Did you know that there are relatives of Hitler in the U.S. — in fact, on Long Island?
They no longer use the name, of course. But an interesting twist: the remaining descendants have reportedly agreed among themselves not to have children, so as to break the generational line (or curse).
That’s all by way of a documentary on Netflix.
There also have been stories in outlets such as The New York Times.
The relatives — three quiet brothers — are the grandsons of Alois Hitler of Liverpool, England, who was Hitler’s half-brother.
There were originally four grandsons. A fourth is no longer alive. Their father, Willy Patrick Hitler (also known as Patty, son of Alois), moved to New York City in 1939 and then out to Patchogue. They grew up under a new surname, for obvious reasons — a very secretive family, according to neighbors. Their last known surname was Stuart-Houston.
One son, Howard, died in a car accident in 1989. The other brothers continued low-profile jobs, Alexander as a social worker, Louis and Brian with a landscaping business. “They are regular Long Island guys, middle-aged and middle class, two of them living together,” noted The Times back in 2006. “They are also the last members of Adolf Hitler’s paternal bloodline.”
“They have moved away from the two-story clapboard house where they grew up on Silver Street in Patchogue, where their father ran a diagnostic blood lab,” noted The Times. “To their former neighbors in Patchogue, much about them and their upbringing seemed all-American – even aggressively so – but some of those neighbors remember a family just a little bit apart from everyone else, speaking German at home, and a patriarch with the slightest, just the slightest, resemblance to a certain dark figure in history.”
Recalled a neighbor, “My father used to say to my mother, ‘Doesn’t Patty look a lot like Adolf Hitler?’ Once, my father told my mom, ‘I just saw Patty mowing the lawn, and he turned around real quick and, my God, he looked exactly like Hitler.’ ”
Since Adolf Hitler had no children, many believed his genetic pool died with him (and Eva).
But it turns out to have survived in the U.S.
Aside from DNA, was there a spiritual inheritance? Hitler was “haunted” since youth. During his Confirmation ceremony at a cathedral in Linz, he turned sulky and surly, repulsed by the holy ritual. He was also prone to trance, according to historical accounts (which of course frame it in more a psychological way). He would turn pale, take on a sinister countenance, and launch into impassioned speeches with a hoarse, raucous, and mesmerizing voice.
A similar trance occurred while Hitler was recovering from war injuries in the Prussian Military Reserve Hospital in Pasewalk. There he heard a voice that told him he was Germany’s messiah. There were times, even while Germany’s leader, when he screamed for aides, terrified of a shadow in his room.
That claim of a pact to end the family bloodline (there is no indication the survivors recognized an actual curse) was originally presented in a book called The Last of the Hitlers, which apparently served as the fount for the later articles and documentary. Says a website, “As soon as they knew about their Hitler family history, the three boys made a pact. None of them would have children and the family line would end with them. It also seems that the other Hitler descendants, their cousins in Austria, felt the same way. Both Peter Raubal and Heiner Hochegger have never married and have no children. Nor do they plan to. They also have no interest in continuing the legacy of their great-uncle any more than the Stuart-Houston brothers. So, it seems, the last of the Hitler family will soon die out. The youngest of the five is 48 and the oldest is 86. By the next century, there won’t be a living member of the Hitler bloodline left. Ironic, yet fitting, that the man who made it his life’s goal to create the perfect bloodline by eliminating the bloodlines of others will have his own stamped out so intentionally.”
None of the remaining grandsons has married. They refuse to speak with the media. When Willie died in 1987, he was buried under a tombstone that bears no name. According to the London Telegraph, his widow moved to a cabin in a rural part of Long Island.
If they haven’t already, may they find peace; may we offer them a prayer, along with any descendants (Hitler was said to have had an illegitimate child) of whom no one knows.