I'm surprised that nobody's asked me why Karl kept the Hitler name...
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Name: Karl Adolf Hitler
Birth: 30 April, 1933, Berlin Germany
Death: 18 June, 2010 (age 77), Buenos Ares Argentina
Father: Adolf Hitler
Mother: Eva Hitler (nee. Braun)
Spouse(s): Heidi Deiss (div.) Gabriela
Giménez (widow)
Issue: Heinrich Hitler, Marie Anna Hitler (with Heidi). Juan Hitler (with Gabriela)
Childhood in Germany
Karl Adolf Hitler was born in a private hospital in Berlin on the 30th of April in 1933 at 8:43 PM to Eva Hitler, former mistress and secret wife of Adolf Hitler the Fuhrer of Nazi Germany. From testimony from the surviving members of Hitler's Inner Circle the Fuhrer variously claimed that his son's name was simply the male version of his mother's name, Klara, or that he was inspired by the name of 'Karl May', one of his favorite writers.
While Karl's existence was considered to be a state secret, Eva and Karl lived in a special chateau attached to Adolf Hitler's personal residence and many in Hitler's inner circle were also aware of their statues. Karl Hitler was in effect an open state secret.
Karl was educated by private tutors in the early years of his life, he was rarely around any children of his own age outside of the children of his father's most trusted lieutenants.
In later years, Karl described his childhood as a happy one.
"Papa always took the time to play with me. I can still remember his secretary waiting by the pool with papers to sign, and my father just gave me a sly smile before yelling "SPLASH!" and we both splashed the man as hard as we could with the water."
Of the few children his own age, Karl was closest with Helga Goebbels. In the interviews that Karl gave during his life, he only spoke about his childhood friendships twice. In both interviews he broke down into tears when speaking about his best friend.
"I didn't really get along with Helmut, too young. However Helga and I were always getting up to mischief."
Documentation released years later reveals that the Allied governments were aware of Hitler's wife and son by the time he was two years old. However it was quickly determined that Hitler had no intention of letting his wife or his son play any major role in the regime, so interest in the pair was minimal.
During the height of the war the Fuhrer wasn't above a family trip, the now infamous 'family photos' reveal that Hitler brought Eva and Karl with him to France during his official visit to the occupied nation. The (now) most famous photograph is of Karl in his mother's arm, Hitler at her side, Karl pointing at the Eiffel Tower.
"I remember yelling, 'Look Papa, look!'"
However as the War began to turn against the Nazi Regime, Hitler made the decision to send his wife and son abroad, telling them that it was just a precaution.
"The last time I saw my father alive was outside the doors of our home. Mama told me that we were just going on a little vacation, but that Papa was too busy to come with us. But I could see in his eyes that something was wrong, but I couldn't figure it out."
With Europe going up in flames, and Asia in a war of attrition, Hitler decided that the only place of safety was in the New World, but the only nation there that was friendly with the Axis was Argentina.
So with a large sum of cash on hand (and access to several secret accounts), Eva and Karl Hitler departed for Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina.
Life in Argentina (Pt. 1)
In Buenos Aires the Hitlers quickly found Argentina to be on the verge of revolution. The officially neutral regime of Ramón Castillo was under tremendous pressure from the Allied nations and from forces within the country. Eva had arrived with her son in early March of 1943, by June he had been overthrown in a military coup and was replaced with an Allied-Friendly government.
However little Karl was barely aware of any of this.
"I was getting settled in Buenos Aires, my mother had already hired a Spanish tutor for me, and we were living in a small chateau in a fashionable district at the time. I was meeting a lot of new children at the time, more so than I ever had in my life."
However even as Eva quietly began setting up a private photography studio to pass the time, testimony from those close to her at the time state that she was extremely worried about the future.
She didn't need to worry at the time though, the military junta that ruled Argentina after the Revolution of 43 while eventually declaring for the Allies only kept Eva and her son under light surveillance.
During the next two years, Eva and Karl followed the news about the war religiously along with sporadic correspondence from Adolf. The pair of them had been given assumed names for the sake of their privacy, however their identities were leaked to the New York Times during the spring of 1944.
