British spies tried to spike Adolph Hitler’s food with estrogen. It was a radical form of estrogen replacement therapy, writes Professor Brian Ford, concocted to curb his aggressive tendencies. Ford is the author of the upcoming book “Secret Weapons: Technology, Science And The Race To Win World War II,” which publishes Sept. 20. The human and animal hormone estrogen plays an important role in female mental health, according to endocrinologists. Low estrogen levels in the brain can lead to depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and, according to the British Secret Service, despotism and mass murder. Allegedly, British intelligence wished Adolph Hitler to be more like his younger sister, Paula Wolf. Wolf worked as a secretary and expressed no leanings toward ethnic cleansing. Estrogen was selected reportedly because it is tasteless and hence would pass by Hitler’s food testers without being noticed. Ford notes that the Hitler estrogen plot – turning “Herr Hitler into Her Hitler,” as the Mail Online so colorfully puts it – was once of many plans Allied forces considered to break the stalemate during World War II. Other plans for gumming up the works for the Third Reich included dropping glue onto Nazi troops to affix them to impede their progress through Europe and Russia, as well as more overtly guerrilla tactics like disguising bombs as tins of fruit exported into Germany. But intelligence insiders were reportedly quite fond of the Hitler hormone therapy idea. “Research had showed the importance of sex hormones – they were beginning to be used in sex therapy in London,” writes Ford, a Cardiff University fellow and champion of popular science. “Hitler had testers who used to taste his meals, so there was no mileage in putting poison in his food because they would immediately fall victim to it.” In order for the estrogen to have been effective, it would have taken several months of regular dosages. The results would have evolved in a subtle fashion, according to Ford.