AN Oxfordshire village has been named as the birthplace of a possible lovechild of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

A television documentary this week will claim Unity Mitford - one of the famous Mitford sisters - may have given birth to a child in Wigginton after returning from an unsuccessful trip to snare Hitler just before the war.

Miss Mitford did spend time in a maternity hospital in the village, which is near Hook Norton, as she recuperated from shooting herself in the head in Munich, Germany, at the outbreak of war.

But last night the claims were met with scepticism and bemusement from villagers.

Martin Bright, a writer for The New Statesman magazine, said he received a phone call five years ago from a woman called Val Hann, suggesting that her aunt, Betty Norton, had run a nursing home during the war, and that Unity Mitford had been one of her patients.

Mr Bright wrote: "Her aunt's business, in the tiny village of Wigginton, had depended on discretion and she had told no-one except her sister that Unity had a baby. Her sister had passed the story on to her daughter, Val."

The baby was apparently given up for adoption, raising the prospect that somewhere in Britain today is the Fuhrer's 67-year-old lovechild.

Mr Bright visited Wigginton and met Audrey Smith, who is in her 70s, who said that as a child she saw Unity Mitford wrapped in a blanket and looking very ill.

The nursing home closed in 1950, but the property, Hill View Cottage, still exists. Mr Bright received confirmation that the nurse had worked there as a midwife at the right time.

But there was no record of Unity being there, let alone a baby being born to her.

Village historian Mick Salt said Unity went to the nursing home to convalesce after trying to commit suicide when her love pursuit of Hitler came to nothing.

Mr Salt said: "She virtually stalked Hitler, and while he was aware of her, he tolerated rather than welcomed her.

"When war was declared she was in an impossible situation, and she tried to commit suicide by shooting herself.

"But she was only seriously injured and was sent back to England.

"Her parents knew of the Wigginton nursery home, where wealthy women went to give birth.

"I think that is how the lovechild theory came about. People put two and two together and assumed that Unity must have been pregnant.

"But she arrived in Wigginton on a stretcher, and was there purely to recover from her gunshot wounds."

Mrs Smith said: "We lived next to the nursing home and my sister Joan worked there. It was little more than a two-bedroom cottage, with the owner Nurse Betty Norton in one, and the patient in the other. I can say with absolute certainty that Unity did not have a child."

Dave Garland, the landlord of the White Swan pub, joked: "We are all wearing jackboots now and looking for someone with a small moustache and slanted hair! People in the village are talking about this but I don't think it's true because Hitler was supposed to be impotent."

Unity died aged 33 in 1948 of a brain injury, according to her death certificate.

  • Hitler's British Girl is on Channel 4 on Thursday at 9pm.