Hitler Birth Chart Analysis

The birth chart of Hitler is a prime example why Sun-Moon-Ascendant astrology is insufficient to explain a chart in depth. As soon as we add Pluto and the Lunar nodes, however, we get a strikingly accurate picture of Hitler: his personality as well as his underlying psychological drives.

To my knowledge, there are two evolutionary astrologers - Steven Forrest and Jeffrey Green - who have published analyses of Hitler's birth chart. I have read both of these and taken some impression from both, but the analysis you will read here is entirely my own.

This is not going to be a complete analysis, but I will cover all points of the evolutionary axis: Pluto, the South Node, the South Node ruler, the PPP, the North Node, the North Node ruler, the skipped steps (there are two), Hitler's Mars-Venus conjunction and finally the Sun.

Pluto in 8H Gemini

With Pluto in 8H, a common soul issue is power and powerlessness. There can be an acute awareness of personal limitations and a need to go beyond them. Why do I feel powerless? How can I empower myself? Who has the power? These are examples of questions that a Pluto 8H individual might ask. There can also be other things going on with this placement, for instance the theme of danger, sexuality or the handling of collective resources. Based on the details of Hitler's life, I think that the question of power is most on target, so I'm going to go with that.

This Pluto 8H is filtered through Gemini. My interpretation is this: The 8H asking of deep questions regarding power and powerlessness has taken the form of dichotomous, categorical (Gemini) thinking. In other words: There are the Germans. There are the French. There are the Russians. There are the Jews. Some of these groups - these categories - have more power than others. And it is inevitable that they will fight each other over power. It is as if the soul has become so deeply attached to this power struggle that it wishes it to go on forever.

We have so far only covered Pluto - but isn't it accurate? We now proceed to describe how past life selves (past life "Adolfs", though they would have gone by other names) have dealt with this soul issue.

South Node in 3H Capricorn

In 3H we find Germini keywords such as: categorization, communication, mental activity, intellectual exchanges, direct participation in one's immediate environment. These are all descriptive of Hitler's personality to an extent, so I will simply summarize by saying that Hitler lived in an extremely mental world. Adding the sign, we could also say that this mental world was colored by Capricorn qualities. Here you might add keywords like "responsibility" - but we must remember to tilt the Capricorn archetype in a negative direction. The word that I think jumps out is harshness. A person living in a mental world of extreme harshness, that would describe both the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, the impoverished vagabond existence of his youth and the "harsh communication" that became his signum. Capricorn is also the archetype of blaming, scapegoating: "It was their fault. They betrayed us. We will have revenge!" (South Node 3H Capricorn linking back to Pluto 8H Gemini)

We also find that Jupiter and the Moon are conjunct the South Node. Starting with the Moon, we can note that Hitler was extremely close to his mother Klara, who died in 1907, when Hitler was 18. Klara's doctor Eduard Bloch - who was Jewish - wrote: "I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler."

Hitler's nationalism did not reach full expression until later and he showed no traces of anti-Semitism until after the First World War. Is it too speculative to think that his attachment to his mother was carried over to the German nation - both signified by the Moon?

As for Jupiter, Hitler had a strong attachment to a twisted version of the "natural" and "good". Communism, capitalism and democracy were all evil ideologies and the Jews, supposedly being the masterminds of all three, were worst of all. A natural society, according to Hitler, would allow the strong to conquer and the weak to perish. Finally, with Jupiter conjunct the Moon, Hitler had a grandiose self-image and a limitless belief in himself. Both being conjunct the South Node, Hitler's "harsh communication" was both highly emotional and ideological, fanatical.

South Node ruler in 10H Leo

The South Node ruler gives us the specifics regarding how the South Node would be carried out. Here is one way to put it: The South Node characterized by (among other things) harsh communication was carried out by Hitler establishing himself as an authority (SNr 10H) which everyone else would revolve around (Leo, archetypally linked to the Sun). You could even see the Nazi salute in this placement: a harsh, rigid, formal (10H) mode of self-expression (Leo), a public (10H) greeting (Leo).

We may also note that Hitler, during his youth, was the "apple of his mother's eye" and "the center of her world". Even in his friendships, such as with his teenage friend August Kubizek - an important primary source for Hitler biographers - he was unable to have relationships on the basis of equality. He always had to take center stage. This pattern remained throughout his life until the very end.

PPP in 2H Sagittarius

Shortly before World War II, Hitler supposedly told a British ambassador: "I am an artist and not a politician. Once the Polish question is settled, I want to end my life as an artist."

You might say that this is reflected in Hitler's Libra ascendant, rules by Venus in 7H Taurus - and I would not disagree with you. I believe that the ascendant has much to say about a person's general sense of direction in life. But from an EA perspective, there is something deeper going on here. Hitler was not so happy with his role as führer after all. Part of him wanted to retreat from the divisive power politics (Pluto 8H Gemini) and lead a calmer life where he could pursue more personal dreams and goals (PPP 2H Sagittarius). Yet he was unable to let go of his desire for power. After the "Polish question" had been settled through military force, Hitler just kept going. Beside the power hunger, he had enormous blind spots that prevented him from actualizing the PPP even if he wanted to.

