Hitler Ate Sugar

Who's gonna tell him that Josef Mengele was a dentist?^note And yes, Hitler really did have poor dental hygiene.

"You know, I shouldn't have to explain this, but sharing one attribute with Nazis doesn't make you one!"

— Jon Stewart, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

A logical fallacy, specifically a sub-type of Association Fallacy, that assumes that anything done or liked by a bad person must be bad itself, taking things to absurd levels.

The premise seems to be that bad people must have a way to tell if something is evil. Either that, or bad people are repulsed by anything that isn't at least as evil as they are. Whatever the reason, bad people magically will only associate with things that are also bad. Therefore, people claim a thing is bad because bad people associate with it.

This is a concept called the Association Fallacy (or the more well-known term "Guilty by Association"), which often overlaps with Godwin's Law due to how often Adolf Hitler is used (also known as Reductio ad Hitlerum)^note In grammatically correct Latin, this would actually be ad Hitlerem, because "Hitler" is presumably a 3rd declension noun. After all, Hitler has gained the reputation for being the very embodiment of darkest evil, who oozed "pure liquid malevolence" right out of his pores. So, he supposedly would only do/like/own things that are as evil as him. You know, things like sitting on a chair, wearing clothes, eating, taking a walk, and breathing. Hitler did those things, but that doesn't make them bad. Hitler is not a reason things are bad. We don't think committing mass murder is bad because Hitler, Stalin, or other bad people did it. We think those people are bad because they committed mass murder. In other words, this trope is backwards. A thing being bad stands on its own as bad. It would be like:

Bob: I want to commit genocide.
Alice: The Nazis committed genocide.
Bob: Really? What was I thinking? I can't believe I was going to do something the Nazis did.

This is also one of the reasons why we are often loath to admit that a person who we generally always disagree with may actually be right for once. Remember, Don't Shoot the Message. Someone intimidated by this "argument" may invoke No True Scotsman as a "rebuttal". ("Hitler wasn't a REAL vegetarian.")

One reason this trope exists was that for a long time during The '30s, Hitler was seen as a neutral statesman and some of his policies were appealing to people because he framed himself and the Nazis as Moral Guardians and espoused various "good-on-paper" sounding ideas like personal hygiene, cleanliness, animal rights, sexual restraint, heteronormality, battling the "excesses" of Weimar Germany and so on. Nazi Germany focused on cultural policy to an equal and at times greater extent than economics and good governance. So in some respects Hitler Ate Sugar is a Justified Trope because he and his fellow Nazis invoked Culture Justifies Anything as a key part of their platform, and Nazi Germany is a historically relevant example on the dangers of such policies and its appeals. In the contemporary context, it must be noted that this trope is deployed on arguments that have to do with "culture wars" rather than the original context of Nazi Germany (The Great Depression, Modernism, the Weimar era).

Additionally, the trope is used in American, British and other countries' politics to attack enemies on both sides of the political spectrum, at least since Red-baiting fell out of style. Suffice to say that divorcing Hitler's positions from their original context and trying to fit them into modern politics where concepts of "left" and "right" are drastically different than in Weimar Germany, is essentially a fool's errand. Worse, Hitler's "opinions" on a modern-day issue are often inferred from Nazi campaign speeches or literature from the '20s, and not policies he actually implemented once in power.

For similar reasons, this trope also has been known to overlap with You Know Who Said That?, when a person says a quote that other people would agree with at face value, but then— gotcha!— reveals it was actually said by Hitler or some other contemptible figure. Of course, as explained, that doesn't necessarily prove the idea is immoral on its own merits.

On the other hand, if it's framed very carefully there can be a valid point to be made here. If something is a demonstrably evil idea on its own terms, then pointing out how it's tied to an evil source is relevant not as a proof but as a supporting example. It might even serve as a sort of moral wake-up call. That would be like:

Bob: Greedy Jew isn't a racist stereotype.
Alice: Then how come the Nazis used it in their racist propaganda?
Bob: ... Hitler's approval fills me with shame.

A particularly insidious individual can invert this as a way of normalizing abhorrent behavior. If someone points out that a person or government is carrying out evil actions comparable to the Nazis, the accused can simply claim that their critics are employing this trope. The insinuation being that the Nazis weren't wrong to practice whatever evil actions the accused person/group are doing now and that the accusation is spurious.

A Sub-Trope of So Was X and Anti-Advice, and the Association Fallacy.

A Sister Trope to Abomination Accusation Attack (attacking people by accusing them of doing or wanting to do something inexcusably atrocious), Ad Hominem (refuting an argument by insulting an aspect of the presenter that isn't relevant to the argument's content), Chewbacca Defense (attempting to win a debate using an irrelevant logical fallacy), Godwin's Law (insinuating that a person is bad by comparing them to Hitler and the Nazis), Damned By a Fool's Praise (insinuating that something is bad by having a stupid or unpleasant person like it), Space Whale Aesop (a moral that involves bad actions having ludicrously unrealistic consequences), and Bulverism (arguing someone's motives for believing an idea without actually explaining why the idea is wrong in the first place).

Often used as one of the less spurious links in a chain of Insane Troll Logic.

This trope has very similar thinking to No True Scotsman, as both are logical fallacies used to exclude or stigmatize something. It could also be seen as something of an Inverted Trope: No True Scotsman fallaciously excludes one bad example to prevent the group as a whole from being identified with it, while Hitler Ate Sugar fallaciously goes right ahead and identifies the group as a whole with the one bad example. An alternate form of inversion is What Would X Do?, when people argue that an action is good solely on the grounds that a good person did it.

Unrelated to Real Men Hate Sugar, where people come to hate something normally considered pleasant due to cultural expectations of what is considered "mature" or "masculine". If Hitler is shown hating sugar, it would likely be a case of Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad, but still counting as this trope if sugar is portrayed as good entirely based on Hitler's dislike of it as a result. As such, unless it is used to demonize sugar and the people who eat it, this trope also has nothing to do with Hitler's well-documented fondness for sweets.

See Villains Out Shopping for examples of evildoers doing innocuous things.

---

Please note that this page is for examples where X is claimed to be bad due to being done, eaten, read, watched, or what-have-you by demonstrably bad people. It's not for cases where the meaning is more "Look, just because they do/eat/read/watch X, doesn't mean they are a good person." It's the difference between the fallacious argument "Hitler ate sugar, therefore sugar is bad" and the valid argument "Even Hitler ate sugar. Eating sugar does not automatically make you nice".

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach: Despite Love Aikawa restraining her before she could have a chance to retaliate, Hiyori Sarugaki was none too keen about putting on a shihakusho, since they're associated with the Sereitei, the same organization that exiled her for becoming an unwilling test subject in Aizen's schemes that resulted in her becoming a soul reaper-hollow hybrid, Love and others included.
• Digimon Tamers: The D-Reaper never Grew Beyond Its Programming after analyzing Jeri's mind when she was still depressed over Leomon's sacrifice. It was working as intended, it just thinks that everyone is as depressed and unstable as Jeri and thus had to be wiped.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Sayaka Miki adamantly refuses to replenish her magic with Grief Seeds just because Homura Akemi, whom she detests and blames for Mami Tomoe's death, uses Grief Seeds.

Comic Books

• In Batman: Fortunate Son, it is retconned that Bruce's parents told him to stop listening to rock and roll on the night that they were killed. Therefore, he comes to the conclusion that rock and roll is death, crime, and the rage of a beast! Or something like that.
• Judge Death in Judge Dredd's universe has the logically extreme example. It runs something like "Crime is bad. You know who commits crime? People that are alive!" Therefore, "The Crime isss Life, the Sssentence isss DEATH!!"

Fan Works

Harry Potter

• The Accidental Courtship:
  Harry: Why is the Ministry trying to make it so only fourth-years can study Arithmancy?
  Hermione: They claim that some of the Death Eaters were using Arithmancy to predict their enemies' movements. So obviously it's evil and terrible and fourth-years will be so much more mature about it than third-years.
• In A King's Path Harry balks at performing a fairly innocuous ritual because Voldemort did it.
  Slytherin's portrait: Tom Riddle was a boy, as are you. Does sharing a particular trait with him automatically make you bad?

Miraculous Ladybug

• The Karma of Lies:
  • Adrien runs headlong into this after his father is unmasked as Hawkmoth. Lila further fans the flames by setting him up as her scapegoat, making herself out to be an Unwitting Pawn that Gabriel hired as a model so he could keep tabs on teenage drama that he could potentially exploit, and implying that Adrien had some hand in this as well.
  • Inverted with Marinette's former classmates once she transfers into Ms. Mendeleiev's homeroom. Others swiftly notice that she's cut ties with them and suspect that, since she's such a good person, she must have had ample reason for doing so. All the more so since everyone knows she's Ladybug now.
• Karma's a Bitch:
  • Adrien manages to avoid this due to being revealed as Chat Noir and publicly denouncing his father upon learning he was Hawk Moth, even after being tempted with the idea of resurrecting his mother using the Wish. Though a minority still believe he might have been involved, most people take these revelations as a sure sign of his innocence, offering condolences and wishing him luck.
  • Zoe is careful to avoid leaving any traceable connection to Lila so that when everything inevitably comes crashing down, no one will have proof that she was involved if and when Lila tries to throw her under the bus.
  • After Gabriel is revealed as Hawk Moth, his employees jump ship en masse, not wanting anything to do with him or his numerous crimes. Vincent the photographer specifically worries that working for a supervillain, even unknowingly, might make it difficult for him to find another job.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• In Equestria: A History Revealed, the narrator reasons that she doesn't understand the scientific process behind baking a cake, and therefore, sees it as something that cannot be explained. She also reasons that dark magic cannot be explained. Therefore, baking must be a representation of dark magic. It gets worse from there on out.
• In Loved and Lost, Jewelius reasons that the town of Ponyville needs to be made an example of since it's the hometown of the "traitorous" Mane Five. He does this by raising taxes, banning trade with other towns, and sending his soldiers to brutalize the citizens.
• A somewhat more rational example than the usual in RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse. As a result of its association with Corona, the Tyrant Sun, gold is all but taboo.

The Owl House

• My Brother Cain, My Brother Abel: After discovering Evelyn is a witch, Caleb tries to tell her they can’t see each other anymore because if the other humans discover her they would both be killed. Evelyn is shocked and horrified at the idea that they would kill Caleb just for being seen with her. Later it is proven true when the two of them are caught together and Caleb is put on trial and sentenced to death for consorting with a witch.

Superman

• Inverted in Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation, where Alan Kent doesn't want to believe his brother Adam is evil just because he is his brother, and Katherine rightly points out Lex Luthor and other villains were somebody's brother, meaning being a brother doesn't equal being good.

Films — Live-Action

• This is the reasoning behind the title of Bowling for Columbine. Moore points out that media watchdogs and social commentary pundits were alarmingly quick to point towards all sorts of societal influences that supposedly caused Harris and Klebold's rampage, including video games, bullying, violent movies, and the like. He then questions if they might as well blame the sport of bowling for what happened, as both killers were attending school classes in bowling and played a game the day before the shooting.
• Used in Clerks in a scene where a 'Chewley's' gum representative is trying to stir up anti-cigarette sentiment in order to sell gum as a substitute. He tells the protagonist that shopkeepers who sell cigarettes are equal to Nazis because clerks like him are only following orders, and so did the Nazis. This is ironic as the Nazis hated smoking. Granted it's a flawed argument considering he obviously has no choice in what he sells and nobody is forced to buy it, but his customers are stirred into pelting him with cigarettes anyway.
• During one flashback scene in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, wee Hansel is watching his favourite program on Armed Forces Television. He notes that Jesus said that darnedest things, and his mother cuffs him and says "So did Hitler."
  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
• In The King of Comedy:
  Rupert Pupkin: I made a mistake.
  Jerry Langford: So did Hitler.
• Legend (1985): Invoked rather literally when the Lord of Darkness asks Princess Lili to sit down at a table. Lili— who knows full well that he is trying to corrupt her— puts up an amazing resistance even to that simple request, for no better reason that because he is the one who asked her to do so, and she knows where it is supposed to lead. As it happens, this is the correct approach, if only because playing hard to get is essential for her to trick him later on.
• The New Tenants: Frank grows increasingly hyperbolic when complaining about Pete hassling him about smoking, eventually moving to vegetarianism and saying "You know, that's how that vegetarian Hitler got started."
• Played for Laughs in The Nice Guys, where Holland March continuously makes comparisons to Hitler as a Running Gag.
• Not Okay:
  • After the truth comes out, Danni’s parents start getting accused of being involved in the scam despite the fact that they were just as fooled by their daughter as everybody else was. It's part of the reason why Danni’s mother acts so cold to her after she’s forced to move back in
  • As part of the uproar that Danni is subjected to, she sees a video of a hairstylist on her computer saying that she wanted to do her hairstyle in a certain way, but she decided not to because it looked too much like the hairstyle that Danni Sanders has. The fact that both have dark hair with some of it dyed white is an addition.
  • Poor Rowan, already a victim of persecution, ends up receiving extra harassment once her friend turns out to be a liar, something she makes sure to scream at Danni.
• In Office Space, Peter's "you know, the Nazis had 'pieces of flair' they made the Jews wear." However, the employers in Office Space in fact do utilize totalitarian structures and strategies to keep their workers in line. In this particular example, the flair pieces are part of a Double Bind structure. This doesn't make Peter's argument any less fallible though, and he takes it back to proceed with even more verbal tripping over himself.
• In Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World:
  Bobby Lee: I love my work.
  Sally Gerber: So did Hitler.
• Used in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope in the argument between David's father and Brandon on the subject of whether "superior" people should have the right to kill inferior ones.
• Starship Troopers heavily leans into this, being a stern condemnation of militarism, nationalism, and propaganda dressed up as a mindless action flick. Problem is, the movie runs with the idea that those things are all evil because they were used by Nazi Germany, to the point that some of our "heroes" are decked out in what amounts to SS uniforms. What director Paul Verhoeven seems to have missed in all this is that not only were such concepts not invented by the Nazis, but even a brief look into the Allied war effort shows these were in fact the very same things the Allies in part relied on to defeat the forces of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
• In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country during the beginnings of the Klingon-Federation alliance the Klingons remark that they just desire a bit of breathing room. Kirk quickly points out Hitler said a similar thing in 1938 (though one wonders if the Klingons would even know who Hitler was — then again, the same scene named the tropes Klingons Love Shakespeare and In the Original Klingon).
• This results in a Wrong Insult Offence in Stolen Kisses. When Georges Tabard mentions learning English from an Australian girl who was married to a housepainter, Fabienne immediately compares the housepainter to Hitler, provoking this response from Georges:
  Georges Tabard: Don't ever say Hitler was a housepainter. That's slander. Hitler painted landscapes.
• Inverted in the comedy To Be or Not to Be with a running joke. The hero is undercover and talking and joking with a Nazi, Colonel Erndhardt. Erndhardt will mock a feature of his sidekick Schultz (e.g. fastidiousness, vegetarianism, etc.), leading the hero to accuse him of insulting Hitler who had all of these traits.

