50 Fun Facts About Adolf Hitler

Which comedian, born four days before Adolf Hitler, mocked him in the 1940 film The Great Dictator?

Charlie Chaplin played the ranting ruler Adenoid Hynkel in what was his first true sound film. He later wrote that he could not have made it had he known the true extent of the Holocaust.

Which American magazine named Adolf Hitler its Man of the Year for 1938, judging influence, not merit?

Time gives the title to whoever most shaped the year's events, for good or ill, and chose Hitler after the Munich summit redrew the map of Europe. Ayatollah Khomeini was a later controversial pick.

Adolf Hitler, who also all but gave up alcohol, kept to which diet from 1942 until his death?

Vegetarian dishes were all his food taster Margot Wölk recalled testing, with no meat or fish. At dinner he would describe animal slaughter in graphic detail to put his guests off their meat.

Whom did Adolf Hitler marry in his Berlin bunker less than 40 hours before they both died?

Eva Braun met Hitler in 1929, aged 17, while working as an assistant to his photographer Heinrich Hoffmann. She attended no public events with him until the middle of 1944.

Blondi, the dog Martin Bormann gave Adolf Hitler as a puppy in 1941, belonged to which breed?

German Shepherd Blondi was allowed to sleep in Hitler's bed in the bunker, and she had a litter of five puppies in spring 1945. He named one Wulf, his own favourite nickname.

Which city's Academy of Fine Arts twice rejected Adolf Hitler, who then sold paintings of its sights?

Vienna's academy turned him down twice, and its director suggested architecture instead. Hitler lacked the school certificate for that, and by 1909 he was living in homeless shelters.

Which country, where Adolf Hitler was born, did Germany annex in the March 1938 Anschluss?

Austria was his birthplace, in a small town on the Bavarian border, but he gave up its citizenship in 1925. He then spent almost seven years stateless before becoming a German citizen.

For which award was Adolf Hitler nominated in 1939 by a Swedish MP, as a satire he soon withdrew?

Nobel Peace Prize nominee Hitler was put forward by the antifascist MP Erik Brandt, purely to ridicule a rival nomination of Britain's prime minister. Brandt quickly withdrew the letter.

Which American sprinter's four golds at the 1936 Berlin Olympics undercut Hitler's racial theories?

Jesse Owens won the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and sprint relay, the most successful athlete of the Games. He later said it was his own president, not Hitler, who had snubbed him.

Which carmaker did Hitler's regime found in 1937 to sell families a car designed by Ferdinand Porsche?

Volkswagen collected weekly instalments from German savers for the promised car, yet war broke out in 1939 and none of them ever received one.

Which book, part memoir and part manifesto, did Adolf Hitler begin in jail after his failed 1923 coup?

Mein Kampf almost carried a far clumsier title: Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice. By 1933 its sales had earned Hitler about 1.2 million Reichsmarks.

Which president, a First World War field marshal, appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor in January 1933?

Paul von Hindenburg had beaten Hitler in the 1932 presidential election and privately dismissed him as a mere corporal. Conservative politicians talked the 85-year-old into the appointment.

Adolf Hitler's failed 1923 attempt to seize power in Munich began in what kind of venue?

A beer hall, the Bürgerbräukeller, was where Hitler fired a pistol shot into the ceiling to silence a crowd of 3,000. The march next day ended in a gunfight with police, and he was arrested two days later.

Which country did Hitler invade on 1 September 1939, leading Britain and France to declare war?

Poland was attacked the morning after German units dressed as its soldiers staged a fake raid on a German radio station at Gleiwitz. Hitler used the incident as his pretext for war.

Which ancient symbol did Adolf Hitler set in a white circle on the red Nazi Party flag in 1920?

The swastika flag kept the black, white and red of the old imperial colours, which Hitler said he treasured as a former soldier. It became Germany's only national flag in 1935.

Which dictator's 1922 March on Rome inspired Adolf Hitler to attempt his own coup a year later?

Benito Mussolini later needed Hitler's help: German paratroopers freed him from a mountain hotel prison in 1943. Partisans shot him two days before Hitler's own death.

Which decoration did Adolf Hitler win in 1918 on the recommendation of Hugo Gutmann, his Jewish superior?

