FLEMINGTON, N.J. — Call him Hitler; it's what he wants.
The name that Isidore Heath Hitler chose for himself and a New Jersey judge approved March 24 became effective Monday on Victory in Europe Day, 72 years after Germany surrendered in World War II.
"It's great. My driver's license is changed over, my insurance, my registration, all that I needed is changed over," the former Isidore Heath Campbell said. "I'm the new Hitler."
His initials are now I.H.H., which he said stands for "I Hail Hitler."
New Jersey law has few legal restrictions on names, and the state's Office of Vital Statistics and Registry can reject a name only because it contains an obscenity, numerals or symbols or a combination that is "illegible," according to a 2014 blog entry from the Philadelphia law firm of Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel.
So now the self-proclaimed Nazi dad who was born in 1973 said he has everything he wants — except his four children, who were placed in foster care in previous years because of what the New Jersey Children & Family Services officials said was violence in his home.
Hitler's children — Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, Honzlynn Jeannie Campbell and Heinrich Hons Campbell — apparently won't share their father's new surname. The request that he filed with the court Feb. 14 listed only himself.
"I feel good about it," Hitler said of his name change. "Now all I need is my kids back."
A white supremacist who now lives in Shippensburg, Pa., Hitler has been enamored with the Nazi leader since at least 2005 when he named his son.
On the child's third birthday, a Greenwich Township, N.J., supermarket refused to sell him a cake decorated with "Happy Birthday, Adolf Hitler," and his story received national attention. Another grocery-store bakery about 10 miles away in Pennsylvania later sold him a cake.
In 2011, Hitler's youngest son, Heinrich, was removed from his father's custody shortly after he was born. In 2013, Hitler marched into the Hunterdon County Courthouse here dressed in a Nazi uniform to petition a family court judge to allow him to see Heinrich.
"Let my four children know that I do love them," Hitler said. "And I will be there soon to get them."
Follow Nick Muscavage on Twitter: @nmuscavage
