History’s Nobel Peace Prize Nominees Include Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini

Established in 1895, the Nobel Peace Prize is one of five “Nobel Prizes” established by the will of Alfred Nobel, and is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Unlike the Nobel Prizes for Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature, the Nobel Peace Prize may also be awarded to an organization. 

With the Nobel Peace Prize presented on December 10, with the recipient to be announced in October, nominations have already started for 2021’s award. Jared Kushner, who was at the forefront of the Trump administration’s unprecedented achievements regarding peace in the Middle East, has been nominated. So has Stacey Abrams, apparently for promoting “nonviolent change via the ballot box.”

However, the nominee raising the most eyebrows is undoubtedly the Black Lives Matter movement. Norwegian MP Petter Eide nominated BLM for “for their struggle against racism and racially motivated violence,” saying that “BLM’s call for systemic change have spread around the world, forcing other countries to grapple with racism within their own societies.” The fact that the widespread violence and rioting sparked and fueled by the Black Lives Matter movement resulted in billions of dollars in damage seems irrelevant.

However, such controversial nominations become less surprising when we understand that “any person or organization can be nominated by anyone eligible to nominate for a Nobel Peace Prize,” with a nomination considered valid if it is submitted by someone who falls into one of the following categories, according to the Nobel committee:

• Members of national assemblies and national governments (cabinet members/ministers) of sovereign states as well as current heads of states
• Members of The International Court of Justice in The Hague and The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague
• Members of l’Institut de Droit International
• Members of the international board of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
• University professors, professors emeriti and associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology, and religion; university rectors and university directors (or their equivalents); directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes
• Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• Members of the main board of directors or its equivalent of organizations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• Current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee (proposals by current members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after 1 February)
• Former advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Committee

As reported by CNBC, “A nomination does not mean that an individual or organization will actually be considered for the prize by the Nobel committee and the committee does not offer comment on any of the nominated candidates.”

Indeed, multiple other questionable nominations have already been made, including Greta Thunberg, the World Health Organization, and the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists. However, one only has to turn through the pages of history to find some shocking nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize that have been made in years prior.

Here is a list of some of the most controversial nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize since its inception.

Adolf Hitler (1939)

In the mid-1930s, Adolf Hitler banned anyone in Germany from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize after Carl von Ossietzky — a German pacifist who was convicted of high treason and espionage for exposing German rearmament — received the award while interned in the concentration camp Esterwegen in 1935. As a dark joke, antifascist member of the Swedish parliament, Erik Gottfrid Christian Brandt, nominated Hitler in 1939, but the nomination was later cancelled.

Somewhat appropriately, no Peace prize was awarded in 1939, with World War II beginning on September 1 1939 after Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. By the time the war ended on September 2 1945 — six years and one day after it began — the world had witnessed over 24 million military casualties and an unfathomable 45 million civilian deaths (at the very least), making World War II the deadliest conflict in human history.

Joseph Stalin (1945 and 1948)

According to the Nobel Prize website, “Joseph Stalin, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1953, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 and 1948 for his efforts to end World War II.”

Following Germany’s surrender, and Soviet losses of at least 20 million civilian and military lives, “Stalin oversaw the continued occupation and domination of much of Eastern Europe, despite ‘promises’ of free elections in those countries.”

“Stalin did not mellow with age,” History writes. “He pursued a reign of terror, purges, executions, exiles to the Gulag Archipelago (a system of forced-labor camps in the frozen north) and persecution in the postwar USSR, suppressing all dissent and anything that smacked of foreign, especially Western European, influence.”

The article concludes that Stalin was remembered both “as the man who helped save his nation from Nazi domination,” and “as the mass murderer of the century, having overseen the deaths of between 8 million and 20 million of his own people.”

Benito Mussolini (1935)

In 1935, German and French academics nominated Italian dictator Benito Mussolini for the Nobel Peace Prize. That same year, Mussolini’s Italian forces invaded Ethiopia in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, which lasted from October 1935 to February 1937. This conflict resulted in 377,500 casualties and losses on the Ethiopian side (who received material support from Nazi Germany at the time), and 208,000 casualties on the Italian side. 382,800 civilians were killed between 1935 and 1941.

In October 1936, an alliance was formed between Italy and Nazi Germany, known as the Rome-Berlin Axis. Mussolini later joined Hitler and Japan’s Hirohito as the main Axis leaders during World War II. 

Neville Chamberlain

On January 24 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, as the leader who “through this dangerous time saved our part of the world from a terrible catastrophe.” The argument was that peace had been secured by Chamberlain after the Munich Agreement was concluded by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy on September 30 1938.

The Munich Agreement was reached on Hitler’s terms, and was an attempt to appease Nazi aggression by handing over portions of Czechoslovakia to Germany. Standing outside 10 Downing Street in London, Chamberlain read these now infamous words:

“My good friends, for the second time in our history a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.”

Winston Churchill, who would become Prime Minister in 1940, described the Munich Agreement as “a total and unmitigated defeat,” and correctly predicted what would await Europe as a result.

“We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat… you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi régime. We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude… we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road… we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: ‘Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.’ And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

Earlier that year, Churchill wrote to David Lloyd George, saying “England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame, and will get war.”

He was right.

Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.