Hitler's second cousin "defective" -- SS report

[Babbler]

A member of Adolf Hitler's own family was one of those killed in the Nazi campaign to wipe out the mentally ill, according to two historians.

The woman, named as "Aloisia V", was the great grandchild of Hitler's great aunt - his second cousin, once removed.

She was gassed to death on 6 December 1940, at a mental institution in Austria, historian Timothy Ryback said.

Medical files show she suffered from schizophrenia, depression, delusions and other mental problems, he said.

Aged 49 when she died, she was one of thousands of mentally ill people - considered sub-human by the Nazis - killed or sterilised in a euthanasia programme meant to eliminate them.


It's painful to see what this woman went through. It highlights the cruelty and brutality of that system to an excruciating degree
Timothy Ryback
Hitler historian

But Mr Ryback, a US historian who heads Germany's Obersalzberg Institute, said he and colleague Florian Beierl had come across several "cases of either physical or mental disabilities" in Hitler's own family.

It is unclear whether Hitler knew about Aloisia's condition, and her fate, the researchers said.

But the Gestapo had labelled Aloisia's line of the family "idiotic progeny" in a secret 1944 report.

Close to Hitler

Aloisia was the great-grandchild of the sister of Hitler's paternal grandmother, meaning she was part of the Schicklgruber side of the family, Mr Beierl said.

He said the Schicklgrubers were close to Hitler's family - and that Hitler's father helped get Aloisia's father a job as a civil servant in Vienna.

Mr Beierl said many of the Schicklgruber family "crashed into suicide and mental illness", until eventually "the entire line died out".

The historians say they have no conclusions on whether mental illness affected Hitler himself, but said they would hand their findings to an expert on hereditary diseases to see what his assessments were.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4187823.stm

 

[rilnator]

I don't think it takes a qualified doctor to tell us Hitler was mentally ill. Especially towards the end.

Maybe in breeding was common among the Schiklgrubers, Hitlers parents were cousins or second cousins or something.

I don't care what anyone else says- In breeding is not cool! If you don't beleive me take a holiday to Tasmania sometime and see what its done to them!

 

[dgfred]

I read about this elsewhere . It may help to explain why Hitler had
such a hatred for these types of people, and sought to exterminate them .

 

[Lonkut]

Hitler was certanly not mentally ill. Maybe his genes played a role in Hitler's life but he was not mentlly ill.

 

[dgfred]

Hitler was certanly not mentally ill. Maybe his genes played a role in Hitler's life but he was not mentlly ill.

You should look at films of Hitler at the Olympic games -- He is sitting
there swaying and trembling in his seat and all the generals around him just
seem to ignore it. Something WAS surely wrong with him .

 

[brinko]

everyone is different and everyone handles the spotlight differently. If anything i thought hitler handled himself well, all up to the point in his bunker when defeat was known to be a round the corner. but that would be normal for anyone who knew they had 1 week to live.

 

[Case]

I read about this elsewhere . It may help to explain why Hitler had
such a hatred for these types of people, and sought to exterminate them .

No, not really. The Nazi's attitudes towards disabled people arose from the then fairly popular belief in 'social darwinism' in which it was belived that 'inferior' elements of the population had to be supressed (in one way or the other - with actual sterilisation and extermination being extremes) in order to improve the composition of society. When combined with their not-unrelated beliefs on 'racial purity' this lead to the deliberate murder of thousands of disabled Germans.

As such, it's wrong to try and explain the Nazi's policy towards the disabled as being the result of Hitler's reaction to his disabled relative. As with all elements of the Nazi's crimes, they grew out of semi-popular beliefs, and not just Hitler's personal opinion.

 

[Adler17]

Social Darwinism was concerning disabled persons used in many states. Also the Germans made these persons infertile. That happened until relative recently (1980) also in Norway, USA and other states. In Germany that was abolished in 1945 for obvious reasons.
Nevertheless Hitler´s family is a family of inbreeding indeed. So it is no wonder that something like Hitler occured...

Adler

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

The falacy of logic is that even if Hitler was insane(and I'm not arguing he wasn't...but thats another discussion), what about the SS and others who gleefully carried out the Final Solution? Is it so hard to except that true evil exists? I also believe Hitler was insane as well, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, if anything, the SS and others were more evil than Hitler in a way, because they carried out the orders, and did so often with entheusism. And it would be a leap of logic if one were to say they were all insane.

 

[rilnator]

everyone is different and everyone handles the spotlight differently. If anything i thought hitler handled himself well, all up to the point in his bunker when defeat was known to be a round the corner. but that would be normal for anyone who knew they had 1 week to live.

What? Screaming and raging at anyone who disagrees with him is handling himself well?

 

[Longasc]

I suggest reading John Toland's and Ian Kershaw's Hitler Biographies.

I do not have them here right now, I am not good at things like that

Aloisia was the great-grandchild of the sister of Hitler's paternal grandmother, meaning she was part of the Schicklgruber side of the family, Mr Beierl said.

I have no clue how she was related to Hitler. But nobody doubts that Hitler had mental problems, especially in the end.

The thing I always regret is that people think he was ONLY mad, all that hand-weaving and shouting stuff and other things are often exaggerated to portray him in an even worse light.

I think it is more disturbing that Hitler made his decisions based on a inhumane ideology in cold blood, not in the rage of madness. There are records of talking in private with the finnish General Mannerheim, he is talking both reasonable and he is not shouting or yelling at all, admitting mistakes and stuff like that.

