Auf Wiedersehen Joerg Haider

So Auf Wiedersehen to Joerg Haider the leader of the Austrian “Freedom Party” (sic) who died in a car crash on 11th October 2008.

To his supporters Joerg Haider was a patriot who dared to speak uncomfortable truths. His critics saw him as an ambitious, racist opportunist who used anti-immigrant and pro-Nazi rhetoric to stir up populist sentiment. What is doubtless is that Haider - whose death in a car crash at the age of 58 leaves a widow and two daughters - had charisma, but there again so had Adolph Hitler.

Joerg Haider was born in the Upper Austrian town of Bad Goisern in 1950 and his parents were very early members of the Nazi party, who moved to Germany where they became party officials. After the war, they were punished for their affiliations and forced to take up menial work.



But of course Austria is not any country but is the birthplace of Adolph Hitler whom they cheered to the rafters when the Nazis “united” Austria with Germany in 1938. Following the 1938 Anschluss, they would surprise Berlin with their astonishing dedication to National Socialism. During World War II, though they only constituted eight percent of the Third Reich’s population, Austrians comprised fourteen percent of the SS and forty percent of Nazi personnel involved in genocide.

After the war, under Soviet and American occupation Austria portrayed itself dishonestly as “Hitler’s First Victim”. They suggested their country had been occupied by aggressive, arrogant, pompous, warlike, super-efficient Germans from Germany. How else were they to deal with the occupiers? But this would make it difficult to understand why, some sixty years after the war, at least one out of every four Austrians (that is, those who voted for Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party) believes that Hitler wasn’t all that bad, the SS was just your usual elite military formation, and National Socialism could have developed highly-successful economic and employment policies if it had not been mismanaged.


The victims?


The occupiers?

That the Anschluss began with maniacal attacks on Jews by Viennese mobs is common knowledge everywhere except Austria. On March 11, 1938, when Vienna prepared to receive Hitler thousands of Viennese took to the streets of their city like mad persons, dragging anyone who "looked Jewish" from vehicles, clubbing and beating victims, desecrating synagogues, robbing department stores, and raiding Jewish apartments. They compelled rabbis to scrub toilet bowls with prayer shawls and stole whatever cash, jewellery, and furs they could find. An SS correspondent would later write admiringly, "’The Viennese have managed to do overnight what we have failed to achieve in the slow-moving, ponderous north up to this day. In Austria, a boycott of the Jews does not need organizing the people themselves have initiated it’"

This horror was a prelude to what would occur in Vienna and in Austria’s provincial cities during the Krystallnacht. Statistics for November 9 -10, a nightmare period not easily matched in previous European history, include 267 synagogues destroyed, 7,500 businesses and homes devastated, 91 Jews murdered, and 26,000 Jews rounded up. True, "Outside [Vienna] so little Jewish property remained to pillage or expropriate that the pogrom was limited by the success of previous purges". No matter, "local Nazis raped and plundered, tortured and maimed, and in Innsbruck beat or stabbed to death four distinguished Jews".




Kristallnacht, Vienna - What the jolly Viennese did in between waltzing and playing violins

Today walking around the former Jewish Quarter of Leopoldville in Vienna today there neither is a feeling of atonement for the fate of its former inhabitants nor has there been much inclination to restore robbed Jewish owned art to the families of its former owners. Austria remains a country in serious denial.

After school, where he was regularly top of the class, Haider studied law in Vienna and joined the Freedom Party in 1976. He quickly rose through the ranks, becoming the party's leader 10 years later. Around the same time he became party leader, Haider inherited a controversial $16m estate in the southern province of Carinthia where he became governor in 1989. Barental, or Bear Valley, was bought during World War II by his great uncle from an Italian Jew who fled in 1940. Critics say the sale was illegitimately forced upon the Jewish owner by the Nazis, but Haider consistently denied this. He amassed a formidable power base in Carinthia, but his first stint as governor in 1989 ended abruptly when he praised the employment policies of Nazi Germany and was forced to resign.

A few years later, he described World War II concentration camps as "punishment camps" and said the Nazi SS was "a part of the German army which should be honoured". He has also compared the deportation of Jews by the Nazis to the expulsion of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after the war.


Happy Germanic People - Austria after the Anschluss


However we must not tar all or indeed most Austrians with the neo-fascist brush. To their great credit when Haider’s Freedom Party entered the Austrian government, thousands of Austrians and others who joined them from all over Europe marched in protest, in Vienna. Israel recalled its ambassador, and European nations made very clear their displeasure no matter what rationales Austria’s government offered. Given the costs of what had happened in Europe during World War II - thanks to Austrian as well as German fascism - it became more difficult to sell snake oil in today than in 1938.

