Heinz Hitler

Heinrich Hitler (nickname Heinz; 14 March 1920 – 21 February 1942) was the son of Alois Hitler, Jr. and his second wife Hedwig Heidemann and the half-nephew of Adolf Hitler. When World War II began, he joined the Wehrmacht and served on the Eastern Front, where he was captured and died in prison in 1942.

Unlike his half-brother William Patrick Hitler, Heinz was a Nazi. He attended an elite Nazi military academy, the National Political Institutes of Education (Napola) in Ballenstedt/Saxony-Anhalt. Aspiring to be an officer, Heinz joined the Wehrmacht as a signals subofficer with the 23rd Potsdamer Artillery Regiment in 1941, and he participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. On January 10, 1942, he was captured by Soviet forces and sent to the Moscow military prison Butyrka, where he died, aged 21, after several days of interrogation and torture.