Like Hitler, General Franco only had one testicle

General Francisco Franco

published 18 May 2009

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.

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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?"

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