Rumors about Adolf Hitler's Jewish origins appeared in the 1920s, shortly after the publication of his life's work "Mein Kampf". But was this criminal in fact running "non-Aryan" blood? And did this become one of the reasons for his racist obsession with Jews?
At 6:30 p.m. on Holy Saturday, April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was born in Room 3 of the Gasthof zum Pomper in the then Austrian town of Braunau am Inn, which had a population of 4,000. He was the fourth child of the Austrian customs officer Alois Hitler and his third wife Klara Pölzl. He was baptized the next day, at a quarter past three, by Father Ignaz Probst.
His parents were not only married, but also ... kinship - Klara was the daughter of her husband's cousin . In order to establish a union, it was necessary to obtain a bishop's dispensation, which the Hitler family received on January 7, 1885. They had five children in total, but three died prematurely. Apart from Adolf, only Paula, born in 1896, survived. Apart from her, the future Führer had two half-siblings - Angela and Alois, children from his father's second marriage to Franciszek Matzelberger.
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Hitler was reluctant to talk about his roots not only because of the close kinship of his parents, which may have fueled political opponents, but also because of the uncertainties surrounding his father's origin. Adolf's male ancestors were from Strones in the Waldviertel district, approximately 80 kilometers northwest of Vienna.
Hitler's father, Alois, did not adopt this name until 12 years before the birth of his notorious son. Before that, he used his mother's maiden name for a long time.
In 1938, after the Anschluss of Austria, the town was literally wiped off the face of the earth, and Hitler made little effort to save it. According to the official version, the village was incorporated into the nearby Döllersheim training ground as part of the expansion of the military base. However, as Bob Carruthers notes in his book "Hitler's Stormy Youth":
Given Hitler's lack of inclination to save the village, it is difficult to draw any other conclusion other than that the decision was related to the fact that Alois was born there and in Strones there was a male lineage Hitler's family. As long as the village existed, the obvious path to research into Hitler's family history remained open for hostile factors.
But what exactly was the Führer trying so hard to hide? His father, Alois Hitler, was born on June 7, 1837, the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber, a peasant's daughter. Five years later, the woman married the miller Johann Georg Hiedler (or Hütler, depending on the spelling), but he was not eager to adopt a child. The family lived in dire poverty, and when Maria died in 1847, Johann Georg's hearing was lost.
Not at all with spelling
Ten-year-old Alois found shelter with his uncle Johann von Nepomuk Hiedler, a wealthy farmer who lived in the village of Spital. Until November 1876 he used his mother's maiden name - Schicklgruber. Later, however, he took over his stepfather's surname. Why? There are two theories about this. According to the first, Hiedler personally recognized Alois as his son and confirmed this in the presence of a notary public and three witnesses. Then the parish priest of Döllersheim, Father Josef Zahnschirm, made corrections to the record book.
The second hypothesis is that it was thanks to the efforts of Johann von Nepomuk that the data was corrected, as Johann Georg had been dead for a long time. The parish priest was presented a report of the testimony of three witnesses issued by a notary from Weitra stating that the man recognized the child before his death . According to Alan Bullock, Alois changed his name to Hitler shortly afterwards. It was supposed to take place in 1877, "12 years before Adolf was born, Alois Hiedler was called" Hitler "and his son was known by that name".
Where exactly such a name was written? David Lewis explains the man's decision as follows:"Alois celebrated the legitimation of his origin by distancing himself from both Johann von Nepomuk Hütler and Georg Hiedler - by combining both surnames he coined a third form of spelling:henceforth his family used the surname Hitler." Another theory is presented in the book "Hitler's Stormy Youth" by Bob Carruthers:
In 19th century Austria, literacy was not common and very different spellings were used for his new name. (…) There is consensus, however, that Hitler is just a different spelling of the German word Hüttler, meaning minor owner.
In an age when teaching was poor and literacy was far from commonplace, spelling mistakes were commonplace and were not given more importance than in Shakespeare's England . In the 19th century, the name was spelled Hütler, Hüttler, Hüettler, Hiedler and Heitler alternately.
