Walter Charles Langer

Walter Charles Langer (February 5, 1899 – July 4, 1981) was an American psychoanalyst who prepared a detailed psychological analysis of Adolf Hitler in 1943. Langer studied psychoanalysis at Harvard University, where he worked as a professor upon completion of his education. Langer was later employed by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), where in 1943 he prepared a psychoanalysis profile of Hitler. In this analysis, Langer accurately predicted that Hitler would commit suicide as the "most plausible outcome", and the possibility of a military coup against Hitler well before the assassination attempt of 1944. Following Langer's analysis and Hitler's subsequent death, Langer turned the report into a book about Adolf Hitler, The Mind of Adolf Hitler: A Secret Wartime Report. This book was Langer's best-known; however, he also wrote the books Psychology and Human Living, A Psychological analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend, and Dissecting the Hitler Mind. Early life and education Langer was born on February 5, 1899, in South Boston to Charles Rudolph and Johanna Rockenbach, recent immigrants from Germany. His mother was born to a Lutheran household in Zweibrücken, Germany, and his father was a member of the Moravian Brethren from Silesia, Germany. Langer had an older brother named William and another brother named Rudolph Langer. The family later moved when Charles became an owner of a florist shop. After their father passed away on 1899, the family lost all their savings. To help support the family Walter worked at a grocery store while going to school. Just after two years of high school, Walter had to drop out and get a full-time job as an apprentice electrician, where he mostly wired houses for two years. While the family moved to Cambridge, he was admitted to Rindge Technical High School to finish out his high school education. He was later accepted at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and during World War I, serviced in the military for 27 months. After being discharged in 1919, Walter chose to pursue the psychology field at Harvard University. Langer attended Harvard University, graduating as part of the class of 1923. Langer continued to study at Harvard until attaining his PhD in psychology in 1935. The same year, he traveled to pursue studies in psychoanalysis in Vienna, Austria, where he studied under Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud.