Why Hitler Would Have Liked Idaho’s High Desert

I remember reading in an Almanac when I was a teenager that Adolf Hitler had owned 8,000 acres of land in Colorado. A story I stored in my head for many years, but saw very few other published matching claims.

Yesterday, I came across a video online that debunks the story. News media first reported this story in 1940 and got it wrong. What a shock! Author Mark Felton explained in the video how this all came about, but no, the German megalomaniac didn’t own land in the United States.

But he did have a love for the American West, especially novels about settlers moving west in the 1800s. Specifically, Hitler enjoyed the work of the novelist Karl May, who was a popular writer in Germany, but also never came to North America. Hitler read the novels for relaxation.

One of my old college professors, Fred Gillan, while studying in Germany, had heard Hitler speak before World War Two. The professor explained the Austrian-born madman compared the conquest of the American West to his dreams of conquest of the Ukrainian and Russian steppes. May’s writings about white men, many of German ancestry, heroically sweeping across North America inspired Hitler. So the deadliest war in history traces its roots to what we used to refer to in this country as dime novels. Pop culture is a powerful thing. Just think that many Americans are going to cast a vote this year and follow the instructions of a singer!

Felton speculates that if Hitler had wanted a home on the range a lot of trouble could have been avoided.