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Adolf Hitler

  • Originally published 03/25/2014

    Germany asks: is it OK to laugh at Hitler?

    The Führer found himself reborn in the 21st century in a 2012 comic novel by Timur Vermes, which sold 1.4m copies in Germany. Its success suggests Germans now look at their former leader in the same way as the rest of the world does.

  • Originally published 03/24/2014

    Enough With the Hitler Analogies

    Our understanding of World War II has been deeply enriched by a memory boom of books and research. The same cannot be said by the Hitler analogy boom.

  • Originally published 08/15/2013

    Wiesenthal Center calls for boycott of Adolf Hitler wine

    It's been called "sickening," an "[apology] for fascism," and "an affront to humanity as a whole."But enough about the wine -- it's the label that's causing a furor.The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based human rights organization, has called for a global ban on Italian winemakers Vini Lunardelli, whose "historical line" of wines includes labels featuring images of Adolf Hitler and various Nazi slogans.

  • Originally published 07/28/2013

    Austrian flap over bell dedicated to Hitler

    VIENNA (AP) — Like many others in Austria's countryside, a tower bell above the red-tiled rooftops of Wolfpassing village marks the passing of each hour with an unspectacular "bong." But this bell is unique: It is embossed with a swastika and praise to Adolf Hitler.And unlike more visible remnants of the Nazi era, the bell was apparently overlooked by official Austria up to now.Ensconced in the belfry of an ancient castle where it was mounted by fans of the Nazi dictator in 1939, the bell has tolled on for nearly 80 years. It survived the defeat of Hitler's Germany, a decade of post-war Soviet occupation that saw Red Army soldiers lodge in the castle and more recent efforts by Austria's government to acknowledge the country's complicity in crimes of that era and make amends....

  • Originally published 07/18/2013

    Nazi-themed cafe stirs controversy in Indonesia

    BANDUNG, Indonesia (AP) — Authorities in central Indonesia will ask a restaurant owner to explain his reasons for opening a Nazi-themed cafe that has sparked controversy among locals and tourists, an official said Thursday.Soldatenkaffee includes a red wall of Nazi-related memorabilia, including a large flag with the swastika and a giant picture of Adolf Hitler. Its wait staff dresses in SS, or Schutzstaffel, military uniforms, and can be seen posing in front of the cafe on its Facebook page.The cafe, located in the West Java provincial capital of Bandung, one of Indonesia’s tourist destination cities, has been open since April 2011. But a recent article in a local English-language newspaper has prompted angry responses from some foreigners and Indonesians on social networking sites....

  • Originally published 06/18/2013

    Kim Jong Un handing out copies of "Mein Kampf"

    Senior North Korean officials received copies of “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler’s rambling prison memoir, as gifts for Kim Jong Un’s birthday this January, according to a report by New Focus International, a North Korean news organization that sources from defectors and volunteer citizens within the country.The famous Nazi autobiography was reportedly distributed as what’s called a “hundred-copy book,” which refers to Pyongyang’s practice of circulating an extremely limited number of copies among top officials, though most books are forbidden in North Korea. Gifts marking the leader’s birthday are typically imbued with special political significance.The book was apparently not distributed to endorse Nazism so much as to draw attention to Germany’s economic and military reconstruction after World War One. A North Korean who works on behalf of the country in China told New Focus that Kim gave a speech endorsing Germany’s inter-war revival and encouraging officials to read “Mein Kampf.”...

