The half-brother of Adolf Hitler bigamously married another woman after walking out on his Irish wife in their Merseyside home… before it was blown to pieces by the Luftwaffe.
The evil Nazi dictator’s family links to Liverpool and unverified claims that the Fuhrer himself once lodged with his relatives in the city before World War One have long been known.
But details about the incredible womanising life of Hitler’s older half-brother Alois Hitler can now be revealed by MailOnline after escaping the attention of many historians.
Alois fled Austria to escape his bullying father when Adolf was still a child, and ended up working as a kitchen porter in Ireland where he met his wife Bridget.
The couple eloped to London where they married before moving in 1910 to a three bedroom flat at 102 Upper Stanhope Street in Toxteth, Liverpool.
Their son William Patrick Hitler, known as Willie and a half-nephew to the future Fuhrer, was born the following year in the city in 1911.
But Alois Hitler struggled to provide for his family, and went to live in Germany in 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War One, promising to send for them when he got established and found a job.
Old reports uncovered by MailOnline tell how Bridget presumed her husband was dead after failing to hear from him as war raged in mainland Europe between Britain and Germany.
Alois Hitler (pictured) was Nazi leader Adolf’s half-brother. Born in 1882, Alois was seven years older than Adolf. He fled Austria to escape their father who was described as a bully
Alois ended up working as a kitchen porter at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin where he met 17-year-old Irish girl Bridget Dowling (pictured). The pair went on to marry against her parents’ wishes and they had a son together – William Paddy Hitler – who was born in 1911 in Liverpool
In the 1930s newspapers told the story of how Adolf is supposed to have visited Liverpool during WWI. Bridget told how Adolf stayed with them in Upper Stanhope Street between November 1912 and April 1913 while apparently trying to avoid being conscripted into the Army
His sister-in-law Bridget told how she collected Adolf then aged 23 from Liverpool Lime Street station in 1912. Describing him as a ‘shabby young man’, she said he took him under her wing and introduced him to astrology during his stay
She was left to raise her son alone in Liverpool with the support of her family from Ireland.
But Alois had not died and reportedly had numerous affairs before remarrying bigamously after opening a restaurant in Berlin, which was later popular with senior Nazis.
Bridget learned of his second marriage when he wrote to her begging her to say that their marriage had been illegal because he had been charged with bigamy.
She refused due to her strong Catholic faith, and also because it would have made her son illegitimate in the eyes of the law.
But in the court case that followed, she curiously defended Alois by writing to the court to say that he honestly believed he was free to marry in Germany.
He was spared a prison sentence when she agreed to a divorce. It was later suggested that he may have fathered a lovechild called Violet May in the UK, although no official records of her birth appear to exist.
Bridget remained in the flat in Liverpool for at least ten years before she and Willie moved to a house in Priory Gardens, Highgate, north London, where she took in lodgers to help make ends meet.
In an ironic twist of fate, the flat which she once shared in Liverpool with her cheating husband was in a terrace of houses destroyed by German bombs in the last air raid on the city during World War Two.
The debris from the homes was cleared up after the war, but the area was never redeveloped and was landscaped with grass to become an amenity for local children and dog walkers.
The grass mound is still a prominent feature of Upper Stanhope Street today, alongside buildings which escaped serious damage in the raid on January 10, 1942.
MailOnline pieced together the astonishing story of the lives of Hitler’s relatives in Britain from census, birth and marriage records, and contemporaneous reports about them from the 1930s.
Alois Hitler, who had convictions for theft as a young man, was a womaniser who left Bridget for another woman and committed bigamy
The records suggest that Alois might have inherited his womanising ways from the father he shared with his half-brother who went on to become the 20th century’s most hated man as the leader of Nazi Germany.
Their father who was also called Alois was a senior servant who was married three times and had eight children in Linz, Austria.
Alois Senior initially married Anna Glasl-Hörer, the wealthy daughter of another Customs official and 14 years older than him, in 1873.
But within months of his wedding vows, he started an affair with Franziska Matzelsberger who was a 19-year-old servant for him and his bride at their farmhouse home.
Franziska is said to have jealously demanded that he sack his other ‘servant girl’ Klara Pölzl, 16, after their illicit fling began.
After separating from his first wife, Alois Senior who was known as authoritarian and bullying, married Franziska. She gave birth to Alois in 1882, followed by a daughter Angela the following year.
Alois Senior rehired Klara to help look after Franziska, nicknamed ‘Fanni’, and their two children after she fell ill with tuberculosis, but she died aged just 23 in August 1884.
He married Klara after her death, and she gave birth to Gustav, the first of their six children, in May 1885. Adolf was born in April 1889.