Little Adolf probably did not think about who his grandfather was. It was only when he started his political career that this issue became pressing.
Hitler's Jewish Roots
So who was Alois's real father? There have been many rumors about this over the years. They spread especially at the time when Adolf Hitler was taking his first serious steps in politics. Even Ernst Ehrensperger in his pamphlet from 1921 described him as a Jew. He was to inherit "Jewishness" from his father's grandfather (interestingly, traditionally in Judaism a person whose mother was Jewish is considered a Jew). It was allegedly a wealthy man who took advantage of Maria Anna and then abandoned her.
Some speculated that it might have been a member of the Rothschild family from Vienna. Others claimed that it was a Jew from Graz named Frankenberger or Frankenreiter, for whom Hitler's grandmother was to work as a cook . The latter rumor was used by Hans Frank while he was awaiting his sentence in Nuremberg.
Shortly before the execution in October 1946, in his diary "Im Angesicht des Galgens" ("In the face of the gallows"), he reportedly mentioned a letter submitted to him by Hitler, in which William Patrick Hitler blackmailed a relative by revealing information about the family's Jewish roots. Frank was tasked with investigating the matter and came to surprising information:"Hitler's father was a half-Jew, born of Miss Schicklgruber's extramarital relationship with a Jew from Graz. This would mean Hitler is a quarter Jewish ”.
However, the former governor general of occupied Poland did not have any concrete evidence to support this thesis. The interrogation of Hitler's sister Paula by the US Army's counterintelligence department in 1945 also failed to unravel the mystery of the Führer's origin. She was supposed to give the following answer:
Only relatives on our mother's side were close to us. The Schmied and Koppenstein family are our beloved relatives, especially my cousin [Maria] Schmied, who married Koppenstein. I didn't know anyone in my father's family. My sister Angela and I used to say, "My father must have had some relatives but we don't know them at all."
Hitler, professing radical views on the purity of the race, could not prove his "Aryan" origin himself. His family tree could only be traced back two generations.
Error in family tree
The main person himself, on February 29, 1932, hired a Viennese genealogist, Karl Friedrich von Frank, for three hundred marks, in order to investigate his male roots. Initially, Hitler was pleased with the work he had done - so much so that he sent him a letter of thanks.
His joy ended when a letter from one of the readers was published in the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung". In Hitler's family tree, the author's attention was drawn to the "Jewish" sounding name of his great-great-grandmother - Katharina Salomon from Nieder-Plöttbach. In fact, the woman was Catholic and… had nothing to do with the Hitler family. It turned out that the researcher made a mistake. Maria Hamberger from that town should have been listed in the document at number 45. Although Karl Friedrich quickly rectified the mistake, the rumor of Hitler's alleged Jewish origins was already living a life of its own.
Hitler, wanting to end speculation, hired another specialist, Rudolf Koppensteiner. But it didn't work - people kept duplicating the wrong version of the family tree. Ultimately, in 1938, Adolf forbade the public disclosure of the results of further research on his ancestors. Moreover, no one was allowed to display commemorative plaques concerning his roots, and those that had already been displayed were to be removed. As Bob Carruthers emphasizes in his book "Hitler's Stormy Youth":
Lingering doubts about the true identity of his paternal grandfather gave the inevitable speculation that Hitler was hiding something, and in the morbid political climate of the 1930s this could only mean only that it has an admixture of Jewish blood .
Over the years, many scientists have tried to figure out the truth. Among them was also the German historian Werner Maser, who traced the Führer's family tree down to the seventh generation. He used parish registers and documentation covering property and inheritance matters. The effect of his analyzes undermined the hypotheses about Hitler's alleged Jewish origins. The value of these findings was emphasized by, among others, professor of the University of Warsaw, the Military Political Academy and the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Franciszek Ryszka. However, for some they are not enough.
Regardless of who is right in this dispute, one thing is certain - Hitler did not meet the criteria of "Aryanness" under the Nuremberg Laws, if only because he was unable to present compelling evidence of his "correct" origin. Bob Carruthers sums it up by saying, "It is ironic that the man who led a party that attached such importance to the" purity "of race himself had such an unclear pedigree.