In July 1934, US General Hugh S. Johnson made anti-Hitler comments in a speech at Waterloo, Iowa.

From a New York Times report:

JOHNSON HITS NAZI KILLINGS; SAYS THEY JUSTIFY FIGHT FOR FREE PRESS IN AMERICA; SHOCKED" AT SAVAGERY Says He Realizes Now Why Our Publishers Were Apprehensive. SEES NO SUCH THING HERE Constitutional Rights, for Benefit of Public, Cannot Be Signed Away, He Asserts. PRAISES NRA TO FARMERS General in Iowa Declares It Added $3,000,000,000 to National Buying Power. JOHNSON'S SPEECH TO IOWA FARMERS

The Nazi regime responded, coercing the US State Department to put out a clarification that General Johnson had spoken off topic (OT) in a personal capacity:

JOHNSON STIRS GERMAN WRATH... Remarks of NRA Head Protested at Washing But Militant Leader to Stick to His Guns. WASHINGTON, July 13 ---- Replying to an official German protest against the anti-Hitler utterances at Waterloo, Iowa, of Hugh S. Johnson, the state department said today it was "to be regreted that the position occupied by the recovery administrator made it possible for remarks by him as an individual to be "misconstrued as official."

In hindsight, Johnson's remarks had been right on the money.

Fast forward to 13 July 2010, one month before the resignation and suicide of Frans Pop on the Debian Day anniversary. We find this tidbit from Andreas Tille, the German who was elected to be Debian Project Leader on Hitler's birthday, where he called for volunteers to face punishments for off-topic comments:

Subject: OT-ness on Debian private [Was: resignation, effective after debconf]
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:40:29 +0200
From: Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 01:23:32AM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote:
> I thought we already forwarded to a larger view of the picture.
> ...

The original problem was split into one personal which is private and
one technical which is not private at all and it is not only missuse of
this list it is also a lack of information non-DDs are deserving.

I'm seriosely asking for more discipline on this list and wonder whether
we could establish some punishment system like: You have to fix a RC bug
for every OT posting on debian-private.

Kind regards

      Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de

Find out more about leaks from debian-private.