Post by Deleted on May 8, 2013 23:00:55 GMT -5
Hitler's "Jewish and African" roots
I'm not going to honor with the link all the stories circulating in a number of newspapers about Hitler being supposedly of "Jewish or African" origin because he belonged to haplogroup E1b1b1.
This comes from a study of men believed to share patrilineal origin with Hitler.
It is difficult to see how much of the hype is due to the original geneticists or to the "journalists" who report on the work.
These "Jewish and African" roots are supposedly due to the fact that Hitler belonged to haplogroup E1b1b1. But, without further information about the subclade in which Hitler belonged to, there is no reason to think that he was of Jewish or African ancestry. He could just as well be of Greek or Albanian patrilineal ancestry. But, I guess that "Hitler's Greek or Albanian roots" doesn't have the same zing that his "Jewish and African roots" does.
What do we know? That Hitler may have had distant Y-chromosome E1b1b1 cousins that wouldn't be considered Aryan in Nazi Germany. But, this would be true no matter what haplogroup he had (except I, perhaps).
If the researchers had found evidence of a recent "non-Aryan" ancestor that would disqualify Hitler from possessing Aryan status according to his race laws, then that would be an interesting and ironic discovery. Or, if they had found that he belonged to a subclade such as E-M81 (found in Berbers and other north Africans) that has most plausibly introgressed into Europe in historical times.
However, the available public evidence is that Hitler may have belonged to a haplogroup that isn't as common in Germany as e.g., in the Balkans, just as some people from the Balkans belong to haplogroups that are more common in Germany, or some Jews belong to haplogroups that are more common in Europe, and so on.