Charlie Chaplin & Hitler – more alike than you’d think

Charlie Chaplin was born within days of Adolf Hitler so will have certain similar markers on his chart. What does the loveable little tramp have in common with a murderous monster?

There are different ways of living out a chart’s energy and while it’s not a concept I’m comfortable with it can be partly explained in terms of the evolution of the soul that incarnates into that particular chart – more primitive or more advanced. There is also a mysterious ‘something’ which the astrology doesn’t pinpoint which will raise one individual to prominence and leave another in obscurity. There are likely to be several born with Picasso’s birth chart who may well have been creative but they never became world famous.

But in this particular example there may be more temperamental similarities than the public image suggests, with the caveat that Chaplin’s birth date wasn’t recorded – reckoned to be around April 16 1889. So it’s likely that Chaplin had a late Aries Sun to Hitler’s Taurus Sun, born 20 April 1889, which would make a difference. However they both almost certainly shared the earthy, sexually-driven, insensitive  Venus Mars in Taurus in a cruel/heartless square to Saturn in wannabe-important Leo.

Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Chaplin draws a few parallels – both men had drunken fathers and nervous mothers. There were patterns of madness and illegitimacy in the family tree. They were short and sported an identical moustache. They had marked histrionic skills, each man ‘appealing to millions of people with an almost mesmeric magic’. They were despotic towards underlings.

That Chaplin was a monster isn’t in doubt. He was a predatory sex offender, constantly bedding underage girls and had a frighteningly out-of-control temper. The sweetness of his screen image wasn’t borne out in the reality of his life. One assistant director described him as ‘a tyrannical, wounding, authoritative, mean, despotic man.’ His fourth wife Oona, who was nearly thirty six years younger than him, took to drink to escape his rages.

Chaplin did have an unthinkable childhood bouncing between an insane mother, the workhouse and home for destitute children and when his mother was despatched to the lunatic asylum suffering from the effects of untreated syphilis, he was handed over to his alcoholic father who died two years later of cirrhosis. A Dickensian nightmare. Instead of crushing him it seemed to have developed a megalomaniac desire to become famous – which he duly did.

Hitler’s childhood wasn’t as gothic though he did clash with his father. He also followed his dream with astonishing self-belief given his background.