This makes him much more guilty than being a mad moron. He also had too much success to be seen as merely mad.

I want to point out that many winners of the nobel prize, for example Elfriede Jelinek for literature recently, come from mentally ill families and where often in the insane asylum and therapy, too.

So these results basically can support the position of Hitler being an evil genius...


I like the irony of it, the man who wanted to create a strong and healthy race should have started out with killing himself and his whole family... now that's funny...

 

[rilnator]

I like the irony of it, the man who wanted to create a strong and healthy race should have started out with killing himself and his whole family... now that's funny...

And then his missus. Eva Braun was 1/32nd Jewish. Himmler did some research and found this out but never told Hitler. I wonder why?

 

[Longasc]

Really? I did not know that about Eva Braun.

I do not know if 1/32 has already been seen as a dangerous degree, take the example of the "Volksdeutsche" population in many parts of Eastern Europe, they were still seen as Aryans.

What would Hitler have done, hmmm... he also declared his jewish driver to be an Aryan by honor. But he did not like the fact that he had a relation to his beloved Geli. I forgot his name, but he was his driver before Kempka.

Even more funny is that Hitler did not have a certificate that he is of pure aryan blood as he married. But they finally said that he is the Führer, so the ceremony could continue. Eva had "good" papers, btw. Himmler was not present during the marriage. But I guess even he would not have protested at this point of time.

 

[Longasc]

I just remembered the name: Emil Maurice.

 

[rilnator]

Emil Maurice, one of Hitlers thugs 'the body of a piano mover with a baby face'. Yeah think he was a rival for Geli but don't know what happened to him in the end.

As for Himmler, I think he was toying with the idea of shaving off his moustache round about the time the Hitlers were saying 'I do.'

 

[MrGoldfinger]

Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler was not jewish, this is all humbug. Both was a little bit catholic (Eva more as Adolf), but really not much...

 

[Lord Baal]

I don't think it takes a qualified doctor to tell us Hitler was mentally ill. Especially towards the end.

Maybe in breeding was common among the Schiklgrubers, Hitlers parents were cousins or second cousins or something.

His father was his mother's uncle.

I don't care what anyone else says- In breeding is not cool! If you don't beleive me take a holiday to Tasmania sometime and see what its done to them!

I read about this elsewhere . It may help to explain why Hitler had
such a hatred for these types of people, and sought to exterminate them .

I'm sure one of his sisters was mentally ill as well.

You should look at films of Hitler at the Olympic games -- He is sitting
there swaying and trembling in his seat and all the generals around him just
seem to ignore it. Something WAS surely wrong with him .

He was excited watching the games? I provide my own commentary to sports all the time, much to the annoyance of everyone around me.

Social Darwinism was concerning disabled persons used in many states. Also the Germans made these persons infertile. That happened until relative recently (1980) also in Norway, USA and other states. In Germany that was abolished in 1945 for obvious reasons.
Nevertheless Hitler´s family is a family of inbreeding indeed. So it is no wonder that something like Hitler occured...

Adler

Sweden forcefully sterilised mentally ill people until the 1970s. Such a policy wasn't actually rare at the time. Outright murdering them was, however, which is what made Nazi Germany worse than its neighbours.

What? Screaming and raging at anyone who disagrees with him is handling himself well?

He didn't do that until the war took a turn for the worse.

And then his missus. Eva Braun was 1/32nd Jewish. Himmler did some research and found this out but never told Hitler. I wonder why?

Really? I'd never heard that. Wikipedia doesn't mention it. 1/32nd Jewish wasn't seen as harmful to racial purity anyway, so I doubt it would have mattered to him.

Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler was not jewish, this is all humbug. Both was a little bit catholic (Eva more as Adolf), but really not much...

Both were raised Catholic. But why you felt the need to bump a 5 year old thread to say so little I don't understand.

 

[Verbose]

Sweden forcefully sterilised mentally ill people until the 1970s. Such a policy wasn't actually rare at the time. Outright murdering them was, however, which is what made Nazi Germany worse than its neighbours.

No, technically it did not, except for a couple of years in the 1930's.

There was eugenicist legislation in the 1930's, overturned alrweady before WWII, according to which several thousand mentally handicapped people were forcibly sterilized. After the law was changed all sterilizations were formally only made with the patient's consent, or that of his/her legal guardian. The problem with the situation is that in order to get this consent, various forms of coercion tactics were employed by the medical professionals, none of which was formal policy though. But in the final instance if the patient, or guardian, simply said "no", they couldn't be touched - not that The Great Doctor demanding their sterilization would inform them of this.

Iirc the absolute upper level estimate by the Swedish national historians' committee investigating the situation has put the number of sterilized, directly by force or through any kind of coercion, as maximum 12000, the vast majority pre-1950. That leaves about 50000 willingly sterilized, which is less odd than it seems, because the precedure got its greatest application as a (dangerously) radical form of contraceptive offered to mothers with already large families, beginning in the 1950's, lasting into the 1970's. (The Pill undercut it eventually.)

Details to be found for instance in the anthology "Eugenics and the Welfare State", edited by Niels Roll-Hansen:
http://books.google.se/books?id=TNF...resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

[Luckymoose]

Murder may be out of the question with mentally challenged people but sterilization should be enforced.

 

[kivanc]

i don't believe any cousin of hitler was killed that way or even if that is true, this doesn't prove anything.