Jean-Marie Loret (born 18 or 25 March 1918 in Seboncourt , near Saint-Quentin in Picardy and died in 1985 in Saint-Quentin) was a French railway worker who claimed to be the illegitimate son of Adolf Hitler . According to Loret, in 1948 his mother revealed to him shortly before his death that the “unknown German soldier” with whom he had had an affair during the First World War was Adolf Hitler. His statement was endorsed by the German historian Werner Maser . Loret published his own autobiography, Ton père s’appelait Hitler in 1981. However, the dominant opinion, represented by historians such as Anton Joachimsthaler , Timothy Ryback , and Sir Ian Kershaw , is that paternity Of Hitler in Loret is unlikely or impossible.
Biography
Jean-Marie Loret was illegitimately born in 1918 at Seboncourt as Jean-Marie Lobjoie. His mother was Charlotte Eudoxie Alida Lobjoie (1898-1951), the daughter of the local butcher and his wife, being them Louis Joseph Alfred Lobjoie and Marie Flore Philomène (born Colpin). According to the entry in the birth register of his hometown, Loret’s father was an unidentified German soldier from World War I. Since Adolf Hitler had remained in the towns of Seclin , Fournes , Wavrin and Ardooie in the years 1916 and 1917, and according to eyewitness accounts he was supposed to have had a relationship with Charlotte, Hitler’s fatherhood in Loret became a subject of Discussion on several occasions.
Charlotte Lobjoie’s profession, according to various sources, was “dancer,” although it is unclear whether it was one in 1916/1917. She seems to have taken up this profession only after she moved to Paris, a few months after the birth of Jean-Marie, which was after the withdrawal of the Germans from France. Jean-Marie lived during his first seven years in the house of his grandparents, with whom Charlotte broke all contact after its transfer to Paris. On May 22, 1922, the husband of Charlotte, Clement Loret, professional lithographer , said he would support the illegitimate son of his new wife, although at that time did not know the boy, and that would allow the child to have his name . According to Loret, his grandparents “treated him poorly.”
After the death in 1925 (of the grandfathers) and 1926 (of the grandmother), its aunt, Alice Lobjoie, worked to maintain to its nephew adopted by its family in Saint Quentin. From then on, the boy attended, one after another, two Catholic boarding schools, in Cambrai and San Quentin.
In 1936, Jean-Marie entered military service and was promoted in the following years, ultimately reaching the rank of sergeant. He later occupied for some years as a businessman until 1948, when he had to give up that profession because of insolvency.
According to Loret, as when he was a child, he knew that he was the son of a German soldier, but he had no idea of the identity of his father. Years later, he affirmed that in 1948 his mother revealed to him, shortly before his death, that the mentioned soldier had been, in fact Adolf Hitler.
During World War II Loret worked as a commissioner with the French police in Saint-Quentin, Aisne. Supposedly he has this position granted to him by personal order of Hitler, although there is no concrete evidence to support this affirmation. Claims that he had collaborated with the Gestapo units in France with this capability are also not proven. However, after the war, no evidence of collaboration was made against him, which speaks against the claim. This is explained by Loret in various sources, claiming that Hitler had none, and all his Loret related material destroyed. It should be noted that Loret was considered quite normal and not overly diligent, so it seems rather unusual for him to have won by himself such high achievements in its entirety on his own merits, under the age of 25.
Loret was married at least once and had nine children. Some sources claim that his wife separated from him in 1948 when he learned of his family inheritance. In later press articles on Loret, a woman named “Muguette” is mentioned, who allegedly lived with him at the time these articles were written. But it is not clear whether “Muguette” was a second wife or a new couple in fact, or whether she was the mother of her children and had returned with him, or if she had never left him at all.
On 7 June 1978, during the public discussion of the controversy, the historian Werner Maser moved Loret to his own house in Speyer, Germany, in order to isolate him by the intense scrutiny of the press at Loret’s house in Saint- Quentin. Once there, the two visited several places, including the former Dachau concentration camp , at which time Loret was supposed to say “I did not choose my father.”
Maser lived with Loret while he traveled around the world to give lectures on the subject of Loret’s fatherhood, even took him to Tokyo, in order to encourage Loret to give interviews, but the Frenchman seemed rather reserved about Give interviews.
Finally, in 1979, Loret and Maser had a quarrel , and broke relationships. Subsequently, Loret, in collaboration with Rene Mathot , published his autobiography, Ton père s’appelait Hitler (Paris, 1981).
The Loret-Hitler connection
The story of “Hitler’s son” was first revealed to the public in the 1970s, most prominently in several magazines illustrated as Bunte , but also in the most reputed publications such as the historical magazine Zeitgeschichte and the magazine Der Spiegel . The latter published the most influential story in Loret to date under the title “Love in Flanders”.
The ultimate origin of the story of Hitler’s son, at first spread only by word of mouth, was hitherto undetermined, since written accounts claiming that the illegitimate son of a French girl and a German soldier was the Son of Hitler had already been commented about a long time in Loret’s hometown when Loret met the German historian Werner Maser. If the rumors had been put to the world by the own Loret or by others, never has been determined.
Maser maintained that he had heard of a reputed son of Hitler for the first time in 1965 while doing research in Wavrin and surrounding towns. He tracked these reports, met with Loret in the process, and was able to persuade him to let the story be published. From then on, Maser exerted great effort to gather evidence to support it, although historians among them Anton Joachimsthaler have criticized this, alleging that Maser was subordinated in the academic search of the truth in order to pursue the commercial motives, as the Sensationalism and the enjoyment of scandal.
