Alois Hitler Archives - Foreign policy

William Hitler, Adolph’s Nephew, Served In The U.S. Navy During WWII

Published on June 21, 2018

History

Born on March 12, 1911, William Hitler was a son of Alois Hitler Jr. and Bridget Dowling. The family lived in Liverpool at the time, making Adolph Hitler’s nephew a British citizen. His half-brother Alois Jr, the oldest child of Alois Hitler Sr. and his second wife Franziska “Fanni” Matzelsberger. Fed up with constant quarrels with his father, Alois Jr. fled home at an early age. He ended up in Ireland, where he met his future wife Bridget Dowling at Dublin Horse Show. Alois Jr. was working as a kitchen porter in a local hotel, barely making ends meet. That didn’t stop him from introducing himself to Bridget and her father as a wealthy hotelier touring Europe. He began courting Bridget and the couple eventually eloped to London and got married. Bridget’s father was furious and threaten to report them to police. Only Bridget’s pleading saved Alois Jr. from prison. They moved to Liverpool, to 102 Upper Stanhope Street and in 1911 had their only child, William. The house was destroyed by German bombs in 1942 and never rebuilt.

In 1914 Alois went to Germany to start a business, but the war caught him there. Bridget refused to accompany him, as he has developed a mean streak and was violent toward her and little William. Alois remained in Germany and tried to fake his own death so that he could marry again. He was discovered in 1924 and charged with bigamy. Once more, Bridget pleas saved him from going to jail.

Young William first visited Germany in 1929. He returned in 1934, trying to talk his uncle, who was in power by then, into finding him a job. He changed several, working as a clerk in a bank, in Opel car factory, and as a car salesman. Dissatisfied with those, he repeatedly tried to blackmail Hitler by threating to reveal details of family past, especially that Adolph’s real grandfather was a Jew. Finally, Hitler agreed to find him a high-ranking job on condition that William renounces his British citizenship. Sensing a trap, William fled to Britain in 138. He tried to cash in on his family ties by writing an article Why I Hate My Uncle, but without much success.

In 1939, William Randolph Hearst offered him a U.S. speaking tour, and William accepted. His mother accompanied him across the Atlantic. While they were in America, the war started in Europe. William tried to enlist in the U.S. Navy but failed. Only after he wrote a personal letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt was he allowed to enlist as a Pharmacist’s Mate. He was wounded on duty and received a Purple Heart.

William Hitler stayed in the Navy until 1947. After he was discharged, he changed his name to Stuart-Houston. He married Phyllis Jean-Jacques and moved to Long Island, where the couple had four sons. William Hitler died in 1987. None of his sons had any children, effectively ending Adolph Hitler’s bloodline.

Angela Hitler, Adolph’s older sister

Published on June 7, 2018June 7, 2018

History

Angela Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria-Hungary, on July 28th, 1883. She was the second child of Alois Hitler and Franziska Matzelsberger, whom Hitler Sr. married after the death of his first wife, Anna Glasl-Hörer. Even before Anna’s death, the couple was involved in an affair that started shortly after Hitler and Anna’s wedding.

Angela was one year old when her mother died. Her father married for the third and final time in 1885 and Angela and her older brother, Alois Jr. went to live with him and their stepmother, Klara Pölzl. On April 20th, 1889, Alois Sr. and Klara had the first of their two children that survived the childhood, Adolph Hitler. Four of Hitler’s siblings died very young. Gustav and Ida died of diphtheria in 1886. Otto was born in 1887 and died the same year. After Adolph Hitler, Klara gave birth to Edmund in 1894, only to see him die of measles six years later. It was just Paula, born in 1896, who survived to adulthood as the only Hitler’s sibling.

In 1903, Alois Hitler Sr. died. In September of the same year, Angela Hitler married her first husband, Leo Raubal. The couple lived in Linz, where Klara moved with the children after her husband died. Angela and Leo had a son, Leo Jr., and two daughters, Geli and Elfriede. Leo died in 1910, leaving Angela to take care of the children alone. By that time, she has lost contact with Adolph Hitler.

After the World War I, Angela and the girls moved to Vienna. She found a job as a manager of Mensa Academia Judaica, a boarding school for Jewish boys. She often had to defend them from anti-Semitic attackers and this earned her a favorable mention in Walter Langer’s report on Hitler, called The Mind of Adolf Hitler.

“Some of our informants knew her during this time and report that in the student riots Angela defended the Jewish students from attack and on several occasions beat the Aryan students off the steps of the dining hall with a club. She is a rather large, strong peasant type of person who is well able to take an active part,” Langer said of her.

In 1919, Angela was contacted by her stepbrother after a decade of no communication. Adolph Hitler was imprisoned in Landsberg prison and Angela went to see him. This is perhaps the reason why Hitler mentioned only her of his several siblings and half-siblings in Mein Kampf. They became close again and in 1928, Angela and her daughters Geli and Elfriede moved to Hitler’s home Berghof at Obersalzberg. Angela was given the position of a housekeeper, while Geli started living with her uncle in his Munich apartment. She committed suicide in 1931.

Angela disapproved of Hitler’s relationship with Eva Braun and this was probably the reason she moved to Dresden, where she married her second husband, a famous architect Professor Martin Hammitzsch. Angela and Adolph apparently patched things up sometime during the war and he borrowed her some money to relocate from Dresden, as the city was in danger of falling to the Soviet troops in 1945.