The strange tale of the Irish Hitlers - the connection between Bridget Hitler and the Nazi leader

The quiet grave in a small Catholic cemetery in Coram, Long Island contains the bodies of Bridget and Patrick Stuart Huston, her son.

However, there is no surname on the gravestone. That is because they were notorious under another name for decades.

Bridget Dowling was a Dublin native who married Alois, Adolf Hitler’s half brother. She bore a son, Patrick who had four children himself, two of whom survive. The sons grew up on Patchogue, Long Island.

The sons are among the only remaining blood links to Adolf Hitler and the two surviving brothers have no children so if they remain that way the Hitler Irish and American link will die out.

Bridget Dowling Hitler is one of the most intriguing tales of the Second World War and the Irish connection.

She was just 17 in the summer of 1909 at the  Dublin Horse show when her father fell into conversation with a handsome foreigner Alois Hitler, who told them he was a businessman on a trip to Ireland.

He wasn’t, he was actually a penniless waiter in a Dublin hotel but Bridget fell in love with the exotic foreigner anyway.

They eloped to London and were wed. He was the future Fuehrer’s eldest half brother. Their common father Alois Senior went through three marriages and eight children, including Adolf and Alois.

Alois Hitler Snr had retired from ill health at the age of 58 He farmed nine acres and beat his children. Alois was the main target of his brutality. In 1898, at the age of 14, Alois left home never to return and pitched up in Dublin working in the Shelbourne Hotel.

Bridget Dowling knew little of this background when she married Alois but she would soon learn.

Alois and Bridget moved to Liverpool where they opened a restaurant but Alois was not a good businessman and soon went broke.

Bridget subsequently claimed that Adolf visited them in Liverpool to avoid conscription into the Austrian army but that story is deeply doubted.

Alois and Bridget had a son Patrick Hitler but soon Alois fled his debts and his wife and went back to Germany in 1914 where he joined the German Army, was erroneously reported killed and eventually remarried.

He began making contact with Bridget again urging her to send his son Patrick to Germany to visit. The 18-year-old went and was introduced to his now famous Uncle Adolf when he attended a Nuremberg rally.

Hitler got his nephew a job in a car factory and Patrick stayed on but soon apparently realized his Uncle Adolph was a very dangerous character after a niece he was alleged to have had an affair with was found dead. That death soured him on Hitler for life.

He rejoined his mother and as the war grew near and their link to the notorious Adolf became known they decided to emigrate to the US where they settled in Patchogue, Long Island. They now were known as Bridget and Patrick Stuart Huston.

Patrick lectured audiences that his uncle was a “madman surrounded by the worst types of men. Sexual perversion is rife amongst the ranks of his closest friends” and accused Hitler of having killed his cousin Geli.

In 1941, when America joined the war effort Patrick enlisted to fight against his uncle and served in the Medical Corps where he saw action and received an honorable discharge.

After the war Patrick set up in business as a laboratory technician. He and wife Phyllis shared a big house on the property, while Bridget had a small cottage in the grounds.

Patrick and Phyllis had four sons, Alex, Louis and Brian, and one who died soon after birth. Neighbors say the family kept to themselves and did not welcome visitors.

Bridget Dowling Hitler died in 1969 at the age of 78 and is buried in a small Catholic graveyard in Coram. Her gravestone reads`Rest in Peace, Bridget Elizabeth, 7 - 3 - 91'. Her son Patrick William is buried beside her, after dying suddenly in 1987.

Thus ended the story of the Irish Hitlers a strange footnote to the rise of the Nazis and an insight into the family of the madman who led them.

*Originally published in 2012.