Nice

When I was in sixth grade our classroom library included a thick book on Hitler, in which the teacher had carefully Scotch-taped two pages together so that none of us kids would know what was written on them. Somehow or other the rumor got out that these pages described Hitler's genital deformity. Something about "one nut."

I heard this story again several times over the years and the other day it came up in Ron Rosenbaum's Explaining Hitler, a great book so far that examines all the different ways scholars and history buffs have tried to make sense of the Fuhrer's evil deeds. According to Rosenbaum, "one nut" originated with a German private named Eugen Wasner, who was in Hitler's class when the two of them were in grade school. During a 1943 "bull session" in the barracks Wasner told his buddies that the reason Hitler was such a psycho was that, as a kid, he had tried to pee in a billy goat's mouth on a dare and gotten his penis chomped in the process.

To the people who believe this story, Rosenbaum says the billy goat's fateful chomp was like "the single bite of the apple in Genesis--an act of appetite from which whole histories of sorrow and tragedy would ensue."