Literature

• The foreword to Harry Potter parody Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody inverts this while playing it for laughs. It includes a message from the publisher describing the work as 'satanic', and a message from Satan who thinks the book is utterly terrible and refuses to take the blame for it. A message from the church follows, stating that anything so reviled by Satan must be the ultimate work of good and encouraging the public to buy it en masse.
• Penn Jillette, in his foreword to Greg Gutfeld's The Bible of Unspeakable Truths, uses this as an argument against believing in God (which he identifies as a major point of disagreement between himself and the author).
• The Dresden Files book Blood Rites has this used as an excuse by a vapid porn actress who's upset that her ex-husband divorced her when she was engineering the death of another actress. Harry points out that the soon-to-be victim has kids, and the woman replies "So did Hitler." Harry then points out that Hitler had dogs.
• The film historian, Siegfried Kracauer, a refugee from Nazi Germany himself, accused German Expressionism and various films made during the 20s for inspiring the rise of Hitler in his book, From Caligari to Hitler. He noted that many of these films had authoritarian villains who subverted society and manipulated the masses. Fritz Lang (who was very anti-Nazi, to the point he fled the country) memorably criticized Kracauer for blaming his generation for being the bearers of bad news. Lang especially objected to Kracauer criticizing his film Die Nibelungen for feeding into Hitler's Wagner fetish, when he pointed out that his film was specifically based on the original German source and not on Wagner at all.
• Richard Dawkins addresses the "Hitler was atheist, so atheism is evil" argument in The God Delusion. Aside from Hitler's ambiguous religious beliefs^note He identified publicly as a Catholic, being born in Austria and all, but his private statements on religious matters are so contradictory that to this day historians still dispute whether he viewed himself as a Christian or an atheist, with enough evidence pointing towards both. Wikipedia has an entire article on it., Dawkins points out that none of the twentieth century dictators (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.) waged wars and engaged in various forms of genocide and democide in the name of atheism, but radical ideologies such as Nazism and Communism. Oddly, he also plays this trope straight by claiming that God is evil because Christianity was used to justify certain wars and tyrannies in the past.
• Project Itoh played this trope straight in his sci-fi novel Harmony, where a professor connects the book's healthcare-obsessed false Utopia with the Nazis because the Nazis starting looking into ways to cure cancer, being socialists, and being politically correct. Those last two are kind of eye-rollers, but the cancer thing gets especially weird seeing as the author was dying of cancer while writing the book. Wonder what that means.
  • Itoh probably learned a lot about cancer during his illness, then he needed an explanation for that in-universe professor and wrote what came first to his mind.
• Harry Potter: Parseltongue, the ability to communicate with snakes, is widely regarded by witches and wizards as a Dark Art, simply because most of the well-known Parselmouths have been Dark wizards (including Salazar Slytherin, the originator of the Fantastic Racism against Muggle-borns, and his descendant Voldemort). This isn't a hard-and-fast rule by any means — Dumbledore expressly states in book 6 that there have been plenty of good Parselmouths — but many still believe the reverse. In book 2, after Harry himself is revealed to be a Parselmouth (Voldemort gave him the ability by accident), half the school promptly becomes convinced that he must be evil; this is brought up again in book 4 as part of a smear campaign against him.
  • In book 3 when Harry's broomstick is destroyed by the Whomping Willow, he has to get a new broom before his Quidditch match and when Oliver Wood suggests he get a Nimbus 2001, Harry vehemently shoots that idea down on the grounds that he refuses to buy 'anything Malfoy thinks is good'.
• In Death series: Origin In Death reveals that the Icoves and their partner Wilson essentially espoused eugenics. Naturally the opposition played this trope. It stopped them from doing things publicly. Privately, they engaged in cloning, genetic manipulation, and a lot of ugly stuff!
• Played with in A Series of Unfortunate Events, a few times. (Only a villainous person places his cup on the table without using a coaster or enjoys the works of Edgar Guest.)
• Spenser often will comment "Hitler liked dogs" when noting that an otherwise villainous character performed a Pet the Dog.
• In I, Jedi, a novel overlapping with the Jedi Academy Trilogy, Corran Horn uses his ability to absorb energy and channel it into telekinetic feats to save the life of another student. Luke cautions him against using his power that way in the future, because Darth Vader used that technique (the Cloud City scene in The Empire Strikes Back, where Han tries to shoot him and he stops the blaster bolts with his hand). Corran accepts this argument, despite the fact that no reason is given why the technique should be regarded as morally problematic aside from the fact that Vader used it one time. And it's a particularly hypocritical argument on Luke's part, since he had himself used Force skills associated with the Dark Side for benevolent purposes, such as using Force-choke - a much more common technique of Vader's - to intimidate some Gamorrean guards into letting him pass when he invaded Jabba the Hutt's palace.
• Villains by Necessity: In the opening chapter, Arcie gets arrested after getting caught red-handed lifting purses. Sam is arrested as well for... sitting next to Arcie while dressed in black. Yes, Sam was a villain, but the guards had no proof of that, and even after finding all his weapons, could not prove he'd killed anyone, much less any specific person, with them. However, it would be enough to show he was a criminal, which is all they cared about, as they're now just being brainwashed into becoming good citizens, and not punished for anything.
• In A Wolf in the Soul, Greg's father reacts this way to Greg's becoming a vegetarian.
• Warrior Cats uses a variant with Tigerstar, the series equivalent of Hitler. All apprentices must serve the elders. When apprentice Tawnypaw Tigerstar's daughter is slightly late bringing moss to the elder Smallear, Smallear says, "Tigerstar didn't want to serve the elders either when he was an apprentice! You're going to turn out just like him!"