Joerg Haider was driving at twice the speed limit when he died in a crash early on Saturday 11th October 2008, court officials have said. Mr Haider, 58, was travelling alone at 142km/h (88mph) in a 70km/h zone when his Volkswagen Phaeton V6 crashed. The accident occurred south of Klagenfurt, the capital of Carinthia, where he was the provincial governor. He was leader of the Alliance for Austria's Future, and was known for his anti-immigration and anti-EU policies.



Mr Haider had crashed shortly after leaving a nightclub. However, prosecutor Gottfried Kranza would not say whether Mr Haider's body had tested positive for alcohol. Mr Haider had reportedly been due to attend his mother's 90th birthday celebrations later in the day.

But the great irony of Joerg Haider’s death is that, in years to come, he will not be remembered for the stupidity of his beliefs and policies but for the stupidity of the way he died. For he was travelling at twice the speed limit in one of the world’s most stupid cars, a Volkswagen Phaeton V6. What a way to be remembered. He wouldn’t be seen dead in a Mercedes but in a Volkswagen. At least it was made by the company named after Hitler’s “People’s Car” so I’m sure in their Lebensraum in the sky his ex- Stormtrooper father and Hitler Youth organiser mother will take some comfort from the manner of his passing.

Auf Wiedersehen Joerg Haider.


Volkswagen Phaeton V6


Note; Historical references to the Anschluss and its aftermath are from Evan Burr Bukey. Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938-1945_. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Auf Wiedersehen Joerg Haider

So Auf Wiedersehen to Joerg Haider the leader of the Austrian “Freedom Party” (sic) who died in a car crash on 11th October 2008.

To his supporters Joerg Haider was a patriot who dared to speak uncomfortable truths. His critics saw him as an ambitious, racist opportunist who used anti-immigrant and pro-Nazi rhetoric to stir up populist sentiment. What is doubtless is that Haider - whose death in a car crash at the age of 58 leaves a widow and two daughters - had charisma, but there again so had Adolph Hitler.

Joerg Haider was born in the Upper Austrian town of Bad Goisern in 1950 and his parents were very early members of the Nazi party, who moved to Germany where they became party officials. After the war, they were punished for their affiliations and forced to take up menial work.



But of course Austria is not any country but is the birthplace of Adolph Hitler whom they cheered to the rafters when the Nazis “united” Austria with Germany in 1938. Following the 1938 Anschluss, they would surprise Berlin with their astonishing dedication to National Socialism. During World War II, though they only constituted eight percent of the Third Reich’s population, Austrians comprised fourteen percent of the SS and forty percent of Nazi personnel involved in genocide.

After the war, under Soviet and American occupation Austria portrayed itself dishonestly as “Hitler’s First Victim”. They suggested their country had been occupied by aggressive, arrogant, pompous, warlike, super-efficient Germans from Germany. How else were they to deal with the occupiers? But this would make it difficult to understand why, some sixty years after the war, at least one out of every four Austrians (that is, those who voted for Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party) believes that Hitler wasn’t all that bad, the SS was just your usual elite military formation, and National Socialism could have developed highly-successful economic and employment policies if it had not been mismanaged.


The victims?


The occupiers?

That the Anschluss began with maniacal attacks on Jews by Viennese mobs is common knowledge everywhere except Austria. On March 11, 1938, when Vienna prepared to receive Hitler thousands of Viennese took to the streets of their city like mad persons, dragging anyone who "looked Jewish" from vehicles, clubbing and beating victims, desecrating synagogues, robbing department stores, and raiding Jewish apartments. They compelled rabbis to scrub toilet bowls with prayer shawls and stole whatever cash, jewellery, and furs they could find. An SS correspondent would later write admiringly, "’The Viennese have managed to do overnight what we have failed to achieve in the slow-moving, ponderous north up to this day. In Austria, a boycott of the Jews does not need organizing the people themselves have initiated it’"

This horror was a prelude to what would occur in Vienna and in Austria’s provincial cities during the Krystallnacht. Statistics for November 9 -10, a nightmare period not easily matched in previous European history, include 267 synagogues destroyed, 7,500 businesses and homes devastated, 91 Jews murdered, and 26,000 Jews rounded up. True, "Outside [Vienna] so little Jewish property remained to pillage or expropriate that the pogrom was limited by the success of previous purges". No matter, "local Nazis raped and plundered, tortured and maimed, and in Innsbruck beat or stabbed to death four distinguished Jews".




