Who invented the sex doll?

Adolf Hitler is said to have invented the first inflatable sex doll.

In late July 2020, a reader shared a 2016 blog post titled "Did Adolf Hitler Really Invent the Dutch Woman?". The post prompted many curious readers to question whether the leader of the German Nazi party actually invented an inflatable real doll, although this was not mentioned in the article itself.

The article was published on website The 13th Floor, a blog about the horror genre that focuses on scare stories and thrillers. The 13th Floor post said: "The Borgild project was a top-secret attempt to stop the spread of syphilis by providing (allegedly) Nazi soldiers with inflatable Dutch wives. Yes, Hitler invented the inflatable doll!”

However, the author also admits that the Borgild project was a scam. However, the author also concedes that the Bogarde project was a hoax: "Unfortunately, there is very little evidence of what actually happened, so it cannot be true. But the idea that "Hitler invented the love doll" is good. Anyway, let's pretend it happened. I mean what will Hitler do now?”

The prank appears to have its origins in an undated article by Norbert Lenz, a self-proclaimed journalist who has not published any other articles. The article was titled “The Unassuming Problem with the Borghild Project – III The German Health Museum in Dresden, Germany, claims to have created the dolls that were destroyed in the 1945 Allied bombing of the city.

An author has also emailed the Museum of Medical History but has not yet received a response. We will update this article as soon as we have an update.

In an email, Laurie Mahrf, associate professor of history at the University of Washington, explained that the scam was based on "[Heinrich] Himmler's very real concern that German men, particularly soldiers and SS men, might express their heterosexuality." . Sex drives and regimented brothels were measures taken by the Nazi state to prevent syphilis. Many governments of the time did the same. But this sex doll is a hoax.”

Elizabeth Heinemann, a history professor at the University of Iowa and author of Before Pornography Became Legal, says there is no evidence of inflatable sex dolls during World War II.

Heinemann told us via email: "[Adult] customers were mostly veterans and the industry offered a surprisingly wide range of products. She noted that the catalogs containing such items "probably ran to over 150 pages by the mid-1950s," but the items listed on those pages did not include inflatable love dolls.

Heinemann continues: "If real dolls existed - if men remembered them or heard rumors about them and now wanted to see them when they returned to civilian life - they wouldn't be in a 1950s porn catalogue. But she added: "That doesn't prove they weren't there during the war. It just means they weren't where we expected them to be."

However, there is no evidence that Hitler invented the inflatable sex doll, which he says looks like an urban legend. They therefore label the claim as “false”.