Although he disappeared 65 years ago, Adolf Hitler continues to attract considerable attention, having become a symbol of evil, racism and genocide, with all humanity’s failings condensed into his name.
Much can be said about Hitler and modern history, whose major events he helped shape. Yet, as usual, the prevailing picture is incomplete, because history is written by the victors, while the defeated fall into oblivion and their testimony disappears from view.
On the other hand, it is difficult to sympathize with Hitler, not merely because his enemies wrote history, but because the vast bloodshed of his major invasions cannot be justified under any circumstances or pretext.
Nazi Germany caused countless tragedies and took millions of lives through reckless policies and brute force. The existence of similar examples elsewhere in the world does not diminish its ugliness or degradation.
Despite this, Hitler’s hateful racist ideas about the superiority of the Aryan race and the inferiority of other peoples still find supporters in Europe and the United States in the phenomenon known as neo-Nazism. Without strict laws, they would resurface.
It sometimes seems as though Europe is trying to sever every connection with Hitler by insisting on rejecting his belonging, questioning his origins and attempting to trace his mortal genes to distant places.
This is reflected in an analysis of the genes of relatives of the Nazi leader, overseen by Belgian journalist Jean-Paul Mulders and historian Marc Vermeeren. Its results claimed that Hitler’s genes were related to peoples he had classified as inferior, specifically people of Jewish and African origin.
The DNA analysis included 39 of Hitler’s relatives, whom Mulders and Vermeeren painstakingly tracked down to obtain saliva samples.
The results reached by experts at Belgium’s Catholic University of Leuven were not a thunderbolt, because suspicions about Hitler’s origins are longstanding. Even so, they would not have pleased Hitler or his supporters. The analysis indicated that the family’s DNA contained the chromosome “E1b1b1,” rare in Germany and throughout Western Europe but common in the Maghreb.
Historian Vermeeren said: “This chromosome is common among the Berbers, the indigenous people of North Africa living in Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, and also among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews.”
The analysis stated that the chromosome identified as shared by Hitler and Jews occurred in 18–20% of Ashkenazi Jews, whose origins are in Eastern Europe, and in 8.6–30% of Sephardic Jews, whose origins are in the Iberian Peninsula, encompassing Spain and Portugal, before their expulsion in the 15th century.
Commenting on these laboratory findings, journalist Jean-Paul Mulders said: “Based on these data, one can affirm that Hitler’s origins go back to those he despised.” He stressed that sample collection and DNA analysis had been conducted under strict laboratory conditions.
Naturally, “discovering” the origin of Hitler’s genes will change nothing and will not turn back time. But the matter is useful in undermining the idea that some human races are innately superior and others inferior, potentially strengthening the values of equality and peaceful coexistence on Earth.