Early Life
William Patrick Hitler was born in Liverpool, the son of Alois Hitler Jr. and his Irish-born wife Bridget Dowling. They met in Dublin when Alois was living there in 1909; they married in Marylebone and moved back north to Liverpool, where William was born in 1911. William was allegedly recalled by elderly former neighbors, and allegedly known in Liverpool folklore as "Billy" or "Paddy" Hitler.
The family lived in a flat at 102 Upper Stanhope Street, which was destroyed in the last German air raid of the Liverpool Blitz on January 10, 1942. Dowling wrote a manuscript called My Brother-in-Law Adolf, in which she says Adolf Hitler moved to Liverpool with her and Alois, remaining from November 1912 to April 1913, in order to dodge conscription in Austria. Most historians dismiss this story as a fiction invented to make the book more appealing to publishers.
In 1914, Alois left Bridget and their son for a gambling tour of Europe. Alois later returned to Germany. Unable to reconnect due to the outbreak of World War I, Alois abandoned the family, leaving William to be brought up by his mother. He remarried bigamously, but re-established contact in the mid-1920s when he wrote to Bridget asking her to send William to Weimar Republic's Germany for a visit. She finally agreed in 1929, when William was 18. Alois had since had another son by his German wife, Heinz Hitler, who, in contrast to William, became a committed Nazi (and was later tortured to death in Soviet captivity).
Read more about this topic: William Patrick Stuart-Houston
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