Hitler may have had Jewish and African roots

FILE - File photo dated Sept. 28, 1938 showing Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, at left in foreground, and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, at right, taken just before the four power conference in Munich, Germany. As a gesture of friendship, Hitler met Mussolini with his car at the Italo-German frontier. Benito Mussolini was a fierce anti-Semite, who proudly said that his hatred for Jews preceded Adolf Hitler's and vowed to "destroy them all," according to previously unpublished diaries by the Fascist dictator's longtime mistress. According to the diaries, Mussolini also talked about the warm reception he got from Hitler at the 1938 Munich conference - he called the German leader a "softie" - and attacked Pope Pius XI for his criticism of Nazism and Fascism. The dairies kept by Claretta Petacci, Mussolini's mistress, between 1932 and 1938 are the subject of a book coming out the week beginning Monday Nov. 16, 2009, in Italy, entitled "Secret Mussolini." Excerpts were published Monday by Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera and confirmed by publisher Rizzoli. On a more intimate note, Mussolini was explicit about his sexual appetites for his mistress and said he regretted having affairs with several other women. (AP Photo/File)

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler may have had Jewish and African ancestors, according to DNA tests.

Saliva samples taken from 39 relatives of Hitler show he probably had biological links to the Jewish community and people from North Africa, such as the Berbers of Morocco – the “subhuman” races he vowed to exterminate during the Holocaust.

Investigative journalist Jean-Paul Mulders was able to probe Hitler's DNA after taking a serviette dropped by the Fuhrer's great nephew Alexander Stuart-Houston, 61, who lives in Long Island in New York. He also got a sample from an Austrian cousin of the dictator, a farmer known as Norbert H.

The tests revealed a form of the Y-chromosome that is rare in Germany and the rest of western Europe, but common among Jewish and North African groups. Both the test samples had a form of genetic material known as Haplogroup E1b1b, proving an “irrefutable link” to the Nazi leader.

“It is most commonly found in the Berbers of Morocco, in Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, as well as among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. One can, from this, postulate that Hitler was related to people whom he despised,” the British media quoted Mulders as saying in Belgian magazine Knack .

Experts say that Hitler's link to his “migrant ancestors” could go back anything from three to 20 generations.