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September 14, 2005
heil, schicklgruber
From The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer:
Johann Georg Hiedler, Adolf's grandfather, was a wandering miller...Five years before the marriage, on June 7, 1837, Maria Anna Schicklgruber had an illegimtimate son whom she named Alois and who became Adolf Hitler's father. At any rate Johann eventually married the woman, but contrary to the usual custom in such cases he did not trouble himself with legitimizing the son after the marriage. The child grew up as Alois Shicklgruber....There are many weird twists of fate in the strange life of Adolf Hitler, but none more odd than this one which took place thirteen years before his birth. Had the eighty-four-year-old wandering miller not made his unexpected reappearance to recognize the paternity of his thirty-nine year old son nearly thirty years after the death of his mother, Adolf Hitler would have been born Adolf Schicklgruber. There may not be much or anything in a name, but I have heard Germans speculate whether Hitler could have become the master of Germany had he been known to the world as Schicklgruber. It has a slightly comic sound as it rolls off the tongue of a South German. Can one imagine the frenzied German masses acclaiming a Schicklgruber with their thunderous "Heils"? "Heil Schicklgruber!"? Not only was "Heil Hitler!" used as a Wagnerian, pagan-like chant by the multitude in the mystic pageantry of the massive Nazi rallies, but it became the obligatory form of greeting between Germans during the Third Reich, even on the telephone, where it replaced the conventional "Hello." "Heil Schicklgruber!"? It is a little difficult to imagine.
Posted by onion slayer at September 14, 2005 03:11 PM