Iron Cross, First Class, was rarely awarded at Hitler's lowly rank. Gutmann was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938, freed by SS men who knew his history, and escaped to New York in 1940.

Which code name, taken from a medieval emperor, did Hitler give the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union?

Operation Barbarossa sent more than 3.8 million Axis troops across a 2,900-kilometre front, the largest military offensive in history. It broke a non-aggression pact signed less than two years earlier.

Which Volga city did Hitler forbid his encircled Sixth Army to abandon before its 1943 surrender?

Stalingrad made the Sixth Army the first of Hitler's field armies ever to surrender. He had insisted it could be supplied from the air, but the airlift never delivered what the trapped men needed.

Adolf Hitler's Liverpool-born half-nephew William Patrick Hitler joined which country's navy in 1944?

United States Navy service earned William Patrick Hitler a Purple Heart after he was wounded in action. On his discharge he changed his surname to Stuart-Houston and settled in New York state.

Which deputy of Adolf Hitler flew alone to Scotland in May 1941 hoping to arrange talks with a duke?

Rudolf Hess had never even spoken to the Duke of Hamilton, whom he wrongly believed led a British faction opposed to the war. He stayed in custody for the rest of his life, dying in 1987 aged 93.

Which propaganda minister did Hitler's will name as chancellor, a post he held for a single day?

Joseph Goebbels moved his family into the bunker complex and outlived Hitler by one day. He and his wife took their own lives after their six children had been poisoned.

Which colonel planted the briefcase bomb that failed to kill Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in July 1944?

Claus von Stauffenberg had lost an eye, his right hand and two fingers in Tunisia, so arming the bomb was a struggle. A solid-oak table leg shielded Hitler, and the colonel was shot that night.

Which British prime minister flew to Germany three times in September 1938 to bargain with Hitler?

Neville Chamberlain, then 69, had barely flown before his first trip to meet Hitler in the Bavarian Alps. Two more flights followed within a fortnight, the last of them to Munich.

Which city hosted Hitler's annual Nazi Party rallies and gave its name to the 1935 race laws?

Nuremberg staged the rallies with mass parades and military ritual, and Leni Riefenstahl filmed them for audiences at home and abroad. Hitler chose the 1935 rally to announce the race laws.

Which building's burning in February 1933 gave Hitler a pretext to suspend civil liberties?

The Reichstag burned four weeks to the day after Hitler took office, and a Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was arrested inside. Mass arrests of communists followed.

During his only visit to Paris, in June 1940, Adolf Hitler paid homage at whose tomb?

Napoleon lies under the dome of Les Invalides, which Hitler reached on a rapid tour by car guided by a sculptor who had lived in the city. That December he had the emperor's son reburied beside him.

Hitler's last major offensive in the west, through the Ardennes in December 1944, goes by what name?

The Battle of the Bulge was the largest and bloodiest single battle American forces fought in the war. Hitler hoped to retake the port of Antwerp and split the Allied armies in two.

The Holocaust under Hitler killed roughly how many Jews, about two-thirds of those living in Europe?

The 6 million Jewish victims were killed mainly in mass shootings and in the gas chambers of extermination camps. Millions of other civilians and prisoners of war were murdered too.

Which title did Adolf Hitler take in August 1934 after merging the presidency with the chancellorship?

Führer became his formal style under a law his cabinet passed the day before the old president died. A plebiscite on 19 August then endorsed the merger with 88 per cent of the vote.

What name is given to Adolf Hitler's style of moustache, also worn by comedian Oliver Hardy?

Toothbrush moustaches first caught on in America before spreading to Germany. A soldier from Hitler's regiment claimed he adopted his after being ordered to trim it to fit a gas mask, a story never proven.

Hitler made France sign the 1940 armistice in what setting, the scene of Germany's own armistice in 1918?

A railway carriage was hauled out of its museum and placed on the exact spot in Compiègne Forest where it stood in 1918. Hitler sat in Marshal Foch's chair, then had the site demolished days later.

Which treaty, limiting Germany's army and taking its territory, did Hitler win fame by attacking?

The Treaty of Versailles was openly defied in March 1935, when Hitler announced an army of 600,000, six times the size it allowed, along with a new air force.

Which fighter ace, long Hitler's chosen successor, lost every office in April 1945 over a telegram?

