In Nazi Germany
In 1933, William Patrick Hitler returned to Germany in an attempt to benefit from his uncle's rise to power. His uncle found him a job in a bank. Later, William worked at an Opel automobile factory, and later still as a car salesman. Dissatisfied with these jobs, William persisted in asking his uncle for a better job, writing to him with blackmail threats that he would sell embarrassing stories about the family to the newspapers.
In 1938, Adolf Hitler asked William to relinquish his British citizenship in exchange for a high-ranking job. Expecting a trap, William decided to flee Nazi Germany; he again tried to blackmail his uncle with threats. This time, William threatened to tell the press that Hitler's alleged paternal grandfather was actually a Jewish merchant. Returning to London he wrote an article for Look magazine titled "Why I Hate my Uncle." However William did return, briefly, to Germany in 1938, possibly as a British agent. William's role in Germany in the late 1930s is unsubstantiated.
William, perhaps thinking his cover was blown, fled Germany in January 1939 with the help of a British agent. Soon after, William and his mother went to the United States on a lecture tour at the invitation of the publisher William Randolph Hearst. William and his mother were stranded there when World War II broke out. After making a special request to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, William was cleared to join the U.S. Navy in 1944, and moved to Sunnyside, Queens in New York.
According to a story circulating after his enlistment, when he went to the draft office and introduced himself, the recruiting officer supposedly replied, "Glad to see you, Hitler. My name's Hess."
Read more about this topic: William Patrick Stuart-Houston
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