Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Hitler’s ‘Older’ Brother Was Actually Younger — Did Infant’s Death Affect Future Fuhrer?

A brother of Hitler’s who was thought to be older was actually younger and died within days, raising questions about how his death might have affected the future leader of Nazi Germany, a historian said in comments published on Monday.

Hitler is widely thought to have been the fourth of six siblings, but records from Braunau am Inn, the northern Austrian town where he was born, show that he was in fact the third, according to findings by the historian Florian Kotanko, reported by the newspaper Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten.

Otto Hitler, a brother of Adolf Hitler’s thought to have been the last sibling born before him, was actually born three years after, on June 17, 1892. He died six days later of hydrocephalus, a swelling of the brain, according to the report.

“The conclusions of many Hitler biographers about the mental development of Adolf Hitler, who allegedly received special attention from his mother Klara as the only surviving child after the deaths of three siblings, are no longer tenable,” Kotanko was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

“How was the three-year-old Adolf Hitler confronted with the birth and death of a brother?” Kotanko said. Among other open questions, he said, is whether Hitler had been aware of his brother’s condition and how it might have affected him.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.