  • Originally published 06/13/2013

    Ben Urwand, Harvard Junior Fellow, reveals Hollywood moguls' creepy love affair with Hitler

    Adolf Hitler loved American movies. Every night at about 9:00, after the Führer had tired out his listeners with his hours-long monologues, he would lead his dinner guests to his private screening room. The lights would go down, and Hitler would fall silent, probably for the first time that day. He laughed heartily at his favorites Laurel and Hardy and Mickey Mouse, and he adored Greta Garbo: Camille brought tears to the Führer’s eyes. Tarzan, on the other hand, he thought was silly.As it turns out, Hitler’s love for American movies was reciprocated by Hollywood. A forthcoming book by the young historian Ben Urwand, to be published by Harvard University Press in October, presents explosive new evidence about the shocking extent of the partnership between the Nazis and major Hollywood producers. Urwand, a former indie rock musician and currently a member of Harvard’s prestigious Society of Fellows, takes the subject personally: His parents were Jewish refugees from Egypt and Hungary. Digging through archives in Berlin and Washington, D.C., he has unearthed proof that Hollywood worked together with the Nazis much more closely than we ever imagined.

  • Originally published 06/11/2013

    Hitler's alpine retreat getting makeover

    BERLIN (AP) — Adolf Hitler's mountain retreat in Bavaria is getting a makeover, with a 17-million euro ($22.5 million) renovation project that will enlarge the historical information center now there.The Bavarian government said Tuesday that building should begin in 2015....

  • Originally published 06/11/2013

    Eva Braun's letters discovered

    The last words of Eva Braun, Hitler’s long time mistress and wife of a few hours, charting her fear of their certain death, have been discovered....The letters are thought to have been written by Braun to her friend Herta Schneider.Third Reich expert Anna Maria Sigmund insists the letters are genuine and were shown to her by descendants of Schneider.She has published the series of letters in a book called The Women of the Nazis, and told the Daily Mail: “I have no doubt the letters are genuine and Eva Braun has typed them, correcting her faults by hand....

  • Originally published 06/10/2013

    Long-lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg found

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government has recovered 400 pages from the long-lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg, a confidant of Adolf Hitler who played a central role in the extermination of millions of Jews and others during World War Two.A preliminary U.S. government assessment reviewed by Reuters asserts the diary could offer new insight into meetings Rosenberg had with Hitler and other top Nazi leaders, including Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering. It also includes details about the German occupation of the Soviet Union, including plans for mass killings of Jews and other Eastern Europeans....

  • Originally published 05/28/2013

    Kettle that looks like Hitler brews trouble for JCPenney

    Trouble is brewing for an American retailer after customers noted that one of its tea kettles bears a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler.Bemused motorists took photographs of the huge JCPenney billboard advertising the kettle as they drove past it on the 405 Interstate highway near Culver City in California, one of America's busiest stretches of roads."That Hitler looks like a kettle," commented one user of Reddit, one of the several websites where the image was posted over the weekend."He even has his right arm extended," wrote another, while a third added: "I'm a little Nazi, short and stout"....

  • Originally published 05/23/2013

    MI6: Hitler better alive because of his incompetence

    British military chiefs thought Hitler was more use alive than dead in the later stages of the Second World War because of the “blunders” he was making.The view emerged as the Government discussed bombing a rumoured hiding place of the Nazi leader two weeks after the launch of the D-Day landings.MI6 had also been asked to draw up a hit list of key German and French figures ahead of Operation Overlord to ensure the landings were a success, previously secret intelligence files reveal today.But the head of the Secret Service disliked the idea as did another intelligence chief even though there were people he would happily “kill with my own hands” without “spoiling my appetite”....

  • Originally published 05/07/2013

    Glenn Beck compares Michael Bloomberg to Hitler

    Glenn Beck roused the National Rifle Association's annual convention this weekend with his attacks on New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but he also aroused criticism by a major Jewish group for depicting the mayor giving what appears to be a a Nazi salute.The head of the Anti-Defamation League called Becks' comments "deeply offensive on so many levels," and B'nai B'rith called for Beck to apologize."Glenn Beck, the keynote speaker at the NRA's annual convention, trivializes the Holocaust when he compares New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Adolf Hitler," B'nai B'rith told ABC News."The casual use of Nazi imagery or words serves to undermine the atrocities of the Holocaust. Glenn Beck should apologize," the organization said....