Kristallnacht, Vienna - What the jolly Viennese did in between waltzing and playing violins

Today walking around the former Jewish Quarter of Leopoldville in Vienna today there neither is a feeling of atonement for the fate of its former inhabitants nor has there been much inclination to restore robbed Jewish owned art to the families of its former owners. Austria remains a country in serious denial.

After school, where he was regularly top of the class, Haider studied law in Vienna and joined the Freedom Party in 1976. He quickly rose through the ranks, becoming the party's leader 10 years later. Around the same time he became party leader, Haider inherited a controversial $16m estate in the southern province of Carinthia where he became governor in 1989. Barental, or Bear Valley, was bought during World War II by his great uncle from an Italian Jew who fled in 1940. Critics say the sale was illegitimately forced upon the Jewish owner by the Nazis, but Haider consistently denied this. He amassed a formidable power base in Carinthia, but his first stint as governor in 1989 ended abruptly when he praised the employment policies of Nazi Germany and was forced to resign.

A few years later, he described World War II concentration camps as "punishment camps" and said the Nazi SS was "a part of the German army which should be honoured". He has also compared the deportation of Jews by the Nazis to the expulsion of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after the war.


Happy Germanic People - Austria after the Anschluss


However we must not tar all or indeed most Austrians with the neo-fascist brush. To their great credit when Haider’s Freedom Party entered the Austrian government, thousands of Austrians and others who joined them from all over Europe marched in protest, in Vienna. Israel recalled its ambassador, and European nations made very clear their displeasure no matter what rationales Austria’s government offered. Given the costs of what had happened in Europe during World War II - thanks to Austrian as well as German fascism - it became more difficult to sell snake oil in today than in 1938.

Joerg Haider was driving at twice the speed limit when he died in a crash early on Saturday 11th October 2008, court officials have said. Mr Haider, 58, was travelling alone at 142km/h (88mph) in a 70km/h zone when his Volkswagen Phaeton V6 crashed. The accident occurred south of Klagenfurt, the capital of Carinthia, where he was the provincial governor. He was leader of the Alliance for Austria's Future, and was known for his anti-immigration and anti-EU policies.



Mr Haider had crashed shortly after leaving a nightclub. However, prosecutor Gottfried Kranza would not say whether Mr Haider's body had tested positive for alcohol. Mr Haider had reportedly been due to attend his mother's 90th birthday celebrations later in the day.

But the great irony of Joerg Haider’s death is that, in years to come, he will not be remembered for the stupidity of his beliefs and policies but for the stupidity of the way he died. For he was travelling at twice the speed limit in one of the world’s most stupid cars, a Volkswagen Phaeton V6. What a way to be remembered. He wouldn’t be seen dead in a Mercedes but in a Volkswagen. At least it was made by the company named after Hitler’s “People’s Car” so I’m sure in their Lebensraum in the sky his ex- Stormtrooper father and Hitler Youth organiser mother will take some comfort from the manner of his passing.

Auf Wiedersehen Joerg Haider.


Volkswagen Phaeton V6


Note; Historical references to the Anschluss and its aftermath are from Evan Burr Bukey. Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938-1945_. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Liverpool, Paddy Hitler and Paddy Murphy

Liverpool Waterfront

The flyer from URBBEATZ about Liverpool’s history as a centre of the slave trend reminds us that this great merchant city and the 2008 European City of Culture has always been a cross roads for humanity. Liverpool does not just have one of England’s longest established black communities, but also a long established Chinese community, a huge Irish influx after the 1847 Famine (so much so it was nicknamed Dublin East!) and a smattering of many more cultures. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of the school of analytical psychology after having a dream vision referred to Liverpool as "the Pool of Life" (in fact, Jung never set foot in Liverpool). When the US beat poet and counter-cultural icon Allen Ginsberg arrived in Liverpool in May 1965, he declared the city to be "at the present moment, the centre of consciousness of the human universe". Perhaps his pronouncement shouldn't be taken too seriously: he made similar claims for Milwaukee and Baltimore. As Liverpool poet Brian Patten, whose floor Ginsberg slept on, says: "I think Allen believed the centre of human consciousness to be wherever he was at the time."