The world had it's first look at the secret family of the Fuhrer of Nazi Germany. The now famous photograph was taken clandestinely in Argentina was of Eva and Karl dressed casually, stepping out of a small coffee shop.
"I honestly don't remember this particular day." Karl said about the picture of himself at thirteen years of age, unknowingly being introduced to the world as Hitler's only son. Though Eva was known at the time to frequent the many coffee shops of Buenos Aires, and to be a generous tipper.
The fallout at the time was minimal, Argentina didn't have any major forces committed to the war so there was little ill-will towards Germany and the Hitler's in their midst. In the long term however, and on a global scale, the damage dealt was
enormous.
Life in Argentina (Pt. 2)
While she kept her son shielded from the, at that point, worst parts of the obvious coming downfall of Nazi Germany. Eva Hitler was quickly forced to move from the chateau to a much smaller flat in the city due to mobs of reporters and photographers interested in getting anything they could out of 'the Wife of the Fuhrer'. Lurid and inaccurate stories about Eva's life were quickly published, ranging from claims that she met Hitler at the age of 16, or that she had been trained in sexual tricks by a Japanese prostitute were banded about.
Oddly enough though there weren't many that claimed that Karl wasn't the son of Adolf Hitler.
While he did have a darker shade of his mother's red hair, her high cheek bones and nose. It was noted that even as a child he had Hitler's eyes, his profile, and most importantly his father's intense stare. Though in terms of temperament he was more like his mother, which more often than not proved shocking to those who first met him, knowing who he was.
But with her and her son's identities public, the Argentinian government suddenly found itself having to officially explain why they had admitted them into the country when they had been making noises about joining the Allies. Thankfully for the pair, it was decided quietly between the Allied powers that keeping them on ice in Argentina was for the best until time could be taken to decide what to do later.
The international press had a field day tracking and tracing Eva's past, though due to the war her family was unavailable for any sort of comment. Never the less they did discover her work as a photographer and more importantly her work in Argentina.
Oddly enough while many of her clients dropped her, the fact that she was Hitler's wife drew in enough people with a morbid curiosity to off-set the loss. Not to mention that, for the moment she still had access to the secret accounts and her declared funds in Argentinian banks.
Life for Karl became more complicated, with his face plastered on every newspaper his old alias fell apart. While he was being educated through a private tutor, never the less most of his new friends quickly ostracized him.
"Parents would tell their kids to not even look at me." Karl stated during an interview in 1982. "The only kids that would even talk to me were the ones with Pro-German parents, but even they were becoming thin on the ground."
But even with his mother's best attempts at shielding him, Karl could see that things were going very, very badly for his father in Europe.
"Even before we were outed and people would wave newspapers in our faces detailing German defeats, I would sneak looks at magazines and newspapers when we'd go out shopping." Karl also admitted on several occasions. "But even then I didn't think that Papa would die, much less how it happened."
A month before the final defeat of Nazi Germany, Argentina formally abandoned it's neutrality and declared war on Nazi Germany.
"Before that my mother had told me that we were being watched by the Argentinians for our own safety. But it was much in the background that I wound up forgetting all about it, then one night I heard noises from the other room in the flat. So I snuck to my door and opened it just a crack and saw my mother talking to several uniformed soldiers looking quite fearful."
"I knew that things had changed without having to be told."
The Hitler's were moved from their flat on the orders of Edelmiro Julián Farrell himself and relocated to a middle class home in a suburb of Buenos Aires and kept as virtual prisoners.
Groceries and other supplies were delivered by armed guards, the radio was taken out and newspapers and other correspondence was censored. The only two people allowed in were a cleaning lady and Karl's private tutor.
"The guards were distant at first, but I managed to befriend a couple of them." Karl explained with a laugh, "I knew formal Spanish at that point, but I wasn't fluent and I didn't know any slang, so they wound up making it their job to corrupt me."
However even this haven of unstable peace came crashing down on the 31 of April 1945 when a government official arrived to personally deliver some news.
Adolf Hitler was dead, reportedly shot in a firefight with Soviet solders in Berlin.
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More to come! Oh, and note that I'll be expanding and improving the other parts as I go along. So skim and see what's been tweaked.