  • Originally published 05/02/2013

    Hitler’s food taster talks of Fuhrer's diet

    BERLIN — They were feasts of sublime asparagus — laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role: Adolf Hitler’s food taster.Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler’s food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader in his “Wolf’s Lair,” the heavily guarded command center in what is now Poland, where he spent much of his time in the final years of World War II.“He was a vegetarian. He never ate any meat during the entire time I was there,” Woelk said of the Nazi leader. “And Hitler was so paranoid that the British would poison him — that’s why he had 15 girls taste the food before he ate it himself.”...

  • Originally published 04/03/2013

    Hitler's food taster: one bite away from death

    It might have been something as simple as a portion of white asparagus. Peeled, steamed and served with a delicious sauce, as Germans traditionally eat it. And with real butter, a scarcity in wartime. While the rest of the country struggled to get even coffee, or had to spread margarine diluted with flour on their bread, Margot Wölk could have savored the expensive vegetable dish -- if not for the fear of dying, that is. Wölk was one of 15 young women who were forced to taste Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's food for some two and a half years during World War II.The 24-year-old secretary had fled from her parents' bombed-out Berlin apartment in the winter of 1941, traveling to her mother-in-law's home in the East Prussian village of Gross-Partsch, now Parcz, Poland. It was an idyllic, green setting, and she lived in a house with a large garden. But less than three kilometers (1.9 miles) away was the location that Hitler had chosen for his Eastern Front headquarters -- the Wolf's Lair....

  • Originally published 03/26/2013

    Gun supporters use of Nazi, Hitler references irritates historians

    When the president of Ohio's state school board posted her opposition to gun control, she used a powerful symbol to make her point: a picture of Adolf Hitler. When a well-known conservative commentator decried efforts to restrict guns, he argued that if only Jews in Poland had been better armed, many more would have survived the Holocaust.In the months since the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, some gun rights supporters have repeatedly compared U.S. gun control efforts to Nazi restrictions on firearms, arguing that limiting weapons ownership could leave Americans defenseless against homegrown tyrants.But some experts say that argument distorts a complex and contrary history. In reality, scholars say, Hitler loosened the tight gun laws that governed Germany after World War I, even as he barred Jews from owning weapons and moved to confiscate them.

  • Originally published 03/20/2013

    2/5ths of Austrians: Hitler not all bad

    Forty percent of Austrians believe things were not all bad under Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, according to a poll released Friday by the Market Institute for the Der Standard newspaper. Researchers sampled 502 subjects throughout the country, of varying ages.They found a rise in the number of respondents – 61 percent this time around, mostly elderly Austrians – who favored the idea of a “strong leader who does not have to worry about a parliament or elections” as a leader. The statistic was three times higher than that seen in 2008, 20 percent at the time, the paper reported.Of those surveyed, 42 percent said “not everything was bad under Hitler,” while 57 percent said they saw “no good aspects” to the Nazi era....

  • Originally published 03/20/2013

    Home towns struggle with legacy of Stalin and Hitler

    The birth towns of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler are divided on the issue of how to deal with the legacy of the dictators who slaughtered millions.In some ways it would be hard to imagine two more different places than Gori in Georgia and Braunau am Inn in Austria.Gori, with its crumbling Soviet-era apartment blocks, is set in the foothills of the Caucasus mountains.You can still see scars from the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia, when Russian troops entered the town.It is poor. Even in winter, pensioners try to earn a few pennies, helping cars to park.Braunau, by contrast, is a comfortable little Austrian town, with a beautifully preserved medieval centre.Cross the bridge over the Inn river, close to the main square, and you find yourself in Germany, in Bavaria - one of the wealthiest parts of Europe....

  • Originally published 03/18/2013

    Carlin Romano: Reason, Emotion, and Hitler

    Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle, is a professor of philosophy and humanities at Ursinus College and author of America the Philosophical (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).Adolf Hitler loved books—that nasty bent for book burning notwithstanding—and the book industry loves him back. Type his name into Amazon, and while he doesn't trigger the English-language numbers of Jesus (186,740) or Lincoln (70,710), he registers a solid 18,597—a stunning figure for someone who died less than 70 years ago.

