What if Adolf Hitler's name had been Adolf Schicklgruber?

[kcwayne]

There has been a lot of discussion regarding how the US is repeating the Nazi mistake and that this country is looking more and more like 1936 Germany.

So I decided to plow into William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to get a better sense of the parallels.

An interesting tidbit about Hitlers father was that he was the illegitimate child of a house maid. Hitler's father was named Alois Schicklgruber. When he was 38 years old an 80+ year old man named Hitler testified in court that he was Alois' paternal father as part of an estate settlement, which is when he then took the name Hitler.

One wonders if Adolf had gone through life as Adolf Schicklgruber whether he would have ever been put in positions of power. Somehow Heil Schicklgruber doesn't have the same resonance.

If the US reelects Bush and we devolve into the Fourth Reich, will historians 500 years from now (assuming that there still is human life on the planet, which given the disposition of the Bush junta is not a safe bet) bemoan the fact that if that judge back in 1875 had not ruled in Schicklgruber's favor, or if Schicklgruber's father had died earlier, the fate of humanity would have been entirely different?

[stryker18]

1. I have a feeling that "Schlicklgruber"

would have been laughed out of every speech he tried to give:

"Das ist ein Schlicklgruber! Heil Schlicklgruber!"

People would have been too busy trying to pronounce it without tripping over their own tongues to listen to what he was saying.

[NervousRex]

2. George W Schicklgruber

...has a nice ring to it.

[Beausoleil]

7. Yeah

"The President of the United States IS named Schicklgruber!" - Firesign Theatre

[kskiska]

3. Heil Schwartzenegger!!!

n/t

[ladjf]

4. Your question is funny as hell. I laughed out loud as I read it.

Seriously, I believe that had his name been Adolf Schicklgruber, there wouldn't have been a WWII. That may sound like a dumb statement.
But, his rise to leadership depended on some very effective "show business" of political theater. With a name like "Schicklgruber", no one could have pronounced it without snickering and that would have been the snicker of death to his movement.

Thanks for the hilarious but yet serious question. You have a profound
insight into the simple mind if the voting public. Unfortunately, so do the propagandists within the Republican Party.

[kcwayne]

8. Thanks, but credit is due to Shirer

He posed the idea of Adolf Schicklgruber and commented on the Heil Schicklgruber conumdrum. He also states that he traveled through the area of Austria where Hitler was born and met a bunch of its residents about which his comments lead one to think of today's mullet haired morans. And he noted that even in its native pronunciation, the name Schicklgruber makes Germans snicker.

[gandalf]

5. Indeed. But there is Shit Schicklgruber

funny idea

[gandalf]

6. What if George W.'s grandpa had not supported Hitler?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html
Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday September 25, 2004

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president

[Endangered Specie]

9. Ahh, thats quite along read...

Good luck finishing it by 2006! ;)

As you will discover (if you read through the first 2 parts)... there are many little details, tidbits and "what if's" that could have easily prevented Hitler's rise to power.

[Cleita]

10. An ambitious and crafty person like Adolf

would immediately have seen the disadvantage and he probably would have shortened it to Schick. Also, another Austrian named Schwarzenegger seems not to have suffered very much from his wordy name. So although it's humorous in English, it's part of the language in German.

[kcwayne]

11. Yes, probably

but according to Shirer, Schicklgruber sounds humorous to Germans as well.

I think Ahnold is a different story, because his unusual name is what made him stand out of the crowd to get noticed enough to be put in movies which gave him fame. By the name he got into politics, all you have to say is Arnold and people know who you are talking about. The lack of seriousness or dignity in his name no longer matters, because you are voting for the Terminator, not some oddball Austrian with a funny last name.