

This status was quite important
for him.

Hitler seemed to have been obsessed
with being an artist.

He really believed
he was good enough.

So he was always very passionate
about that,

but it seemed that it was not his
actual calling.

Hitler had invested all his hopes
into entering

the Vienna Academy,
but he was rejected twice.

He spent the next few years
drifting in Vienna,

eking out a living selling paintings
in the street.

A major change of fortune came
with the outbreak of

the First World War.

So how did the move

to military life suit
Hitler's possible autistic traits?

1914 was one of several turning
points in Hitler's life.

The First World War gave him
a new opportunity

to find employment,

to find meaning when all his dreams
of becoming

an artist had actually been dashed.

Hitler left Austria and moved to

the Bavarian capital
of Munich in Germany.

When the announcement
of war was made in Munich,

Hitler claims he was there that day,

and he joined up with

the 16th Bavarian
Infantry Regiment.

At that point,

he is willing to follow orders

and function in this
very structured,

hierarchical way where other people
tell him what his boundaries are

and what he can do within
those boundaries.

Hitler thrived in the army.

He won an Iron Cross for bravery

and was promoted to
the rank of corporal.

Hitler's entrance into

the army is absolutely fascinating

because he found a structure there.

Another feature of autism is what
we call preservation of sameness,

wanting routine,
wanting the same routine every day.

He didn't have friends in the army.

He didn't relate to
the other soldiers.

If you ever look at
a photograph of Hitler in the army,

he's always at a side.

Germany was
at the mercy of the Allies.

We celebrate not only
because the war was over but

because it seemed that we had put an
end to German militarism forever.

After the war,
Hitler returned to Munich.

In the chaos,

it had become a hotbed
of revolutionary activity on

the left and right of politics.

Hitler worked for the army
as an informant, sent

to monitor the activities
of extreme parties.

He was soon drawn to

the right-wing nationalist views
of one group in particular,

the NSDAP,

which became known
as the Nazi Party.

It's not uncommon for a person
with autism

to have very black
and white thinking.

This black and white thinking makes
people vulnerable

to join extreme groups.
And of course,

Hitler did that. Of course,
in the general population,

the vast majority
of autistic people are highly moral.

They're excessively moral.

Now that's totally different
from Hitler who was amoral

and perverse. The first fellow who
heard him speak in

a bierkeller in Munich,
he said, "What a gob he has,

"we could use him."

And because of that,
he was made their leader.

Hitler's genetic propensity
for autistic

and ADHD traits does seem

to align with what we know
from history.

Could these findings help explain

Hitler's behaviour in later life?

At Trinity College, Cambridge,

a leading autism expert will assess
his polygenic scores.

Simon, this is the one for autism.

So he's in the top 1%
for autism on the polygenic score.

Yeah. We've got another polygenic
score around ADHD,

and he's coming at
the 80th percentile.

It is amazing how
the scientists have managed

to extract these scores
from the DNA.

But the process of science is all
about critical review and scrutiny.

Going from biology
to behaviour is a big jump.

It's an indication
of a predisposition,

but it's not a diagnosis. Yeah.

By looking at genetic results
like this,

there's a risk of stigma.
People out there might feel,

is my diagnosis being linked

with somebody who did such
monstrous things?

The vast majority of these
individuals do not do bad things.

We've just got to keep that in mind

so that it doesn't become
out of balance.

It would be very easy for people
to look at this result

and say, "Was the whole of Hitler's
behaviour to do with autism?"

And I think that would be
the wrong conclusion to draw.

The risk is reductionism
down to genetics,

when there are so many other factors
that could be playing a part.

We know that genes don't operate
in isolation,

they operate in an environment,

and I'm glad that Alex is here
as the historian

to just remind us about
the importance of social factors.

Yeah.

He clearly experienced

an unusual level
of suffering during his childhood.

And loss, yeah. And loss.
To me, the experience of neglect

and abuse would be
much more relevant

to understanding why somebody grows
up with hate

and anger rather than
the genetics. The two interplay.

And in Hitler's case,

autism and ADHD cannot explain
his cruelty in later life.

But perhaps one other polygenic
finding from his DNA can.

Tests have also revealed that
Hitler's genetic propensity

for antisocial behaviour,

a measure of psychopathy,
is in the top 10%.

I think that we're quite entitled

to use criminal autistic psychopathy
to describe Hitler.

It highlights, number one,
his criminality,

number two, his autism,
and number three,

his psychopathy.
So it's a very complex mixture.

Hitler was one in a million,
or maybe one in billion.

The shy, unusual boy who failed
at everything he had strived

for had put his unique mind
to reinventing himself as

a messianic leader,
inspiring godlike devotion.

But strip away the theatrics,
and Hitler was still a man.

No amount of power could help him
to overcome

the limits of his body.

And when the scientists explore what

Hitler's DNA might reveal
about his physique,

something truly extraordinary
is exposed.

We've had some results come back,

and there's something really,
really interesting in it.

He's got a deletion
for one letter of his DNA,

but that really affects

the protein that is implicated
in sexual development

and development of sexual organs.
Really significant finding.

It seems this was manifested
in his personal life,

in his own personal relations.
He had throughout his life,

difficulty establishing
intimate relationships.

Oh, my goodness,
this is going to be quite big.

Could this finding help
to answer one of

the most persistent rumours
around Hitler?

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