Live-Action TV

• Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report often uses this as a means of argumentation, for example thinking that it's not OK to be a vegetarian because Hitler was one or celebrate Mother's Day because Joseph Stalin had a mother. On the other hand, Colbert did defend Michael Jordan for his sporting of a toothbrush mustache in Hanes underwear commercials. This could be because Jordan is black (and, therefore, couldn't possibly be Aryan and thus has, if you will, N Mustache Privileges), although the reason Colbert explicitly gave is that Jordan has a soul patch as well. Colbert pointed out that if Hitler had had a soul patch too, he'd have looked less like, well, Hitler, and more like a beatnik.
• Community: Being a Soapbox Sadie social justice warrior, Britta LIVED for this trope. In the episode "App Development and Condiments" (when people’s social standing and popularity were based on ratings) she was FINALLY shut down by Annie, of all people:
  Jeff Winger: Britta. Please tell me you're not using this app.
  Britta Perry: Uh, I liked the idea at first, giving a voice to the unheard, but then Annie just told me that the rating system is exponentially weighted. As your ratings go up, your ratings of other people become more important.
  Jeff Winger: (Mockingly) No.
  Annie Edison: It just means the more others like you, the more likeable you can make others. It makes sense to me.
  Britta Perry: You know who else it made sense to?
  Annie Edison: Say "Hitler" one more time, and I'm giving you a two.
• In Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry is accused by a neighbor of betraying his Jewish heritage by whistling Richard Wagner, since Hitler frequently used his music during the Nazi era.
• The Daily Show:
  • Jon Stewart once used Glenn Beck logic to prove that Bert — yes, the one from Sesame Street — is actually Hitler. Seen here.
  • He also showed a clip of Glenn Beck using it himself, not as a parody: since both the Nazis and Dirty Commies used "social justice" as a leitmotif, everyone asking for it is either of them (or maybe both).
  • From another of his Glenn Beck segments:
    You know who else didn't answer medical questions? Hitler.
  • Another time was when a mention was made to Glenn Beck connecting the word "empathy" which was what Barack Obama said America needed more of (or something like that) to Hitler. As Lewis Black said, he'd just connected one of the most positive words in the English language to Hitler and that Glenn Beck had "Nazi Tourette's."
    "Oh, can I play? Let's see. Mother Teresa: Mother Teresa had a mustache, Hitler had a mustache. Mother Teresa is Hitler!"
  • And in what may be his final Glenn Beck riff, on 4/7/2011, Jon Stewart managed to link the announced cancellation of Glenn Beck's show on Fox News to the apocalypse predicted by the Mayans in 2012. "Do we want to live in an America where what we watch is determined by a shadowy mix-and-match collective of so-called 'Nielsen Families'? You know who else had a family that anyone could join? Charles Manson."
  • Jon brought the author of "Liberal Fascism" (Jonah Goldberg) onto his show and asked him to explain why organic foods are fascist. The author's response? Hitler made his troops eat organic foods (which aren't even "liberal" in the traditional sense, either. Goldberg apparently got "left-wing" confused with "alternative lifestyle"). Jon's response to this was "That is literally like saying mustaches are fascist. Hitler had a mustache."
    • At one point, Goldberg said that liberals use accusations of fascism to discredit all conservatives. Basically, accusing liberals of using this trope. While this actually is the case among some liberals, Jon held up the author's own book to show him he's doing the exact same thing.
  • After discussing and showing instances of people and events being compared to Hitler and Nazi Germany, he concludes that this kind of metaphor would even be demeaning to Hitler because of how much effort he put to earn his infamy.
• From Dexter:
  • On Dexter's advice about Cody's school assignment:
  Rita's mom: Dexter does drugs. He is wrong.
  • On Agent Lundy's walking style:
  Masuka: That's exactly how Hitler walked.
• A Running Gag in the pilot of Freaks and Geeks is Harold Weir constantly knocking down his children's proposals or scolding their behavior with the argument "[Celebrity Name]/[A friend of mine growing up] did that, and you know what happened? They DIED!"
• In the ABC mini-series The French Atlantic Affair (1979), a cult leader played by Telly Savalas seizes an ocean liner for ransom. A member of the cult argues that their glorious leader is Not Evil, Just Misunderstood, citing how when she first met him, he was involved in helping people in hospitals and orphanages and so on. The rebuttal? Hitler started out the same way!
• Murr on Impractical Jokers used this logic to convince a man not to buy a brand of baby wipes.
• A bizarre inversion is discussed on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. One senator argues that the death penalty is a good thing because Jesus died that way.
• In Search of...: In "Astrology", when he disputes the legitimacy of astrology, astronomer George O. Abell claims that the Nazis used astrology to guide their wartime strategy.
• Parodied in John Safran's Music Jamboree, where it explained, in depth, why Dr Seuss books and Cristina Aguilera CDs are bad, because their publishers are owned by a company that "used slave labour" during the Nazi era. Based on that logic, Ebenezer Scrooge is an evil man because he once hated Christmas.
• In John Safran vs God, the titular presenter (who is Jewish) mentions an anecdote from his youth. He was a big fan of Beastie Boys and to emulate them, got a big Volkswagen logo pendant. This led to his mother ranting about how he was showing support for a product of Nazi Germany.
• Craig Ferguson uses a variant of this a lot in his Late Late Show monologues. "You know who else doesn't like _____ ? Al-Qaeda!"
• Inverted on an episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien, where a skit mentioned news that US tobacco companies were being required by law to start making anti-tobacco ads. One of the "ads" shown on the show involved Himmler walking up to Hitler and offering him a cigar, to which Hitler responded with a quick "Nein!" The ad ended with the tagline: "Be Like Hitler: Don't Smoke!"
• Discussed in the Louis Theroux documentary Louis and the Nazis, where the mother of Aryan singing duo Lamb and Lynx has them dance around a swastika. She claims that anyone who would take offence to such an act is merely invoking this trope, as the swastika existed for thousands of years before the Nazis appropriated it. Louis tells her that excuse is a little hollow, however, since she openly calls herself a Nazi.
• In an episode of Mad About You, Paul insists on using Nazi comparisons when having arguments with Jamie (mostly about the mayor, for whom she worked), to the point where she claims he would be unable to have a discussion if the Nazis didn't exist.
• Inverted on Mad Men. Bert Cooper argues that Roger should stop smoking because it's a sign of weakness, claiming that when Hitler met with Chamberlain in Munich, he made sure it was in an old non-smoking building so that after a few hours Chamberlain would have agreed to anything to get out of there. Roger replies, "All I can get from that story is that Hitler didn't smoke, and I do."
• On Married... with Children, Marcy visits the Bundys with a bunch of political signs to put in their yard, and Bud notices that one reads "Support toxic waste dumps." Marcy explains that if the neighbors see something in their yard, they'll be instantly driven to the opposite.
• An episode of M*A*S*H sees Hawkeye yelling at a soldier whose deep guilt over a lack of bravery on the battlefield has given him psychological paralysis, on the theory that if the soldier doesn't overcome his guilt now, he never will. When Trapper asks afterward if it was rough, Hawkeye says, "Did you know Hitler and I have the same answering service?"
• Cam and Mitchell on Modern Family point out that Hitler had straight parents when they believe people assume the worst from them for being gay parents.
• QI discussed the trope at one point, along with Godwin's Law. Stephen Fry is of the opinion that anybody who uses this trope immediately loses whatever argument they were having.
  Hitler liked that therefore it's bad. Or Hitler didn't like that therefore it's good. Hitler, for example, was massively opposed to fox hunting; he thought it was cruel and terrible. And so, he banned it. So, therefore, it must be right... that's just a mad argument.
• Saturday Night Live had a parody commercial for a sneaker company where they showed members of the Heaven's Gate suicide cult wearing Nike sneakers, with the implication that if a suicide cult wears them they must be evil.
  • In their 1976 debate, Jimmy Carter (Dan Akroyd) is asked about his personal attacks, and replies that Hitler also criticized people for their personal attacks, and while he doesn't think that his opponent, "Mr. Ford would purposefully kill 50 million people, his lack of leadership may lead to a fiery, demonic holocaust."
• On So Random!, in one skit, in a school presidential debate, Layla points out that she looks good in hats, and Mark responds "You know who else said they looked good in hats? Attila the Hun".
• Detective Delahoy from The Unusuals is supposed to be doing paperwork but refuses and instead hangs at a Chinese restaurant. When his partner confronts him about it, he says that the Nazis did a lot of paperwork.
• The Young Ones but ever so slightly inverted:
  Rick: Vyvyan, stop being so sexist! They're called breasts and everybody has them.
  Vyvyan: Well I don't!
  Rick: Yes, and nor did Adolf Hitler.

