Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany

by Rudolph Herzog

  §1 Anyone who does something or fails to do something will be punished.

  §2 Punishment will be handed down according to popular opinion.

  §3 Popular opinion is defined by the Nazi district leader [Gauleiter].

  Indeed, some people during the Third Reich wondered why the government felt it needed a legal system at all. Right from the start, there were crass cases of injustice, and measures taken to terrorize enemies were both extreme and arbitrary.

  One joke played on this very point, and its punch line had a twisted logic:

  A high-ranking Nazi official visiting Switzerland asks what a certain public building is for. “That’s our Navy Ministry,” his Swiss host explains. The Nazi laughs and says: “Why does Switzerland need a ministry of the navy? You’ve only got two or three ships.” The Swiss answers, “Why not? Germany has a ministry of justice.”

  Yet even in the final stage of World War II, even while they murdered thousands of Jews every day in Eastern Europe, the Nazis were unwilling to do without the pretence of legality, for instance in the form of judgments handed down by the notorious People’s Court. In 1933, the Nazis were already thinking in terms of what Hitler called a “legal revolution” and began laying the groundwork of their new system for administering injustice. Laws were constantly issued that turned German citizens into arbitrary victims of state authorities. As early as February 28, 1933, they adopted their infamous idea of “protective custody”—a concept that allowed them to incarcerate their political opponents without trial. The basic judicial principle, cynics joked, was now brutality before legality.

  The Nazification of the government, the church, and the judicial system was accompanied by fascist purges of Germany’s cultural edifice as well. Within the first few months of Hitler’s assumption of absolute political power, Goebbels claimed similar authority over culture through his newly created Ministry of Propaganda. Anyone who wished to work in Germany as a writer, an artist, or an actor was required to join the Reich Chamber of Culture or one of its subordinate organizations. Those who remained outside or were excluded from this state association were effectively prohibited from working. Moreover, the Nazis didn’t handle artists they considered a nuisance with kid gloves. By the spring of 1933, some 250 well-known German authors, including Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Stefan Zweig, had been stripped of their citizenship and the works of “enemy” writers were being publicly burned, in theatrical spectacles featuring bizarre “campfire speeches” by Nazi agitators. Meanwhile, instead of voicing their opposition to the book burnings, other prominent cultural figures, like the actor Gustav Gründgens and the writer Gerhart Hauptmann and including, sometimes, even personal friends of the persecuted writers, were pledging their fealty to their new leaders. Behind closed doors, many of these artists may have complained about the banal monotony of the “Pitiful Chamber of Culture,” but most of them simply adapted to the times.

  Goebbels was equally eager to achieve a quick and smooth Nazification of the German press. Opposition newspapers were banned, and others were forced out of business by state subsidies handed out to rivals. The Ministry of Propaganda took care to ensure that some semblance of journalistic variety remained, but only in layout and appearance—not in the centrally dictated, strictly nationalistic content of the articles.

  As strange as it might seem today, many Germans at the time actually applauded the eradication of the free press. The Munich cabaret performer and early Nazi sympathizer Weiß Ferdl, for example, wrote a song praising Nazification and comparing it to the Nazi campaigns against jazz and other forms of “nigger music.” The text might read like a parody today, but during the Third Reich it was sung without irony. Its “humor” consisted of a play on Gleichschaltung (literally, “same-keeping”), the German term for bringing everything into line with Nazi interests and ideology:

  There used to be so many parties,

  And also a lot of friction

  Until an engineer spoke his opinion:

  No, dear Germans, this can’t go on,

  No more alternating currents—

  A single one will do just fine.

  He converted some and turned off others,

  And brought everything into line.

  It used to be that reading paper

  Made you stupid and even crazy.

  One wrote “Bravo! Very good!”

  Another “Pfui!” The truth stayed hazy.

  Now you can save your dime,

  If you’ve read one, you know what’s right,

  They say the same thing every time,

  Brought into line, brought into line.

  We no longer like the saxophone

  We don’t dance the rumba or the Charleston

  No more jazz or nigger steps,

  We’ve stopped playing the simpleton,

  We hear the songs of yesteryear

  Marching music, German rhyme,

  And they are pleasant to the ear,

  Brought into line, brought into line.

  If a man wants a second woman

  And can’t stay true to his wife,

  A German lady, she can threaten

  To send him to Dachau for life.

  “For twenty years you did enjoy

  All my charms, and that was fine,

  And so it will be—you, too, are older,”

  Brought into line, brought into line.

  At meetings for disarmament,

  Frenchmen never stopped complaining

  “Germany poses us all a threat,”

  But the world’s no longer listening.

  Our chancellor spoke an open word:

  “Only he can say peace is mine

  Who destroys his weapons and keeps his word,”

  Brought into line, brought into line.

  United are Prussians and Bavarians

  And won’t be parted ever again.

  Instead to going to the mountains

  Let’s spend a weekend in Berlin.

  We’ll go sledding in Luna Park

  While the Prussians learn to yodel fine.

  Boy, do we now stick together,

  Brought into line, brought into line.

