Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (75 page)

UNCLE ADOLF

For nearly a decade both Bridget and William believed Alois was dead. It wasn’t until Adolf Hitler staged his Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923 that they learned the truth. The event made headlines in English newspapers, and when 14-year-old William Patrick read them he realized that Adolf was his uncle. He thought “Uncle Adolf” might be able to tell him more about his father’s death and where he was buried, so he wrote him a letter in care of the mayor of Munich.

Adolf
Hitler never wrote back—but
Alois
Hitler did. He announced to his son that he not only was still alive, but that he had remarried (without ever bothering to divorce Bridget) and fathered another son, named Heinz. And thanks to William’s letter to the mayor of Munich, he was now facing trial for bigamy. Alois needed Bridget’s help to beat the bigamy rap. He pled poverty as usual, but he promised that if Bridget helped him out of the mess he was in, he’d soon be wealthy with the help of his brother’s growing influence and would be able to repay her for all the years she’d raised their son alone.

Bridget agreed, and with her help Alois got off with the minimum fine and no jail time. Not surprisingly, he never did send Bridget any money.

IN THE NEWS

William had to wait six more years before he was finally reunited with his father, during a two-week visit to Germany in 1929. He met his Uncle Adolf during a second trip to Germany the following year. That meeting went well, but relations between the dictator and his nephew soon soured.

By 1931 Hitler’s international profile had risen to the point that the British press began taking an active interest in his career and was interviewing his relatives. The very thought of this sent Adolf into fits of rage. He was afraid that if his brother’s bigamy became public knowledge, it might cost him the support he needed to get to the top. So he summoned his nephew to Berlin and screamed at him uncontrollably for the better part of an afternoon. That got William to stop talking to the press...for a while.

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BLACK SHEEP

By this time, England was in an economic depression. Finding and keeping a job wasn’t easy, even if your last name wasn’t Hitler, but for William, it was impossible. Both he and his mother were fired from their jobs for being related to Adolf Hitler.

After more than a year and a half without a job, in October 1933, William Patrick was finally offered a job as a department store clerk in Berlin. Hitler was now chancellor of Germany, and didn’t like the idea of one of his relatives working in a department store, so he forbade William from taking the job. Hitler controlled the economy, so William couldn’t get any job without his uncle’s approval. And because Hitler refused to advance his career, William bounced from one low-paying job to another. But he never gave up his British citizenship, and never became a Nazi.

Finally, after about five years, nephew and uncle decided they’d had enough of each other. Adolf summoned William to his offices, screamed at him again, and told him either to become a German citizen or get out. William left Germany in February 1939.

FRESH START

By this time, Hitler had already invaded Czechoslovakia and Austria, and was seven months away from invading Poland, the start of World War II.

William had no future in Germany, and things didn’t look bright in England either, not for him and especially not for his mother. Though she’d been born in Ireland, then a part of the British Empire, when Bridget married Alois Hitler she became a citizen of Austria. When Hitler absorbed Austria into the Third Reich, she became a citizen of Nazi Germany. Now she wasn’t just a Hitler trying to find a job in wartime England, she was a
German
Hitler looking for work.

She and William decided to try their luck in America. William found that he could make enough money to support them by writing newspaper and magazine articles with titles like “To Hell with Hitler” and “Why I Hate My Uncle,” and by touring the country making speeches against the Führer.

Liberace owned a retracting toilet. It sank into the bathroom floor at the flip of a switch.

William then set his sights on joining the U.S. military. Upon being rejected, he wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt forwarded it to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who launched an investigation into William’s background. A month later, Hoover wrote back to the president that “no information was developed to indicate that [Hitler] was engaged in any activities of a subversive nature.”

Finally, after waiting over two years, William was inducted into the U.S. Navy in March 1944. Very little is known about his time in the military, other than that he served in the medical corps and received a shrapnel wound to his leg, apparently while in action.

INTO HIDING

Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and Germany surrendered a few days later. His nephew remained in the Navy until March 1946. After his discharge, he moved to New York and became a U.S. citizen. Then he and his mother changed their last names and disappeared from public view.

William lived in complete anonymity for nearly 30 years, until Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Hitler biographer John Toland made a trip to Hamburg, Germany, in the early 1970s to interview Hitler’s distant relatives. One relative showed him a picture of William holding his infant son. Using information the family members gave him, Toland tracked William down to the New York City area. William did not want to talk, and Toland agreed not to disclose his new last name or place of residence.

William apparently retained some form of admiration for his uncle—or at least a perverse form of pride in being related to such a major, albeit notorious, historical figure. The photograph of William and his infant son was the first sign to anyone outside the Hitler family that William might actually be proud of his family tree. The child’s name was written on the back: Adolf.

FOUND

The story stopped there until 1995, when British journalist David Gardner tried to track William Patrick Hitler down for an article on the 50th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s suicide. The anniversary came and went without Gardner being able to find Hitler’s nephew, but he kept digging. Finally, after three years of sifting through Social Security records and chasing down every possible lead, Gardner located Bridget Hitler’s grave in a cemetery in a small town on Long Island, New York. She had died in 1969. There on the same tomb-stone was the name of William, who had died in July 1987. By the time Gardner found his man, he’d been dead 11 years.

The Assyrians curled their hair with curling irons...3,500 years ago.

