The Historical past Channel, America’s most popular methodology for placing dads to sleep in armchairs, used to provide a sequence known as Searching Hitler. The fact present floated the chance that Hitler survived World Battle II and escaped to Argentina. In fact, if that had been true, he’d be properly over 100 years previous, which might make the occasions of the present much less of a “hunt” and extra of an prolonged errand to gather some hypothetical bones.
In Season Two, Searching Hitler featured an thrilling improvement: A random Argentinian man produced an previous {photograph} of an aged man that he claimed was actually Adolf Hitler. For some purpose he saved this essential piece of proof in a field in his closet as a substitute of, say, giving it to the press or doing actually something with it aside from handing it over to the random strangers who confirmed up at his door with a actuality TV crew in tow.
The photograph was so instantly convincing that the Searching Hitler crew saved it for evaluation, arguing that it could possibly be one of the crucial “important discoveries” in all of historical past. Though they in the end decided that the photograph wasn’t of Hitler in any case.
What the present didn’t reveal was the truth that the photograph was actually of comedy legend Moe Howard, of The Three Stooges fame. And final time we checked Moe A) was Jewish; B) by no means lived in Argentina; and C) undoubtedly wasn’t not certainly one of historical past’s biggest monsters.
Subsequent reruns of the episode apparently edited out the scenes that includes clear pictures of Moe, as did the excerpted YouTube clips. However you may nonetheless see fleeting glimpses of the enduring Stooge in commercials for the season.
Fortunately, a YouTuber uploaded the scrapped scenes, wherein a facial recognition knowledgeable compares an actual photograph of Hitler to the one of many star of The Three Stooges Meet Hercules. Because the video factors out, it appears extremely unlikely that this was an “sincere mistake,” seeing as how the picture was taken from an previous house film of Moe and manipulated earlier than being printed on photograph paper.
All of which positive makes it look like this was all a actuality present contrivance. It’s potential that they picked Howard to be their phony Hitler as some sort of ill-conceived inside joke, owing to the truth that Moe famously dressed up as Hitler in the 1940 brief You Natzy Spy!
In fact, there’s no conclusive proof of any of this – however we’d be hard-pressed to consider one other believable rationalization for a way a Hollywood comedy icon who by no means dedicated against the law better than the odd eye-poking ended up being mistaken for a genocidal dictator.
We’ll preserve a detailed eye on future Historical past Channel exhibits, simply in case they attempt to promote a conspiracy idea involving Stalin utilizing an previous 8×10 of Groucho Marx.