Memoirs claim his eldest son ‘bore the brunt’ of his rages and was beaten for Adolf’s pranks, triggering him to run away aged just 14.
He ended up in Ireland and met his future wife Bridget Dowling, then aged 17 and fresh out of convent school, at the Dublin Horse Show in 1909.
She swooned over Alois and his charming ‘broken English’ accent, after falling for his lie that he was a wealthy hotelier on a trip to Ireland, and being impressed by his gold-handled white-ivory walking stick.
The truth was that he was a penniless waiter at Dublin’s five-star Shelbourne Hotel, as well as being a decade her senior and twice-convicted of theft.
The loved-up couple eloped to London and married in Marylebone register office on June 3, 1910, despite Bridget’s father, a strict Catholic farmer, threatening to have Alois arrested for kidnapping her, before she dissuaded him.
The newly-wed Hitlers moved to Liverpool where Alois tried his hand at different jobs including running a restaurant, a boarding house and a hotel before becoming a salesman for a disposable razor firm.
In later years Bridget claimed in newspaper interviews that she had gown close to Adolf during those five months he lived at their flat in Toxteth Park, Liverpool – and even once encouraged him to trim off the edges of his moustache to make it into his iconic toothbrush style
Alois and Bridget settled in Liverpool – as census records from 1911 show – where they settled in Upper Stanhope Street. But Alois Hitler struggled to provide for his family, and went to live in Germany in 1914. Bridget remained at the flat for a further ten years before moving to London
In an ironic twist, during WWII the German Luftwaffe bombed the very flat where monster Adolf reputedly stayed. Now all that exists where the flat once stood is a grassy children’s play area
Records for the 1911 census show that the couple adopted the first names Anton and Cissie.
Bridget’s father became reconciled with his runaway daughter, attending his son’s christening in St Patrick’s Presbytery, Toxteth, on April 30, 1911.
Alois who loved gambling had high hopes of building up his own international razor business and invited his sister Angela and her husband in Austria to help him.
According to a manuscript written years later by Bridget, and entitled ‘My Brother-in-law Adolf’, she and her husband went to Liverpool’s Lime Street station to pick up his relatives so they could talk about a prospective deal.
But she said they were shocked when Alois’ younger half-brother Adolf, then aged 23 and described by Bridget as ‘a shabby young man’, turned up instead on behalf of the couple.
She claimed that he ended up staying with them in Upper Stanhope Street for five months between November 1912 and April 1913 while apparently trying to avoid being conscripted into the Army.
Bridget stated in her manuscript which was turned into a book that she had introduced Hitler to astrology during his stay and even encouraged him to trim off the edges of his moustache to make it into his iconic toothbrush style.
Historians later doubted her claims, and believe she potentially made up the story about Hitler living in Merseyside to try and capitalise on her links to him.
Her dubious memoir inspired Beryl Bainbridge to write Young Adolf, a fictional account of his supposed visit to Liverpool, where Hitler lazes around his in-laws’ house, displaying many of his sinister character traits.
Whether or not the visit to Liverpool happened, Hitler famously served as a soldier in World War One, reaching the rank of Corporal, and being twice decorated for bravery, getting a second class Iron Cross in 1914, and a first class Iron Cross in 1918.
Shortly after moving from Dublin to Liverpool, Alois and Bridget Hitler had a son William – was Adolf’s nephew and would later change his surname to try to escape its huge notoriety
The Luftwaffe bombed Hitler’s brother: This grassy spot in the Liverpool suburb of Toxteth where is where Alois Hitler lived. It’s where the Nazi dictator is rumoured to have stayed for a few months during WWI – and was bombed by the Germans in WWII
MailOnline found Liverpudlians living around Upper Stanhope Street who were well aware of Hitler’s not so distant family connection with the city.
Unemployed Ben Jones, 61, said he had even seen neo-Nazis visiting the site of the bombed out flat, and treating it as a shrine.
Ben said: ‘They came with swastikas on their arms and St George’s flags on Hitler’s birthday. They asked where Hitler lived but people soon drive them out.’
Others said they had heard the tale – perhaps true, perhaps an urban myth – that Hitler’s half- brother was a regular at local pub Peter Kavangh’s.
The pub’s barman Mark Littlewood, 61, said: ‘Hitler’s brother definitely drank here but I don’t think Hitler was here himself – apparently he was in a homeless hostel in Austria at the time. But many so believe he lived around here.
Mark added: ‘I always tell people about the pub’s Hitler link. They are very surprised and I guess it is weird that there is a Scouse link to Hitler’
Mother-of-two Sharon Brown, 43, said: ‘I believe he lived on that open but of land – that’s why it’s kept so neat. Dog walkers use it a lot.’
