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William Patrick Hitler
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William Patrick "Willy" Hitler (later Stuart-Houston) (March 12 1911 – July 14 1987) was the nephew of Adolf Hitler. Born to Adolf's half-brother Alois Hitler, Jr., and his first wife Bridget Dowling, William later moved to Germany and subsequently escaped, eventually going to the United States where he fought against his uncle in World War II.
iam Patrick Hitler was born in Liverpool, the son of Alois Hitler, Jr., and his Irish-born wife Bridget Dowling.
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William Patrick "Willy" Hitler (later Stuart-Houston) (March 12 1911 – July 14 1987) was the nephew of Adolf Hitler. Born to Adolf's half-brother Alois Hitler, Jr., and his first wife Bridget Dowling, William later moved to Germany and subsequently escaped, eventually going to the United States where he fought against his uncle in World War II.
Early life
William Patrick Hitler was born in Liverpool, the son of Alois Hitler, Jr., and his Irish-born wife Bridget Dowling. They had met in Dublin when Alois was living there in 1909, and eloped to Liverpool where William was born in 1911. Hitler's nephew is recalled by elderly former neighbors, and in Liverpool folklore variously as "Billy" or "Paddy" Hitler. The family lived in a flat at 102 Upper Stanhope Street, which was destroyed in the last German air raid of the Liverpool Blitz on January 10, 1942. It remained a bomb site for many years, but has now been rebuilt and landscaped. Dowling wrote a manuscript called My Brother-in-Law Adolf, in which she claimed Adolf Hitler had moved to Liverpool with her and Alois from November 1912 to April 1913, in order to dodge conscription in Austria. The story has been popular, but is dismissed by most historians.
In 1914 Alois returned to Germany, but Bridget refused to join him, as he had become violent. Unable to reconnect due to the outbreak of World War I, Alois abandoned the family, leaving William to be raised by his mother. He remarried, bigamously, but re-established contact in the mid-1920s when he wrote to Bridget asking her to send William to Weimar Republic Germany for a visit. She finally agreed in 1929, when William was 18. Alois had another son with his German wife, Heinz Hitler, who, in contrast to his half-brother, became a committed Nazi and died in Soviet captivity.
In Nazi Germany
In 1933, William Patrick Hitler returned to Nazi Germany in an attempt to benefit from his uncle's rise to power. His uncle found him a job in a bank. Later, he worked at the Opel car factory and then as a car salesman. Unsatisfied, William persisted in asking his uncle for a better job, and there were rumors he might sell embarrassing stories about the family to the press if he did not receive one; among the rumors would have been his father's bigamous marriage. In 1938, Hitler asked William to relinquish his British citizenship in exchange for a high-ranking job. Fearing a trap, William panicked and fled Germany and then tried to blackmail Hitler with threats to allege to the press that Hitler's alleged paternal grandfather was actually a Jewish merchant. Returning to London he wrote an article for Look magazine titled "Why I Hate my Uncle."
In 1939, William and his mother went to the United States on a lecture tour on the invitation of William Randolph Hearst, and were stranded there when World War II broke out. After making a special request to President Franklin Roosevelt, William was cleared to join the United States Navy in 1944; according to a story printed in newspapers at the time of his enlistment, when he went to the draft office and introduced himself, the recruiting officer replied, "Glad to see you Hitler, my name's Hess."
Later life
William Patrick Hitler served in the US Naval Medical Corps before being discharged in 1947, after being wounded during the course of the war. After leaving the service he changed his last name to Stuart-Houston, married a German woman, moved to Patchogue on Long Island, New York, and had four sons. He used his medical training to establish a business analysing blood samples for hospitals.
He was married to Phyllis Jean-Jacques, born in Germany in 1923, whose sister had kept in correspondence with William via mail. After their relationship had begun, William, Phyllis, and Bridget sought anonymity in the U.S. In 1949 they had their first son, who was given the name Alexander Adolf by William. They would later have three more sons, by the names of Louis, Howard Ronald, and Brian William.
William died in July 14, 1987 in Patchogue, New York, US and was buried alongside his mother, Bridget, at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram, New York. Phyllis died on November 2, 2004.
Howard Ronald Stuart-Houston, a Special Agent with the of the Internal Revenue Service, died in an automobile accident on September 14, 1989 without having had any children, leaving his brothers Alexander Adolf, Louis and Brian William as the last three members of Adolf Hitler's paternal bloodline. Howard Ronald is buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram, New York. It has been said that these three have vowed not to have children themselves, and none of them have married. However, Alexander, now a social worker, has said that he knows of no such pact, and that if it had been made, it was made by the other two brothers without his involvement.
Despite his public disapproval of his uncle's ideology, not only did William give his eldest son (born in 1949) the middle name of Adolf, but it has been pointed out that his adopted name Stuart-Houston is remarkably similar to that of famous British anti-Semitic ideologist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, often cited by Nazi sympathizers at the time. The family, however, says that William had rejected Nazi beliefs and had embraced the American Dream.
William Patrick Hitler in the media
His story has featured in documentaries as well as works of fiction. Beryl Bainbridge's 1978 novel Young Adolf depicts the alleged 1912–13 visit to his Liverpool relatives (including the infant William) by a 23-year-old Adolf Hitler, finding dark humor in his maladjustment and ordinariness. Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell's 1989 comic book The New Adventures of Hitler is likewise based on the supposed Liverpool visit. It sparked controversy in the early 1990s and has not been reprinted since. In October 2005, The History Channel aired a one hour documentary entitled Hitler's Family, in which William Patrick Hitler is profiled along with other relatives of Adolf Hitler.
In April 2006, Little Willy, a play by Mark Kassen examining the life of William Patrick Hitler, opened at the Ohio Theater in New York before moving on to the West End in London.
See also
External links
- from the Daily Telegraph
- CNN interview.
- , (2002) by Hal Bastin, accessed April 15, 2006
- Kilgannon, Corey. , The New York Times, 24 April 2006
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