When Hitler rose to power in Germany and Europe, he made Paula change her name from Paula Hitler to Paula Wolff - Wolff was Adolf Hitler's nickname.

She later told:

"The first time that my brother suggested my changing my name was at the Olympic Games in Garmisch. He wanted me to live under the name of Wolff, and maintain the strictest incognito. That was sufficient for me. From then on I kept this name. I added the Mrs. as I thought that less conspicuous."

Soon Paula was dismissed from her job. Hitler decided to give her 250 Marks a month, raising the figure to 500 Marks after the Annexation of Austria into the German Reich, The Anschluss, in 1938. In addition he gave her a present of 3000 Marks every Christmas and helped her buy a villa. Occasionally she would visit him in the Obersalzberg but rarely for more than two weeks.

The 2005 discovery of a journal written by Paula Hitler showed she was once engaged to Dr. Erwin Jekelius, an Austrian associated with crimes against humanity during the Holocaust as one of the Third Reich's most notorious euthanasia doctors. Hitler was against the marriage and Jekelius was sent to the Eastern front. He died in a Soviet prison in 1952 while serving a 25-year-sentence for killing 4,000 civilians including hundreds of children during the Nazi Euthanasia Program.

Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and early on the morning on April 29 he hastily dictated his last will to his secretary, Frau Traudl Junge. He nominated Martin Bormann as his executor and asked him to hand over to his relatives " .. everything that has a sentimental value or is necessary for the maintenance of a modest simple life."

Until the last weeks of the war, Paula Hitler lived in Vienna where she was arrested by US Intelligence officers in May, 1945. During the interrogations, she told how her brother had been deeply affected by his mother's death when he was 18. After breaking into tears, she said: Please remember, he was my brother:

"The personal fate of my brother affected me very much. He was still my brother, no matter what happened. His end brought unspeakable sorrow to me, as his sister .."

Paula was released and returned to Vienna to work in an arts and crafts shop. On December 1, 1952, she moved to a two-room flat near Berchtesgaden, Hitler's mountaintop retreat on the German-Austrian border, where she lived in seclusion under the last name of Wolf until her death on June 1, 1960.

Paula Hitler, who never married or had children, is buried in the Bergfriedhof in Berchtesgaden as the only member of the immediate family to carry the name Hitler on her tombstone.

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