Politician named Adolf Hitler clinches victory in Namibia but insists ‘I’m not striving for world domination’
A POLITICIAN called Adolf Hitler has won a landslide in the Namibian election - but promised he is not "striving for world domination".
The councillor with the unfortunate name won 85 per cent of the vote as he claimed a seat in the former German colony in southern Africa.
Mr Hitler has assured he has "nothing to do with" the Nazi ideology despite sharing a name with the evil Fuhrer, who died in 1945.
Full name Adolf Hitler Uunona, he won the seat on the party ticket for the ruling South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo).
The party has been in power since winning independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990.
Namibia still has many streets, places and people sharing German names and used to be part of the colony German South West Africa.
"My father named me after this man. He probably didn't understand what Adolf Hitler stood for," Mr Hitler told Bild.
"As a child I saw it as a totally normal name.
"Only as a teenager did I understand that this man wanted to conquer the whole world."
Mr Hitler said that his wife calls him Adolf, and that he normally goes by the name Adolf Uunona.
He bemoaned it is now "too late" to change his name as it appears on all his official documents.
He won 1,196 votes in the election over 213 for his opponent, handing him a seat on the regional council in Oshana.
Mr Hitler couldn't be more different than his historic namesake, getting into politics as he joined anti-apartheid fighters with Swapo.
"That I have this name doesn't mean that I want to subjugate Oshana now," he assured.
Namibia still has communities of German-speaking people due to its colonial past and each year is visited by about 120,000 Germans.
Berlin still says it has a "special responsibility" to the country due to the two nation's "shared colonial past".
German soldiers slaughtered some 65,000 Hereo and 10,000 Nama tribes people to suppress a revolt between 1904 to 1908.
The kaiser's control of the region was wrestled from the fallen empire at the end of World War 1.
Adolf Hitler's rise to power (the Nazi one)
ADOLF Hitler was one of the most evil men to ever live and was responsible for the murder of millions
He was born in Austria in 1889 and originally considered careers as a priest or artist before being enlisted into the German army in 1914.
His experiences in World War 1 led him into politics as Germany suffered a humiliating defeat in 1918.
Hitler became a leading member of the National Socialist German Workers Party - or the Nazis - in 1920.
Capitalising on growing unhappiness and hardship in Germany, Hitler's party grew in popularity and even staged a failed coup in 1923.
He was jailed and after his release unveiled his true ideology in his book Mein Kampf.
The Nazis became one of the largest parties in Germany, with Hitler being appointed chancellor in 1933.
He passed a litany of new laws which imposed censorship and ended civil liberties, installing himself as a dictator.
Germany invaded Poland in 1939 to reign territory it lost in World War 1 - triggering World War 2 and the downfall of the Nazis.
Pressure has been growing in recent years for German to offer some kind of reparations for Namibia.
Much unlike his modern namesake, Hitler was a brutal tyrant whose attempts to steamroller over huge swathes of Europe triggered World War 2.
After taking power with the Nazi party in 1933, the evil regime committed genocide on a massive scale as it imposed its warped racist views.
The Third Reich systematically murdered six million Jews - around two third of Europe's entire Jewish population - in the Holocaust.
Most read in News
Britain, America, Russia, and their allies defeated the Nazis in 1945 after liberating much of Europe from Hitler's iron grip.
Hitler committed suicide by shooting himself while cowering in his Fuhrerbunker as the Soviet Union's huge Red Army stormed towards Berlin.
His body was dragged from his bolthole by his staff before being burnt in the gardens of the Reich Chancellery.
Read More on The US Sun
It comes after a cat lover was left baffled after spotting Hitler's face staring out of his kitten’s ear.