North Node in 9H Cancer

Here is a telling story: During World War I, an unofficial truce was held along the western front during Christmas 1914. French, German and British soldiers emerged from their trenches to exchange Christmas greetings, sing carols, and even play football together. Hitler could not understand this. How could his comrades suddenly fraternize with the enemy (Pluto 8H Gemini)? Instead of joining them, he chose to remain in the trenches (SN 3H Capricorn).

And what a missed opportunity - what if he instead had been able to feel emotionally secure around foreigners (NN 9H Cancer)? He would have had to relax, be a little less uptight, and try to engage with the foreign soldiers on an equal footing. That was not a path he was prepared to take.

North Node ruler in 3H Capricorn

Yet imagine that he had. Would this not have forced him to use his mental prowess in a new way - by becoming truly open-minded and curious about the other? Communication through broken German and broken French mediated through sign language, gesture, facial expressions and the like? Would he not have needed to establish (Capricorn) a new mode of communication and a new sense of connection (3H)?

We will never know exactly what Hitler's North Node could have entailed - because, as far as I can tell, it was not actualized. But even if it was actualized (Jeffrey Green actually suggests something to this effect in Pluto: Volume 1), it would send him back to past dynamics, because the North Node ruler (the Moon) is conjunct the South Node. Insofar as feeling emotionally secure around the strange, the unfamiliar, the foreign, it was clearly not actualized.

Skipped steps

Hitler's blindness comes back in at least two more ways: a Mercury skipped step in 6H Aries and a Uranus skipped step in 12H Libra. And this is where we find the true horrors, horrors that were unknown by people close to Hitler to the very end.

Let's start with Mercury - and here I will loosely relate the account of a Canadian psychiatrist who has spent much of his life trying to understand the workings of totalitarianism. In 6H, we see a mind that was obsessed with cleanliness. This obsession was fuelled by an intense disgust (Aries - not being able to stand the other) and it was often achieved through violence (Aries). When Hitler came to power, he campaigned against smoking, he created public health programs for tuberculosis, rat extermination, beautifying of factories and the like. But then he went on to "clean up" the mental hospitals from the mentally ill. Then he went after other groups - Communists, Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Homosexuals, who he also referred to as rats, insects, parasites. See the pattern?

Now, as more and more people - primarily Jews - disappeared from society, they did not vanish into thin air. They were sent to concentration camps. So what is the Uranus skipped step about? Is it about a deranged, crazy ideology, hidden from view (Uranus 12H) about inequality (Libra)? And is it also about the way that large collectives of people were sent to the concentration camps (Uranus 12H), places where - as they would soon find out - no one could hear their screams (Libra - listening)?

I would answer yes to both. And is it not telling how these two skipped step oppose each other? On the one hand, we "clean up" our society from undesirables - on the other hand, the camps, the gas chambers. The citizen reporting on his Jewish neighbors does not see what happens after they have been deported. The left hand - in a very negative sense - doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Planetary functions

We have covered the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn in various respects as planets conjunct the South Node (Moon, Jupiter), South Node ruler (Saturn) and North Node ruler (Moon). We have also covered Mercury and Uranus as skipped steps. If this analysis were to be complete, we would also cover these planets as planets, feeling the tensions between their own north and south nodes, where the planetary "new response" connected to its north node becomes the planetary function that makes its own specific contribution to the PPP. (This has been formulated by Michael de Baker in Chiron: Trauma Key and in his EA School Online). In the interest of brevity, and because I simply don't have enough evolutionary signs to go on, I will not go into this, though I will say that the Moon's new response would probably resemble the Moon's potential expression as North Node ruler: establishing communication (Capricorn impacting 3H) from a place of curiosity (3H).

Instead, I will say something about Mars and Venus and then move on to the Sun.

Mars and Venus conjunct in 7H Taurus

With Mars and Venus conjunct in 7H Taurus, we find that Hitler's conscious desires (Mars) were glued to the primary relationship (Venus) he had in life. When asked why he did not have a wife, Hitler would reply that he was "married to Germany". Speaking astrologically, we might say that he was in a state of listening (7H) to the land (Taurus) and that this defined both his will and his primary sense of relating to the world. Venus being retrograde, we can see that it would have been hard for him to maintain many close relationships other than his "relationship to the land".

This in itself need not have been a problem. Nothing is ever black and white: Hitler clearly did work hard to improve the state of his country in a way that improved the lives of many Germans. He was widely seen as an incorruptible leader who only had the interest of the German people at heart. We may even say that he was meant to assume this kind of role, Venus being retrograde for evolutionary reasons so that he could focus solely on improving the state of the country.