According to Maser’s depiction, the Loret-Hitler connection was as follows: Hitler had met with Charlotte Lobjoie in 1916 in the town of Wavrin, in the part occupied by the Germans of France, while he was there as A soldier, and had begun a sentimental relationship with her. Loret had been conceived in the summer of 1917 at Ardooie or, according to other sources, in the autumn of 1917 at Le Ceteau. The last scenario is the less likely variant, since it would require premature labor.
Maser wrote in his Hitler biography of Hitler and Lobjoie’s relationship:
At the beginning of 1916 the young woman had met the German soldier Adolf Hitler, for the first time. He was first in Premont, fell into a sexual relationship with him, and followed him until the fall of 1917 for, among other places, Seboncourt, Forunes, Wavrin and Noyelles-lès-Seclin in northern France - And in May, June and July 1917, also to Ardooie, in Belgium ‘ (page 528).
Critics of this account pointed out that Maser had no evidence of this beyond Loret’s own claims that they were second-hand.
A genetic certification of his biological inheritance, made at the University of Heidelberg , led to the realization that “Loret might be Hitler’s son”, but that did not have to be so.
Maser claims that Hitler’s paternity tests included Charlotte Lobjoie’s commitment to a French sanatorium (allegedly Hitler’s instruction) after the German invasion of France, and a protracted interrogation of Loret by the Gestapo at the Lutetia Hotel , The headquarters of the Gestapo in Paris, as well as the alleged collaboration of Loret with the Gestapo as a police officer.
Maser’s questioning of Alice Lobjoie, Loret’s aunt and Charlotte’s sister, whom she had wanted to stake as a “witness to the crown” for her claim, yielded instead a negative result: Alice Lobjoie stated that her Sister had in fact had a love affair with a German soldier, but it is vehemently argued that this soldier had been Adolf Hitler. She said she could remember the man’s face quite well and knew that this face had no resemblance to Hitler. In addition, it is stated:
“Jean is a crackpot. Only the Germans were talking about Hitler’s story with him.”
Maser later tried to minimize Lobjoie’s statements in the editions of his most recent book on Hitler, noting the alleged wrath of the aunt in his nephew.
In addition to the claim of Alice Lobjoie, critics of Maser’s thesis such as the historian Joachimsthaler, among others, are introduced in the testimonies of debate of Hitler’s comrades who, in their memories of Hitler in World War I , Unanimously stated that it was absolutely against relations between German soldiers and French women. Balthasar Brandmayer, for example, in his 1932 memoir Two Dispatch-Runners , reported that Hitler had reacted in the most violent terms, against the intention of his regimental partners to get involved with the French and had reproached them for not having ” No German sense of honor. ”
In addition, critics have asserted logical inconsistencies in Maser’s story: that it is highly unlikely that any soldier in the war, let alone a private rank low in the military hierarchy, would have been able to have a lover with him through all Movements of his regiment, which Hitler had done with Lobjoie, according to Maser’s account. Free movement would hardly have been possible in the occupied areas, and the fact that Charlotte has traveled along with the regiment is very doubtful.
The Daily Express states in an article dated 15 February 1985 that a portrait of Loret’s mother after Hitler’s death had been found among his belongings, but there was no evidence for this statement. In fact, a portrait by Adolf Hitler in 1916 that supposedly depicts A Charlotte Lobjoie with a scarf and a fork in his hand was traced to a Belgian businessman in the 1960s and was published in an issue of Panorama magazine From the 1970s. It is therefore unlikely that this same portrait was found among Hitler’s belongings in 1945. One must, in this case, determine the origin of the claim to a misunderstanding.
In more recent time Maser reaffirmed in an interview with the guidance extreme right - National-Zeitung that he was with his thesis, as before, and he maintains that Loret “was unmistakably the son of Hitler”, and that this had Been “recognized in France by officials”. The 12th edition of his book Adolf Hitler: Adolf Hitler: Legend, Myth, Reality - according to Maser, the most translated biography of Hitler in the world, contains a complete section on this subject.
Genetic evidence
In 2008, Belgian journalist Jean-Paul Mulders traveled to Germany, Austria, France and the United States to collect the DNA of the Lorets and Hitler’s last living relatives in Austria and Long Island. When comparing DNA, Mulders claimed to find proof that Jean-Marie Loret was not the son of Adolf Hitler. The results of his research were published in Het Laatste Nieuws, the largest newspaper in Belgium. In February 2009 a book on this subject was published by Herbig Verlag in Munich: Auf der Suche nach Hitlers Sohn - Eine Beweisaufnahme. The news was collected by several international media, including Daily Mail, USA. Today, Bild, Hürriyet, and the China Daily newspaper.
On February 17, 2012, the French magazine Le Point describes new developments, reported that a study by the University of Heidelberg that showed Hitler and Loret were of the same blood group and that another study showed that they had similar calligraphy. The article also states that the official paperwork of the German army shows that officers brought the envelopes of cash to Miss Lobjoie during the occupation of World War II, and that a revised edition of Loret’s book The Name of Your Father is Hitler Was established so that it will be published with new evidence. The magazine also described a suggestion from the family lawyer to be able to claim the royalties from Hitler’s book Mein Kampf . The article was similarly repeated over the following days in other international newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph and National Post . It has also been reported that a grandson has criticized the 2008 Mulders study, claiming that DNA samples from Hitler’s relatives were taken from napkins. However, the dominant point of view is still represented by historians such as Anton Joachimsthaler and Sir Ian Kershaw, that Hitler’s paternity is unlikely or impossible.