Music

• According to The Axis of Awesome song "Do They Know It's Pizza?", Joseph Kony cuts pizzas into 8 slices. (Spoofed by an issue of MAD that has a fake Williams-Sonoma mail-order catalog offering a rusty steel "African Warlord Pizza Machete" that customers can use to cut uniform slices and then lop off the hands of anyone who tries to take some pizza.)
• Because the music of Richard Wagner was so commonly used by the Nazis in their propaganda, fans of Wagner can expect to hear this from the ill-informed when they announce their admiration for Der Ring des Nibelungen. Granted, the situation is more complicated than usual since Wagner himself was anti-Semitic and pushed for a united Germany. Yet, he still died before Hitler was even born. And his only work of music which references his anti-Semitism at all is Parsifal, which the Nazis actually banned for being too pacifistic since Wagner wanted Jews to convert to Christianity - he was not in favor of genocide. Despite all this, though, if people know one thing about Wagner and his music, it's that he was a "Nazi composer," to the extent that his music is quite verboten in Israel.
  • Fans of Wagner themselves are sometimes called anti-Semitic just for liking his music. Said fans are ignorant of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, and a huge Wagner fanboy.
  • In some lovely Irony, as Wagner's Opera The Flying Dutchman is based off a recording of the legends by the poet Heinrich Heine, who was Jewish.
  • Averted with Anton Bruckner. Hitler was a huge fan of Bruckner (who was a huge fan of Wagner, for that matter). When Hitler's death was publicly announced on German radio, they played the second movement of Bruckner's 7th Symphony (which Bruckner wrote to memorialize Wagner). Hitler even planned to create a museum to Bruckner at St. Florian's Monastery in Linz (including kicking all the monks out) and paid for the first critical editions of Bruckner's works to be published. Thankfully, Bruckner's reputation seems unharmed by the association.
• This even extends to guitar tunings—according to an urban legend, a leading Nazi officer set the concert pitch of the A note to 440 Hz, leading some guitar experts today to prefer alternative frequencies such as 432 Hz.

Newspaper Comics

• In a Dilbert strip, Ratbert wins every debate on the Internet by using the argument: "How would you like it if Hitler killed you?" In one of his text books, Scott Adams pointed out you can win any argument by comparing something to Hitler. This works so well, he explains, because Hitler was a surprisingly versatile guy; he did everything from invasions to building autobahns.

Radio

• There's a That Mitchell and Webb Sound sketch about this sort of thing. There's a debate about killing pizza-flyer delivery guys and one of them reduces all the other's responses to comparisons with Hitler, and the other constantly compares his opponent to Stalin. Which culminates in the exchange:
  "You're like Stalin..."
  "You are Hitler".

Religion

• In regards to sin in general, I John 3:8 states that anyone who has committed a sin is considered of the devil, who had committed a sin by rebelling against God. This is paraphrased as "If you do something bad, no matter how bad it is, you're following the example of Satan."
  • This isn't saying that committing a sin makes you as bad as Satan, but rather that - like him - you're willingly going against what God said to do.

Stand-up Comedy

• Comedian Andy Kindler says he uses this trope to break up the "Astrological love-fest" between people with the same Zodiac sign (ie. "Hitler was a Sagittarius"). If it isn't true, no one's going to call you out on it. For the curious, Hitler was a Taurus.
• Lampshaded in a tongue-in-cheek fashion in Bill Bailey's stand-up: asking the audience for famous vegetarians, someone yells out "Hitler!", with Bailey replying: "You're absolutely right, Hitler was a vegetarian. It's very unseemly to think so, but there he was. Just goes to show: vegetarianism - not always a good thing. Can in some extreme cases lead to genocide."
• The entire premise behind Richard Herring's "Hitler Moustache" show is that he is reclaiming the toothbrush moustache. He points out that Charlie Chaplin had it first, but it's become evil by association with Hitler. The toothbrush moustache was also a popular fashion accessory for German World War I veterans who joined the postwar Freikorps, a right-wing paramilitary organization formed to restore order in the wake of the political violence in Germany immediately after the war. While many of the Freikorps troops did become Nazis, various others were Jewish - and one was even murdered by his fellow troopers for it!
  • Of course this neglects that Chaplin reclaimed his mustache himself in The Great Dictator by openly embracing the surface resemblance between Hitler and the Tramp, and clarifying the differences once and for all.

Tabletop RPG

• This is addressed in an editorial in the back of Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The Wyrm is the incarnation of destruction, decay, corruption, etc, but it shouldn't be blamed for everything. if someone is Wyrm-Tainted, that doesn't mean the devil made him do it. It just means he did it and the devil noticed.

