Fascinated by Freaky Fuhrer Facts? You’ve come to the right place. Here are fifty insane facts about Hitler. Believe us, some of the later ones seem almost too crazy to be true! Fact One! Many people know that Adolf Hitler was a failed art student before becoming a dictator, but fewer people know that he did so badly during his second application to college that he wasn’t even allowed to sit through the entrance exams. Fact Two! Adolf Hitler had a pet German shepherd named Blondi that was given to him as a puppy by a member of the Nazi Party. When the Fuhrer moved into his hidden bunker towards the end of the war, Blondi traveled with him and even met the same fate via a cyanide capsule to avoid his beloved pooch falling into the hands of the Soviets. Fact Three! Hitler was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1939, though this was most likely meant as a backhanded compliment by the Swedish legislator who proposed the nomination. Because the previous German recipient of the peace prize - Carl Von Ossietzky in 1935 - was a journalist critical of the Nazi party, Hitler had already banned the award from being given to any German - resulting in three other Germans needing to decline peace prizes during the time of the Third Reich. Fact Four! Hitler avoided the consumption of meat, as well as smoking and drinking alcohol, but was a known user of several hard drugs such as cocaine and opiates. Perhaps in an effort to follow their leader, it was common practice for Nazi soldiers to take doses of crystal meth before battle - a twist on the old stories of Germanic berserkers, warriors who would enter a chemically altered state and fight as though they were possessed by animal spirits on the battlefield. Some even speculate that Hitler was tweaking on methamphetamines during the 1936 Olympic games, and a video of Hitler freaking out and fidgeting in the stands briefly went viral in 2022 after being featured on The Joe Rogan Experience. Fact Five! It’s believed by some historians that Hitler impregnated a French teenager during his service in World War I, though the identity of his child was never confirmed. Any claims of parentage would likely be wild speculation, but it’d certainly make for an exciting episode of Maury. Fact Six! Though Hitler was born in Austria, he became a German nationalist from a young age, using the “heil” greeting among his peers. He would go on to change his nationality and spend the rest of his life as a German citizen. Austria is likely quite happy he’s associated more with their neighbors than them. Fact Seven! Hitler’s father, Alois Hitler, was born with the surname Schlickgruber, but changed it later in life to match his stepfather: Johann Georg Hiedler. For unknown reasons, the spelling of Hiedler was changed to Hitler, but either way - the Fuhrer’s name might have been Adolf Schlickgruber. Though we’re not sure he would have caught on as a charismatic dictator with such an unwieldy name. Fact Eight! Hitler blamed the German defeat during World War I on communism - the entire economic system which he believed was a conspiracy perpetrated by a shadowy league of Jewish people. This conspiracy continues to exist today, with the phrase “Cultural Marxism” or “Cultural Bolshevism” often being a coded reference to it among certain fringe, far-right organizations and movements. Hitler’s legacy of virulent antisemitism is sadly still alive and well. Fact Nine! A 21st-century art critic once reviewed Hitler’s paintings without being told who the original artist was. While the critic said the paintings were technically competent, the human figures that Hitler painted were lifeless, and this indicated a lack of interest in the lives of other people. Given Hitler and his men extinguished millions of those lives with seemingly no remorse, the critic may have been onto something there. Fact Ten! Hitler was well known for his thoughts on eugenics, and belief in the chosen Aryan race, but the features of his own skull were once described by a German professor of phrenology as follows: “bad race, mongrel, low receding forehead, ugly nose, broad cheekbones, small eyes, and dark hair.” Phrenology is, for the record, a completely bunk pseudoscience popular in early Racist and Eugenicist movements. There’s no honor among bigots, it seems. Fact Eleven! After being kicked out of art school in December of 1909, Hitler had to resort to living inside a homeless shelter in Vienna. He was only able to recover financially when his father’s inheritance money bailed him out. Fact Twelve! Carl Jung - a famous Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist who, along with Sigmund Freud, is considered to be one of the fathers of the psychological school of Psychoanalysis - believed that Hitler had essentially feminine instinct when it came to the quality and style of his handwriting. The study of handwriting analysis doesn’t hold the water it used to, but it’s a strange and interesting thought nonetheless. Fact Thirteen! Hitler would sometimes show graphic images of animals being slaughtered before dinner parties in order to discourage his guests from eating meat. It’s believed that he witnessed an autopsy of a farm animal as a child, and never wanted to consume meat again. This makes it extra bizarre that he’d spend the rest of his life treating human beings like livestock for the slaughter. Fact Fourteen! The Fuhrer often made significant decisions in governing Germany without consulting any of his advisors. Since much of Hitler’s power was autocratic, these decisions were rarely questioned