Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were all nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

Amazing and weird fact about history.

Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were all nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

Benito Mussolini

The same year Italian Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini was invading Ethiopia and placing three quarters of Italian businesses under state control, he was nominated for the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize. He received not one letter of recommendation, but two: one from a law professor in Germany, and the other from a professor in France. Mysteriously, those letters cannot be found in the Nobel Institute archives, so we’ll never know the exact reason why two professors deemed him worthy of such an award. Mussolini was not considered in the shortlist, but there was so much disagreement within the committee that the prize was not awarded that year. I guess if Mussolini can’t have it, then no one can.

Josef Stalin

Former Soviet Union leader, Josef Stalin, was nominated twice: in 1945 and 1948. Apparently it was for his efforts in ending World War II. But leading a violent siege of Berlin, causing 65,000 deaths, executing over 25,000 Polish POWs, orchestrating a political campaign later referred to as “The Great Terror,” and leading troops to rape women along the way, does not end wars: it perpetuates them.

Adolf Hitler

Josef Stalin wasn’t the only World War II bad boy to snag a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. In 1939, Adolf Hitler was nominated by a member of the Swedish parliament, E.G.C. Brandt. But Brandt didn’t do it seriously. He intended it to be a satiric criticism to point out the flaws of foreign policies of the day, particularly the Munich Pact in 1938, which allowed Nazi Germany to take over parts of Czechoslovakia. No one got the joke, and the nomination was withdrawn, but not withdrawn from history.