The original report was prepared for the United States' Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and submitted in late 1943 or early 1944;[1] it is officially entitled A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend.

[6][7] In addition, similarities have been noted to perhaps the earliest published psychological profile of Hitler developed by Murray and influential psychologist Gordon Allport for Harvard seminars on 'Civilian Morale' (1941), intended to be distributed to private organisations throughout the US to prepare a consensus for war.

[9] After receiving some encouragement from fellow scholars, particularly Professor Henderson Braddick of the Department of International Relations at Lehigh University,[10] Langer decided to publish the report in book form.

Gatzke writes "Recent correspondence with the publisher...has revealed that the original [OSS report] manuscript was changed and edited several times by Dr. Langer and others, both in 1943 and again before publication.

"[15] According to Langer's introduction to the 1972 publication, he and his fellow investigators made a preliminary conclusion from a "survey of the raw material" and "knowledge of Hitler's actions as reported in the news" that Hitler "was, in all probability, a neurotic psychopath" (page 17) (the term "psychopath" was applied prior to the popularization of its modern definition in The Mask of Sanity and likely just refers to being mentally ill, with "neurotic" being the key descriptor).

The Langer report was ostensibly an objective analysis of the mind of Adolf Hitler and related aspects of his life and society, based on written material, interviews, psychoanalytic theory and clinical experience.

It represents an attempt to screen the wealth of contradictory, conflicting and unreliable material concerning Hitler into strata which will be helpful to the policy-makers and those who wish to frame a counter-propaganda."

The preface further asserts that despite the 'extremely scant and spotty' material for a psychological analysis, one was possible due to their informants knowing Hitler well and their descriptions agreeing relatively well with each other, combined with the writers' own 'clinical experience in dealing with individuals of a similar type'.

[6][20] In a review of The Mind of Adolf Hitler for The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Martin Waugh concluded that Langer's work is important "because of its value to the historian; because it was a 'first' for this country's intelligence services; and because of the official recognition of psychoanalysis the assignment implied.