  • Originally published 03/12/2013

    July 20 plotter von Kleist dies

    Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, the last surviving participant in the main plot to kill Adolf Hitler, has died aged 90.Von Kleist, who once volunteered to wear a suicide vest to assassinate the Nazi dictator, died at his home in Munich on Friday, said his wife, Gundula.Von Kleist was born on 10 July 1922, on his family estate Schmenzin in Pomerania, in an area of north-eastern Germany that is now part of Poland.The Von Kleist family was a long line of Prussian landowners, who had served the state for centuries in high-ranking military and administrative positions....

  • Originally published 03/07/2013

    Turkish teens: Hitler right about Jews

    A Dutch researcher who interviewed a group of Muslim immigrant teenage boys from Turkey was shocked at their repeated response to questions about the Holocaust: Hitler should have finished the job, they suggested.“As far as I’m concerned, Hitler should have killed all Jews,” one said on the video, which aired on Nederland 2 TV last month and is now available with English subtitles, The Blaze reported.And another: “On the one hand, I’m satisfied with what Hitler did with the Jews. I am being really honest.” His friends agreed, The Blaze reported.That line of thought is echoed throughout the boys’ school, they said....

  • Originally published 03/05/2013

    New book traces education of Adolf Hitler

    Historian Othmar Plöckinger argues that Adolf Hilter's time in the military facilitated his transformation into a murderous dictator. His new book traces how in the army Hilter acquired skills and an education that he would put to use during his later rise to power. What does a soldier do after his country has lost a war and he is left with nothing, has no education or vocational training, and no family and no friends? He remains a soldier.On Nov. 21, 1918, 10 days after the armistice, lance corporal Adolf Hitler reported for duty at his regiment's garrison in Munich. He was given free rations, a monthly wage of about 40 Marks and a heated place to sleep, an important concession that winter....

  • Originally published 02/27/2013

    German politician: Reichstag fire should be investigated

    The vice president of Germany’s lower house of parliament, Petra Pau, called for a review into the 1933 fire that destroyed the Reichstag in Berlin which helped clear the way for the Nazi rise to power.A communist Dutchman, Marinus van der Lubbe, was sentenced to death for treason and arson in 1933 for setting fire to the parliament building four weeks after Adolf Hitler became chancellor. Historians still debate whether van der Lubbe acted alone or if the Nazis were involved in the crime.“The Reichstag fire is a stigma of German history,” Pau, a member of the Left Party that’s a successor to former East Germany’s ruling communists, said in a speech in Berlin on Feb. 26. “The Bundestag especially should have a particular interest in this and push for a clarification.”...

  • Originally published 02/11/2013

    New satire unleashes Hitler on modern, multi-cultural Germany

    What would happen if Adolf Hitler woke up in modern-day Berlin to find that it was not occupied by Russian soldiers but instead by a vibrant, multicultural citizenry? This is the premise of the debut novel by German journalist Timur Vermes, Er Ist Wieder Da (He’s Back), which has topped Germany’s best-seller list.Narrated in the first-person by Hitler, the story follows the Führer as he awakens from a 66-year sleep in his bunker beneath Berlin to find an entirely changed Germany. In the celebrity-obsessed modern-day city, everyone assumes the fulminating leader of the Nazi party is a comedian in character — and soon he becomes a celebrity with a guest slot on a Turkish-born comedian’s TV show. His bigoted rants are interpreted as a satirical exposure of prejudice, leading him to decide to start his own political party....

  • Originally published 02/04/2013

    Hitler’s Toilet Is in New Jersey

    Florence, N.J., isn’t too different from other small towns in the Garden State, one marked, if anything, by a slew of very ordinary sights—chain flower shops at every major intersection, decidedly lower gas prices, and a few cozy diners. But it is also home to something else, acquired by Greg Kohfeldt when he bought Sam Carlani’s auto-repair shop here almost 20 years ago: Adolf Hitler’s toilet.