Hitler vs. Stalin

Submission 37,123

Part of a series on World War II. [View Related Entries]

About

Hitler vs. Stalin refers to a series of memes based on an artwork of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin engaged in hand-to-hand combat. First used as an object labeling meme in January 2019, the format received further spread on Reddit in September 2019.

Origin

On December 28th, 2016, DeviantArt user DaniART90 (Daniar Joldoshbekov) submitted an artwork of WW2 Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler and Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin engaged in hand-to-hand combat.^[1] The post received over 2000 views on DeviantArt and 6 retweets on Twitter^[2] in three years (shown below).

On January 6th, 2019, an unknown user posted an edited version of the image with Hitler and Stalin given Chidori and Rasengan chakra spheres from Naruto (shown below).^[3] On the same day, Twitter user @Xion_Sempai posted the edited version of the image with the post gaining over 30 retweets and 70 likes in nine months (shown below).^[4]

Spread

In the following days, the image was reposted by users on Twitter and in several subreddits, including notable reposts in /r/pewdiepiesubmissions,^[5] /r/fakehistoryporn^[6] and /r/memeeconomy.^[7] On January 9th, 2019, Redditor jango671 posted the earliest known object labeling meme based on the image as an example for their /r/memeeconomy post (shown below, left).^[8] On January 21st, Redditor RedRiki24 posted another object labeling meme based on the image to /r/dankmemes subreddit, with the post gaining over 14,200 upvotes in six months (shown below, right).^[9]

On June 19th, 2019, Redditor conschtructor used the edited image for a meme, spawning History Channel at Night meme series.^[10] The post gained over 53,600 upvotes in /r/dankmemes subreddit in one week (shown below).

The image did not see further use in memes until on September 24th, 2019, Redditor D3Rpy_Un1c0Rn107 posted a meme based on the image which gained over 24,500 upvotes in three days in /r/memes subreddit (shown below).^[11]

In the following days, the format gained significant popularity on Reddit, primarily in /r/memes and /r/dankmemes subreddits.