His family tree has no bearing on what happened in Nazi Germany or what is happening in Ukraine today.
It’s not unusual for people to make shit up about political leaders. In America, we recently went through the Birther drama, where Barack Obama was alleged to have been born in Kenya rather than Honolulu, and therefore was somehow an illegitimate president. The truth about Adolf Hitler’s family tree was a subject of speculation and propaganda throughout his public life. This was in large part because his father was a bastard and the identity of his paternal grandfather a mystery. Opponents of Hitler therefore could speculate freely with whatever theory they thought would hurt him most with a given target audience. Was he the product of incest? Was he part-Jewish?
The idea that Hitler grandfather might have been a Jew, and that Hitler was therefore one-eighth Jewish, was used to attack his credibility. The idea was offensive to everyone. The Nazis saw it as a calumnious lie. Jews saw it as a way to blame them for their own persecution. Hitler himself was worried enough that the rumor might be believed (or even be true) that in 1930 he asked Hans Frank to investigate the claim. For anyone who thinks the truth of the matter is of any great consequence, it’s important to realize that Hitler didn’t know the answer.
The subject is in the news today because Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the following remarks on Sunday during an interview with an Italian media outlet.
When asked how Russia can claim that it is fighting to “de-Nazify” Ukraine when President Volodymyr Zelensky is himself Jewish, Mr Lavrov said: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. [That Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews.”
Those remarks evoked swift condemnation from the Jewish community and especially the Israeli press, which is treating the matter of Hitler’s alleged “Jewish blood” as utterly without foundation. Yet, the Jerusalem Post took the question seriously in August 2019 when they reported on a new study that claimed to confirm the allegation.
Now, Hans Frank went on to be an important architect of the Holocaust and he was tried at Nuremberg and hanged in 1946. In 1953, his memoirs emerged, along with his claim that his investigation in 1930 had confirmed that Hitler’s paternal grandfather was a Jew. The proof was that a Jew had made child support payments.
“Frank wrote in his memoir that he conducted an investigation as Hitler had requested, and that he discovered the existence of correspondence between Maria Anna Schicklgruber – Hitler’s grandmother – and a Jew named Frankenberger living in Graz. According to Frank, the letters hinted that Frankenberger’s 19-year-old son had impregnated Maria Anna while she worked in the Frankenberger household: …that the illegitimate child of the Schickelgruber [sic] had been conceived under conditions which required Frankenberger to pay alimony.”
Sax writes in the study that according to the letters in Frank’s memoir, “Frankenberger Sr. sent money for the support of the child from infancy until its 14th birthday.”
These allegations have been questioned on the theory that no Jews were known to be living in Graz, Austria at the time. The 2019 study supporting the allegation is based on new evidence that there actually was a small Jewish community living there. But, of course, that proves nothing.
Under the race laws extant under the Third Reich, a one-eighth Jewish Hitler would have been a candidate for his own death camps–certainly some kind twisted irony, as well as a world historical double standard and example of rank hypocrisy. These things certainly mattered politically at the time but I don’t see how they make any moral difference now.
Hitler’s race theories were bunk, and we should no more apply them to him in retrospect than he should have been applied them at the time.
If you’re interested in the truth, however, there are more facts of interest. William Stuart-Houston (born William Patrick Hitler) was the son of Hitler’s half-brother, Alois. He was raised in Liverpool, England, but went to Germany when his uncle came to power. Dissatisfied with the banking job he secured he actually had the temerity to threaten “the Fuhrer” with blackmail on the matter of his paternal grandfather. He eventually wound up a U.S. citizen and fought against Hitler during the war.
Now the Russians are reviving this theory to suggest that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, like Hitler, is a self-hating Jew who embraces Naziism. That’s a truly despicable charge. It’s flatly untrue that Zelensky in running a Nazi regime even if he tolerates some neo-Nazis in the armed services–primarily in the Azov regiment which is presently being wiped out in Mariupol.
The Azov regiment was initially created in May 2014 as the Azov Battalion, named for the body of water where Mariupol and its now-destroyed port are, to defend the city when it came under attack by pro-Moscow forces. At the time, it was known for its nationalist, far-right members, which has been used by the Kremlin to justify its military campaign as having “antifascist” aims.
The group’s controversial reputation lingers, and though it still has some nationalist members, analysts say the unit, now called the Azov regiment, has evolved since its was incorporated into the regular combat forces of the Ukrainian military.
Lavrov’s comments deserve the strong condemnation they’re receiving, but not because it’s outrageous to suggest that Hitler might have been part-Jewish. They’re outrageous because he accuses Zelensky of being an anti-Semite, and because he suggests that Hitler was motivated by self-hatred when the evidence indicates he was as unsure of his lineage as historians are today.
Most of all, it doesn’t matter who Hitler’s true grandfather was because Hitler is responsible for his own actions. The horror of the Holocaust is not heightened nor mitigated, let alone explained, by the answer to this question.
It is interesting to consider, however, that Hitler’s “official” grandfather was named Johann Georg Hiedler and “Hitler” seems to have been some kind of bureaucratic transcription error. So, Adolf Hitler should have gone in history as a Hiedler–and ostensibly the product of first cousins. Alternatively, he could have kept his grandmother’s name of Schicklgruber. And if his grandfather really was a Jew named Frankenberger, well, he could have been known by that name.
As for his nephew, William Patrick Hitler, who changed his name to William Stuart-Houston, he had four sons (including one born in 1949 named Alexander Adolf) but none of them had children. According to disputed reports, this was a result of pact between them. The idea being that, experiencing it themselves, they shouldn’t burden anyone with being a relative of Hitler.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the fewer biological heirs to Hitler there are, the better.
