It may have taken nearly 80 years, but it seems Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s reign as history’s famous Hitler may finally be drawing to a close – enter Twitter’s latest historical darling, a Red Army soldier by the name of Semen Hitler.


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Earlier this week, the image of a man boasting a name once thought to be reserved for a Nazi leader’s little swimmers emerged as the platform’s unlikely main character after making a black-and-white appearance on the popular Wikipedia highlight page,  @depthsofwiki.


“I am quite scared of what the replies to this will be,” the account captioned an accompanying link to his Spanish Wikipedia article.



Yet, amid all the jokes surrounding Semen’s sticky name situation — “Semen Hitler was always going to win against Evil Hitler, who famously only had one ball,” wrote @bubbadpanda –  one question remained: Who the fuck was Semen Hitler anyways?



Though the soldier’s Spanish Wikipedia page is still up and running, his English language entry appears to have been lost to the sands of time … or some prude at Wikipedia. A link to Hitler’s English article archived in an old Reddit post now leads to a page stating that “Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.” (the entire Spanish language has left the chat).


Now before you arrive at Wikipedia HQ with your pitchforks and torches chanting “We want Semen!” it seems not all hope is lost for us English speakers. Alongside translating the Spanish page, some fine internet archivists bravely took Hitler’s life into their own hands, archiving the page on the Wayback Machine to preserve a taste of Semen’s existence.


Born to a Jewish family in what is now southern Ukraine circa 1922, Semen Hitler fought against his namesake, joining the Red Army in 1940, per the archived entry, dating back to 2021. Despite surviving several battles for Odessa, even while injured, a feat which earned him a medal “For Courage,” Hitler ultimately died during a battle in July 1942.


Evidently less-than-thrilled with their last name’s new connotation, Hitler’s family headed to Israel following the occupation, where they changed their last name to Hitlev, a decision best described as extremely reasonable.


So here’s to Semen Hitler, a man that to paraphrase @chillcuteboy, so boldly embodies what would happen if our favorite and least favorite thing was a person.