For some reason, I thought Napolean was “The Little Corporal.”
I missed this before. But considering that Stalin’s right arm was crippled from birth and he was apparently very sensitive about it, and the fact that he ordered several million people to their death at the least whim, I’m guessing the nickname “Lefty” was not used much.
I can’t speak as to its accuracy, but the “carpet chewer” story does come from an otherwise credible source: Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. I would guess even if the story wasn’t mistranslated, it wasn’t entirely literal, but rather a poetic description of his bizzare paroxysms.
Napoleon has a much better claim to the tilte of “The Little Corporal”, but Hitler was a corporal during WWI.
I’ve found a reference in Shirer, quoting a a passage from Guderian’s memoirs. It’s one of Guderian’s final encounters with Hitler in February of 1945.
I assume Guderian wrote in German - perhaps some other English writer mistranslated this passage is some other work? (or, it could be Allied wartime propaganda, of course).
Hi Indy!
Also sometimes said “Wolfi”. As far as I know this was the only nickname that he went under as an adult. I think that only Gelli Raubal and Eva Braun called him Wolfi to his face regularly though. I vaguely recall a letter from his sister Paula where she used Wolfi as address as well, but I might be mistaken.
Apparently Hindenburg habitually referred to him disdainfully as “that little corporal from Bavaria.” It stuck with amongst others Churchill who also at times referred to him as “the little corporal.” As noted the nickname is more famously attributed to Mr. Bonaparte.
As for “Der Teppichfresser" (note spelling) this does in fact refer metaphorically to his habit of pacing and thereby wearing carpets down.
Sparc
Hi Indy!
Also sometimes said “Wolfi”. As far as I know this was the only nickname that he went under as an adult. I think that only Gelli Raubal and Eva Braun called him Wolfi to his face regularly though. I vaguely recall a letter from his sister Paula where she used Wolfi as address as well, but I might be mistaken.
Apparently Hindenburg habitually referred to him disdainfully as “that little corporal from Bavaria.” It stuck with amongst others Churchill who also at times referred to him as “the little corporal.” As noted the nickname is more famously attributed to Mr. Bonaparte.
As for “Der Teppichfresser" (note spelling) this does in fact refer metaphorically to his habit of pacing and thereby wearing carpets down.
Sparc
Trivia Hijack:
During the Iran hostage crisis, the Canadian Embassy supplied some fake passports for some Americans to get out of the country.
One of the Americans got a German passport with the name,
Wolfgang A. Muller.
The Iranian checking passports pulled him out of the line.
German passports NEVER have middle initials, they always have the full name.
The American, a quick thinker, spoke in hushed tones:
“My middle name is Adolf, and they made an exception and let me use my middle initial instead.”
He was allowed on the plane and escaped.
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who oversaw Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in 1944, purportedly referred to Rommel as “Bubi” (Baby). There was a vast disparity in their ages. It does not appear to be a term of endearment, either.
On the other side of the fence, General George S. Patton’s diaries and letters are supposedly rife with references to “Omar the Tentmaker,” better known as his boss, General Omar Bradley.
A recent edition of Military History magazine has an interview with a former fifteen-year old conscript with the Luftwaffe antiaircraft corps. In that interview, he says his fellow gunners regularly referred to Field Marshal Hermann Goering as, “Meyer.”
The term of course extends from the fairly famous (and variously translated) quote from Goering, which essentially stated, “if Allied planes ever bomb Berlin, you can call me Meyer,” a short-lived and innacurate boast if ever there was one.
What I didn’t know until I read that interview is that Meyer was a fairly common Jewish German name. I had always thought it was simply a nonsensical, flippant remark, but no, Goering was speaking like the classic Nazi asshole that he was, and was deliciously schooled by it. I’m glad the nickname stuck, at least with the kids.
(Apparently, everyone but me understands this nuance of the quote implicitly, but it was somehow lost on me. We learn something new every day, I guess.)
In his series of “Strange…” books, writer Frank Edwards, whose writings are full of the supernatural, mentioned a woman of the eighth century A. D., St. Odelia, whose prophecy very closely described Hitler and said that this ruler would be called the Antichrist. Edwards said Hitler “was indeed called that, and worse.” My father left the Navy not long after the U. S. entered World War II, and presumably he was in a ship in the Pacific, so he said little about the Fuehrer but I’m sure that, like most people in Allied (and perhaps Axis) countries, he had some cuter sobriquets for Dolf.
Mumble, grumble, bloody fighting ignorance, mumble 
German troops (at least, not sure about civilians) called Hitler GRÖFAZ, abbreviation of Grösster Feldherr Aller Zeite, The Greatest Warlord Of All Time.
Obviously, it was used when a political officer wasn’t around…
…I’ll need one of our pals in Orange to verify this, but I also recall that Dr. Artur Seyss-Inquart, the Nazi ruler of the Netherlands during its occupation, was often symbolized in graffiti by a number, “6 1/4,” which is apparently what his last name sounds like in Dutch.
I guess Shirer’s description of “the carpet chewer” is somewhat disputed (thanks to Sparc for the correct spelling, by the way). Here’s more from “Hitler as his Associates Know Him, Part II. Hitler, Psychological Profile, OSS Study”:
"Almost everyone who has written about Hitler has commented on his rages. These are well known to all of his associates and they have learned to fear them. The descriptions of his behavior during these rages vary considerably. The more extreme descriptions claim that at the climax he rolls on the floor and chews on the carpets. Shirer (279) reports that in 1938 he did this so often that his associates frequently referred to him as ‘Teppichfresser’. Not one of our informants who has been close to Hitler, people like Hanfstaengl, Strasser, Rauschning, Hohenlohe, Friedelinde Wagner, and Ludecke, have ever seen him behave in this manner. Moreover they all are firmly convinced that this is a gross exaggeration and the informant of the Dutch Legation (655) says that this aspect must be relegated to the domain of ‘Greuelmaerchen.’ "