Adolf Almost Had This Last Name Instead Of Hitler

"Adolf Hitler" easily ranks up there with the most well-known names in all of human history, like Alexander the Great, Isaac Newton, Socrates, Charlemagne, and Jesus. He was the ranting, raving Führer who pulled Germany and its allies into World War II (okay, and also started it), and led the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party to its demise. Known for terrible facial hair choices, loads of spittle while speaking, and forever cementing the stereotype that "German is a harsh-sounding language," he was also a failed painter and World War I veteran who really didn't like Jewish people. Also: He was almost Adolf Schicklgruber.

The tale of Hitler's alternative name amounts to a semi-known, half-urban legend with firm footing in historical facts — but also a lot of holes. There are even entries in sites like Alternative History that envision what it would have been like if Hitler didn't turn into the Hitler we know. What if he stuck to his painting, did a little political canvassing, never got married, and died in New York City at the age of 73 with a dog and three cats? This person's name would have been Adolf Schicklgruber.

But alas, Schicklgruber never was. Not that a name would have changed Hitler's temperament or choices — or could it have? Such a change would have started with Hitler's father, who was born out of wedlock, received his mother's last name, and then — as the story goes — chose a different last name for him and his son. 

The story of the Adolf that never was — Schicklgruber, not Hitler — begins with his father, with whom he shares a last name and first initial. Alois was already in his 50s when Adolf was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889. His marriage to Klara Pölzl was his third and produced six children, although only two survived to adulthood: Adolf and his sister, Paula.

Alois was already retired by the time Adolf entered boyhood, and he died in 1903. Klara died four years later in 1907. Paula would live to 1960, and it's in her diary (published in 2005) that we witness the precise kind of upbringing you'd expect would produce a dictatorial monster: Alois regularly beat Hitler, and in turn, Hitler beat Paula. Their mother was helpless to intervene.

By all accounts, the father-to-son curse started with Alois' own parentage. Born out of wedlock in 1837 to Maria Anna Schicklgruber, he received his mother's last name. When Alois was 5 years old, his mother got married to a man named Johann Georg Hiedler, and it's here we see the last name "Hitler" in a different form. For some reason, Alois legally changed his last name from Schicklgruber to Hiedler when he was about 40. But he changed the spelling from Hiedler to Hitler, and no one knows why. If Alois hadn't gone through this name-changing process, then Adolf Hitler would have been Adolf Schicklgruber.

Adolf Hitler kept his legal birth name his entire life, despite his contemptuous relationship with his father, Alois. This simple fact flies in the face of the conspiratorially minded who've suggested that Hitler had a secret Jewish heritage. In this version of the tale, Hitler's hatred for his father and himself got projected onto Jews in Germany. At the most, it's true that Alois' mother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, worked as a housekeeper for a wealthy Jewish person, and she had Alois outside of marriage. 

"Hitler" is actually a last name shared by some Jewish people, at least in New York City as late as the 1930s. The spelling was different — "Hittler" — but it's still the same name. In fact, even as recently as 2014, "Hitler" still existed as a regular surname across the world. Forbears tells us that 4,615 unfortunate people around the world had the surname that year, most in Nigeria for some reason. The name also has loads of spelling variations like "Heitler," "Hietler," "Hitller," Hitlher," and yes, "Hittler" with two "t's." Hitler's own birth certificate actually bears this latter spelling. 

But regardless of the spelling, we know that Adolf's father, Alois, adopted the surname "Hitler" — altered from "Hielder" — as an adult. Some believe that his stepfather, Johann Georg Hiedler, was actually his biological father. But no matter the truth of this statement or any other strange facts hidden from history, one truth remains: It was an odd and unusual path that granted us Adolf Hitler and not Adolf Schicklgruber.