It appears that we must toss the previously-blogged tale of Nazi Sex Doll Borghild (Link) on the dungheap of internet hoaxdom. Boing Boing reader Rochus Wolff says of the fabled proto-robo-ho:
I came across the story about these dolls about a year ago after a Canadian researcher sent an email around asking whether anyone knew anything about this doll apart from what it said on the (now mostly defunct) site borghild.de.
After reading your post, i researched the matter a bit further. The origin of the information that led to your post (via Fleshbot and other blogs) seems to be an article by the widely read but often less-than-accurately-reporting German daily Bild. All the information given is what can be found on the rather odd website borghild.de – the "information" given there can still be found here in an English translation.
Independently of each other, Jens Baumeister and I have concluded from the information available to us, that the "Borghild" story is quite probably a fake. (The German posting on my research is here. Jens has posted his results here. Some of his findings are translated here: Link).
The main problems with "Borghild" are:– There is no evidence that any of the documents the text talks about ever existed. The Deutsche Hygiene Museum says that of course most records were destroyed in an attack in 1945, but that still no one they talked seems to remember anything about this project. The photographs on borghild.de are clearly fabrications, and the site even acknowledges that.
– The author of borghild.de, "Norbert Lenz", claims to have worked for a number of German magazines – all of which claim not to know a journalist by that name. He is not listed in phone directories, and the only book currently available in Germany by a Norbert Lenz is a book about – ducks.So in the end it seems like the Nazis were not, after all, planning to equip their soldiers with sex dolls. That hardly comes as a surprise.
Yours truly,
Rochus
Fine, Rochus. Go ahead. Defrag my Borg-hilda dreams with your merciless facts, your heartless "empirical evidence" — call our lady of latex a lie. But borg love is TRUE. Die sexpuppen der Nazis are forever.
Previously: Nazi sex dolls
