Like Hitler, General Franco only had one testicle

Hitler may not have been the only 20th-century Fascist dictator to have been in possession of only one testicle, if a new book by a Spanish historian is to be believed.

General Francisco Franco, the man who led the Nationalists to victory in the Spanish Civil War and ruled Spain until his death in 1975, was also a 'monorchid'. Spanish historian Jose Maria Zavala says that the grand-daughter of his urologist told him that, like Hitler, Franco lost the organ in battle in 1916.

Dr Ana Puigvert claims her grandfather Antonio Puigvert, told her that Franco lost a testicle during the Rif war. He is believed to have been wounded in the lower abdomen in a skirmish against native Morroccans at El Biutz, near Ceuta in June 1916 where he fought as a captain in the Spanish army.

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Historians have regularly speculated that the injury may have led to reproductive difficulties for the dictator, despite the fact that he did have a daughter, Carmen Franco y Polo, in 1926, by his wife María del Carmen Polo y Martínez-Valdès. Last year Hitler's own battle injury came to light when new documents were released. Dr Johan Jambor, an army medic who treated Hitler for abdominal injuries at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, told his priest in the 1960s that the man who would lead Germany to disaster had lost one of his testicles. The first thing Hitler asked Jambor was: "Will I be able to have children?"