Okay, so possibly dumb question, but … how do you spell his name, anyway? Was it “Adolf” or “Adolph”? I’ve seen both, frequently, but which is right?
I’ve seen ‘Adolf’ far more commonly used than ‘Adolph’. In fact I don’t remember seeing ‘Adolph’ much at all.
Perhaps I exaggerated when I said that I’ve seen “Adolph” frequently. But I have seen it quite a few times, enough that I’m uncertain of the answer.
Google.
“Adolf Hitler” 835,000 hits
“Adolph Hitler” 161,000 hits
Well I never. All those documentaries I watched on adolf and ww2 and I never thought of his name having two common spellings.
“Adolph Hitler” returned 1 book written about Hitler by Walter Adolph Broschiert.
“Adolf Hitler” returned 460 books about Hitler, including Mein Kampf.
I’m going to go with Adolf.
It surprises me that amazon.de would carry Mein Kampf. I do know that Germany has banned anything Nazi inside its borders since the late 1940s at least.
Doing some googling for Hitler’s signature, he seemed to spell his name “Adolf” (although he didn’t have very good handwriting…here are some signatures)
I don’t find it that surprising.
Nazi Campaign poster uses Adolf. 2nd link has a cover of MK using that spelling
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/posters/hindhit.jpg
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/posters/mk.jpg
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/posters/hand.jpg
Very, very minor historical-related mini-rant:
it annoys me out of all proportion to hear the name pronouced as “Ay-dolf,” rather than the proper “Ah-dolf.” US documentaries seem to be the worst for this.
It used to be the convention in the American press to Anglicize the spelling of all foreign names, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you found a lot of 1920s or 1930s American examples of “Adolph.”
I think it’s fairly recently that the American press had largely adopted the rule of spelling foreigners’ names exactly how they want them spelled. Roberto Clemente, the 1960s baseball player, was routinely referred to as “Bobby Clemente,” in order to avoid that furrin “Roberto,” even though Clemente himself made it clear that he didn’t want to be called “Bobby.”
In fact, my AP Stylebook still says, for example, that Russians named “Aleksandr” (the spelling you would get by transliterating from Cyrillic) should be referred to in print as “Alexander.”
ay-dolf was as bad s’DAM hasseyn, who was leader of ay-raq, a place where ay-rabs live.
Why not?
Well Germany is a modern european capitalist country, World War 2 and Hitler were over 60 years ago why would a valid piece of Germany’s s history be unavailable on the german flavour of Google?
It’s a question having to do with the German Spelling Reforms.
There’s a scene in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” where the actor playing Hitler signs a book for Indy…he signs it “Adolph Hitler” with his right hand. This scene never fails to crack me up because:
A: It is spelled Adolf.
B: Hitler was left handed.
Oh, well.
And I think Germany has a law against buying or selling Nazi stuff, not against owning it. My host mom’s dad was in WWII and he had plenty of Nazi shit in his basement. I doubt it was illegal for him to keep it.
Nor do I. How could someone condemn Hitler’s ideas without having access to his book?
Lobsang, rfgdxm, can a person buy a swastika in Germany as of now? Can a German in Germany legally try to resurrect the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, aka National Socialist German Workers’ Party, aka the Nazis)? To my understanding, both of those things are illegal.
If those things would be illegal, what would legitimize the seminal work of the whole Nazi movement in the eyes of the German government?
Common sense?
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/index.html
The full text of “Mein Kampf”, in many different languages, is easy to find online.
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3471665536/302-8593713-6393629
Amazon.de has a print copy for sale online.