An article written by Adolf Hitler’s nephew that exposed the Fuehrer’s bizarre behavior is currently for sale. The article was published in Look magazine on July 4, 1939, and is titled “Why I Hate My Uncle.” It gave insight into the curious temperament that the Nazi leader had.
William Patrick Hitler was the son of Adolf’s half-brother Alois Junior. The nephew’s mother was an Irish woman named Brigid Dowling and they lived in Liverpool.
The article was written two months before the start or World War II and promised to candidly tell “some things about his uncle that only a relative could know.” William began the article by remembering a visit to Hitler’s Berchtesgaden home in 1936.
William wrote:
“I drove there with friends and was shown into the garden. Hitler was entertaining some very beautiful women at tea. When he saw us he strode up, slashing a whip as he walked and taking the tops off the flowers. He took that occasion to warn me to never again mention that I was his nephew. Then he returned to his guests still viciously cracking his whip. We had cakes and whipped cream, Hitler’s favorite dessert. I was struck by his intensity, his feminine gestures. There was dandruff on his coat.”
Hey Adolf, maybe get some Head & Shoulders.
The nephew also wrote a dark story about the death of Adolf’s half-niece.
“When I visited Berlin in 1931, the family was in trouble. Geli Raubal, the daughter of Hitler’s and my father’s sister, had committed suicide. Everyone knew that Hitler and she had long been intimate and that she had been expecting a child – a fact that enraged Hitler. His revolver was found by her body.”
In the 1930s William moved to Germany and couldn’t find a good job so he allegedly wrote a letter to Hitler demanding a better job. This lead to accusations that he was attempting to blackmail his famous uncle by threatening to tell the press that Hitler’s alleged paternal grandfather was actually a Jewish merchant.
“I published some articles on my uncle when I returned to England and was forthwith summoned back to Berlin and taken with my father and aunt to Hitler’s hotel,” William wrote. “He was furious. Pacing up and down, wild-eyed and tearful, he made me promise to retract my articles and threatened to kill himself if anything else were written on his private life.”
William was forced to flee to the U.S. in 1939 after blackmailing Hitler.
William wrote of the last time he saw his uncle:
“I shall never forget the last time he sent for me. He was in a brutal temper when I arrived. Walking back and forth, brandishing his horsehide whip, he shouted insults at my head as if he were delivering a political oration.”
William would become a United States citizen and enlisted with the U.S. Navy and fought during World War II in the Pacific theater.
He was discharged after the war with a shrapnel wound. William lived for a while in New York, before changing his name in 1946 and disappearing. Smart move. He died in New York state in 1987.
The magazine, which sold for just 10 cents back in 1939, is now being sold for $800 by a dealer in Canada through AbeBooks.
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