WAS HITLER AUTISTIC?

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Bill Gates. Not Hitler, but obviously someone with AS can build an empire and dominate a market/country.

I'm not going to read this whole thread but I'll throw in my experience w/people with AS. The black/white/right/wrong thinking has generated some amazingly brutal, politically incorrect words from my AS friends lips. It makes sense to them. It's functional. Seperate the wheat from the chaff and be done with it seems to be the mindset. Hitler did seem (for right or wrong) to oook at the world this way too.

Aspergers sometimes leads to unlawful behaviour when it involves a special interest. eg Gary McKinnon and aliens. Or the subway enthusiast who impersonated a subway worker. If Hitler had Aspergers then his immoral behaviour could have been justified in his mind if his special interest was attacked. His interests were art, architecture, war, german nationalism. Perhaps the loss of WWI was perceived by him as an attack on his special interest and that over-road all other morality.

Didnt Ted Kazinski resort to violence when his special interest of self-sufficiency was attacked by developers?

Im known as pushover but the only time I fight back is when it involves my special interests being attacked by envious people.

So if you see some harmless person who has spent twenty years builing a Lego model: Dont muck with his Lego.

Bill Gates's diagnosis is rumor, not confirmed. I've heard both: he is and is not.
I'm not saying someone with AS can't say the same things as Hitler or be antisemitic. Anyone can, which is my point. There were proponents of genocide and social darwinism both here (US) and in Europe. It was a darker time. There wasn't such a thing as political correctness and we didn't have the disasters of WWII to learn from. It's no wonder Hitler and the other Nazis thought what they thought. Ask yourself if they were that different from others of the same period.
There isn't much evidence that Hitler was autistic if you really consider all the variables and look at the issue with an open mind. You must try to go back in time and get into the mindset. He was hardly a fish out of water. This was before they cured syphillis with antibiotics and most people lived in squalor and poverty so how can you know he was the way he was because of autism, especially since he was never diagnosed?

How many NTs would have goals like "getting out of jail" and "taking over a country"? You can replace the word "autistics" with "neurotypicals" in your sentences above and it'd still make sense. Therefore you can't assign having any such goals as within the exclusive realm of NTs.

Right, that's why there is consistency with the model that he had ASD, but not definitive proof, because alternative models exist to explain Hitler which don't include the premise that he was on the spectrum. However, you are trying to assert that the model that he had ASD has no validity whatsoever, but you have yet to give evidence that unequivocally disproves the model.

OOo-. I will focus on the points most relevant to the discussion of whether Hitler had asperger.

Walter Langer did not even consider that he might be manic/depressive or schizoid. Langer is a psychiatrist who led the probably most detailed study of Hitler’s behavior and possible diagnosis.

Still asperger seems to be the condition that best fits Hitler's behavior. Better than any other explanation.

That is an unconfirmed rumor. It was spread as an attempt to explain his behavior.

He had both in the last years of his life. However, that does not explain his behavior when he was younger.

Yes. Same as before. Besides, neither arsenic poisoning, parkinson or amphetamine addiction can cause behaviors similar to asperger and to the behavior of Hitler I have described in an earlier post.

I have looked on the empirical evidence. Primarily Langer’s detailed descriptions of Hitler’s behavior, which are based on information from a large number of people who had known Hitler, some of them closely. He describes a life story and a behavior that is more consistent with asperger than with any other explanation of Hitler’s behavior.

He caused immense suffering and started a war that crippled Germany. I will not call that a success. In contrast, it is worthwhile to try to explain his behavior, for instance to avoid that a leader like him can rise again.

Langer describes how Hitler showed he had very little theory of mind in his youth. His later behavior fits an asperger who learned to reason out people’s behavior, not someone with a good theory of mind.

Hitler lived as a homeless for at least eight years. A large proportion of people who live like that have some sort of disorder.

Thank you, Engineer, but my point is you cannot say, exclusively, that Hitler was autistic considering the variables.
You keep comparing Hitler to people of today in your statement about homeless people having disorders. Nowadays, it might be the case, but what about during the 1920s? Do you know for sure it was a factor back then, or was it because so many people were impoverished a percentage of the population couldn't afford adequate housing and were thus homeless? This was before widespread social welfare programs.
It doesn't matter what Hitler's traits were because we have no idea why he had these traits. Disorders share traits that can overlap. Amphetamine useage can cause similar symptoms, such as obsessiveness and talking for prolonged periods (overtalkativeness)
What if his traits were due to other reasons, like amphetamine addiction? Maybe his mental and emotional growth were stunted due to growing up in an abusive household and he developed a personality disorder? He could have just as easily had any number of disorders and not AS.
You cannot rule out other disorders because he is no longer living, thus you cannot claim AS exclusively. You cannot say for certain he had AS and not another disorder.
What about his peers? What were they like? Who were the ones that deviated besides him or did most of them act like he did, more or less? Another good thing to ask yourself: during his youth, was he like the children Hans Asperger saw in his clinic? Did the children in the clinic grow up to be like Hitler, with that kind of power and control over people? How many of those diagnosed with AS are like Hitler, with savvy and ability to make it in politics?
There's not enough evidence that he has AS, nor is there any way to rule out other possibilities, therefore, no one can say for certain that he had it, thus we have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

His political career was successful only because he reached his goal of becoming leader of the Nazi party. He did his part to further the goals of the party, which, in his mind as well as the other Nazi's, was for the prosperity and future of the Reich. It was distorted thinking, we know that now.

I'll say it again: Autistic folks don't make incredibly bad calculations which pretty much lead to their downfall, like he did. I'm not even talking about getting all the Germans to turn on him; I refer to stabbing his then-ally( Stalin) in the back, and getting his forces wiped out during the freezing winter in Soviet Russia.

No, if you want the worst of the 20th century, that'd be Stalin, not Hitler. Stalin even had a term for those who were crazy enough to believe him: "useful idiots".

He got many a Communist sympathizer by doing that.

I'd comment, but I'd get banned for swearing. All I'll say is I'd quote Full Metal Jacket.

Hitler was not autistic.

just narcissitic and completely evil basically.

ofcourse not , he failed art college. an aspie would pass it with the snap of his fingers

Wheter he was AS r not, s***ler was a smart one.

After having read this thread, there is some clear for me: There is something, and I don't know what, that can make some non-Asperger people (I don't think NT is a good name, neither fits it for aspergers: there is a great diversity) think and reach almost the same conclusions than "Asperger" people.
I do not think that the goal of "non-asperger" (or neurotypical or whatever) is to relate evil to aspergers in any possible way, on the contrary. And thanks to the opinion of ppl like Phaidros, AC, Kangoogle and many others, the "non-Asperger" feel some kind of relief. Why? Well, we "the some", like they, don't want to state things as being black or white, relate as for instance asperger to Hitler or Bill Gates, but rather be able to listen and consider one possibility that goes against our expectations. And accept it, even be able to laugh at it. So thanks.


On the other hand, and more related to the question, I also think that there is something in German language that can make German look and act much more Aspie-like (distant, rational), in both maybe, the positive and negative senses. I'm sorry, just trying to be honest. What do you think about it?

well nothing, until I get data, we could trck down his remains and get a da sample, but until then i am unable to determine. I wont make a stand without the evidence.

NO! i feel sick being on the same website as you.

I don't think so, but he was evil. He did many terrible things. His persecution and killing of Jews was nothing short of Satanism. The Holocaust involved killing people by putting them in ovens, changing people's eye color by injecting chemicals in their eyes, and God knows what else.