Back in 1931, the Daily Post writer Michael O'Mahoney magisterially wrote that Liverpool was the threshold to the ends of the earth. In those days it was a self-evident truth. Earlier still, as America opened up and was linked to Europe by Liverpool's steamship lines, millions of emigrants flowed through the city. Not all of the huddled masses, though, moved on. Thousands stayed in Liverpool, adding exotic ingredients to its melting pot. But of all the stories of Liverpool immigrants the two strangest are probably those of Paddy Hitler and Paddy Murphy for interestingly Liverpool had a strange Axis link with both Adolph Hitler’s nephew and a relation of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito living in the city.


Hitler's half brother Alois

Adolf Hitler did not have a son, but he did have a nephew, whose given name was Paddy. Paddy, the son of Hitler's half brother Alois, lived in Liverpool as a young boy. In 1933 he moved to Germany, trying to be a car salesman and cash in on his family name. Things didn't work out and he moved to the US, denouncing his Uncle and serving in the US Navy in the war. Finally he settled in Long Island where he had four sons, including Brian Hitler. Although to be strictly correct his full name was William Patrick Hitler, rather than Paddy and in any case, Hitler's nephew changed his surname to Stuart-Houston after WW2. So there was never really a Brian Hitler, only Brian Stuart-Houston.


William Patrick Hitler Poster

William Hitler grew up in Toxteth in the early 20th century living at 102, Upper Stanhope Street. William’s father Alois Hitler, the half-brother of Adolf had married an Irish girl called Bridget Dowling. Alois and Bridget had met at a horse fair in Ireland before eloping to London and marrying and finally settled in Liverpool. The Liverpool branch of the Hitler family ran different businesses including a boarding house and a restaurant. The couple had one child, William Patrick Hitler born on March 12th 1911.

Once his uncle rose to power in Germany, William moved to Germany and basked in the female adulation that came from having such a famous uncle. Hitler never had much time for William and eventually paid him off (there was rumour of blackmail about revealing Jewish ancestors) and he moved to the United States to go on a lecture tour organised by William Randolph Hearst. When war broke out he stayed in the USA joining the US Navy in 1944. A recurring story, that has never been proved either way, is that Adolf Hitler visited Liverpool in 1912. At the time he was practically destitute and working as a part time labourer in Vienna.


Poste House pub where Hitler is meant to have had a drink

Local legend has it that Hitler drank in the Poste House pub in Cumberland Street. The evidence for Hitler’s visit comes from the writings of William’s mother Bridget who moved to the USA too. She wrote that her famous brother-in-law had moved to Liverpool and lived with her and Alois from November 1912 to April 1913. There is no other evidence for the visit, which many historians dismiss as a ploy by Bridget to make money from the infamous family name.

The family home on Upper Stanhope Street where Adolf Hitler is reputed to have stayed was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in 1942, ironically the last street in Liverpool to be bombed in the Second World War. After the war William Patrick Hitler changed his surname and lived in relative obscurity up to his death in 1987. He was buried alongside his mother in Long Island cemetery. He had four sons Howard, Alexander Adolf, Louis and Brian. Howard died in a car crash in 1989; the three surviving sons have no children.


Hitler's Grand Nephews

Beryl Bainbridge wrote a novel about a fictional visit by a young Adolf to his Liverpudlian relative - which was dramatised on T.V. in the early 80s I. Willie's three sons, who all lived in Long Island, changed their name and made a pact never to have children. A new documentary, called "The Last of the Hitler’s," tells the story of the brothers, and their bizarre pact with each other never to have children in order to sever the bloodline of their infamous relative. The film is based on the fascinating book of the same name by journalist David Gardner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Patrick_Hitler

A relation of Emperor Hirohito escaped the stifling restrictions of life at the Imperial Court in the 20s and worked his passage to Liverpool where he worked on the docks and lived in a council tenement under the name of Paddy Murphy!

Paddy Murphy was the assumed name of Kanso Yoshida, born in Japan in 1895, settled in Liverpool in 1938 and lived there until he died in 1973, his death meriting a lengthy obituary in the Liverpool Echo. Kanso was second cousin to Princess Chichibu, who was sister-in-law to Emperor Hirohito, the father of Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan.


The peace loving Imperial Deity aka The Emperor Hirohito

Kanso Yoshida’s grandson Frank King still lives in Liverpool where he describes himself as a pedigree mongrel. Although his features belie the fact that his grandfather was the famous Japanese Liverpool resident, known to all as Paddy Murphy, there is plenty of Irish in his family. His Grandfather left Japan to escape the stifling life of the Imperial Court and worked as a seafarer and visited Liverpool several times before deciding to make his home there. Although Frank knew Kanso all his life, only recently (2007) did he discover that Kanso was his grandfather.