or walked back. And if you disputed Hitler’s choices, especially closer to the end of his reign, you would likely find yourself up against the firing wall for treason. Fact Fifteen! The death of Adolf Hitler was announced to the public on May 1, 1945, the same day of the month that Osama Bin Laden’s death was announced in 2011. A great month for the deaths of incredibly dangerous men, it seems. Fact Sixteen! In all of the elections he ran in prior to 1933, Hitler never received the popular vote, and the highest amount of support that the Nazi party was able to obtain was around 37%. It’s a disturbing fact that apathy for Hitler’s bigoted and authoritarian policies was just as, if not more, responsible for his rise to power than active support for them. Fact Seventeen! The infamous toothbrush mustache that is associated with Hitler is actually a holdover from his service in World War I, as the shorter facial hair made it easier to wear a gas mask. Before that, Hitler’s mustache had been done in the full Kaiser style. British actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin wasn’t pleased with the similarity to his own toothbrush stache but managed to turn lemons into lemonade by lampooning Hitler in his famed 1940 satire, The Great Dictator. Fact Eighteen! Hitler’s parents were second cousins, and three out of his five siblings died in childbirth - possibly due to complications resulting from inbreeding. It’s a terrible shame for all of us that Adolf wasn’t one of them. Fact Nineteen! Hitler was known to whistle tunes to himself, including the tune of “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Disney’s Pinnochio. We’re sorry to anyone who had that song ruined for them by this fact. Strangely, the legacy of Hitler and Disney have become forever tied. Hitler believed that Disney’s breakout feature hit, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was one of the greatest movies ever made. There have been multiple claims that Walt Disney himself was a Nazi sympathizer, with dubious evidence both for and against. The most likely origin of the theory was that Walt Disney did once give leading Nazi propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl - most famous for creating Triumph of the Will - a tour around Walt Disney studios in 1938. Fact Twenty! There is only one recording of Hitler’s ordinary speaking voice, done in secret. This was due to the fact that Hitler supposedly hated the sound of his voice when not delivering a prepared speech. Fact Twenty-One! Hitler distributed at least 50 blow-up dolls modeled after blonde-haired, blue-eyed women among his soldiers as a preventative measure against STDs. The soldiers didn’t want to take the dolls and refused to carry them into battle for fear the assets might be seized by the allies, humiliating the German army. The joke is on them, of course, because all of us know now - And yes, it’s pretty humiliating. Fact Twenty-Two! On D-Day, Hitler slept through the storming of the Beach of Normandy and was reluctant to deploy troops when he awoke - thinking that the allies must have been pulling some kind of trick. Imagine hitting the snooze button while experiencing one of the most damning defeats of the entire war. If that’s not an argument for waking up early, we don’t know what is. Fact Twenty-Three! It’s believed that Theodor Morell, Hitler’s personal physician, would inject him with a variety of testosterone-enhancing drugs before he spent the night with his mistress Eva Braun. These included a selection of drugs derived from the genitals of juvenile bulls. Fact Twenty-Four! British spies once planned to use research into hormone therapy to “feminize” Hitler using estrogen. While poison would have been detected by Hitler’s tasters - who were all young women - estrogen would affect the dictator more subtly and supposedly make him more like his docile sister Paula. Like many of the more unusual schemes of British intelligence, it was not put into action. Fact Twenty-Five! Over the course of his life, Hitler’s hatred for the religion of Christianity grew to a boiling point, calling it a “religion for slaves” and disparaging it for its meekness. In contrast, he was won over by the religious traditions of Japan as well as the ideals found within Islam. Fact Twenty-Six! During his service in the German Army in World War I, Hitler was injured in a mustard gas attack and spent the rest of the war recovering from the resulting blindness. Doctors at the time believed many of his symptoms were caused by his altered mental state after the war. Fact Twenty-Seven! A friend of Adolf Hitler, Ernst Hanfstaengl, studied at Harvard and gave Hitler the idea for the “Sieg Heil” chant and salute from observing the cheerleaders at American football games. Fact Twenty-Eight! In 1993, Hitler was baptized by the Mormon church in an effort to include all human beings who have ever lived on Earth in their traditions. The same was also done for the infamous Vlad the Impaler, who surprisingly was a real historical figure who served as a basis for Dracula. Fact Twenty-Nine! Hitler was believed by some Historians to have had severe health problems towards the end of his life, including the tell-tale full-body shakes caused by Parkinson’s disease. While the Fuhrer and the rest of the Nazi government always tried to project a strong image, Hitler likely suffered from lapses in memory and judgment as well. Fact Thirty! Hitler’s administration held the German Jewish community financially responsible for the destruction of property and loss of life that occurred