Ashton asks:

Now can either of us spel, Iosip Vissarionovich Djugashvili right?

Well, up here (or rather, over in Sweden), we actually transcribe it Josif Visarionovitsj Djugaszvili, but that's probably just one of those "Peking/Beijing/Whatever" things you get when even the alphabets are different...

(or am I mixing up Tito AND Stalin..?)

Could be; mr Broz's first name was Josip with a 'p', and I've never seen that for mr Djugaszvili.

"Steel" indeed - at least Stalin's moniker sorta 'meant' something!

I've heard it also means "Hammer" (as in "and sickle")? Dunno, though -- but even if that's wrong, I suppose the association between hammer and steel is close enough for goverment work...

WTF might 'Hitler' sorta mean, homonymically speaking?

That, I actually happen to know. Adolf's papa, Alois (by all accounts a sadistic bastard who probably made Adolf the monster he became), took it from his mother's side of the family (before Adolf was born IIRC, so it's not as if he ever was anything but a Hitler; just that he "ought to have been"). Dunno why Alois did that; maybe he didn't get on well with his Dad, either...

Anyway, there were indeed a bunch of near-homonyms in how the name had been spelled before that (perhaps not too surprising, among the rural near-illiterates generations before Alois and Adolf): "Hidler", "Hiedler", and... "Hütler". Again, this vowel change is not surprising if you've ever heard how the "Ü" sound is actually pronounced in the southern German dialects (Austrian, Bavarian, my own Swabian, and "Schwyzerdütsch" or Swiss German)... It kind of glides over into a long 'i' (ObEng: 'ee') sound.

So the prevailing opinion among researchers (at least it was so a decade or two ago, when I read about all this) is that Alois' mother, little Adolf's Granny, came from a family named for their work, like Müller and Schmidt (Miller and Smith) -- that she was descended from a line of makers of hüte, hats.

"Hitler", apparently, means "hat-maker".

Also Shiklgruber sans an ü :-\ufffd

Yes, but actually there's a couple of 'c's in "Schicklgruber"... :-)

...to the Führer to, uhm, Führen: "Leader, command [us]! -- we'll follow" (or, "...obey").

Expressing their willingness to be led. Kind'a like sheep, bleating "Fleece us! Fleece us!"...