Moon Hitler was invented by Stuart Heritage writing for The Guardian following the release of the 2015 Christmas advert for the John Lewis department store in the UK. Stuart Heritage explains that Moon Hitler is a man who has done something so wrong that he was sent to live as far away as possible from any other human.
In the advert the plot features a young girl using a telescope to view an extremely lonely looking old man sitting on a bench on the moon. She sends him a telescope so he can look back at Earth and see how far away and lonely he is.
Stuart Heritage: "Clearly, the answer is that the old man is a monster. That’s the only logical explanation. Napoleon only got exiled to a Mediterranean island, for crying out loud, and he was Napoleon. But this guy has literally been jettisoned to the moon. He is hundreds of thousands of miles away from the nearest human. What could he possibly have done to warrant such punishment?
How many people must he have killed? How many lives must have been crushed into nothing under his vicious boot? Is he a war criminal? Is that it? Is he Hitler? Is this whole advert just a berserk wish-fulfilment fantasy about how the international community should have treated Hitler if they had caught him before he killed himself? If that’s the case – as I strongly suggest it is – the advert’s slogan probably should have been revised from “Show Someone They’re Loved This Christmas” to “Don’t Give Balloons To Moon Hitler, You Idiot”.
A Moon Hitler is someone who did something which was so wrong they got sent to live on the moon.