There’s a thread or column or both somewhere about Hitler as a surname. Obviously anyone left with that name would be tempted to change it, but IIRC there were very few Hitlers among the substantial German-American populace even at the time of the war. Likewise (and again, allowing for the possibilities of name changes) I’ve never come across IRL a German or German-American named Goering or Goebbels or Himmler. Baumanns, yes, a good number of Hesses. I’m not sure about any Rommels (and this all includes reading a fair amount of German literature and history).
I post this here because there’s no real GQ answer that I can think of (unless someone has a useful link to German census records or something). Just struck by the fact that I’ve met a number of Roosevelts, or Pattons, or McArthurs (though only one Eisenhauer, as that guy spelled it). How did the Nazis end up with such outlier surnames (or, if some German wants to come along and tell me Germany is to this day bristling with Himmlers and Goerings, I could be persuaded of that too)?
Just a quick search of the online white pages reveals plenty of Goerings, Himmlers and Hitlers. It doesn’t appear to me that those names are unusual at all among German-Americans. Goebbels on the other hand is a bit more rare, but there are still some around, e.g. composer Heiner Goebbels.
I couldn’t think of a tactful way to bring it up, but it always seemed to me there was not a lot of overlap between the most common names in the U.S. and the names of presidents. There have been two president Johnsons (second-most common name) and a Wilson (8), a Taylor (10) and a Jackson (13), but it start to get thinner after that. There were a few Adamses (36) and a Carter (40). Those and Washington (90) are the only ones in the top 100. But that’s based on the census in 1990 and I’m wondering it just looks like common names are underrepresented because of changes in demographics over the years.
There are a few Himmlers and Görings that I have heard of so the names are not that rare in Germany. But still rare enough to make one pause when reading a mention of one in a newspaper. There is one well-known Rommel (Manfred Rommel, actually Erwin Rommel’s son, a former long time mayor of Stuttgart and still popular as an aphorist).
WAG that this is skewed somewhat (I’ll never be able to remotely quantify how much) by the fact that those common names are disproportionately either old English surnames or recent immigrant (mostly Hispanic, at this point) in origins. The Gonzalezes and Hernandezes haven’t gotten elected pro rata just because assimilation is still ongoing and they’ve only hit the top 100 recently. And the old English surnames are likely (mutatis mutandis) underrepresented because at least some/a significant number of people named Williams or Jones have been until recently de facto non-starters for Presidential timber because they were either black or much-lower-class white.
I know a guy at work named Goering and according to him, even though he’s very distantly related to the former Reichsmarschall, his family’s been in the U.S. for over a century. Hitler comes from Heidler which is a fairly common German name. Hess/Hoess border on being a Deutsch version of Jones.
Schickelgruber, on the other hand, is a bit unusual.
then there are the Heitlers Heitler - Wikipedia . Walter Heitler, for instance, was a German-Jewish physicist who had the good sense of relocating to England shortly before WW2.
And, I believe that a significant number of the Washingtons alive in the US right now are descendants of people who adopted the name Washington in the 1800’s (e.g. freed slaves who wanted or needed a last name).
I don’t think Rommel was a Nazi at all. Indeed, he was involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler.
Anyway, I very much doubt that the phenomenon described by the OP (if real) is unique to the Nazi leadership. It is probably just a reflection of the fact that in most countries (Western ones anyway) although common surnames are more common than any particular uncommon one, all the relatively uncommon surnames taken together are far more common than the common ones: there are a few common surnames, but a huge number of uncommon ones, so most people,in fact, have an uncommon surname.
Incidentally, why should names like Williams and Jones be predominantly Black or “much-lower-class” white? Is this really the case? It is true that they are not English names, but they are very common, white, British names. I have never heard that the Welsh were ever an oppressed ethnicity in America (and if the names are common amongst blacks, that presumably indicates that certain Williamses and Jonses were once major slave owners, i.e., part of the American wealthy elite).
What is also strange is that, apart from maybe Speer, none of the main Nazi big wigs were anything like the tall, blonde Nordic supermen they espoused.
A real bunch of lousy physical specimens.
Goering was a wheezy lardbutt.
Hitler, Hess and Himmler were shortish and dark.
Goebbels was a hunchback with a club foot.
I thought, though, that he was solidly in the second tier of leaders, answering to Himmler. And he didn’t join the party until 1931.
As for the non-“Aryan”-ness of the very top guys like Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels et al, I’m guessing that guys who needed to find a wacko party like this to belong to in the Twenties were by and large social outcasts. Someone with movie star looks or who was in any other way impressive probably wouldn’t feel the need to hang around with Nazi crackpots while they were still congregating in beer halls. Goering was probably an exception, as he was a genuine war hero and was decent looking before he put on the pounds.
I was just looking around for a picture of Hermann Goering, and found a painting of him at the bottom of this page. The caption reads:
“An unusually flattering portrait of Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering. In this rendering, the artist display[s] a well-developed sense of self-preservation.”
