Book on Nazi humour is a stress buster

LONDON: Hitler may have been a fascist, but Germans living under his iron fist made full use of humour as a stress buster, says a new book.

Here is a sample of “Nazi humour” from German film director and screenplay writer Rudolph Herzog’s Heil Hitler, The Pig is Dead — the punch-line to another Hitler joke — that releases this month: “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 Füehrer, I’m the nurse, I’m not crazy!’ comes the answer.”

“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,” German news magazine Der Speigel’s website quoted Herzog as saying. That joke about Hitler’s asylum visit, like many other jokes about the Fuehrer and his henchmen could be told openly in the early years of the Third Reich, according to the book. However, by the end of the World War II, a joke could be a matter of life and death.

The book recalls a Berlin worker, identified as Marianne Elise K, who 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.”

The book, based on contemporary literature, diaries and interviews with 20 people who lived through the Third Reich, concludes that Germans from an early stage were well aware of their government's brutality.

The country was neither possessed by "evil spirits" nor was it hypnotised by the Nazis' propaganda, Herzog noted, adding that hypnotised people do not crack jokes. This joke about the Dachau concentration camp, opened in 1933, shows people knew early on they could be imprisoned on a whim for expressing an opinion: “Two men meet. ‘Nice to see you’re free again. How was the concentration camp?’

‘Great! Breakfast in bed, a choice of coffee or chocolate, and for lunch we got soup, meat and dessert. And we played games in the afternoon before getting coffee and cakes. Then a little snooze and we watched movies after dinner.’

“The man was astonished: ‘That’s great! I recently spoke to Meyer, who was also locked up there. He told me a different story.’ The other man nods gravely and says: ‘Yes, well that’s why they’ve picked him up again'.”