Yes, Nazi Dictator Adolf Hitler Was Once Time Magazine's Man of the Year

Arguments about Time's Person of the Year seem to erupt at around the same time each year. This year, Time named Donald Trump Person of the Year, a distinction the president-elect has held before. As always happens when someone controversial is granted the distinction, some people were outraged at the idea that Trump had been bestowed with this kind of honor.

It's at this point that people usually remind those outraged that Hitler was once Time's Person of the Year, and that the award is supposed to be based on a person's significance, not necessarily on whether they were good for the world. Following this argument, some people naturally wanted to know whether Hitler was really ever named Person of the Year. Here's what we know.

Yes, Hitler was named Time's Person of the Year in 1938, the year before Germany invaded Poland and kicked off World War II. Time still has the article up that explains the magazine's rationale at the time (of course, they had no idea of the many horrors to come). Even in the moment, though, it's clear that Time's writers didn't necessarily grant Hitler the distinction because they admired him.

The article describes a 1938 Munich conference that redrew the maps of Europe, allowing Germany to take Austria without a fight.

"Herr Hitler reaped on that day at Munich the harvest of an audacious, defiant, ruthless foreign policy he had pursued for five and a half years," it says. "He had torn the Treaty of Versailles to shreds. He had rearmed Germany to the teeth or as close to the teeth as he was able. He had stolen Austria before the eyes of a horrified and apparently impotent world."

The article then goes on to describe the way events in Czechoslovakia "threatened World War."

"When without loss of blood he reduced Czechoslovakia to a German puppet state, forced a drastic revision of Europe’s defensive alliances, and won a free hand for himself in Eastern Europe by getting a “hands-off” promise from powerful Britain (and later France), Adolf Hitler without doubt became 1938’s Man of the Year," the article continues.

Clearly, then, Hitler did not earn the distinction of Man of the Year (the idea that the distinction could be granted to a woman had not even entered the brains of Time in 1938) because the magazine admired what he had done.

Their argument, instead, was that Hitler had shaped world events in 1938 more profoundly than any other person. The article goes on to argue that other potential candidates aren't qualified for one reason or another.

Whatever you think of Donald Trump (his own vice president once compared him to Hitler), it's clear that Time has a long history of bestowing that distinction in a value-neutral way. Their argument is that Trump, like Hitler, shaped world events in 2024 more than anyone else. That could be wrong, but it's separate from the suggestion that he is not a good person.