Enter Pluto and the situation doesn't look quite so sunny. With a soul desire for a perpetual, dualistic power struggle (Pluto 8H Gemini), Mars and Venus in 7H Taurus have something more to say: "I will use my conscious will and my primary sense of relating to the world to listen to the state of the country - to increase its security at the expense of others (Taurus impacting 7H). We cannot both have security - if your security goes up, mine goes down (7H - the Libran scales always in a state of connection to each other). In order for Germany to be completely secure, Russia cannot be secure - I can hardly even allow it to survive (Taurus)!"

Imagine if instead Hitler had tried to pursue mutual security (7H Taurus) through dialogue, exchange, and diplomacy. Perhaps the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles could have been rectified without having to resort to world conquest, trying to swallow all of the Soviet Union in a single bite? Just a thought.

The Sun in 7H Taurus

In fact, is not this 7H Taurus need for mutual security the very thing that animates the entire chart? Is this not what Hitler, in his saner moments, was pursuing relative to France, Great Britain and other great powers?

Quoting Steven Forrest, the Sun is "that within yourself to which you must be true if you're going to be whole, if you're going to be sane, if you're going to be authentic." (Measuring the Night, Volume One, p. 240) It is the life force that animates the entire person; it is that which all other planets revolve around. Pluto or any other planet may try to do their own things, but the Sun will always sit in the center of the internal solar system and say: "Sorry pal but there is simply no escaping my gravity. You revolve around me, so you might as well honor me."

If the person does not honor their inner Sun, mental illness or outright breakdown can follow. And while psychiatrists differ on their evaluation of Hitler's psychology, it seems clear that his megalomania alternated with intense despair and nervousness whenever he recieved news of a military setback. Time and again, he dishonored his Sun by ordering a reckless military gamble. And even when he got away with it, he would be beset with great anxiety until the storm had passed. At one point, he personally referred to the remilitarization of the Rhineland as the most "nerve-racking moment" of his life. In the struggle between his compulsive soul desires to overpower all opposition (Pluto 8H in Gemini - antagonism) and his central, most vital need to establish mutual security (Sun 7H Taurus), the former repeatedly won out.

As the war turned from a string of swift blitzkrieg victories to an inevitable defeat, Hitler started to grow pale. His vitality was zapped from him; he rarely showed himself in public any longer; he threw temper tantrums at his officers for bringing him ever more bad news. He stopped dining with his officers, preferring instead the company of his female staff who would not bother him with details about the war. As much as we like to think of Hitler as a monster, on one level he was just a man animated by a strong 7H Taurus Solar need to withdraw to a simple life where he could enjoy good food, playing with his dogs, pursue art and pleasant conversation - all in a state of mutual security, of safety. How hard would it not have been for him to live with the fact that Great Britain refused to make peace, that the Allies were landing in Normandie, and that the unstoppable Red Army was coming for him with a vengeance?

On the other hand, if this Solar need had been honored, would it not have been a direct ally to the PPP in 2H Sagittarius - withdrawing from involvement with power politics to pursue more personal goals?

Now, as you can see, I do not treat the Sun as a potential weakness or problem-spot, something to be worked at. This is because the Sun is not connected with a person's karma - it has no south node and therefore no past. It is the only planet (astrologically speaking) in the chart that simply is. Other astrologers might look at Hitler's Sun in Taurus and use it to explain his extreme rigidity and stubbornness, his refusal to budge. But as you can see, this rigidity can be easily attributed to the Capricorn/10H signatures of Hitler's South Node and South Node ruler, and perhaps partly to the Mars-Venus conjunction in Taurus. The Sun, in my opinion, simply does not tell us anything about past-life patterns of behavior that the individual has to work at in the current life.

Pluto conjunct Neptune

This could be the end of the analysis, but it strikes me that I should say something about Neptune too. Hitler was born at a time when Neptune was conjunct Pluto. With a ten degree orb, the conjunction went on from around 1883 to 1900. During this time (in 1883-1885), Friedrich Nietzsche wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra, popularizing the phrase "God (Neptune) is dead (Pluto)." This is also the work where Nietzsche presents his ideas of the übermensch and the will to power. His works were later edited by his sister, who gave some of his ideas a more openly fascist interpretation. Hitler's conjunction had a four degree orb - hardly spectacular, and you would probably not see that many fireworks even in the charts of people with exact Pluto-Neptune conjunctions. But could it be that he still, for some reason, became a channel for this collective consciousness in its more negative expression? The historical facts suggest as much. And on a personal level, given what we already know about his Pluto placement, it does seem to add an important detail to the picture to say that his attachment to an antagonistic power struggle (Pluto 8H Gemini) between different categories (Gemini) took on a prophetic dimension (Neptune): inspired to the point of madness, a boundless vision of a thousand-year reich guided by divine providence.

Resources

Liljegren, Bengt (2008). Adolf Hitler. Lund: Historiska Media.
Hitler: A Career (1977). Netflix.