Video Games

• Dragon Age:
  • Series-wide, this may be the true character of Blood Magic — a tool and not an inherently evil force. A Player Character can be absolutely upright and selfless and still practice blood magic with no ill effect. The most vilified ability of blood magic is the ability to Mind Control others, but comparing it to certain non-blood magic spells is a good reminder that other magic can also be seriously nasty. For example, Immolate, which allows a mage to "...unleash a massive explosion, leaving enemies in the area burning in agony. There's also magic of some kind which rips a hole in reality, sucking spirits into this world while turning them into insane demons."
  • Another, in-universe example comes up in arguments over mage rights: Do you know who else is against preemptively locking up mages and cutting them off from their families? Tevinter, that's who!
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy at least makes some effort to avoid this trope in its tutorial level. Kyle at one point tells you "Force powers aren't inherently good or evil - it's how you use them". Sure enough, since which ending you get is based on a single choice, whether to kill a specific NPC who's at your mercy near the end, you can get the light-side ending after having played the game with nothing but Dark Side powers. That said, Kyle and Luke will still worry about you in the intermissions between acts if you invest in too many Dark powers, and it also doesn't help that the earlier Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II did have which ending you got determined by whether you had more Light or Dark powers, with the only variation (i.e. Light-focused power set but Dark Side ending) done by way of killing too many innocents.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel does this in the first game during the field study in Heimdallr. The terrorist group known as the Imperial Liberation Front makes an attack at the garden party that is being attended by Carl Regnitz, who is a political ally of Chancellor Osborne, and the main objective of the Imperial Liberation Front is Osborne's death. During the attack, Gideon, one of the leaders of the group, confronts Carl and tells him even though he has no personal grudge against Carl, he is guilty by association for working with Osborne and is ready to kill him. Carl survives because Class VII manages to arrive at the party in time to stop Gideon.
• In the Metal Gear series:
  • Played With in Metal Gear Solid: Snake points out to Otacon that Hitler was a dog lover. He's not actually speaking one way or the other to the morality of being a dog lover, and in fact is a big fan of canines himself. He's merely refuting Otacon's assertion that Sniper Wolf liking dogs is concrete proof that she's a good person.
  • A non-Hitler example comes from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, where the explanation for why Solid Snake suddenly has Big Boss' CQC abilities is that Snake had always known how to use CQC, but refused to due to its association with Big Boss, as he had betrayed Snake in the original game. He only uses it during the events of this game because, with Big Boss' pre-Outer Heaven exploits having been declassified sometime after the Big Shell incident, everybody else on the modern battlefield now knows a "cookie-cutter imitation" of CQC too, so when they try to use it on Snake he instinctively responds in kind.
• A borderline Insane Troll Logic variant appears in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All. A witness states that a bellboy is suspicious because he had stitches on his face and wore non-uniform leather gloves. Phoenix, grasping at straws and trying to stall the trial for as long as possible, points out that baseballs have stitches, and footballs are made of leather. Does that make all baseballs and footballs suspicious?
• Postal 2 includes a group of protesters first showing up on Tuesday, whose slogan is "save a tree, burn a book". One of their placards reads "Achtung! Hitler wrote a book!" Which, of course, is Comically Missing the Point in that the Nazis also burned books.

Web Animation

• In the comedic flash parody The Matrix Has You, Neo gives a lecture on car safety, specifically to buckle up, and points out that both Agent Smith and Hitler don't wear seat belts.
  Neo: Why, Agent Smith never buckles up. [a mustache appears over Smith's face] And neither did Hitler. You don't want to be like Hitler... do you?

Web Comics

• This Bug Martini show the difficulty of debating Hitler on account that you can't use this arguement, and because of the Gestapo.
• College Roomies from Hell!!! once had a crazy person declare that hands were evil because Hitler had hands.
• Cyanide and Happiness has this:
  "You know who else had a single preference? Hitler."
• This seems to show up in The Easy Breather for, of all things, smoking.
• Not actually involving Hitler but in one Elf Only Inn strip, Goku wants to fight Woot because the latter ate Goku's head. Woot uses a similar argument to convince Goku that he doesn't have a mouth.
  Woot: I have no mouth. That's just Republican propaganda. You're not republican, are you?
  Goku: Oh? Of course not. Sorry.
• In a parody of anti-drug PSAs, a Loserz strip demonstrates the evils of pot smoking, finishing off with the assertion that Hitler regularly had a breakfast joint with none other than Satan. Just to drive the point home, the following strip is an equally absurd PSA defending marijuana, ending with the statement that Jesus smoked pot, so it was obviously good.
• In Muertitos here: "I heard she was so evil that if she does something good, then forever after it becomes evil, just 'cause she did it!"
• Millie in Ozy and Millie is fond of this.
• From Ape, Not Monkey
  "You know who also associated things with Adolf Hitler? ADOLF HITLER!"
• Inverted in one episode of Penny Arcade: "I mean, it's not like doing one thing the Nazis did is absolutely evil, even if that thing involves burning art that does not conform to our standards".
• Referenced in the "That Certain Card" strip of Positivity:
  #1: Hey, what do you think of my new haircut?
  #2: You know who else had hair? Hitler!
• Questionable Content came up with the counter to Godwin's Law after Pintsize attempted to invoke this trope:
  Pintsize: You know who else knew Latin? The NAZIS.
  Hannelore: Well you know who knew more Latin than the Nazis? INDIANA JONES.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal explains why you should always floss your teeth:
  "Now, I notice you haven't been flossing. So, I wanted to share with you a picture of someone else who didn't floss." *shows portrait of Adolf Hitler*
• User Friendly did a parody on Godwin's Law here.

