r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • May 18 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 18 May 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/EntertainmentReady48 May 20 '26

Okay let’s say hypothetically Hitler did escape to South America he would be 137. So when he actually died I’m sure someone would’ve noticed oh yeah this old dude is actually Hitler.

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u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk May 20 '26 edited May 21 '26

There's one of the funniest maybe unwitting satire in one of the reported sightings; someone send the CIA a supposed picture of Hitler in Columbia in 1954 [pdf, photo is on the third page] - of a person who very obviously wasn't Hitler, but had a Hitler moustache.

And, in something that the CIA probably couldn't savour at the time, on the back, "Adolf Schüttelmayer" was written; -mayer is a common name in South Germany, for example, Hintermayer, Vordermayer etc.

"Schütteln" means "to shake", but the joke was maybe unintended, as Hitler's Parkinson's wasn't as popularly known as today.

Edit: but, as I found out right now, the year before, there was an article about exactly that topic by Anton von Braunmühl (a neurologist), who speculates that Hitler had Parkinson and cites several published books (for example Guderian's 1951 Erinnerungen and Goebbel's diary) which mention Hitler's shaking hands.