Hermann Göring cabled to ask whether he should take over once he heard Hitler meant to die in Berlin. Bormann persuaded Hitler it was a coup, and Göring was expelled from the party and arrested.

Which police chief did Hitler order arrested in April 1945 for secretly seeking talks with the Allies?

Heinrich Himmler had used his masseur as a go-between to reach a Swedish count, hoping to open talks behind Hitler's back. He went into hiding but was captured by British forces.

Which armaments minister quietly ignored Hitler's March 1945 order to destroy German infrastructure?

Albert Speer persuaded generals and regional party leaders to ignore the scorched-earth order. It became known as the Nero Decree, after the emperor blamed in legend for burning Rome.

Which 2004 film starring Bruno Ganz as Hitler in his final days inspired countless internet parodies?

Downfall drew on the memoir of Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge, and Ganz spent four months studying a rare recording of Hitler's ordinary speaking voice. It earned an Oscar nomination.

Which composer's operas drew Hitler, a devoted admirer, to the Bayreuth festival from 1923 onward?

Richard Wagner's Lohengrin was the favourite: the young Hitler sat through ten performances of it. Other leading Nazis resented being made to attend the lengthy operas at his insistence.

Which SA chief and early ally did Hitler have shot in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934?

Ernst Röhm was given the chance to take his own life in a Munich prison cell, refused, and was shot on 1 July 1934. His talk of a second revolution had alarmed conservative elites and industrialists.

Which economic shock helped lift Hitler's party from 12 parliamentary seats in 1928 to 107 in 1930?

The Wall Street Crash set off the Great Depression, and voters deserting the moderate parties turned to the Nazis and the Communists. Hitler's party took 18.3 per cent in 1930, the second-largest share.

Which 1933 law, opposed only by the Social Democrats, let Hitler's cabinet bypass parliament?

The Enabling Act passed by 444 votes to 94 after the Communists had been banned and 26 Social Democrat deputies arrested or driven into hiding. Otto Wels was the only party leader to speak against it.

Which Munich student was executed in 1943 for distributing anti-Hitler leaflets with the White Rose?

Sophie Scholl was 21 when a university caretaker saw her scatter leaflets with her brother Hans and reported them. Both were tried for treason and guillotined the same day.

In which prison did Adolf Hitler serve under nine months of his five-year sentence for the 1923 putsch?

Landsberg held him for just 264 days in 1924, and he used them to dictate his manifesto. Bavaria's Supreme Court pardoned him that December over the state prosecutor's objections.

Which admiral, former head of the U-boat fleet, did Hitler's will name as the next head of state?

Karl Dönitz led a short-lived government based at Flensburg and oversaw the unconditional surrender a week later. The Allies dissolved his cabinet on 23 May 1945.

Which organisation was the female branch of the Hitler Youth, taking in members aged 14 to 18?

The League of German Girls grew into the largest female youth organisation of its day, with over 4.5 million members once joining became compulsory. Ten- to 14-year-olds had a junior section of their own.

Which former teacher wrote the Newbery Honor book Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow?

Susan Campbell Bartoletti built the book around the stories of twelve young Germans, some of whom served the regime and some of whom resisted it. One story became her novel The Boy Who Dared.

Which ex-chancellor urged the president to appoint Hitler, expecting to rein him in as vice-chancellor?

Franz von Papen naively believed Hitler could be reined in once in government and took the vice-chancellorship for himself. He was acquitted of all charges at the main post-war trial.

Which Berlin suburb hosted the 1942 conference where Reinhard Heydrich coordinated the Final Solution?

Wannsee's lakeside villa had been bought by the SS security service as a guest house. There Heydrich told ministry representatives how Europe's Jews would be rounded up and sent to extermination camps.

Alois Hitler wanted his son Adolf to follow him, not become an artist, into what career?

Customs official Alois once took the boy to see a customs office, an outing Hitler later described as the start of a bitter feud. He claimed he then did badly at school on purpose, hoping to be left to paint.

Which First World War general marched with Hitler in the 1923 Munich coup and was acquitted at trial?

Erich Ludendorff went on to run for president in 1925 with Nazi backing and won just 1.1 per cent of the vote. Hitler may have urged him to stand precisely because the result would humiliate him.