Web Original

• Parodied in The Agony Booth review of TRON: Legacy.
  You know who else was a genocidal maniac? Hitler!
• Parodied by the satirical news website the Babylon Bee: "Reminder: Adolf Hitler Also Wanted To Go Outside And Do Things"
• Children's Daycare is Evil (no longer subtitled, but you get the gist from the keywords and tone).
• In The Cinema Snob's review of Troll 2, he points out "You know who else threw parties? GACY!"
• Used for comedic effect in Coldmirror's Gag Dub "Harry Potter und der Plastikpokal":
  Barty Crouch Sr./Candyman: Good day, it's me the candyman. From now on I am going to come to your school with my food trolley every morning and sell candy. No stupid cheese rolls like in your cafeteria. No, just sweets, sugar... lots of sugar.
  Pupils: Whaaat?
  Ron: Sugar is evil!
  Girl: Sugar makes hyperactive!
  The Wesley twins: Hitler ate sugar!
• Episode 11 of Comeuppance, a series that runs on strawmen, has this little bit:
  Sian: From Miss Scatcherd and the Trunchbull, to Pink Floyd and The Demon Headmaster, you [teachers] command a unique notoriety in the cultural psyche, don’t you?
  Mrs. Pascal: But you’re forgetting Miss Honey, John Keating and Dewey Finn. A good teacher inspires like no other.
• Lampshaded and parodied in the D&D PHB PSAs by Creative Juices 7 in D&Debate #6 (PSA #39), when Mialee discovers that she's being sued for his mistreatment of Displacer Beasts:
  Lilith: Do you know who else made sweaters out of an oppressed species?
  Mialee: (pause) ... no?
  Lilith: Hitler.
  Mialee: Um, I... yeah, um, Hitler did a lot of bad stuff, but I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.
  Lilith: (angry glare)
  Mialee: Uh, no offense.
• The Drunk and The Ugly podcast group dropped this one during their play-through of Road Trip.
  "You know who ELSE used teamwork? The NAZIS!"
• Used in Epic Meal Time:
  "If you're getting tired of all this bacon there's something wrong with your brain! You know who else didn't like too much bacon? Hitler. You don't want to be Hitler, do you? No. He's got stupid hair.
• "Everyone I Don't Like Is Hitler: A Child's Guide to Online Political Discussion◊."
• Used and inverted in Channel Awesome' 2-year anniversary special, Kickassia. When Linkara expresses doubts about the upcoming invasion of Molossia, The Nostalgia Critic responds:
  Critic: You know, there's another group of people who thought like you, Linkara, they were called NAZIS! They were closed-minded, hate-filled people who only wanted things their way! Are you a Nazi, Linkara? ARE YOU?!
  [...]
  Critic: Good. Now let me tell you about a group of people who didn't give up. They were called Nazis...
• Parodied in the HeadGum channel Off Days skit "Not Illegal," where Amir Blumenfeld defends smoking by saying, "Hitler smoked!"
• The Hittle parodies this way of thinking. A vegetarian and a meat-eater argue about which side is morally superior. So they actually bring Hitler in to resolve the dispute by blindfolding him and giving him a bat. Whoever Hitler attacks is clearly in the right, making the other side wrong.
• An episode of "Hope Is Emo" had the main character disapprove of babies because Hitler was a baby.
• Jacksfilms uses this once or twice. In his jeggings parody:
  "You might be thinking, "Hey! I like pants!" Well that's fine. You know who else liked pants? Hitler."
• The Matt Walsh Show, on the subject of birthdays:
  "Think about this, and it should be enough to put birthdays to rest: Hitler had birthdays. Dozens of them. So if you're now turning 27, well, congratulations. Even Hitler did that. In fact, I find it rather suspicious that Hitler had birthdays and so do you. What else do you two have in common?"
• This parody political ad for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic villain Ahuizotl takes this trope and runs with it hilariously:
  Announcer: "Daring Do has consistently shown a desire to steal, plunder and destroy ancient artifacts for nothing more than greed. You know who else was greedy? Al Capone. In fact, have you ever seen them together? That's right: Al Capone and Daring Do are most likely the same person."
  Ahuizotl: "Also, have you ever seen me and Mother Theresa, or Batman in the same room together? I'm not saying I am Mother Theresa or Batman... but I'm implying it shamelessly!"
• Parodied in one of many Pokémon Abridged Series.
  Officer Jenny: You know who else claimed he wasn't a Nazi? Hitler!
• From the Rifftrax of High School Musical during a romance pop-song called "Start of Something New":
  Bill Corbett Yeah, you know what else was new at one time? Hitler.
  Mike Neslon: Easy there! A bit early in the film to go full Godwin!
• In the Scott The Woz episode "You're Not An RPG Guy", Scott's friends chastise him for not liking RPGs by comparing him to Stalin.
  Rex: Stalin f**king hated RPGs, but loved Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.
• Also used for comedy in an old Seanbaby review about the NES game Wall Street Kid, concluding with "To keep it in perspective, though; all this game really was was a simple bad idea. But you know who else had some simple bad ideas? Hitler."
  • Used to even better effect when discussing the injustice of Curtis Armstrong's role in Shanghai Noon being deleted:
  Seanbaby: I know the word "Hitler" gets thrown around a lot when someone's angry, but cutting 15 minutes of Booger from a movie is exactly the kind of thing Hitler would do. Exactly.
• Todd in the Shadows does this with Jason DeRulo, of all people, in response to Meghan Trainor talking about shaking her butt "like I'm supposed to do." He even uses the exact words "You know who else..." Granted, he's not necessarily wrong, assuming she meant the line as literally as he interprets it.
• This is basically a meme on the liberal political humour blog Wonkette: "You know who else...?" Invariably, when someone asks such a question in the comments, people will respond with nonsensical answers (although the intended answer is usually, of course, "Hitler"). Presumably it started by means of mocking Glenn Beck.

Western Animation

• The trope itself is discussed in Adventure Time.
  Finn: Hey, Ice King seems way into ninjas. Even more than we are.
  Jake: Yeah, so?
  Finn: So, doesn't that mean that ninjas must be kinda lame?
  Jake: Nah, they're still cool. But Ice King's still lame because he hides his ninja love. We wear our ninja on our sleeve!
• In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius episode "Maternotron Knows Best", Jimmy's robot caretaker modeled after his mother refuses to let him and his father go outside because "Outside is where the Civil War was held!"
• The Trope Namer is Daria, episode "Pinch Sitter", with this little exchange from two kids repeating stuff their parents told them about eating sweets.
  Tricia: Sugar is bad.
  Tad: Sugar rots your teeth.
  Tricia: Sugar makes you hyper.
  Tad: Hitler ate sugar.
• On The Boondocks, after Riley finds out his idol Gangstalicious is gay, he comes to the conclusion that since he likes Gangstalicious he must be gay himself.
• Family Guy:
  • Dialogue from a PSA made to make weed illegal again in Quahog:
    Peter: All right, Carter, I've finished cutting together our anti-pot video. Take a look. (a live-action Adolf Hitler is shown with a cartoon marijuana joint)
    Adolf Hitler: (in Peter's voice) Hey, I've got a great idea! Let's kill 6 million Jews!
    German People: (in Carter's voice) Hooray! Yeah! Yeah, I'm on board! How did you come up with that?
    Adolf Hitler: (in Peter's voice) I got the idea from... from... while... from while I was smoking pot. Anyone else who likes pot, reach for my joint.
    German People: (in Carter's voice) Oh, there it is. Give us some of that!
    Adolf Hitler: (in Peter's voice) Ha ha ha! Perhaps later. Now let's go to France and steal all their Objects D'arte!
    German Soldiers: (in Carter's voice) Yeah, alright! Let's go to France!
    Peter: Not bad, eh?
    Carter: (after receiving a call) Aw, dammit. That was Fox News. Apparently they own the rights to Hitler's likeness and they won't have him slandered.
  • Inverted in "No Meals on Wheels", where Peter's argument for handicapped people being uncool is that Mark Harmon is cool and doesn't have a wheelchair.
    Peter: What do you see here, Lois?
    Lois: A picture of Mark Harmon.
    Peter: A picture of Mark Harmon, the greatest actor who ever lived! Do you see a wheelchair under Mark Harmon?
    Lois: Peter....
    Peter: Lois. Do you. See a wheelchair. Under Mark Harmon?
    Lois: No.
    Peter: No you do not, because Mark Harmon is cool.
  • When Peter gives up television, one of his arguments against it is that Charles Manson likes it.
• Invincible: In Season 2, Mark tells Cecil that he won't be stop from re-engaging in hero duty even if he is ordered too. Cecil immediately replies that Nolan, who had already went renegade, said the exact same thing.
• King of the Hill:
  • Luanne finally moves out in one episode, but her new roommates are stereotypically lazy college students who invoke Godwin's Law whenever anyone attempts to assert any sort of authority over them. For example, when she asks them not to smoke in the house:
    Girl Hipster: You know who else was anti-smoking? HITLER!
  • This didn't pan out at the end when the male roommate made the same accusation against Grandpa Cotton, a grizzled World War II veteran:
    Cotton: WHO ARE YOU CALLIN' A NAZZY?! (headbutt!)
• Buck Rockgut from The Penguins of Madagascar.
  "Like nuts do ya? You know who else likes nuts? THE RED SQUIRREL!"
  "Your friend there has a big fluffy tail. You know who else has a tail? THE RED SQUIRREL!!"
  "Read any good books lately? Read? Red? THE RED SQUIRREL!!!"
• Spoofed to high heaven in the Robot Chicken sketch "Hitler is Stealing Sandwiches" with Adolf Hitlarious himself. A Nazi soldier asks his office mates, Hitler and Himmler, which one of them stole his leftover sandwich from the fridge. Himmler doesn't want to accuse Hitler but points out meaningfully that "only one of us murdered 6 million Jews." Hitler proudly replies, "Yes! Exactly! I murdered 6 million Jews. Clearly I'm a good person! I wouldn't steal a sandwich!" After more discussion, however, Hitler gives himself away by saying something about the sandwich he would only know if he ate it, upon which he has a Heel Realization: "I stole your sandwich, Fritz. Therefore, I am a bad person. Therefore, a bad person killed 6 million Jews. Therefore, maybe killing 6 million Jews was wrong! What have I done?!" Fritz consoles him: "Mein Führer, only a bad person would kill 6 million Jews, but only a good person would feel bad about it."
• The Simpsons:
  • Inverted when Sideshow Bob, up for parole, is questioned about his tattoo reading "Die Bart, Die." He explains that it is German for "The Bart, The". The parole board is convinced, someone reasoning "No one who speaks German could be an evil man."
  • Also inverted in "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Three Times" where the Springfield Library has a cardboard cutout of Hitler encouraging reading.
  • The Itchy & Scratchy Show was once sponsored by a brand of mustache wax. Their brand was being the one Hitler didn't use.
• South Park, "Weight Gain 4000":
  Cartman: You guys, guess what? After I'm on television, I'm gonna be totally famous.
  Wendy: [as she passes by] Hitler was famous, too.

