According to a recent DNA study conducted by Belgian scientists, Adolf Hitler may have had Jewish and African ancestors

A DNA study conducted by Belgian scientists has sparked a new wave of discussion about the origins of Adolf Hitler. According to the results, the Nazi leader may have had both Jewish and African roots. The question of his ancestors has been the subject of much debate. There was a theory that his father, Alois, born out of wedlock to Maria Schickelgruber, was the son of a young Jewish man, Leopold Frankenberger, in whose house she worked as a maid. She later married Johann Georg Hiedler, whose surname eventually transformed into "Hitler." Another theory holds that Alois may have been the son of a man who was also the grandfather of Adolf's mother, Klara Pölzl, making their marriage potentially incestuous. To test these hypotheses, Belgian journalist Jean-Paul Mülders, together with historian Marc Vermehren, collected saliva samples from 39 living relatives of the dictator. Among them was his great-nephew Alexander Stewart-Houston, who lives in New York, as well as an Austrian cousin known as "Norbert H." The results showed that family members are predominantly of the haplogroup E1b1b, which is extremely rare among Western Europeans but widespread among North African Berber peoples. In addition, this genetic marker is also standard among Jews: 18-20% of Ashkenazim and up to 30% of Sephardim. Thus, Hitler's family line could have included representatives of those ethnic groups that he himself declared "enemies of the Aryans." At the same time, it was the Jews who became the primary victims of the Holocaust, which took the lives of two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe between 1933 and 1945. People of African descent were also discriminated against and persecuted. As Mülders aptly noted: "It can be assumed that Hitler was related by blood to those he hated." In the future, additional genetic studies are planned on the remains stored in Russian archives: a fragment of a jaw and a piece of bloody cloth found in the bunker where the Führer committed suicide in 1945. Moscow insists on the authenticity of these artifacts, despite doubts expressed by several American scientists in 2009. Experts emphasize that the presence of haplogroup E1b1b does not automatically mean Jewish or African origin, since it is also found in other populations. Geneticist Ronnie Decorte summed up the findings succinctly: "Hitler himself would certainly not have been pleased with such results."