“Did Hitler Have a Secret Son?” asks the headline. Jean-Marie Loret, a Frenchman who died in 1985, spent much of his life trying to verify his mother’s claim that Adolf Hitler had gotten her pregnant during World War I. The story was retold by Loret’s attorney, now an old geezer, for a French paper last week.
Drumming up interest in Loret is undoubtedly part of the advance publicity for the revised edition Loret’s book, Your Father’s Name Was Hitler, said to be on the way.
It was that particular detail that set me thinking. Loret wrote a book trying to convince the world he was the son of one of history’s most loathed figures. In real life, offspring of Infamous parents may write autobiographies capitalizing on their connections. Stalin’s daughter did, too, for example.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
After seeing Luke Skywalker’s horrified reaction to the villain’s parental claims in The Empire Strikes Back, the last thing audiences would believe is Luke spending his time in sickbay dictating Darth Vader Is My Dad.
Or anyone who’s familiar with Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche knows perfectly well that the hero, revolutionary French lawyer Andre Moreau, did not depart his last encounter with the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr filled with a burning desire to publicize that connection.
But Hitler’s and Stalin’s kids want you to know. A funny world we live in.
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Two of Stalin’s grandsons have opposite views on their ancestry. Aleksander Burdonsky tries to emphasize his mother’s family. Vissarion Dzhugashvili just loves dear old Granddad.
Ironically, Burdonsky is the son of Vasily Stalin, the favored son, while Dzugashvili is the son of Jakob Dzugashvili, the disfavored one.
Slava Slava Slava . . .
As for the other guy . . . Adolf had two half-brothers, Alois Jr. and William Patrick. Alois had a son, Heinz, who died on the Russian front, and a daughter. (His full sister, Angela, had a son who died in Stalingrad and a daughter who shot herself after an encounter with Onkel Adi.) William Patrick had three sons, who decided not to have children so the name would die out. (Adolf had a full sister, Paula, who was his hostess before Eva came along.)
Hitler may also have had a nephew named Patrick. Possibly William Patrick’s son. He tried to establish a liason with the dictator in the years running up to the war. He may have wanted a loan, but probably had honorable intentions on the whole. Hitler was horrified that the young man just wanted to shake him down, or ruin his reputation by showing the Fuhrer was human enough to have relations. He gave W.P. some money and told him never to be seen in Germany again. I suppose that’s about when the young man decided to immigrate to the U.S. and live under a different name. It is probably the three sons of Patrick rather than William Patrick that JTM speaks of. A trip to Wikipedia would sort it out.
Meanwhile, imagine what a sitcom *that* My Three Sons would have made!
Taral: You’re right. William Patrick Hitler was Alois Hitler’s son by his second marriage. My apologies.
Okay, I did some more research. God, was the man’s family weird!
Father and his Parents
Alois Hitler the elder [1837-1903] was born “Alois Schicklgruber”, the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. In 1842, Anna married Johann Georg Hiedler, and her son became “Alois Hitler”.
[It’s not clear if Alois was the son of Johann Georg Schicklgruber or his brother Johann Nepomuk Schicklgruber. William Patrick Hitler, of whom more later, in a blackmail attempt claimed that his grandfather was instead the son of Leopold Frankenberger, which would have made the uncle a Mischlinge of the Second Class, one-third Jewish. (The Nazis also invented an Aryan Arithmetic.)]
. . . to be continued
More yet.
The Siblings
Alois Hitler was married three times. By his second wife, Franziska Matzelsberger, he had two children who survived to adulthood, Alois (Alois the younger was born during the life of his father’s first wife, so he was “Alois Matzelsberger”; is there a pattern here?) and Angela. By his third wife, Klara Pölzl, he had two children who survived to adulthood, Paula and him.
Alois the younger [1882-1956] married twice; by his first wife, Bridget Dowling, he had a son named William Patrick Hitler. He married bigamously in Germany, having returned there before WWI broke out, to Hedwig Heidemann, having one son, Heinrich “Heinz” Hitler.
Angela [1883-1949] married twice, to Leo Raubal and Martin Hammitszch. By her first husband she had three children, Leo Rudolf Raubal, Angela Maria “Geli” Raubal, and Elfrieda Maria “Friedl” Raubal.
Paula [1896-1960] never married. She used the last name of “Wolff”, which her brother had used while in hiding. (Whatever would he have said if he had been told that “Magda Lupescu”, the flamboyant mistress of Carol II of Romania, was originally Helen Wolf — and her father was Jewish!?)
. . . to be continued
More than you want to know —
The Younger Generations
William Patrick [1911-1987] was invited to Germany by his uncle, and then in 1939 moved to the U.S., where he served in the navy. He married Phyllis Jean-Jacques. Perhaps not surpisingly, he changed his last name, to Stuart-Houston, and they had four sons, Alexander, Louis, Howard [1957-1989], and Brian. Alexander Stuart-Houston has denied that the brothers agreed not to have any children, though they don’t.
Heinz [1920-1942] joined the army, took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union, and died after being captured.
Leo Raubal [1906-1977] was also captured, at Stalingrad, but not having quite such a notorious name survived. He had a son, Peter.
Frieda [1910-1993] married and had a son, Heiner Hochegger.
And then there was Geli [1908-1931], who apparently had a too-close relationship with her uncle, and wound it up by shooting herself with his pistol. (Eva killed herself. The Hon. Unity Mitford, another intimate of his, shot herself when the war began, and eventually died as a result of the wound. Is there a pattern here?)
Not surprisingly, there’s a family tree on wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_family#Hitler_family_tree