1873: Adolf Hitler’s father, Alois, married a woman 14 years his senior, an ailing matron too old to bear him any children. His lover, a teenage household servant named Fanni, gave birth to his bastard son, Alois Jr.
When the first wife died, Alois Hitler married Fanni. She bore him another child. When she died, too, Alois took a third wife, Klara, who was a first cousin once removed. She gave him 5 children, including Adolf.
Alois Hitler Jr. and Adolf Hitler were half brothers.
1909: Alois Jr. left Germany for Dublin. There he met an Irish lass named Bridget Dowling at a horse show. He wooed her and said he owned a hotel. They married. Then Bridget learned the truth; Alois was merely a waiter at a Dublin hotel.
1911: Their son William Patrick Hitler was born in Liverpool. He was called Willy.
Alois Jr. abandoned the family three years later. Bridget raised young Willy alone.
1933: William, age 22, reconnected with his estranged father in Germany just as his uncle Adolf became the nation’s new chancellor.
Uncle Adolf had little regard for his half-nephew. When William asked him for a job, the German leader found him a position in a bank. When that didn’t work out, William became a car salesman.
Being the nephew of the new German chancellor opened doors for William at dinner parties where he expressed contempt for his father’s half-brother.
Then he tried to blackmail his uncle. He threatened to spread rumors that the Hitler family had Jewish ancestry. He hoped this would persuade his uncle to give him a better career.
Mutual animosity grew between the two Hitlers. Adolf called his nephew “loathsome.”
Later, Adolf furiously railed at him and demanded he renounce his British citizenship to become a German. Instead, William left the country for good and never saw his uncle again.
When he returned to England with his mother, William wrote an essay published in a prominent magazine. The title: “Why I Hate My Uncle” by William Patrick Hitler. In the article he wrote about the brutal manner in which Adolf Hitler ruled, as well as his uncle’s “feminine gestures,” “dandruff on his coat,” and his suicidal ideations.
1939: Bearing the name Hitler in England became dangerous, so William and his mother Bridget left Great Britain for the United States. He went on the lecture circuit to inform Americans that his uncle was a lunatic surrounded by deviant sycophants. William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper baron, bankrolled William’s lectures.
When the US finally entered WWII, William wanted to fight for his new country. The Armed Forces, however, kept rejecting him due to his family name. That changed after he wrote directly to President Roosevelt.
When he was finally accepted in 1944, an officer asked his last name. He replied, “Hitler.” The officer sarcastically replied, “Oh, yeah? And I’m Hess.”
William joined the US Navy as a pharmacist’s mate. He served for three years and was discharged with a Purple Heart award after a shrapnel wound to the leg.
William and his mother Bridget changed their last names to Stuart-Houston. From his pharmacological experience in the Navy, William created his own blood analysis business.
He married and raised four sons in central Long Island, NY. He and his mother kept low profiles for the rest of their lives.
Until his death in 1987, almost none of William Stuart-Houston’s neighbors in Long Island, the home of many Jewish Americans, ever realized that the old US war veteran was related to Adolf Hitler.
ALSO:
None of William Stuart-Houston’s sons had any children.
As of this writing, the Hitler family tree has supposedly dwindled to five people.
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