"My mother told me, just before she died seven years ago. Apparently my grandmother, Mabel Dingle, had been a barmaid at The Yacht in Duke Street, Kanso's local pub (he lived in Kent Gardens then). They had a bit of a fling, which resulted in my mother. My grandmother later married George Puddifer.

"I always knew he was my step-grandfather but never knew about Kanso being my real granddad till I was in my mid-40s." When he was a child, Frank used to play dominoes with Kanso, and realised the old man had a bit of a soft spot for him. Kanso Yoshida worked as a ship's fireman and donkeyman, and was in the British Navy in both world wars. In 1917, during World War I, his ship Huntstrick was torpedoed and sunk off Gibraltar, injuring Kanso badly. Yet in World War II his ship was twice bombed, but Kanso escaped unhurt.

In 1940 Kanso became a British citizen, but unlike many, was not interned. After Japan entered the war in 1941, he was subject to snide remarks. Kanso explained his nickname: "One day I get real mad. And I yell out, 'I'm not Japanese, I'm good Englishman as any of you. If you don't like my name, then OK, I change it. Call me Paddy Murphy!' I am known as Paddy Murphy ever since."

So there you have the strange tale of Liverpool and Paddy Hitler and Paddy Murphy, relations of the leaders of Germany and Japan respectively during World War 2 which in the masterly understatement of the Emperor Hirohito when he ordered Japan’s surrender “has not necessarily worked out to Japan’s advantage!” Unfortunately Adolph Hitler’s verdict on World War 2 was not recorded but no doubt it would have been similar!

Liverpool, Paddy Hitler and Paddy Murphy

Liverpool Waterfront

The flyer from URBBEATZ about Liverpool’s history as a centre of the slave trend reminds us that this great merchant city and the 2008 European City of Culture has always been a cross roads for humanity. Liverpool does not just have one of England’s longest established black communities, but also a long established Chinese community, a huge Irish influx after the 1847 Famine (so much so it was nicknamed Dublin East!) and a smattering of many more cultures. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of the school of analytical psychology after having a dream vision referred to Liverpool as "the Pool of Life" (in fact, Jung never set foot in Liverpool). When the US beat poet and counter-cultural icon Allen Ginsberg arrived in Liverpool in May 1965, he declared the city to be "at the present moment, the centre of consciousness of the human universe". Perhaps his pronouncement shouldn't be taken too seriously: he made similar claims for Milwaukee and Baltimore. As Liverpool poet Brian Patten, whose floor Ginsberg slept on, says: "I think Allen believed the centre of human consciousness to be wherever he was at the time."

Back in 1931, the Daily Post writer Michael O'Mahoney magisterially wrote that Liverpool was the threshold to the ends of the earth. In those days it was a self-evident truth. Earlier still, as America opened up and was linked to Europe by Liverpool's steamship lines, millions of emigrants flowed through the city. Not all of the huddled masses, though, moved on. Thousands stayed in Liverpool, adding exotic ingredients to its melting pot. But of all the stories of Liverpool immigrants the two strangest are probably those of Paddy Hitler and Paddy Murphy for interestingly Liverpool had a strange Axis link with both Adolph Hitler’s nephew and a relation of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito living in the city.


Hitler's half brother Alois

Adolf Hitler did not have a son, but he did have a nephew, whose given name was Paddy. Paddy, the son of Hitler's half brother Alois, lived in Liverpool as a young boy. In 1933 he moved to Germany, trying to be a car salesman and cash in on his family name. Things didn't work out and he moved to the US, denouncing his Uncle and serving in the US Navy in the war. Finally he settled in Long Island where he had four sons, including Brian Hitler. Although to be strictly correct his full name was William Patrick Hitler, rather than Paddy and in any case, Hitler's nephew changed his surname to Stuart-Houston after WW2. So there was never really a Brian Hitler, only Brian Stuart-Houston.


William Patrick Hitler Poster

William Hitler grew up in Toxteth in the early 20th century living at 102, Upper Stanhope Street. William’s father Alois Hitler, the half-brother of Adolf had married an Irish girl called Bridget Dowling. Alois and Bridget had met at a horse fair in Ireland before eloping to London and marrying and finally settled in Liverpool. The Liverpool branch of the Hitler family ran different businesses including a boarding house and a restaurant. The couple had one child, William Patrick Hitler born on March 12th 1911.

