Is it true that Hitler almost won the Nobel Peace Prize?

On the Internet you can find information that Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939 and even almost received it. We decided to check if this is true.

You can find it on the Internet articles, which says Hitler almost won the Nobel Peace Prize. Alone write, that the name of the German Fuhrer was included in the list of candidates under pressure from Goebbels, others - that, on the contrary, Goebbels forced Nobel committee cross out Hitler from among the contenders. Some believe that in this way the Nobel committee wanted “apologize» before Hitler for the fact that three years earlier the Peace Prize had been awarded to Karl von Ossietzky, a German journalist who had criticized the Fuhrer. "Arguments and Facts" claim that Hitler (like Mussolini) was “just a little short” of the prize. They write about this on blogging platforms, to "Peekaboo» and on others portals. In March 2022, the story of Hitler's nomination remembered politician Sergei Mironov, commenting on the nomination of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky for the Nobel Peace Prize.

On the Nobel Prize website, indeed, there is confirmation that Hitler was nominated for the Peace Prize. The comments state: “The nomination was withdrawn on February 1, 1939 by the nominator himself, Erik G. K. Brandt, an anti-fascist member of the Swedish Parliament who did not imagine that his proposal could be taken seriously.” 

How did this happen? The fact is that in the same 1939 there was a nominated British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain - for his contribution to Munich Agreement 1938, according to which Czechoslovakia had to cede part of its territories to Germany. This, according to the nomination card on the Nobel Prize website, was seen as an attempt to prevent war in Europe. However, not everyone assessed the agreements with Hitler in this way, and Chamberlain’s nomination was viewed with skepticism by many. Among them was Brandt, who three days later proposed to nominate Hitler for this prize.

He attached to his proposal letter, where he explained the choice of candidate: “I hereby humbly propose that the Peace Prize for 1939 be awarded to the Chancellor and Fuhrer of Germany Adolf Hitler, a man who, in the opinion of millions of people, is the person who, more than anyone else in the world, deserves this highly esteemed award. <...> Thanks to his ardent love for peace, previously documented in his famous book Mein Kampf - perhaps the best and most popular book in the world after the Bible - together with his peaceful achievements - the annexation of Austria - Adolf Hitler avoided the use of force, freeing his compatriots in the Sudetenland and making his fatherland large and powerful. <...> I could not have found a more opportune time to nominate Hitler as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize if a number of Swedish parliamentarians had not nominated another candidate, namely the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. This nomination seems poorly thought out. While it is true that Chamberlain, through his magnanimous understanding of Hitler's struggle for peace, helped save world peace, the final decision was Hitler's, not the Chamberlains'! <…> Adolf Hitler is, of course, a true God-given champion of peace, and millions of people around the world place their hopes in him as the Prince of Peace on earth.”

It is difficult to imagine that Brandt, who consistently took an anti-fascist position, could write something like that sincerely. Nevertheless irony Not everyone appreciated Brandt, and he was subjected to a barrage of criticism. He gave several interviews where he explained that it was a satire, that in this way he wanted to emphasize that neither Hitler nor Chamberlain deserved this prize. Just a week after his nomination, Adolf Hitler's candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize was withdrawn. 

In fact, Hitler is far from the only controversial candidate for this prize. Thus, the Nobel Peace Prize was also nominated in different years Joseph Stalin And Benito Mussolini. According to rumors, three Russians were nominated for the 2021 award: Vladimir Putin, Alexey Navalny And Ramzan Kadyrov (by the way, we already talked about this story wrote). It is impossible to say for sure whether this is true, since the committee's charter prohibits disclosing the names of nominees who did not receive the award for 50 years. Yes, the latest data about them on the official website of the Nobel Prize - for 1970.

However, this is quite possible, since the list of those who can nominate a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize is quite wide:

- members of national parliaments and governments, members of the cabinet and ministers of sovereign states, as well as current heads of state;

— members of the International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague;

— members of the Institute of International Law;

— members of the International Council of the International Women's Union for Peace and Freedom;

— university professors, emeritus professors, associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology and religion, rectors and directors of universities (or their equivalents), directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes;

— Nobel Peace Prize laureates;

- members of the board of directors or its equivalent for organizations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;

— current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee;

- former advisors to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Nevertheless, the winner is chosen Norwegian Nobel Committee. It consists of five people elected for six years by the Norwegian Parliament. They are the ones who decide who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, and they certainly don't do it as a joke. Therefore, yes, Hitler was indeed nominated for this prize, but his nomination caused such a wave of criticism and public indignation that the nominator himself withdrew this candidacy a week later. Yes, and Brandt put forward it, in his own words, as a political satire, and not at all because he considered the Fuhrer of the German nation worthy of this award. So Hitler had no chance of getting it.

Cover photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H1216-0500-002 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons

Mostly not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Facts about the Nobel Peace Prize
2. Is it true that Hitler had Jewish roots?
3. Is it true that Vogue magazine published a photograph of Hitler and Eva Braun in 1939?