Nazi leader Adolf Hitler might have married a woman of Jewish descent, according to DNA analysis conducted for a television documentary.

The Channel 4 programme will claim that Eva Braun, the lover whom the anti-Semitic fuhrer married shortly before they both killed themselves in 1945, was possibly of Jewish ancestry.

The Dead Famous DNA film, to be screened next Wednesday, tested hair samples which are said to have come from a hairbrush used by Braun and which were discovered at Hitler's mountain retreat.

The German leader, behind the mass extermination of Jews during the Second World War, was 23 years older than his lover - who fell in love with him when she was a teenager - and worried that the ­relationship would affect his image, he kept her largely hidden away at his Alpine residence, the Berghof.

A team of scientists ­examined the hair and they found a particular sequence within the DNA, which the channel said was "strongly associated" with Ashkenazi Jews, who make up around 80% of the global Jewish population.

Many Ashkenazi Jews in Germany converted to Catholicism in the 19th century.

The hairs came from a hairbrush found at the Bavarian residence by an American army intelligence officer who had privileged access to the property and took a number of items from Braun's apartment.