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The northwestern Austrian town of Braunau am Inn, where Adolf Hitler was born, has revoked the Nazi dictator’s citizenship, 78 years after he offed himself. Hitler was actually born, in April 1889, in the hamlet of Ranshofen, abutting Braunau, and was made an honorary Ranshofener in 1933 (despite the fact that his family had migrated in 1892 to the bigger pastures of Passau—later notorious for three concentration sub-camps—in Lower Bavaria). Ranshofen was annexed by Braunau in 1939, a year after Braunau had gifted to Hitler the right of residence during the Anschluß, the 1938 Germany-Austria union, to celebrate which the Fuhrer had swanned through the delirious town. It is to pay penance for this well-documented hospitality that the Braunau town council has stripped Hitler of all honours. It’s especially farcical because huffy councillors have been reported wondering about the possible excessiveness of this retroactive reparation, given the doubts over the legality of Hitler’s Ranshofen citizenship being transferable to Branau.
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