From The Mailbag: Skippy Hitler
Dean
From Penny Wit:
What if future Hitler analogies referred not to Adolph, but to his little brother Skippy?
Aside from the fact that some Hitler references are funny and some are not, this does bring up an interesting point: it is amazing how much people talk about Nazis, Nazism, and Hitler without knowing the first thing about the man or th emovement. I often ask people to tell me what they think the tenets of Nazism were, and they usually can only name one or two. If you want to see what it was really all about, you can start with the 1928 Nazi Party program, which fairly well describes how Hitler governed from the time he seized power (undemocratically, by the way--he was never democratically elected) until near the end of the regime. Note how little of it really looks like what most people would expect.
Another interesting fact is that Hitler had a fairly interesting upbringing as a boy. He had a slightly older brother, Alois Hitler Jr., with whom he was never close. Alois, who lived in England for a while, ran a restaurant in Berlin during the war that was quite popular with the Stormtroopers. Although he had no direct involvement with the regime it's assumed his name helped make his restaurant successful.
Hitler also had a sister, Paula Hitler, of whom he was quite proud, and who did a good bit of cooking for him.
Another fascinating fact is that Hitler's father's last name was originally Schicklgruber. It has long been speculated that had Alois Schicklgruber not had his name legally changed to Hitler, his son Adolph might never have risen to quite the prominence he did. It is certainly difficult to imagine hordes of people in throngs of adulation giving the Ceasar-spear salute and bellowing, "Heil Schicklgruber!"
At one time here in America, calling someone "a real Schicklgruber" was considered a pretty funny way of calling someone a cheap, stupid, tinpot little wanna-be dictator. It always got a laugh, especially among the World War II generation and the kids who grew up during the war era.
Now no one remembers it. Still, I do enjoy the thought that we could now call someone "Skippy Shicklgruber" and maybe get a laugh.
It's interesting to hear about Hitler's family. I wonder what happened to them after the war...
Their son William Patrick Hitler wound up in the United States, and he served in the US Navy during World War II, from which he was discharged in 1947. He, his wife and their four children changed their family name.
Oddly enough, the man who would become known as Josef Stalin also visited England briefly before World War I, on Bolshevik party business. There, he met Leon Trotsky for the first time and the malevolence in which these two regarded each other later in life stemmed from that brief encounter. Trotsky the voluble intellectual; Stalin the silent plotter mordantly regarding the world through his yellow eyes.
One wonders what these three bastards would have said to one another had they all gotten together in the same room in the same building in the same city in England on the same day, and some erudite Englishman who knew both German and Russian could have translated for them.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
That is extremely interesting. Your knowledge of history is astounding. I wish you and my late father, a historian by profession, could have got together. You could write a book.
This William Patrick Hitler who served in our Navy during World War II may be the Hitler my friend (Robin Georg Olsen) told me about. Many tie-ins here....
For you, kindly soldier on as the favorite G K Chesterton authority of all of us who have read your material. And never retreat from the struggle to maintain and continue our western and gloriously faustian civilization in the face of ignoble and treacherous attacks.
I wish I could have met your father. He sired an interesting and passionate son whose obvious appreciation for the fine arts is equaled only by his love of liberty and the Constitution of the United States.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
"SMA, anyone can have an astounding knowledge of history."
I didn't mean to imply that SMA is one of the unlettered. Just the opposite is a man such as he, who can partakes equally of the classics in literature, the fine arts, ancient history, and support for the United States Constitution.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
THANK YOU!!!! I totally reciprocate that admiration, as you well know.
You wrote:
"Another historian said that Hitler continuously walked around the great docks of Liverpool, figuring out that British sea power was what gave them their then-commanding position in world affairs."
Actually, the Germans had been striving to emulate England's navy before World War I. And that brings me to something else I've been thinking about:
The Germans copied their idea of Empire from the Romans. They copied their army from the French. They copied their navy from the English. They copied their idea of a fascist state from the Italians. They got their idea of "the superior Teutonic race" from a Frenchman (Comte de Gobineau). They got their idea of "the evil Jewish conspiracy" from a Russian writing in Paris ("The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion"*). They copied the Swastika from the Hindus. Hmmm....
(*For the historic influence of that infamous forgery, see Norman Cohn's Warrant for Genocide.)