Was Adolf Hitler nominated as a serious candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939? No, that is missing context: The Nobel websites state that the nomination was not meant to be taken seriously and was withdrawn five days after it was made. According to the nominator, a Swedish anti-fascist, the nomination was intended as irony "to shame" Hitler "as enemy number one of peace in the world."
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by alt-right online commentator Stew Peters on X, formerly known as Twitter, on October 28, 2024. It said:
Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939. ☮️ They don't teach you that in public school.
This is what the post looked like at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Oct 29 17:37:43 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories has written multiple fact checks of false claims made by Stew Peters.
The Nobel Prize's website (archived here) specifies that Hitler's nomination was "withdrawn" in 1939 and was not intended as an official nomination. The site's Nomination Archive says:
The nomination was withdrawn 1 February 1939 by nominator E.G.C. Brandt, an anti-fascist member of the Swedish parliament who never intended his submission to be taken seriously.
The website (archived here) for the Nobel Peace Center, which provides information about former nominees and prizewinners, elaborates further: Brandt nominated Hitler on January 27, 1939 as an "ironical" response to the nomination of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, hailed for brokering with Hitler the so-called Munich Compromise. This agreement allowed Nazi Germany's 1939 takeover of the Sudetenland, an area of then Czechoslovakia with a large ethnic German population.
Outrage in Brandt's native Sweden led to the withdrawal of the nomination, The Nobel Peace Center explained. The site reported that Brandt himself told an anti-Nazi newspaper that he had wanted:
"by the use of irony suggest a Peace Prize to Hitler and by that nail him to the wall of shame as enemy number one of peace in the world.."
In a section (archived here) about how Nobel Prize nominees and laureates are chosen, the Nobel Prize's website states that "any persons who are qualified to nominate" may make a nomination.
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At the time this fact check was written, Snopes had reviewed a similar claim in 2022 about Hitler's Nobel Prize nomination.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks concerning claims about Nazis can be found here. More Lead Stories fact checks of claims about former President Trump can be found here.