But other neighbours suggested Alois Hitler and his family lived on the opposite side of the road.
Karen Wilson, 62, said: ‘I was told he lived on the other side of the road. I was shocked when I found out the Hitler link. It’s not what you expect.’
The four bedroom terraced house in north London where Bridget moved to with Willie after leaving Liverpool between the two world wars, still exists today and is valued at £1.7million by property website Zoopla.
The pair stayed at the house for several years, even visiting their famous relative Hitler in Germany after he became Chancellor, before they emigrated to America shortly before the start of World War Two in 1939.
Their old house in an affluent area with a spacious back garden overlooking Highgate Woods is just a short walk from Highgate underground station.
Priory Gardens now bears little evidence of the night-time horrors of the Blitz that terrorised London – and other British cities – in the first years of the war.
Only a newly built property – dotted among period houses – suggests that several homes were completely destroyed by the Luftwaffe’s bombs.
The three-storey is nondescript, perhaps in need of a lick of paint, and its value comes more from its location in fashionable Highgate than from any inherent attractiveness.
It was last sold two years ago for £1.5 million to a high flying lawyer who has practised in Singapore and the US.
Ten years after Alois walked out on her and returned to Germany, Bridget and Adolf’s nephew William Hitler moved to a house in Priory Gardens, Highgate, north London, where she took in lodgers to help make ends meet. Here, Bridget is pictured inside the property boiling a kettle
Today the four bedroom terraced house in north London where Bridget moved to with Willie after leaving Liverpool between the two world wars, still exists today. It is valued at £1.7million by property website Zoopla and was bought two years ago by a high-flying lawyer
She wasn’t at home when we called but near neighbour Edward Yescomb, a retired banker who has lived in the street for many years, was stunned when MailOnline told him that a branch of the Hitler family had lived in the house
Mr Yescomb, 77, said: ‘I knew that Hitler had relatives in Britain, but I had no idea that they had lived in Highgate!
‘I knew that the family had been in Liverpool, but presumably this woman must have come down to London afterwards.
‘I had heard of the British Hitlers before. But I don’t think it’s fair to blame one brother for the crimes of another, or indeed his wife. Bridget Hitler had to live somewhere, I suppose.’
Hitler’s half-nephew Willie found his Hitler surname increasingly problematic as the brown shirts rose to power in Germany
He was fired from an accountancy apprenticeship in the early 1930s because of his bloodline, prompting him to leave for Nazi Germany, where his half-uncle was Chancellor, in 1933.
Baby Adolf with his mother Klara who would die in 1907 without ever learning the monster she had created
Willie stayed in Germany for nearly five years before relations between him and the dictator became increasingly fraught, and he returned to his mother in north London.
Some reports said he went back to Britain following a row with Adolf, who wanted him to relinquish his British citizenship in exchange for a high-ranking role.
There were also conflicting claims that the bust-up was over Willie wanting Hitler to help him leave his lowly job at a bank, only for the Fuhrer refusing because he did not want to be seen to be giving preferential treatment to a relative.
Willie went on give interviews and write articles about his increasingly prominent uncle, latterly describing him as a ‘madman’.
During a two month visit back to his mother’s home in Highgate in the late 1930s as war loomed in Europe, he spoke to reporters in his native English with a slight German accent, saying he had become ‘homesick’ for England.
Describing his relationship with Hitler in one newspaper, he said: ‘My uncle the Fuhrer gave instructions that I was to be given every facility to go anywhere.
‘I worked in banks studying finance, and I have worked through the great Opel car factory and other industrial concerns. In Germany they say no one manages finance like the English.
‘In Germany I am a private individual and in England I am a private individual. I have no authority to make any political statement, and I would not say anything to embarrass my uncle.
‘Germany is good for Germans and England for the English. The German people admire the English and their stability of temperament.
‘My mother is Irish and a good Catholic, and I find it very difficult to convert her to national Socialism. There are some things she feels very bitter about.
‘She lost her British nationality when she married my father, and became Austrian. Recently the Austrian consulate refused to renew her papers so that she now has no country.’
Alois Hitler Senior: wearing his Austrian military uniform, the father of Adolf and his anglophile older brother Alois Junior. Their father married three times and was a bully, it is claimed
Alois Snr initially married Anna Glasl-Hörer, 14 years his senior. Then had an affair with the nanny and married his mistress. When she died he married Klara Pölzl, Adolf’s mother
In what a reporter described as a voice of hushed reverence, he spoke fondly of his half uncle, saying: ‘Since the Fuhrer has been in power, Germany has improved enormously.’
Before returning to Germany, he said in another interview: ‘The constancy, endurance and conventionalism of English customs are refreshing.
