How the first Aryan Borghild sex doll was invented in Nazi Germany

The Nazi occupation of France in 1940 led to multiple sexual contacts between German soldiers and Parisian prostitutes, and as a result, to an outbreak of syphilis in the troops. Something had to be done. It was possible to simply prohibit such connections, but the authorities of the Third Reich went the other way: they decided to develop an artificial woman who would satisfy the sexual needs of a soldier and not infect him with anything. Thus was born a top-secret project of a blue-eyed blonde sex doll named Borghild — the first artificial woman in history.

Heinrich Himmler, the SS chief, was responsible for the project. In a document supposedly discovered by journalist Norbert Lenz, Himmler wrote: "The biggest danger in Paris is the uncontrolled spread of corrupt women who find customers in bars, at dances and in other places. Our duty is to prevent the military from risking their health for short affairs."

The erotic doll had to be included among the necessary things that soldiers took with them on a hike (in a deflated form it was placed in a hiking backpack), it would help avoid homosexuality and venereal diseases among military personnel (and they led to "unnecessary losses" of lives) and would contribute to the preservation of the purity of the Aryan race. Initially, the doll was called "Field Hygiene Project".

Adolf Hitler personally approved the doll's design, after which Himmler hired Franz Chackert from the German Hygiene Museum to design it. Earlier, Chakert created a "Woman Made of Glass— - an anatomically correct transparent mannequin, which became a sensation in Germany in the 1930s. Therefore, it is quite plausible that he was hired for this job.

But there was a problem: would the soldiers agree to copulate with dolls instead of living women? How to make them obey? The Nazi psychiatrist Rudolf Chargeheimer wrote: "The purpose of these dolls is to help our soldiers. They need to fight, not hunt foreigners and mix their blood with strangers. However, no man would prefer a doll to a living woman."

And it really is - unless the doll is of the highest quality. Chargeheimer established three requirements in order to overcome the likely reluctance of soldiers to use the doll:

1. Synthetic leather should feel like real leather. 2. The doll's body should be as flexible and mobile. 3. The genitals should feel realistic.

The team got to work. Initially, they wanted to make the skeleton aluminum, but abandoned this idea, and Chakert settled on silicone.

The doll's appearance also had strict requirements. In one of the letters to Hannussen, Hitler gave detailed instructions on how Borghild should look: life-size, 176 centimeters tall, with very white skin, blond hair, delicate blue eyes and an open navel. She should have big lips and big breasts, bending arms and a head.

The doll's face was very important to the Nazis, even more important than the body. The developers wanted to make a doll with the appearance of Hungarian actress Kath von Nagy, but she refused. Then they decided not to give certain features to the doll's face, leaving only blue eyes and blonde hair so that the soldiers could think out her appearance in accordance with their own fantasies.

The development team decided that Borghild should have a "fictional face of lust itself." They formed ten faces and used psychological tests to determine which was more desirable for most men. Borghild's hair was short to remind her users that this is not an ideal of femininity, but a combat friend is part of the armed forces.

When developing the body of Borghild, Chackert wanted to make a solid plaster cast of a living woman and invited athletes Wilhelmina von Bremen and Annette Walter. But the casts disappointed him: "They looked terrible. Sometimes the legs looked too short and deformed, sometimes the woman had a skinny back and arms like a wrestler." In the end, Chakert's team settled on a stylized image of a woman — with a shrinking chest and a sporty figure.

When the design was ready, the Nazis began to develop a prototype of the doll. She looked like this.

Wehrmacht soldiers first tried Borghild in 1941. The dolls were tested at the German garrison of Jersey Island. Hitler was so impressed with the test results that he ordered 5,000 dolls for his personal guard. However, in 1942, the project was frozen: many German soldiers began to be captured and refused to carry dolls with them, fearing that they would cause ridicule and mockery of the enemy.

In the end, the idea finally ran out of steam, and all copies of the Bronghild were destroyed by Allied forces during the bombing of Dresden.

The writer Donald Graham learned about the secret Borghild project while researching the origin of the Barbie doll: he found out that Americans Ruth and Elliot Handler created the legendary toy after visiting Germany in 1956, where they bought Borghild's "daughter" Lilly, which was sold in adult stores and nightclubs. Graham included the story about this in his historical collection "Mussolini's Barber" (Mussolini's Barber).