  And if we strongly stick together,

  Everything will be looking great

  For farmer, worker, and every servant

  Noble or common, the same good fate.

  In the land that we fought for

  And suffered years of pain,

  We now want to live together,

  Brought into line, brought into line.

  Ferdl wrote these verses the year after Hitler became chancellor, and they are one of the many examples of cultural figures declaring their loyalty to the Nazis in those early days.

  During that period, however, some people still resisted Nazification. Many respectable middle-class citizens shook their heads at the Nazis’ provocative, drastically anti-Semitic publications. But there was little significant revolt among the Germans, who considered themselves a people of “thinkers and poets,” as the Nazis set about remaking the German press and German culture in their own image. Their resistance extended only to hiding the works of the great German-Jewish writers in the second rows of their bookshelves, and perhaps allowing themselves a small sarcastic joke in private about the banality of Nazi culture. One sadly untranslatable example of such a joke revolves around a schoolteacher having his pupils practice comparatives and superlatives using three Nazi newspapers. In the punch line, one pupil responds that Der Stürmer, the virulently anti-Semitic organ of the SA, is at its best when applied most intimately—that is, used to wipe one’s ass. The pattern of the joke is typical for the Nazi years: the punch line is a naïve, unthinking remark put into the mouth of a child, a circumstance that takes some of the sting out of an insult aimed at Nazi culture and would have allowed the joke-teller to protest his innocence, if accused of fomenting political discontent.

  In the first years of the Third Reich, German society was not only Nazif
ied but militarized. The Nazis created numerous and, in part, competing organizations in which people from all walks of life and of all ages were required to appear in uniform. The result was a Kafkaesque confusion of official garb on German streets shortly after Hitler took power. That gave rise to the popular quip that soldiers would soon have to wear civilian clothing to distinguish themselves from the masses.

  The spread of Nazism also meant the absurd spread of acronyms for the often clumsy names of Nazi organizations, which included not just the SS and SA, but also the BDM (Association of German Girls), the HJ (Hitler Youth), and the NSKK (National Socialist Corps of Auto Mechanics). The explosion in abbreviations quickly became the subject of mostly harmless jokes:

  The number of organizations continues to expand. Before they are eligible for the SS and SA, young people are recruited to the HJ, the younger ones to the Jungvolk, and those younger still to Nazi kindergartens. Now infants are being organized. They are called T.U.R.D. Scouts.

  Jokes like this didn’t aim any serious criticism at the paramilitary nature of Nazi organizations. At most, such witticisms targeted the disruptions to normal family life party duties entailed:

  My father is a SA man, my oldest brother is in the SS, my little brother is a member of the HJ, my mother belongs to the Nazi Women’s Group, and I’m in the BDM. We meet up once a year at the Nuremberg Rallies.

  The acronym BDM in particular was fodder for sexual jokes, with the abbreviation being made to stand for “Soon-to-be German Mothers,” “Commodities for German Men” or “Boy, Mount Me.” As was typical for the period, these jokes had no pointed political thrust and can hardly be interpreted as signs of a basic skepticism among the populace toward the regime.

  GERMANS ENJOYED laughing at the bizarre particulars of National Socialism, but the new system, despite some initial criticism, was soon firmly anchored in German society. And as a gesture of gratitude, the regime repaid the populace with instances of seeming liberalness. The Nazis were apparently worried that they would be seen as thickheaded thugs with no sense of humor, and occasionally policies were aimed at communicating the message that the party leaders weren’t as fearsome as their reputations. One of the strangest results of this charm offensive was a compilation of foreign anti-Hitler caricatures that was published in Germany in 1933. The editor of the fancily bound volume was none other than the Nazi responsible for dealing with the foreign press, Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl.

  In his introduction, Hanfstaengl wrote:

  The mocking, distorted images used by a degenerate press to depict Adolf Hitler as he fulfills his historic mission are reminiscent of cacophonous jazz music. The naysayers and defamers are shamefully unmasked by their own work.… The value of this compilation of caricatures of the Führer resides in the fact that they, more than any other opposing voices, argue for him. Every image reveals how wrongly the world has seen and judged Adolf Hitler. Those who study the book attentively will get a good laugh at every picture, not because the caricaturists are so witty, but because they have gotten things so obviously wrong.

  In fact, Hanfstaengl did not trust his readership to draw the correct conclusions. To ensure that readers laughed at the right things for the right reasons, Hanfstaengl added propagandistic glosses to the caricatures.

  For instance, one image from The Nation depicted Hitler as a grim reaper with an army of skeletons marching at his feet. The reaper’s scythe was shaped like a swastika, and its blades dripped with blood. On the following page, Hanfstaengl interpreted the picture for his readers:

  The press: The image suggests Hitler is a warmonger.

  The facts: On July 15, 1933, Hitler authorized the German ambassador in Rome to sign the Four Powers’ Pact, through which England, France, Italy, and Germany ensured peace in Europe for the next ten years.