‘I suppose I appreciate these things because I was born in England, although it is difficult to persuade my English friends to look upon me as an Englishman.
‘Many of them seem to think I am directly answerable for most of the things in Germany which they consider bad. I have a British passport, and I should not like to give up my English nationality.
‘I want to settle here eventually although I want to go back to Germany for a year or two. With the mentality of an Englishman, I cannot subscribe to everything in National Socialism, but I try to study the Fuhrer in most things.
‘I agree with all the fundamentals. My uncle Adolf understands this. My uncle is a peaceful man. He thinks war is not worth the candle.’
Bridget talked of her battles to regain her British citizenship in an interview with the Daily Express in October 1938 when she was said to be living in a semi-detached house in Hornsey, north London.
She revealed she and her son had an audience with Hitler the previous year in 1937 during a visit to Germany when the Fuhrer was surrounded by his SS guards.
Bridget said: ‘Sure I know something of the Hitler family… That was the trouble about Adolf’s half-brother, Alois, my husband. He didn’t realise the Irish in me, that I could be led, but never driven.
‘Now I want to get back my British nationality. I’ve seen the Home Office, and they want to help me, but unless my marriage can be dissolved, I must remain an alien.
‘Just to think that I, Bridget Dowling that was, am now a German subject since Hitler took in Austria. As a Catholic, I don’t believe in divorce. My husband and I are just separated. That isn’t enough for the Home Office.
‘Mind you, I’ve nothing to say against the Nazis as I’ve found them. The Fuhrer is well disposed to my son Wille, his nephew, but says he must cultivate self-reliance and stand on his own feet. I admire him for that.’
Describing the Munich Agreement when the UK and other European countries agreed to Germany taking over the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, she added: ‘The crisis was an especially worrying time for me because my son was over in Germany and is still there.
‘But Willie doesn’t see much of his father these days. My husband has a restaurant in Berlin. Whenever Willie calls in there, he always pays for whatever he has. That’s the Irish in him.
‘Nowadays it’s a bit embarrassing to be Mrs Hitler. But the people who know me don’t mind, and the others don’t matter. At heart I’m still Bridget Dowling, but, oh, it’s my British nationality again that I’m wanting.’
Bridget made headlines in January 1939, just a few months before the outbreak of World War Two, when she appeared at Highgate police court for non-payment of rates, the property tax that funded local councils.
She had arrears of a little over £9, the equivalent of almost £800 today, despite apparently receiving an allowance from the German embassy to help pay her bills.
Two months after her court appearance, she sailed to New York where she joined her son on a lecture tour of the United States to cash in on the family surname.
On his arrival in the US, Willie played down his relationship with Hitler, saying: ‘I would not become a German citizen and I was always under the threat of being put in a concentration camp… The Chancellor is very reticent about his family relationships.’
He went on to give a series of lectures including some to Jewish groups, having been signed up by the William Morris Theatre Agency.
German authorities dismissed his tour at the time as a telling of ‘unauthenticated and detrimental tales of the Fuhrer’, and he and his mother decided to stay in America.
During the war, Bridget rallied to the Allied cause and was photographed working in New York as a volunteer for the British War Relief Society.
When Willie enlisted in the US Navy, they posed together, with him holding a newspaper bearing the banner headline: ‘TO HELL WITH HITLER’.
Following his honourable discharge from the Navy in 1947, he and his mother settled in Long Island, New York, where they changed their surname to Stuart-Houston and lived quietly in relative obscurity.
Willie married a German wife Phyllis and had four sons, one of whom died young. He died suddenly in 1987 and was buried with his mother who had died in 1969. Her book which was given the new title The Memoirs of Bridget Hitler was published ten years after her death
The oldest known surviving relative of Adolf Hitler is his great-nephew Alexander Stuart Houston, 74, who was tracked down by German newspaper Bild to his home in Patchogue, Long Island, New York. Alexander is the son of Hitler’s nephew William Patrick Hitler
Alexander (pictured in his youth) is the oldest male descendant of the Nazi dictator
None of his sons had children; and it has been suggested that they made a pact to remain childless in order to end the Hitler bloodline, but there is no proof that this was the case.
One of his surviving sons Alexander Stuart-Houston, 68, was tracked down in 2018 by German newspaper Bild to his home in Patchogue, Long Island.
Alexander whose middle name is Adolf had always refused to give interviews in the past, but admitted to the Bild reporter that he was a keen Republican voter who did not like Donald Trump.
He said: ‘The last person I would say I admire is Donald Trump. He is definitely not one of my favourites. Some things that Trump says are all right… It’s his manner that annoys me. And I just don’t like liars.’
