Meet the Hitlers

Why haven't you changed your name?

Well, I could not come up with a reason to change my name.

There's no reason to change your name.

Unless you're a criminal or something.

I didn't need an alias.

Why do it? You'd lose all your identity.

No one has ever asked me about changing my last name.

No one's ever brought that up. I've never even heard of that.

Um...

Even if they did, I'd tell them,"I'd never want to change it," you know.

"You like your last name, I like mine, so..."

Sometimes I feel like I wanna change it.

You know, but after a while,

after people know me, who I really am,

they say, "You know what? Doesn't bother me, your name, no more."

See, if you have an unusual name,

even as a kid growing up,

you know, you're gonna get people bullying you in the playground.

I fought back bullies in my real life by mocking them.

And, you know, once they figured out that I wasn't afraid of 'em,

they'd leave me alone.

It is harder. I mean,

everywhere that I go where I have to show my ID,

I can see people...

thinking about my name.

They kinda like... Sometimes they ask me for two IDs or three IDs.

And they actually tell their co-worker,"Hey, look at it."

I do probably get discriminated about it

but I don't let people tear me down about it.

It doesn't faze me, I don't let it bother me.

So it just means uniqueness.

It means individual.

I think as much as we like to pretend that it's not that important, I think it is.

Why is a name important?

That's a philosophical question.

I'd have to think about that a little bit. I've never really...

Well, because it was given to me by my parents.

That's why it's important.

I use a different tool.

Okay, this is like a miniature jack-hammer.

People always ask me, "What part of Germany do you come from?"

They just assume I'm German.

My name is Gene Douglas Hitler.

My mother actually considered naming me Adolf.

Because they didn't know he was gonna turn out to be that... bad.

She says, "Aren't you glad I didn't go through with that one?"

"I am, I'm glad you didn't."

I'm a guy that has an insatiable curiosity.

I've never harnessed my brain.

I'm like a crow. If it's shiny, I have to take it back to my nest.

This is a Benjamin air pistol.

It is older than I am.

Drop it in there.

The mechanism of this fascinated me.

As an engineer, I appreciate a good piece of work.

Ruth Ann.

If there was ever love at first sight, that was it.

There's no way I could find another one to replace her.

I never even tried.

My name is Emily Hittler, I'm 16 years old.

And I'm not related to Adolf Hitler.

When I lived in my old house, it was full of people.

We were always outside, there was always barbecuing or friends over.

You couldn't say the Hittlers were doing nothing.

I moved in with my grandma

because my dad got really sick.

My dad was the strongest guy in the world to me.

So, to see him laying in a hospital bed, almost dying,

was really hard for me to watch.

And we lost our house and everything.

And we're trying to get back on our feet, but for now, this is our little house, so...

This is my room. I'm up in the attic. It's cramped.

My friends like to make me things that say my name on it.

They all call me Hittler. Just little goofy things like, "You're pretty,"

"You're cooler than ice cubes,"it says right here.

Just says, "Hittler, I love you so much."

My name is Hitler Gutierrez.

I'm a carpenter.

It's not enough to pay my bills.

I'm from Ecuador.

Ecuador is a tiny, beautiful country. Poor, but beautiful.

We didn't know anything about Hitler

until I came here.

At work we spend a lot of time talking about my name.

See now, Adolf Hitler gave us the Volkswagen Beetle.

What? So What?

So what have you done for me lately?

Oh, yeah, anytime he goes somewhere,

Home Depot or any place where he's gotta show his ID,

you know, they look at his ID and then they tell their buddy.

My wife works in the restaurant,

where I put my business card and she says that people would come,

just take a look at the business card,

and put the card right back in the little holder.

It's hard enough to come to America

without no English, no money, knowing nobody.

And on top of that,

with the name "Hitler", it's even harder.

You wanna see the swastika, we can.

Well, I mean, it could almost just stand up a little bit.

Now, everything's good.

Tip "Hitler" to the right.

My name is Jim Riswold.

I'm in advertising part-time and I'm in art part-time.

You know, we'll do some generic Hitler boxes within...

You know, we can do the love.

Make this primarily Adolf and Eva.-Yeah.

Adolf and Eva's wedding cake.

Hitler tchotchke.

Bad dog bowls.

You be a good Nazi, Coco.

I call whatever I do absurd realism.

And there is nothing more absurd than all this Hitler shit you can buy.

I like to make bad guys look silly.

Bad guys don't mind being called bad guys.

But they don't like to be made fun of.

Hitler's drunk in his own gift basket.

He doesn't drink, though, right? - No. He's a vegetarian, too.

I always wanted to do an ad for a steakhouse that said,

"Hitler was a vegetarian."

You know,"So and so steakhouse."

Well, this here is my good luck symbol.

And then it's got my wife's name,

my son's name, my daughter's name,

and my other daughter's name. That's my circle of love.

I have different beliefs, you know, I believe in white for whites, black for blacks.

You know, Spanish for Spanish.

I mean, I don't see anything wrong with that.

My name is Heath Campbell.

Adolf Hitler Campbell. That's my son.

They came to this ShopRite to simply buy a birthday cake

for their three-year-old son's party.

But the parents of little Adolf Hitler walked away empty-handed.

And they are now at the center of controversy.

Spiderman?

Little Adolf and his parents are now in a dispute

with this Phillipsburg, New Jersey ShopRite

after the store refused to spell out his name on a cake for a party last weekend.

A person makes a person. A name doesn't.

The Campbells ultimately got the cake made at a Walmart in Pennsylvania.

It was all about Nazism when it's supposed to be about

a little boy and a birthday cake. Not about Nazism.

You know, I have rights just as much as anybody else does.

My name is David Gardner. I'm a journalist and writer.

I covered the First Gulf War. I was in Beirut. I covered 9/11.

Columbine.

I got an assignment to find the last living relatives of Adolf Hitler.

I found out the last descendant of Hitler was in America.

It is the last place most people would think to search.

That journey turned into a book called The Last of the Hitlers.

I had an element of the story, but I never really got to the bottom of it.

I've been back a number of times and I've come back now

in that hope that I can kind of...

bring the story to a resolution.

When I started researching, it was kind of a dead end.

It took me the best part of six years to find this guy called William Patrick Hitler,

the nephew of Adolf Hitler.

He came to the United States but no one knew what happened to him.

He disappeared into obscurity.

It is the Fuhrer's nephew, William Patrick Hitler, 32,

who came here from England five years ago.

As a member of the Armed Forces,

I hope to take an active part in the liquidation of this man, my uncle,

who has unleashed such misery upon the world.

This guy had spent half his life trying to hide from the world.

There's always been something missing from this story.

And there is a lot more to tell.

Now, you three are bowling? - Yes.

Okay, what name do you want down? - Hittler.

H-I-T--- "Hitler"?

Yeah.

Nice mustache. How do you spell that?

I had a substitute teacher one time.

And he had to get my name down

before I went to the bathroom.

And there's another Emily in my class and he said,"Which one?" I said, "Hittler."

And he said, "That's how you pronounce it?"

I was like, "Yeah."

And then he goes,"That must be a rough life."

I said, "I like my last name." And I took the hall pass and I left

'cause I had to go to the bathroom, so he had to get my name before, so...

He was rude about it and I got pissed.

I was only in seventh grade, and I still knew the right and wrong,

that he had an attitude about it.

I was 11 years old when World War II started.

And the kids started teasing me about that.

But most of them I'd either beat up or they were my pals.

You know, "Whatever" at one time or other,

we used to get in fights all the time.