Hitler Laughing: Comedy in the Third Reich

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The film suggests Hitler became a brutal dictator because he was mistreated as a child. One Jewish community leader here says Hitler does not deserve any mitigating circumstances or pity. But director and screenplay author Dani Levy says he was tired of documentaries that insist on demonizing Nazi leaders without asking how they came to power. Levy is Jewish and was born in Switzerland, where his mother lived after fleeing Hitler's Third Reich.

Und Äktschn! (And Action!), a critically acclaimed comedy released in German cinemas last month, tells the story of an amateur film-maker trying to make a movie about Adolf Hitler's private life. In an interview with Der Spiegel, its director, veteran Bavarian satirist Gerhard Polt, argued that there must have been a likable side to Hitler – otherwise how could he have penetrated the salons of Munich high society? "The likable guys are the dangerous ones. When a likable person gives you a hug and says something terrible, it's much harder to let go." He was elected and people don't elect idiots. We are used to thinking that he wasn't able to think clearly and have a certain kind of logic. I think that is the surprise in the book is that Hitler has a certain kind of logic. Werner Maser, editor. Mein Schüler Hitler. Das Tagebuch seines Lehrers Paul Devrient, bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Werner Maser. Ilmgau Verlag, Paffenhofen 1975. That Hitler was coached in the art of speaking was also a topic in Bertolt Brecht’s drama about Chicago gangsters, Artuo Ui. Cited in Gustav Seibt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 08.01.2007, available at http://www.filmportal.de. Scene where Krebs and Burgdorf greet [[Helmuth Weidling|Weidling]] and Weidling flashes his Iron Cross The rhyme is a good illustration of Thomas Hobbes’s theory that “the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others…”The group included directors Michael Verhoeven, Volker Schlöndorff, and Wolfgang Petersen, and actors Hanna Schygulla, Senta Berger, and Armin Mueller-Stahl. They called on the Academy Awards to redress the slight by nominating the film in other categories for which it was eligible. Years later the pacifism of the movie’s close haunted Chaplin when he was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which saw in the movie’s plea for peace a tendency toward a leftist even communist ideology. In its day, viewers could have understood the film as a call for appeasement. As World War II drew to a close, the advancing Russians came upon a town only recently vacated by the retreating Germans. They went to the Jewish ghetto and found that every single Jew, man, woman and child, had been hung from hastily erected gallows. As they stared in silence, one Russian soldier said to another, “Look what a horrible thing those barbaric Germans have done; they have hung every Jew in the town.” “Yes,” said the other, “it is a terrible thing. They didn’t leave a single one for us to hang.” (9)

In the last sequence of The Great Dictator, Hynkel the dictator has been replaced by Hynkel the Jewish Barber, both characters being played by Chaplin. Throughout the film, Chaplin has used German-sounding gibberish to lampoon Hitler’s style of speaking. Here, as the barber steps outside his character, Chaplin the actor steps forward and delivers a plea for universal understanding. The scene creates the ultimate in comedic subversion, reversing the buffoonery of the previous ninety minutes to convey a serious message of peace. Chaplin forces viewers to confront their reaction to his caricature as he pleads for world peace; war at this point is no longer a laughing matter. Hitler is no longer funny. The comedy that we saw in the early scenes, even those portraying persecution, no longer makes us laugh. Moreover, Chaplin delivers his message with a sense of genuine urgency, obviating (41) any ironic reading. Victoria Coren Mitchell gives birth! TV host, 51, welcomes second child with comedian husband David, 49, as proud parents confirm tot's sweet name After the war, in spite of the earnestness with which films from Hollywood and other film industries treated the Third Reich, the Nazis remained the butt of visual gags, but without reference to the Holocaust or even elements of Jewish persecution. For example, the American television series Hogan’s Heroes, which premiered in 1965, lampooned received images of Nazi ineptitude for its six-year, 168-episode run. Five episodes featured stories with Hitler, referencing both Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and the July 20 attempt on Hitler’s life, but as comedy. Other episodes revolved around spies, the German underground, and escape plans, to highlight the cleverness of the prisoners in thwarting their German captors. The one episode to feature a minority, The Gypsy, used the movie stereotype of fortune-tellers for sit-com laughs, overlooking the degree to which the Sinti and Roma, as the ethnic group is referred to in Germany, were persecuted. By 1968, however, in the middle of the run of Hogan’s Heroes, Mel Brooks’ The Producers had its first appearance as a non-musical movie, asking tongue-in-cheek whether the theatre world was ready for a comedy based on Hitler and the Nazis. The boldness of the concept, the fact that writer-director Brooks is Jewish, and the Yiddish jokes won over critics and viewers. Above all, by foregrounding the awareness of Nazi crimes within the plot, Brooks was able to forestall criticism. The film does not so much trivialize the Third Reich as it does the attempts by popular culture to trivialize the Third Reich. Brooks had his cake and ate it too. Grunbaum's eldest son and wife want Grunbaum to kill Hitler, which he tries but cannot bring himself to do. This is an important storyline, says Moritz Reininghaus, editor of a Jewish paper here, Juedische Zeitung.What neither side spoke to in the debate was the film’s use of humour to deal with the Holocaust. Bittere Ernte is a dramatic film, belonging to the group of serious works that are often cited as helping Germans come to terms with the past. In contrast, Europa Europa finds humour in a young man who tries to undo his circumcision, suggesting he is not only hiding from but for a time denying his Jewish identity. (28) It may be that German film critics were not ready for a humorous portrayal of the Holocaust.

