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During the Liverpool Blitz, Upper Stanhope Street in Toxteth faced devastation in the final Luftwaffe raid on the city on 10 January 1942. This raid marked the end of sustained bombing in Liverpool, but not before several homes on the street were levelled. In a curious twist of fate, among these was No 102, a property with profound historical resonance: it had once housed Alois Hitler Jr., Adolf Hitler’s half-brother, and his wife Bridget Dowling, along with their infant son William Patrick Hitler – and may once have even been visited by a young Adolf Hitler. These homes were never rebuilt; instead, the local authority cleared the bomb site and set it aside as grassed land.

This particular bombing raid provides a critical moment in The Mighty Ocean, the third book in the Romulus Hutchinson Naval Adventure series, which is released on February 27, 2026. But in this blog, I wanted to explore in more detail, the extraordinary coincidence of how the final raid of the Blitz brought devastation to a home that Hitler himself is said to have known well.

Liverpool endured relentless bombing across the Blitz period, from August 1940 to January 1942, resulting in approximately 4,000 deaths. It was the most intensely attacked British city outside London, due to its strategic port, docks and wartime industries. While the docks were the primary targets, residential areas like Toxteth, where dock workers and their families lived, suffered serious damage. The January 1942 raid, which obliterated the house on Upper Stanhope Street, was a final blow in an ongoing campaign that had already inflicted thousands of civilian casualties and mass homelessness.

Hitler’s family ties to Liverpool

The story of No 102 begins long before the war, in the early 1910s. Alois Hitler Jr., estranged half-brother of Adolf Hitler, moved to Liverpool after imprisonments for theft in Austria. He met and married Irish-born Bridget Dowling in London in 1910 and the couple relocated to 102 Upper Stanhope Street in Toxteth. Alois worked as a waiter in the Jewish-owned Lyons Café, as recorded in the 1911 census, another deep irony, which highlights the ideological chasm between him and his more infamous sibling.

Bridget later claimed that Adolf Hitler himself stayed with the family from November 1912 to April 1913. She depicted him as an aspiring artist, shy of English, wandering the city streets late at night and frequenting local pubs. Bridget suggested that his visit coincided with his rejection from Austrian art schools and a desire to avoid military conscription. Though historians debate the accuracy of her claims, no definitive record confirms Adolf’s presence. Nevertheless, the narrative endures in memoirs preserved by Bridget Hitler.

Baby William Patrick Hitler was born at the Toxteth property on 12 March 1911. He later emigrated to the United States, taking the name Houston and even serving in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, turning the familial irony full circle by opposing his own uncle’s Nazi regime.

By 1914, Alois and his family had left Liverpool. Alois returned to Germany and later remarried, but remained in the shadows of Hitler family history. The Upper Stanhope Street home later became an ordinary terrace house – until its dramatic end in 1942.

Liverpool’s Legacy and the Hitler Connection

Today, the grassed-over site at Upper Stanhope Street stands as a sombre reminder of the Blitz’s final fury and an unusual chapter in Adolf Hitler’s biography. It underscores Liverpool’s central place in the war – its port sustained Britain’s wartime supply lifeline but came under repeated air attack as a result. The house’s destruction in January 1942 symbolically closed a loop: a building once linked to Hitler via family connections was ultimately demolished by the Luftwaffe.

The Mighty Ocean is released on February 27, 2026, as our twin Liverpudlian heroes Rom and Remmie Hutchinson continue their seafaring adventures amid the darkest days of the Second World War. The raid on Upper Stanhope Street is to also have dramatic implications for the Hutchinson family. To Preorder for Kindle, visit: https://getbook.at/TheMightyOcean