Television: Hiding the Hitlers

A Channel 4 documentary about the Hitlers unearths some interesting skeletons in the dictator's family closet, while RTÉ finally moves its Shortscreen series of short films to a more deserving time slot

When you are a terrifying dictator, what could possibly terrify you? The Hitler Family (Channel 4, Saturday) presented the family tree that Hitler spent his career trying to hide so that he could seem a superhero who appeared from nowhere.

If anything about Adolf Hitler could be amusing, perhaps it is the fact that he had a half-Irish nephew, William Patrick Hitler, who had the gall to blackmail him. But not much about Hitler is amusing and today the last of those who legally share his name – the three sons of that nephew – live in hiding in America and appear to have a pact to sire no children so the family name will finally die out.

Hitler was never keen to speak about his family. Mein Kampf acknowledges the existence of his dead parents in one sentence but makes no reference to a bigamist half-brother, Alois, two half-sisters or a niece, Geli, with whom Hitler fell passionately in love, confining her to his Munich apartment until this once-carefree girl committed suicide.

When he occupied Austria he declared his home-place his "official ancestral providence". The locals were thrilled until he uprooted them all to turn it into a military practice area so that no trace of his past would exist. Part of his paranoia was that his own family would never match the strict Aryan ideals that he insisted that all Germans live up to. His wastrel half-brother, Alois, married a woman from Dublin while working in the city as a waiter before moving to Liverpool. When Hitler rose to power, Alois's son, William, turned up in Germany threatening to reveal family secrets and enjoyed six years of pampering and debauchery at the Führer's expense. William was referring to Alois's simultaneous marriage to two women. But Hitler was terrified that his nephew had evidence of Jewish blood in his family line.

There was a history of mental illness in the family. Hitler's cousin was gassed to death in 1940 while a patient in a mental hospital. When Hitler's half-sister – forced by her brother to live under an assumed name – fell in love with the stridently pro-Nazi doctor who ran this same hospital, Hitler transferred him to the Russian front for fear that he might marry his sister. The ultimate control freak, only Hitler himself could decide who entered his family.

His relations tried to cash-in on his fame in his lifetime and then distance themselves from it after his death. No one was more terrified of the connection after the war than his nephew. William switched sides once his uncle's bankrolling money ran out and even joined the US army as a stunt. In America, after the war, he frequently changed names to avoid association with his uncle, yet still called his first-born son Adolf. Today Adolf and his two brothers carry that burden, protected by lawyers, keeping their identities secret, waiting for the name to finally die out.

Written by Brian Ó Tiomáin, directed by Graham Cantwell and produced by Tamara Anghie, A Dublin Story (RTÉ Two, Saturday) suffered from a feeling that much of the ground it covered has been well-covered before.

In this depiction of Dublin street-life, two urchins roam streets populated by drug dealers, addicts and prostitutes. The oldest is hardened and cocky, his future already mapped out. The youngest is protected by an aura of innocence as he prays aloud for the safety of his mother, a prostitute who gets into cars whose registration numbers he writes down.

It lacked a certain originality but possessed integrity; its effective and understated finale will linger in the memory. It is good to see RTÉ move its Shortscreen series to this earlier time when it can reach the audience it deserves.