In Germany’s National Vice, Samuel Igra wrote that as a young man Hitler “had been a male prostitute in Vienna and Munich” (Igra:67). Lending credence to this is the fact that for quite a long time Hitler “chose to live in a Vienna flophouse known to be inhabited by many homosexuals” (Langer:192). That “flophouse” was the Meldemannstrasse Hostel. Hitler’s long-time “gay” friend Ernst Hanfstaengl identified this residence as “a place where elderly men went in search of young men for homosexual pleasures” (Machtan:56). “It was an open secret at the beginning of the 20th century,” adds Machtan, “that municipal hostels for homeless males were hubs of homosexual activity...[where many young men] kept themselves afloat by engaging in prostitution. Hitler spent over three years in this environment” (Machtan:51).
This would help to explain Hitler’s close relationships to his purportedly homosexual patrons Dietrich Eckart and Karl Haushofer. Rector writes that, as a young man, Hitler was often called “Der Schoen Adolf” (“the handsome Adolf”) and that later his looks “were also to some extent helpful in gaining big-money support from Ernst Roehm’s circle of wealthy gay friends” (Rector:52).
But Hitler was apparently not involved with homosexuality solely to survive financially. Even in his pre-Nazi years, most of Hitler’s reputed homosexual encounters were consensual meetings in which no money changed hands. Machtan suggests that each of Hitler’s longer-term relationships in his youth -- with Reinhold Hanisch, August Kubizek, Rudolf Hausler and Ernst Hanfstaengl -- were homosexual “love affairs.”
There are numerous other incidents (“one night stands”) in which Hitler was purported to have been the solicitor and not the solicited one. Eugen Dollman, former member of Himmler’s staff and one-time Hitler interpreter, cited testimonies from the files of the Munich vice squad in which a series of young men identified Hitler as the man who had “picked them up” on the streets for homosexual relations (Machtan:135ff). Dollman himself was also homosexual (ibid.).