In article ,
vincent p. norris wrote:

Thousands--probably hundreds of thousands--of
Americans have fought against their own or their parents' homelands.
They included William Patrick Hitler, who served in the U.S. Navy in
WWII.

Dan, I recall reading many years ago that Adolph Hitler's real name
was Alois Schickelgruber.

Do you know if that's true?

IIRC, Alois was his father. His given name was Adolph Schicklegruber,
he later changed it to Hitler, his mother's maiden name.

I gather it's well established that Josef Stalin's real name was
Visarionovich Dzugashvili (although probably NOT spelled that way).

He adopted "Stalin" because it means "steel." Did Hitler choose
"Hitler" for some similar reason?

Mostly because it sounded better. ("Heil Schikelgruber!" just doesn't
have the zing, does it?) IIRC, Spike Mulligan had a lot of fun playing
with the name, though that might have been Spike Jones.