Once he’d found the grave, finding out where William’s widow lived wasn’t difficult. Not surprisingly, she didn’t want to talk, although she did confirm that she was his widow and that he was indeed Hitler’s nephew. She and William had four sons: Adolf (who now goes by the name Alex), born in 1949; Louis, born in 1951; Howard, born in 1957; and Brian, born in 1965.

Howard, the only son who ever married, died in a car accident in 1989. He had no children. At last report Alex, Louis, and Brian were all still alive, still living under the assumed name that their father chose when he went underground after World War II.

In his book, Gardner does not reveal the name. But, providing further insight into William’s seemingly ambivalent attitude toward his uncle, Gardner describes the name as a “double-barreled alias derived from an English author whose racist texts helped mold Hitler’s Nazi doctrines.”

DESCENDANTS

Today Alex counsels Vietnam veterans, and Louis and Brian are partners in a landscaping business. Gardner reports that the three surviving sons of William Patrick Hitler have made a pact never to marry or father children, in order to ensure that the male line of the Hitler family dies out when they are gone.

When Gardner asked William’s widow and sons to sit for formal interviews for his book, they all declined. But Alex did make one request: “Just make sure you say good things about [Dad] because he was a good guy,” Gardner quotes him as saying. “He came to the United States, he served in the U.S. Navy, he had four kids and he had a pretty good life.”

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More colorful language from our friends in the healthcare profession. Stat!

TMB:
Too Many Birthdays (suffering from old age)

FORD:
Found On Road Dead

House Red:
Blood

TRO:
Time Ran Out

Frequent Flier:
Someone who is regularly taken to the hospital in an ambulance, even though they aren’t sick (because it’s free and something to do)

Code Zero:
Another name for a “Frequent Flyer.” The real radio codes range from Code 1 (not serious) to Code 4 (emergency)

Code Yellow:
A patient who has wet the bed

Code Brown:
(You can guess this one yourself)

FOOSH:
Fell Onto Outstretched Hand (a broken wrist)

T&T Sign:
Tattoos-and-teeth. (Strange but true: Patients with a lot of tattoos and missing teeth are more likely to survive major injuries)

DFO:
Done Fell Out (of bed)

MGM Syndrome:
A “patient” who is faking illness and putting on a really good show

WNL:
Will Not Listen

SYB:
Save Your Breath, as in, “SYB, he WNL”

Insurance Pain:
An inordinate amount of neck pain following a minor auto collision with a wealthy driver

ALP:
Acute Lead Poisoning

—a gunshot wound

ALP (A/C):
Acute Lead Poisoning (Air Conditioning)

—multiple gunshot wounds

Flower Sign:
Lots of flowers at a patient’s bedside (may indicate the patient is a good candidate for early discharge, since they have friends and family who can care for them)

ART:
Assuming Room Temperature (deceased)

Bagged and Tagged:
A body that is ready to be taken to the hospital morgue (it’s in a body bag and has a toe tag)

AMF Yo Yo:
Adios, Mother-f@#*!, You’re On Your Own

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Have you ever noticed that it seems like everything is made in China? Well, almost everything
is
made in China. Here’s why. (And if you want to know what’s
not
made in China, see
page 450
.)

I
N THE RED

Prior to World War II, China was a major economic force, exporting huge amounts of raw goods (such as tea and rice) all over the world. When Mao Tse-Tung’s Communist government assumed control of China in 1949, it took over all of the country’s businesses. Not content with only exporting agricultural goods, Chairman Mao wanted China to become a major industrial power. So he implemented China’s first “Five Year Plan” for economic development. Money, resources, and labor were all allocated by the government, which also set wages and prices. Even consumption of food and goods would be controlled through strict rationing.

Result: industry grew rapidly, but agricultural production suffered. The next Five Year Plan (1958) aimed to revive the agricultural sector to such heights that China could be completely self-sufficient. Farming output increased as planned, but the government neglected to update food storage and transportation technology. A huge grain crop went to waste and, coupled with huge floods from failed irrigation experiments, 30 million people in China starved to death between 1958 and 1961—the worst famine in recorded history.

After China publicly criticized the USSR for bowing to American pressure and removing missiles from Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union withdrew economic assistance in 1962. The rest of the world turned its back on China after it invaded India twice (1959 and 1962), suppressed a rebellion in Tibet (1959), and aided Vietnam in the Vietnam War. By 1970, China was almost completely alone. Self-sufficiency was the goal—but isolation was the result.

NIXON GOES TO CHINA

Conditions would begin to improve after President Richard Nixon’s 1971 visit to Beijing. China agreed to re-establish ties with the United States on the condition that American troops would leave Taiwan. (They had been stationed in the Chinese province since the Communist takeover.) Nixon agreed; tensions eased between China and the U.S.

Money well spent: It cost $1,505,675 to build the Eiffel Tower in 1887.

OUT WITH THE OLD...

Chairman Mao died in 1976 and was replaced by the moderate Deng Xiaoping. Rejecting Mao’s failed plans for self-sufficiency, Deng opened China to the world in 1980. To hasten modernization, the government encouraged foreign investment and invited western companies to bring their technology to China in the form of entire state-of-the-art Western factories. State-owned businesses remained the standard, but private ownership of companies became legal. Most revolutionary of all, the government took a capitalist approach to taxing businesses: it took a cut of the business’ profits and allowed the remainder to be reinvested into the companies. The result of Deng’s policies: China’s industry grew at an annual rate of 11 percent in the 1980s and 17 percent in the 1990s, the fastest rate in the world at the time.