on Kristallnacht. He not only pushed the propaganda that led to racialized violence but directly benefited from it in a financial sense. Fact Thirty-One! Time magazine selected Adolf Hitler as person of the year back in 1938 because it was believed that Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement towards him would have prevented another world war. The choice turned out to be a mistake, given that Hitler continued to pursue his goals of German expansion. Fact Thirty-Two! The famous British World War II song “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball” might have been based in fact, as Hitler was found to have lived with Cryptorchidism - a condition where one of the testicles does not descend from the body. Technically, there were two, but by all appearances… Well, you get the idea. Fact Thirty-Three! Hitler refused to undress for medical examinations and nearly any other circumstance. His recorded weight of around 155 lbs was only the closest estimate because the weight of his clothing had to be factored in. Fact Thirty-Four! A historical biographer named Volker Ullrich discovered that Hitler had been very loose with his personal funds, spending thousands on fancy clothes and other luxury goods. Fact Thirty-Five! When Hitler came into power, he made himself free of taxes and thus was able to avoid the enormous amount of tax debt that he had been dodging for years. He also never declared his income despite the fact that he was undoubtedly making millions from his book sales and salaries. Fact Thirty-Six! Hitler was a known chocoholic and would consume at least two pounds of the confectionary every day. Ironically, towards the end of the war, the Third Reich would hand out chocolate and other candy as a recruitment method to bring in teenage conscripts. Fact Thirty-Seven! Hitler kept a picture of his mother on his person ever since her death in 1907 - all the way up until his fateful days in the bunker. Fact Thirty-Eight! Hitler never personally visited any of the concentration camps during the war, even though he had personally authorized all the killings and ethnic cleansing that took place there. Fact Thirty-Nine! According to a German newspaper, in 1894, a four-year-old Hitler was rescued from drowning in a freezing river by a priest named Johann Kuehberger. This incident initially made the young boy want to become a priest when he got older - if only we lived in that timeline. Fact Forty! While practicing his speeches, Hitler took photographs of himself in dramatic poses as a way of psyching himself up. Who knew that a tyrannical dictator could also be a selfie fanatic? Fact Forty-One! The development of the Volkswagen Beetle was commissioned by Adolf Hitler in the 1930s as a car that would bring joy to the German people. He laid the cornerstone of the original Volkswagen factory himself. So, if it weren’t for Hitler, we wouldn’t have had Herby the Love Bug. Truly, he was history’s most awful monster. Fact Forty-Two! Hitler seemed creepily obsessed with his half-niece, Angel Maria Raubal, who was also known by her nickname “Geli.” Hitler kept Geli inside his apartment and forbade her from having any friendships or relationships, and she would later die a tragic and mysterious death from a gunshot wound… Caused by Hitler’s own Walther Pistol. Hitler was immediately ruled out as a suspect by authorities at the time, but historians have argued about the possibility of Hitler killing his own half-niece in a jealous rage for decades since. Fact Forty-Three! William Patrick Hitler was the name of Adolf Hitler’s nephew who fought for the allies. Apparently, Willy H. was tired of all the jobs that old Uncle Adolf kept getting him, so he ran away to the United States and rebelled against his family name. And considering how Hitler treated his half-niece, who could blame his nephew for getting out of dodge before things started getting equally creepy? Fact Forty-Four! Adolf Hitler suffered from ailurophobia, which meant that he was afraid of cats - a trait supposedly shared by fellow authoritarian leaders Benito Mussolini, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Fact Forty-Five! In a shockingly rare showing of humanitarian concern from Hitler, the Fuhrer was the first European leader to ban the operation of human zoos in his country. And yes, human zoos were indeed a common practice in Europe, as horrifically barbaric as it sounds. Fact Forty-Six! Newlywed couples in Nazi Germany were given a copy of Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf after they tied the knot for free. And the award for most poorly aged wedding gift goes to… Fact Forty-Seven! The first ballistic missile introduced into warfare - the V-2 Rocket - was developed under Hitler’s regime. Fact Forty-Eight! Hitler planned to build a grim museum that would house all of the artifacts from the races his policies of ethnic cleansing would make extinct. Fact Forty-Nine! After his first failed coup, the Beer Hall Putsch, Adolf Hitler spent five years in German prison. That’s where he wrote Mein Kampf. Fact Fifty! Eduard Bloch, a Jewish doctor who was the Hitler family physician during Adolf’s youth, was spared the horrors of the concentration camps as Hitler believed him to be a “noble jew” and went as far as to say “if all the jewish people were like [Bloch] there would be no Jewish question.” It’s less a shocking display of empathy for an evil man, and more a sign that he was a truly repulsive hypocrite all the way down. Now watch “Hitler’s Plans for the World if He Won”. Or watch this video instead!