  Another caricature in the compilation portrayed Hitler as a fearsome Indian chief with an enemy’s head impaled on a spear. The caption read: “The chief of a savage tribe after the Battle of Leipzig and in full war dress.” Hanfstaengl’s gloss:

  The press: On September 25, 1930, Hitler testified before a Leipzig court that “heads would roll” when the Nazis took power in Germany.

  The facts: After taking power, Hitler did indeed cause a number of heads to “roll” into the concentration camps. This was because he had decided to be a generous victor and because he wished to spare the healthy productive masses of the German people from a bloody confrontation with their enemies.

  Hanfstaengl’s “corrections” could hardly have been more cynical, but the fascist press applauded his machinations. In the publicity blurb on the book jacket, a director of nature films, Luis Trenker, wrote that Hanfstaengl’s work would “recall to our minds the heroically pursued struggle of our Führer.”

  Hanfstaengel’s declaration of loyalty to Hitler went for nothing. In 1937, he was forced to flee to America after a conflict with Goebbels. The man who had tried to stir up hatred against Jews and the Nazis’ political enemies became a persona non grata in the Third Reich. But his career continued. Franklin Roosevelt used him as a political and psychological adviser during World War II. In 1946, after the demise of the Nazi regime, Hanfstaengel returned to Germany and wrote his memoirs. He died there in 1975, without ever having been called to answer for his past.

  A tragic destiny, on the other hand, awaited a man who had turned against the Nazis voluntarily, and much sooner. The caricaturist Erich Ohser, who was born in 1903, attracted the displeasure of the Nazis early in the 1930s after he published a number of satirical depictions of Hitler. One showed a man out for a walk in the snow urinating in the form of a swastika. Another image merged Hitler’s moustache and hairstyle into a frightening grimace that cast the Führer as a warmonger. Ohser’s courage would not go unpunished. When he later applied for membership in the Imperial Chamber of Culture he was rejected and couldn’t get any work. The letter he received from the chamber on January 17, 1934, read: “On the basis of your earlier, explicitly Marxist public work, the Commission of the Regional Press Association of Berlin has decided negatively regarding your request for acceptance into the expert committee of journalistic illustrators in the Imperial Association of the German Press and for entry into its professional rolls.” Seized by panic, Ohser burned the originals of drawings he had done for the left-wing newspaper Vorwärts, but to no avail. His anti-Nazi caricatures had appeared in mass circulation, and Goebbels and his henchmen could hardly be expected to forget his earlier criticisms of fascism.

  Gritting his teeth, Ohser adapted to the times, at least externally, and began publishing apolitical cartoons under the pseudonym E. O. Plauen. His series Father and Son enjoyed enormous popularity, and that opened doors to the newspaper Das Reich, which was considered relatively liberal. There, he sold a number of political cartoons that were careful not to overstep fascist lines. Ohser drew anti-British and anti-Soviet caricatures, but in his private life he made no secret of his real political convictions. In the next-to-last year of World War II, this personal frankness undid him. A neighbor reported anti-Nazi remarks made in a conversation between Ohser and his friend Erich Knauf, and the two men were hauled up in front of the People’s Court. Ohser committed suicide before the trial; Knauf was executed in May 1944.

  THE CABARET ARTIST Werner Finck had far better luck than Ohser. Nazi prosecutors ignored him for an astonishingly long time, although the courageous comedian became an underground hit in the early Hitler era for his risky political jokes. Finck had a standing engagement at the Berlin cabaret house Catacomb. This small theater became something of a legend in postwar Germany, but despite its later reputation, Catacomb was not strictly a venue for political cabaret. Instead, it put on variety shows that featured sketches and small-stage acts. A chanson singer usually appeared, and then a mime, before Finck took the stage. One could say that he was responsible for the political segment of a general entertainment. Indeed, some artists who worked in the Catacomb in the early 1930s considered i
t too apolitical and founded a harder-hitting cabaret house of their own.

  Those artists were forced into exile after Hitler’s assumption of power, while Finck became a master of ambiguity. His performances were famous for what they didn’t say. Every one of his appearances was a dance on a knife’s edge. Finck knew that if his criticism of the regime became too explicit, the Nazis would ban his act, label him a political enemy, and send him to a concentration camp. He was forced to adopt a number of tricks in order to conceal political messages in harmless packaging. His audiences knew the point of Finck’s game, and the comedian’s daring verbal acrobatics gave his act an additional appeal. The kick one got was similar to watching a high-wire artist working without a net. People thrilled to the danger and laughed because they were able to read between the lines. Finck himself accurately described the situation when he said that during the Third Reich, one only had to strike a tiny bell with a tiny hammer to create a deafening uproar, whereas later you could hit a giant bell with a giant hammer and only a tiny sound would come out. Germans under Hitler were highly sensitized and could tell when invisible boundaries were being crossed.

  Finck, the master of humorous transgressions, was also a sly operator. In 1933, for instance, he founded the seemingly innocent “Fighting Association for Harmless Humor” (KfhH), an organization whose name sounded well in Nazi ears. In the Catacomb’s program, the “Association” published the following Finck verses: