Commander Kelly: William Patrick Hitler: Fighting Celt!

William Patrick Hitler

This is the William Patrick Hitler chapter of our forthcoming work 101 Fighting Celts from Boudicca to MacArthur...

Pursued by the shame
of an infamous name. Half-Celt
fighting Uncle's friends.

(Haiku by Stuart Laycock)

William Patrick Hitler may be one of the strangest Fighting Celts who ever lived. He was born in Liverpool in 1911 to Alois Hitler and Bridgett Dowling. His father was Adolph Hitler’s half brother, and his mother was an Irishwoman from Dublin. The couple had met in Dublin where Alois, who claimed to be the son of a wealthy hotelier, was visiting. They moved to Liverpool and married, with William following shortly after. The marriage did not last, and William was brought up in Britain by his mother. Alois returned to Germany and remarried bigamously.

After his uncle emerged as an important political figure in Germany, William moved in 1929 to Germany. He used his family connection to land a low-level job at the Reichs-Kreditbank in Berlin. Not satisfied with his banking job, he moved on to Opel. At one point, he seems to have attempted to blackmail his uncle, who was Chancellor of Germany at the time. He threatened to expose a rumor about the family’s alleged Jewish roots. Adolph Hitler referred to “Willie” as “my loathsome nephew.” William took the hint and fled to Britain where he wrote a 1939 article for Look magazine titled “Why I Hate my Uncle.” Rejected by the British military because of his surname, William later moved on to the United States.

FDR Statue
Grosvenor Square, London

Following the Pearl Harbor, attack, he wrote a letter in 1942 to President Roosevelt, asking for help in joining the US military. Hitler wrote, “I am one of many, but can render service to this great cause.” On January 10 that same year, his house on 102 Upper Stanhope Street was destroyed by the last Nazi air raid to hit Liverpool.

This Hitler earned a Purple Heart

In 1944, Hitler finally signed up for service in the US Navy. When he first approached a Navy recruiting station, introducing himself as Hitler, the response was, “Glad to see you, Hitler. My name is Hess.” Hitler served as a pharmacist’s mate until his discharge in 1947. He saw active service in the war, received a shrapnel wound, and was awarded a Purple Heart.

After the war, he returned to New York and changed his name to William Stuart-Houston. He married a German woman with whom he had four sons. He used his Navy medical training to establish a blood laboratory.

Hitler’s estranged nephew died in New York in 1987. In 2006, a play on the life of this odd Fighting Celt titled Little Willie opened in the States and on London’s West End."

101 Fighting Celts: From Boudicca to MacArthur is coming soon...!