Real Life

• The phrase "reductio ad Hitlerum" ^note derived from the Latin phrase reductio ad absurdium, "reduction to absurdity" closely associated to Godwin's Law, was first used in an article written by University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss in 1951. The fallacy is essentially synonymous with this trope: if Hitler or the Nazis did or believed something, that automatically makes it wrong.
• Hitler is sometimes considered to be the poster boy of Evil Vegetarian, in fallacious arguments that often try to make vegetarians look like an Animal Wrongs Group. It doesn't help that lots of modern white supremacists are vegan and vegetarian as part of the "blood and soil" ideology.
  • However, it's worth mentioning that Hitler only started being a vegetarian for health reasons, because his doctor ordered him to - afterwards, he pretended to be a moral vegetarian for PR purposes and in order to bully subordinates who weren't.
  • Falling prey to this fallacy, in a book entitled ''Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover," the author, a vegetarian, attempts to refute this argument by demonstrating that, actually, Hitler was not a vegetarian.
• Hitler's religious beliefs, which are considered to be highly syncretic and idiosyncratic by neutral observers and historians, are used to denounce both the inevitable moral bankruptcy of atheism, and the oppressive, intolerant nature of Christianity.
  • (Here's the TL;DR) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, the Nazis established a church called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately he was not any sort of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) to be ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. Despite being "chosen," he did not see himself as carrying out the will of a personal god, but rather as implementing Nature's law - which, according to him, was survival of the fittest.
• A strange variant of this trope occurred in Jaslo, Poland in July 2009. An oak tree became the target of a political movement to get it felled once it was found out that Hitler had had it planted in celebration of his 53rd birthday.
• Adolf Hitler disapproved of smoking and was an anti-smoker, and hoped that in his lifetime every cigarette packet in Europe would come with a warning label (a practice that has indeed become widespread by the 21st century). For this reason, anti-smoking campaigns or cigarette bans have on occasion been accused of "fascism."
• There is, of course, nothing inherently good or evil about how one styles one's facial hair, but the toothbrush moustache, highly popular and perfectly uncontroversial in the decades leading up to the Second World War (being sported by the likes of Charlie Chaplin), became so strongly associated with Adolph Hitler that, almost a century later, it remains socially radioactive.
• Anti-porn activists like to point to historical figures who were sexual deviants, among them, allegedly, Hitler.
• Hitler and the Nazis (and other 20th century dictators like Stalin and Mao) did much to discredit the notion that there could be such a thing as a "good" dictatorship, and retroactively tainted all non-democratic forms of government back through history, even though they existed centuries before Nazism or Communism were ever conceived.
• One of the arguments used by some creationists to reject Evolution and Charles Darwin was the Nazis' obsession with Social Darwinism, scientific racism, eugenics, and "survival of the fittest," arguing that the Theory of Evolution led directly to the Holocaust.
• J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar who had a great attachment to Germanic and Nordic culture and art. With the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of the Second World War, he knew exactly what would happen, and wrote bitterly to his son that Hitler was, "making forever accursed that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe."
• All weapons used by the Nazis are de facto "evil" weapons, especially the famous ones such as the MG 42 machine gun or the Luger pistol. Director George Lucas of the Star Wars franchise equipped the stormtroopers of the evil Galactic Empire with an MG 42 look-alike.
  • Averted with the Walther PPK, which was used frequently by high-ranking Nazis and officers, and with which Hitler committed suicide. In addition, an upgraded variant served as the basis for the post-war Makarov pistol, becoming the Soviet (and therefore "evil") counterpart to the American M1911. Despite this, the Walther PPK has avoided the label of "evil gun," possibly thanks to being the primary firearm of James Bond.
• In a bit of irony, the Nazis fell victim to a version of this, and thereby handicapped their own attempts to create an atomic bomb, because they considered nuclear physics to be "Jewish science" and refused to use the ideas of the likes of Albert Einstein.
• Hitler spent some of his younger years as a painter, which is sometimes brought up in discussions over whether or not it's okay to enjoy the artistic output of morally questionable people. A joke or prank which is sometimes pulled is presenting one of his paintings (which are of passable quality) to an unsuspecting victim, and asking their opinion. If the person responds in any way positively to the painting, the trap is sprung and they are told they just liked something made by Adolph Hitler!
• Hitler is such a potent example of evil to modern people that, in some cases, it seems that even things like mass murder and genocide are, indeed, generally seen as less evil as long as it's not Hitler doing them. For example, the Mongol invasions under Genghis Khan in the Middle Ages were a series of brutal conquests and genocides that rival if not surpass anything committed by the Nazis. However, historians often say Genghis Khan has a "complex" legacy, while they are unlikely to ever call Hitler's legacy "complex" for any of the "good" things he may have done.
• PETA infamously published a video about the evils of milk, starting out by claiming that it's the drink of choice of white supremacists.
• British newspaper The Daily Mail once used Charles Manson's belief in climate change to ridicule the idea.
• In April of 2012, Representative Allen West (R-FL) said that members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus were members of the Communist Party, because the Communist Party praised some of their policies. Politifact called this "Guilt by Association on steroids."
• Any time there's a national tragedy, the killer's hobbies and musical interests are always demonized for having "turned" him into a killer. Video games and hardcore rock/rap are always the first to take the heat.

---

Rest easy, Hitler never browsed TV Tropes. As far as we know.

---