Laughing at Hitler

From the movie "My Führer"

World War II is taboo in Europe, particularly in Germany. But a movie released this month breaks the long-standing German taboo against laughing at Adolf Hitler. Making fun of the Nazi Dictator is nothing new in the English-speaking world. Charlie Chaplin did it in "The Great Dictator", as did Mel Brooks in the Producers. Deutsche Welle's Sabina Casagrande has this report about "My Führer - The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler", the new comedy that has sparked a national debate in Germany.

It's the first home-grown comedy about Adolf Hitler. No German previously has dared to make a funny film about the man who triggered a world war and the murder of six million Jews. The plot to "My Führer -- The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler" opens in late 1944. Germany is losing the war and Hitler is an emotional wreck. So his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels pulls a Jewish acting coach out of a concentration camp to prep the Führer for a speech to rally the country for a final war offensive.

The man who chose to break this longstanding taboo is Dani Levy, a Swiss-born Jew who has lived in Berlin for years. Levy says he has long felt the need to explain how it was possible for Germans to follow Hitler but that he wanted to do so with another genre. It was also high time for Hitler to be knocked off the historical pedestal given to him by documentaries and serious portrayals in films, Levy says.

From the movie "My Führer"

"I think ultimately, the time is always ripe for a good comedy, especially about painful topics and ones which somehow stagnate in public discussion. I wanted to look at this horrible time with a comic eye. I had the feeling I decomposed it from the inside. I went into this power apparatus and raged in it as a Jew and then displayed it. I had the opportunity to pull it out of its landmarked box".

In the run-up to "Mein Führer's" opening, German media was consumed with the question of whether it's okay to laugh at Hitler. At this point in history, many Germans, especially the younger generation, say yes. Today, Hitler seems like a laughable figure, they say, with his funny moustache, manner of speaking and the huge discrepancy between his own physique and the tall blonde blue-eyed Aryan ideal the Nazis propagated.

But critics have warned that the film trivializes the Nazi era, for example with jokes about the Holocaust. In one scene, propaganda minister Goebbels tells the Jewish acting coach Adolf Grünbaum, who has just arrived from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, not to take the final solution so personally. But Levy says he is by no means trying to play down the darkest chapter of Germany's history.

"Everything is clearly stated in this film by the Nazis themselves. They say the words 'final solution', they talk about gassing, everything is said which dispels any doubts of touching up the past. A comedy can do that. It can sharpen language so that there are no misunderstandings".

And Ulrich Mühe, who plays Grünbaum, says laughter is simply one way of examining the Nazi era.

From the movie "My Führer"

"The question is: isn't it, for many people, one way of dealing with this topic? Of course, it isn't the ultimate and final option, but it's an idea by a filmmaker. And the important thing is that the discussion about this topic and this time doesn't come to a standstill".

The film does offer a handful of comic elements: Hitler having half of his trademark moustache shaved off by accident, training his German shepherd Blondi, outfitted in her own tiny SS uniform, to perform the Hitler salute or playing with a plastic battleship in the bathtub. The scenes where Grünbaum, who has outfitted the Führer in a mustard-yellow tracksuit, works on Hitler's acting skills are humorous as well.

But the big problem with this movie as a whole is that it isn't really funny. And film critics have slammed it for precisely this reason. Even Helge Schneider, the wacky German comedian and actor playing Hitler, says the director could have gotten more out of the film.

Laughter is supposed to have a liberating effect. In Germany, at least the younger generation appears to have reached a point where it can laugh about Hitler or at least view him in a more relaxed manner. But it appears a true satire about the Führer now still needs to be made.