William P. Stuart-Houston
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| Nickname(s) | Willy |
| Buried |
Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Coram, New York
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| Allegiance | United States of America |
| Service/ | United States Navy |
| Years of service | 1944 – 1947 |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards | Purple Heart World War II Victory Medal |
| Relations | Adolf Hitler (uncle) Alois Hitler, Jr. and Bridget Dowling (his parents) Phyllis Jean-Jacques (his wife) |
William Patrick "Willy" Stuart-Houston (né Hitler) (March 12, 1911 – July 14, 1987) was the nephew of Adolf Hitler. Born to Adolf's half-brother Alois Hitler, Jr., and his first wife Bridget Dowling, William later moved to Germany and subsequently escaped, eventually going to the United States where he enlisted to fight in World War II.
William Patrick Hitler was born in Liverpool, the son of Alois Hitler Jr., and his Irish-born wife Bridget Dowling. They had met in Dublin when Alois was living there in 1909 and got marriedinMarylebone, they then moved back north, to Liverpool where William was born in 1911. Hitler's nephew is recalled by elderly former neighbours, and in Liverpool folklore variously 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. It remained a bomb site for many years, but has now been rebuilt and landscaped. Dowling wrote a manuscript called My Brother-in-Law Adolf, in which she claimed Adolf Hitler had moved to Liverpool with her and Alois from November 1912 to April 1913, in order to dodge conscription in Austria. The story has been popular, but is dismissed by most historians.
In 1914, Alois returned to Germany, but Bridget refused to join him, because he had become violent. 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 Germany for a visit. She finally agreed in 1929, when William was 18. Alois had another son with his German wife, Heinz Hitler, who, in contrast to his half-brother, became a committed Nazi and died in Soviet captivity.
In 1933, William Patrick Hitler returned to Nazi Germany in an attempt to benefit from his uncle's rise to power. His uncle found him a job in a bank. Later, William Patrick worked at an Opel automobile factory, and later as a car salesman. Dissatisfied with these jobs, William Patrick persisted in asking his uncle, Hitler, for a better job, and he wrote to Hitler stating that he would sell embarrassing stories about the family to the newspapers if he did not receive one. Among these rumors would have been his father's bigamous marriage. 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, and then he tried to blackmail Adolf with threats to allege to 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."[1]
In 1939, William and his mother went to the United States on a lecture tour[1] on the invitation of the publisher William Randolph Hearst, and they 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. According to a story printed in the newspapers at the time of 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."[1]
William Patrick Hitler served in the U.S. Navy as a Pharmacist's Mate (a designation later changed to Hospital Corpsman) until he was discharged in 1947. He had been wounded in service during the course of World War II.[1] After leaving the Navy, William Patrick changed his last name to Stuart-Houston, married, and moved to Patchogue, Long Island, N.Y., where he and his wife became the parents of four sons. Stuart-Houston built upon his medical training to establish a business that analyzed blood samples for hospitals. His laboratory, which he called the Brookhaven Laboratories, was located in his home, a two-story clapboard house at 71 Silver Street, Patchogue.[2]
Stuart-Houston was married to Phyllis Jean-Jacques, who was born in Germany in 1923 or 1925[3] (d. 2004), whose sister had kept in correspondence with William via mail. After their relationship had begun, William, Phyllis, and Bridget sought anonymity in the United States. William and Phyllis married in 1947, and they had their first son Alexander Adolf in 1949. They later had three more sons, Louis (b. 1951), Howard Ronald (b. 1957, d. 1989), and Brian William (1965).[1][4]
William died on July 14, 1987 in Patchogue, New York, and his remains were buried alongside those of his mother, Bridget, at the Holy Sepulchre CemeteryinCoram, New York.[5] Phyllis died on November 2, 2004.
Howard Ronald Stuart-Houston, a Special Agent with the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service, died in an automobile accident on September 14, 1989[6] without having fathered any children. Howard Ronald is buried in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram, New York. Though none of the children ever had children of their own, Alexander, now a social worker, has said that he knows of no fraternal pact to purposely end the Hitler bloodline.[1][7]
His story was featured in documentaries as well as in works of fiction. Beryl Bainbridge's 1978 novel Young Adolf depicts the alleged 1912–13 visit to his Liverpool relatives (including the infant William) by a 23-year-old Adolf Hitler, finding dark humour in his maladjustment and ordinariness. Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell's 1989 comic book The New Adventures of Hitler is likewise based on the supposed Liverpool visit. It sparked controversy in the early 1990s and has not been reprinted since. In October 2005, The History Channel aired a one hour documentary entitled Hitler's Family, in which William Patrick Hitler is profiled along with other relatives of Adolf Hitler.
In April 2006, Little Willy, a play by Mark Kassen examining the life of William Patrick Hitler, opened at the Ohio Theater in New York before moving on to the West End in London.[citation needed]
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