In contrast, Agnieszka Holland’s Europa Europa (1990) became an international cause célèbre because of its reception in Germany. Appearing one year after Schlingensief’s film, Europa Europa had wide distribution. The controversy that ensued after its release suggests how sensitive the subject of Hitler and laughter was in Germany at the time. Holland’s images of Hitler dancing with Josef Stalin to Johann Strauss’ “Blue Danube Waltz” or her depiction of the German dictator hiding in a closet holding his crotch, an allusion to the jokes about the Nazi leader’s scrotum missing a testicle, were tame in comparison to Schlingensief’s salacious satire. Nonetheless, the German film jury responsible for nominating a German film in the foreign film category of the Academy Awards caused a minor sensation by passing over the film. They argued that the film was directed by a Pole, not a German. Yet, in 1986, the jury had nominated Holland’s Bittere Ernte ( Angry Harvest) as Germany’s entry in this category, negating their argument that the director was not German. The decision to overlook Europa Europa, titled Hitlerjunge Salomon ( Hitler Youth Solomon) in German, occasioned a debate between defenders of the film, who reflected Germany’s cinema élite (26), and opponents, who represented many critics and apparently the public, as the film was not successful in Germany. Arguments cantered on whether the film was being slighted because it dealt with the Holocaust, an issue that critics of the decision felt Germany might not be ready to confront, or quality, which the jury was claiming. Bittere Ernte had also dealt with the Holocaust, without obviating its acceptance as a German film, suggesting that the topic by itself was not behind the negative decision. Quality could indeed have been the reason, as members of the jury described the film as “trash” and “embarrassing”. A review in Die Welt called it “voyeuristic” and “sexually overwrought”, and a critic for taz wrote that it was “unbelievable” (27). Yet, the film won a Golden Globe as Best Picture, suggesting its cinematic value. According to biographer Jürgen Trimborn, much of the film was inspired by a screening of Leni Riefenstahl's pro-Hitler documentary, Triumph of the Will, at the New York Museum of Modern Art. While other viewers were appalled, Chaplin roared with laughter at the ridiculous spectacle. This attitude sustained him when he was urged to abandon The Great Dictator. "I was determined to go ahead," he wrote in his autobiography, "for Hitler must be laughed at." For a discussion of these films and others see Georg Seeßlen, “Zu Hitler Muss Uns Immer Wieder Etwas Einfallen,” 179-199, in Mein Führer: Die Wirklich Wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler: Das Buch zum Film, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007. What has comedy at the expense of the Nazis consisted of? Jokes that were off-hand, or glib, weren’t there to diminish the horror of the regime, but to forever draw attention to its risibility, to never aggrandise the perpetrators. Peter Cook, for instance, went big on insouciance. “Hitler was a very peculiar person, wasn’t he?” he once drawled. “He was another dominator… And he was a wonderful ballroom dancer. The only trouble was, he was very short…” He added: 'In the book Hitler, As I Saw Him, Hoffmann tells us that Hitler is said to have overruled Bormann, complaining: "There are people who have a true talent for spoiling my every joy."

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Roberto Benigni’s Italian Life is Beautiful preceded Mein Führer by 10 years and the East German dramatic comedy Jakob der Lügner, directed by Frank Beyer, was released in 1975. But both of these films mix drama with comedy, pathos with laughter. Mein Führer is pure farce. But, he argues, the book was so dangerous precisely because it's not full of mad ideas. "Some of it is fairly commonsensical. Take Hitler's thoughts on housing: he says young people need houses, so the state should build more houses. We can't declare that wrong simply because it was Hitler who said it." Bestselling tabloid Bild demands an interview with the "loony YouTube Hitler" in which it tries to call his bluff. "Is it true that you admire Adolf Hitler?" asks the journalist. "Only in the mirror in the morning," Adolf replies. Because Hitler does not adapt to the 21st century and instead just continues to be the Hitler who died in 1945, no one can get a grip on him. Robbie Williams reveals he once 'slashed his wrists' in a bid to end his life and didn't sleep for 144 HOURS during battle with drink and drugs