Thanks for referring me here, @eric3579.

It's all true. The bit about pretty much zero world history being taught in schools is correct, but in a way that just makes it all the MORE puzzling.

I teach high school level students English. I do a unit on "Local Heroes" where my students learn a little bit about significant people from native English speaking countries. To get the theme across, I start with a Thai guy named Phraya Phichai who is a very significant person in the province where I live. From there I talk about Elvis Presley or Amelia Earhart for the US, Lord Nelson for England, William Wallace for Scotland, Nelson Mandela for South Africa, etc. to demonstrate people who have a similar kind of significance to people from those states/countries.

After that unit, during oral testing I ask every student to name their favorite historical figure / hero other than the ones we covered. Single most common response: the King of Thailand (the one that just died last year was and still is extremely respected / revered by Thais). But the second most common response: Hitler. By a pretty wide margin. I'd say 30%+ say the King, and nearly 10% say Hitler. Random sports players, musicians, etc. make up most of the rest -- but none with a big chunk of the responses like those 2.

I used to be pretty shocked by all of that kind of stuff here (I've seen the shirts, chicken restaurant, nazi flags for sale, etc.) but I guess I'm pretty numb to it by now. No idea what the source of it is, because it really does seem quite strange that Hitler isn't covered in schools here, yet somehow people seem to learn broad strokes about him enough for him to be oddly "popular". Whatever the source of that is, it seems to filter out the stuff that should make him infamous as opposed to a general pop culture sort of famous.

I'd be very interested to know what the first few results would be if the average person in Thailand did google Hitler. Given that they tailor their results to what they think you're looking for, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not what you'd expect.

I put a browser in incognito mode (so there would be no cookies / history to tailor results with) and tried it. Should be pretty much on par with average Thai results since I have Thai ISP and went through google.co.th. Also, I changed the search term to "Hitler" in Thai language script: "ฮิตเลอร์".

I'm pretty functionally fluent in listening to Thai and semi decent at speaking it (I can get along in daily life fine although I'll never be mistaken for a native speaker since I didn't grow up with a tonal language). I'm not completely illiterate when it comes to reading it, but I'm quite slow. Sort of "Dick and Jane" level. Anyway, it would take forever for me to interpret the results of that search reading everything in Thai, but here's a quick once-over:

#1 result is https://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/อดอล์ฟ_ฮิตเลอร์
The Thai wikipedia article on Hitler is a bit shorter than the English one, but seems to cover everything in a similar way. I didn't try to read much to confirm but it does talk about the holocaust and Jews.

#2 result is http://teen.mthai.com/variety/57766.html
Seems to be a blog-type article on Hitler, written by a (high school?) student. I used the Chrome translate feature (which generally produces nonsense with Thai to English, but can get you broad strokes) to save time. This one does mention that Hitler hated Jews and talks about the holocaust being "cruel", although it seems to present a sort of positive take on Hitler in general. At least, more than we'd generally be comfortable with in the West.

#3 result is https://pantip.com/topic/31569039
This is a web forum. The article/post is called "(เรื่องน่ารู้) 10 อันดับเหตุผลที่ทำไมฮิ
605;เลอร์ถึงเกลียดชาวยิว", which google translate converts to "(I know) 10 reasons why Hitler hated the Jews". My stab at a better translation would be "(Things you Should Know) 10 reasons why Hitler hated the Jews". Thai doesn't really have pronouns, so that bit in parenthesis is semi ambiguous, but น่ารู้ means "should know" or "worth knowing".

This one is interesting. The list it presents is:
* Jewish influence in communism.
* Jewish causes lost World War 1.
* Jews make Depression
* Hitler knot lodged since childhood.
* Hitler was influenced by the idea against genocide.
* Hitler's brain has been affected as a soldier.
* Master Race theory
* Hitler believed in conspiracy theories about Jews.
* Political nationalism
* Hitler envious of wealthy Jews.

It explains those in brief terms (a few sentences each) and then there is a poll where readers can vote on which one was the main reason that Hitler hated Jews. There's some anti-semitic implications mixed in there, but it is also blunt about the evil stuff that Hitler did and doesn't present him as a person to be emulated / respected.


I wish I read Thai better so I could get a better read on those. Your question is quite interesting, along with (my potentially incorrect take on) those first few search results.

I know a lot of people from Thailand, mostly second gen Thai Americans, but some Viet, Mong, and Cambodians whose parents were in refugee camps in Thailand or who worked at those refugee camps. I don't live in Thailand though, so I'm giving a second/third person account, but several of my friends who have Thai influences laugh and joke about the Hitler thing. Nothing shocking to someone who lived in BKK or had parents who did. I feel thankful for having grown up with Thai people, all of whom i met in honors and AP classes in high school.

But basically what that means is, I don't know any of these misinformed Thai people, just those that left Thailand for America and tell tales of their homeland.

@MilkmanDan, thanks for filling in some the gaps of my knowledge with your exp!

That's not crispy chicken in that Go Bowl.