Once his uncle rose to power in Germany, William moved to Germany and basked in the female adulation that came from having such a famous uncle. Hitler never had much time for William and eventually paid him off (there was rumour of blackmail about revealing Jewish ancestors) and he moved to the United States to go on a lecture tour organised by William Randolph Hearst. When war broke out he stayed in the USA joining the US Navy in 1944. A recurring story, that has never been proved either way, is that Adolf Hitler visited Liverpool in 1912. At the time he was practically destitute and working as a part time labourer in Vienna.


Poste House pub where Hitler is meant to have had a drink

Local legend has it that Hitler drank in the Poste House pub in Cumberland Street. The evidence for Hitler’s visit comes from the writings of William’s mother Bridget who moved to the USA too. She wrote that her famous brother-in-law had moved to Liverpool and lived with her and Alois from November 1912 to April 1913. There is no other evidence for the visit, which many historians dismiss as a ploy by Bridget to make money from the infamous family name.

The family home on Upper Stanhope Street where Adolf Hitler is reputed to have stayed was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in 1942, ironically the last street in Liverpool to be bombed in the Second World War. After the war William Patrick Hitler changed his surname and lived in relative obscurity up to his death in 1987. He was buried alongside his mother in Long Island cemetery. He had four sons Howard, Alexander Adolf, Louis and Brian. Howard died in a car crash in 1989; the three surviving sons have no children.


Hitler's Grand Nephews

Beryl Bainbridge wrote a novel about a fictional visit by a young Adolf to his Liverpudlian relative - which was dramatised on T.V. in the early 80s I. Willie's three sons, who all lived in Long Island, changed their name and made a pact never to have children. A new documentary, called "The Last of the Hitler’s," tells the story of the brothers, and their bizarre pact with each other never to have children in order to sever the bloodline of their infamous relative. The film is based on the fascinating book of the same name by journalist David Gardner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Patrick_Hitler

A relation of Emperor Hirohito escaped the stifling restrictions of life at the Imperial Court in the 20s and worked his passage to Liverpool where he worked on the docks and lived in a council tenement under the name of Paddy Murphy!

Paddy Murphy was the assumed name of Kanso Yoshida, born in Japan in 1895, settled in Liverpool in 1938 and lived there until he died in 1973, his death meriting a lengthy obituary in the Liverpool Echo. Kanso was second cousin to Princess Chichibu, who was sister-in-law to Emperor Hirohito, the father of Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan.


The peace loving Imperial Deity aka The Emperor Hirohito

Kanso Yoshida’s grandson Frank King still lives in Liverpool where he describes himself as a pedigree mongrel. Although his features belie the fact that his grandfather was the famous Japanese Liverpool resident, known to all as Paddy Murphy, there is plenty of Irish in his family. His Grandfather left Japan to escape the stifling life of the Imperial Court and worked as a seafarer and visited Liverpool several times before deciding to make his home there. Although Frank knew Kanso all his life, only recently (2007) did he discover that Kanso was his grandfather.

"My mother told me, just before she died seven years ago. Apparently my grandmother, Mabel Dingle, had been a barmaid at The Yacht in Duke Street, Kanso's local pub (he lived in Kent Gardens then). They had a bit of a fling, which resulted in my mother. My grandmother later married George Puddifer.

"I always knew he was my step-grandfather but never knew about Kanso being my real granddad till I was in my mid-40s." When he was a child, Frank used to play dominoes with Kanso, and realised the old man had a bit of a soft spot for him. Kanso Yoshida worked as a ship's fireman and donkeyman, and was in the British Navy in both world wars. In 1917, during World War I, his ship Huntstrick was torpedoed and sunk off Gibraltar, injuring Kanso badly. Yet in World War II his ship was twice bombed, but Kanso escaped unhurt.

In 1940 Kanso became a British citizen, but unlike many, was not interned. After Japan entered the war in 1941, he was subject to snide remarks. Kanso explained his nickname: "One day I get real mad. And I yell out, 'I'm not Japanese, I'm good Englishman as any of you. If you don't like my name, then OK, I change it. Call me Paddy Murphy!' I am known as Paddy Murphy ever since."

So there you have the strange tale of Liverpool and Paddy Hitler and Paddy Murphy, relations of the leaders of Germany and Japan respectively during World War 2 which in the masterly understatement of the Emperor Hirohito when he ordered Japan’s surrender “has not necessarily worked out to Japan’s advantage!” Unfortunately Adolph Hitler’s verdict on World War 2 was not recorded but no doubt it would have been similar!