William Patrick Stuart-Houston

by Frank M. Roberts

August 2015

Hitler walked the streets of my Long Island neighborhood.

I was born in Manhattan, spent six infant months in the grungy city of Steubenville, O. (Dean Martin's home town) and then, wisely, our family moved back to NYC, settling in the middle class neighborhood of Sunnyside, one of America's first planned communities. It is a 15-minute subway ride to Times Square and, during 1939-40, a 10-minute ride to the New York World's Fair. What a way to grow up!

It was a temporary home-sweet-home for aspiring performers - close to the theaters, and inexpensive. Those folks, heading toward stardom included James Cagney, Ethel Merman, Perry Como, Nancy Walker, Judy Holliday, James Caan, Rudy Vallee and, least of all, the old punk rock group, The Ramones.

Legendary jazz musician, Bix Beiderbecke, whom a biographer called, "the remote and mysterious jazz cornetist who died in obscurity," lived in an apartment at 43-40 46th St. I lived in an apartment at 41-23 47th St.,so we were practically neighbors.

As a jazz-loving kid, I bought a lot of his records, never realizing I might have talked to him about his music. Cagney and Merman lived about six blocks from my humble apartment.

Hitler? No one seems to remember his address. Anyway, he had wisely changed his name to William Patrick Stuart-Houston. He reportedly despised Uncle Adolph.

He left the neighborhood to join the Navy - the U. S. Navy, of course - where he served as a pharmacist's mate.

His name, before Americanization, was William Hitler. He came from a poor Liverpool family. His daddy, Alois, was the Feuhrer's half brother. From November 1912 to April 1913, Adolph Hitler lived with Alois Hitler's family.

Adolph H. was trying to escape destitution in Vienna. He worked as a laborer. There, he was introduced to astrology, which he later used to make evil decisions and military blunders.

In England, Alois deserted his family. His son changed his name to William. (My uneducated guess would have been Wilhelm). When Hitler rose to power in Germany his nephew was after him for a job. Uncle Adolph's reply was, "I didn't become chancellor for the benefit of my family. No one is going to climb on my back."

Most of the above information came from memoirs penned by William's aunt, Bridget, who said that William at first tried to exploit his lineage. Later, he tried his hand at blackmailing Uncle Adolph, exposing the Fuhrer's family history, which included a Jewish background. (His paternal grandfather was Leopold Frankenberger, a Jewish merchant. Note to the neo-Nazi's: Heh-heh.)

Hypocrisy was often a Nazi trademark.

When America entered the war, William Hitler wrote to President Roosevelt, telling him that England refused him permission to enlist and could he join the U. S. Army. He was given permission but, in 1944 he joined the Navy.

After the war, he settled briefly in Sunnyside, later moving to Patchogue, a comfortable Long Island community. There was one uncomfortable question. He changed his name to William Stuart-Houston, "strikingly close," said biographer David Gardner, "to that of the anti-Semitic author whose work was favored by the Nazis, Houston Stewart Chamberlain."

In 1947, he married a German woman. They had four children, three of whom are still alive. William, who operated a laboratory specializing in blood analysis, died in 1987 and is buried in a Catholic churchyard. Gardner wrote that he "totally rejected his uncle's beliefs and aggressively embraced the American dream." (The new name is somewhat suspect).

As of a few years ago, his sons never married. They prefer not talking about their father, explaining, that they intended to write their own book.

Our family frequented a German delicatessen in the neighborhood. I can't help but wonder if William and I were there at the same time ordering sausage. Then, we might have gone next door for papers, magazines or candy in a store operated by a Jewish gentleman.

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Note: Charlie Chaplin directed and starred in his first talking picture, "The Great Dictator" (1940), almost five years after release of his last silent film, "Modern Times." (1936). It was a war-time, anti-Fascist satirized, thinly-veiled lampooning of The Third Reich and its dictatorial leader (rare among American films) in which a Hitler-like despotic tyrant named Adenoid Hynkel ruled the kingdom of '(P)Tomania.' Its most memorable scene was the one in which Hynkel danced and tossed around a giant world globe/balloon.