Did You Hear the One About Hitler?
Atticle by David Crossland
A new book about humor under the Nazis gives some interesting insights into life in the Third Reich and breaks yet another taboo in Germany's treatment of its history. Jokes told during the era, says the author, provided the populace with a pressure release.
Hitler visits a lunatic asylum. The patients give the Hitler salute. As he passes down the line he comes across a man who isn't saluting.
"Why aren't you saluting like the others?" Hitler barks.
"Mein Führer, I'm the nurse, I'm not crazy!" comes the answer.
That joke may not be a screamer, but it was told quite openly along with many others about Hitler and his henchmen in the early years of the Third Reich, according to a new book on humor under the Nazis.
But by the end of the war, a joke could get you killed. A Berlin munitions worker, identified only as Marianne Elise K., was convicted of undermining the war effort "through spiteful remarks" and executed in 1944 for telling this one:
Hitler and Göring are standing on top of Berlin's radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Berlin. "Why don't you just jump?" suggests Göring.
A fellow worker overheard her telling the joke and reported her to the authorities.
The author, German film director and screenplay writer Rudolph Herzog, isn't trying to make readers laugh. He wants to examine the Nazi period from a different perspective, and sees contemporary jokes as a good way of showing people's true feelings at the time.
"Jokes reflect what really affects, amuses and angers people. They provide an inner view of the Third Reich that possesses an authenticity one usually misses when reviewing other literary texts," says Herzog, 33, whose book "Heil Hitler, The Pig is Dead" -- the punchline to another Hitler joke -- goes on sale in September. "Political jokes weren't a form of active resistance but valves for pent-up public anger. They were told in pubs, on the street -- to let off steam with a laugh. This suited the Nazi regime which was deeply humorless."
Releasing steam
Many Germans were angry about Nazi fat cats getting top jobs in the government and industry, but they didn't rebel. They just told jokes:
"A senior Nazi visits a factory and asks the manager whether he still has Social Democrats among his workforce.
"Yes, 80 percent," comes the reply.
"Do you also have members of the Catholic Center Party?" "Yes, 20 percent," the manager responds.
"Don't you have any National Socialists?"
"Yes we're all Nazis now!"
The vanity of the Nazi top brass was the butt of many jokes:
"Göring has attached an arrow to the row of medals on his tunic. It reads 'continued on the back.'"
Such jokes were harmless to the Nazis and didn't reflect opposition to them, says Herzog. He contrasts it with the desperate gallows humor of Germany's Jews as the noose tightened during the 1930s and in the war years:
"Two Jews are about to be shot. Suddenly the order comes to hang them instead. One says to the other "You see, they're running out of bullets."
Such jokes told by Jews were a form of mutual encouragement, an expression of the will to survive. "Even the blackest Jewish humor expresses a defiant will, as if the joke teller wanted to say: I'm laughing, so I'm still alive," says Herzog.
His book, based on contemporary literature, diaries and interviews with 20 people who lived through the Third Reich, comes to some uncomfortable conclusions: From an early stage, Germans were well aware of their government's brutality. And the country wasn't possessed by "evil spirits" nor was it hypnotised by the Nazis' brilliant propaganda, he says. Hypnotized people don't crack jokes...
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New Book on Nazi-Era Humor: "Did You Hear the One About Hitler?" - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News