Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany

by Rudolph Herzog

  A fresh wind is blowing

  We want to laugh again

  Humor, awaken!

  We’ll give you free rein.

  While the lion is crowned

  And Mars rules the hour

  Good cheer, which we all love,

  Is slowly turning sour.

  Let’s not allow the devil

  Or any other powers

  To rob us of the fun

  That is rightfully ours.

  Let the power of words

  Vibrate the eardrums

  And if anyone objects, he can

  Kiss us on our bums.

  These lines were full parodies of Nazi slogans, such as “Germany, awaken!,” and authorities intervened and banned the program. Finck’s rhyming takeoff on Nazi jargon prodded the Nazis in what was apparently a sore spot. But in the pseudo-tolerant years of the early Third Reich a modicum of criticism was tolerated. Indeed, the Nazis occasionally had some kind words for Finck. In a review of a Catacomb spring show, published in the Nazi party’s chief organ, the Völkischer Beobachter, an adjutant to Propaganda Minister Goebbels praised the performer for his “witty joking and sometimes surprising punch lines.” And the editor-in-chief of Der Angriff, which was published by Goebbels himself, wrote in the Catacomb’s visitor’s book: “Dangerous or not—keep going!”

  Later, in the 1960s, Finck related an anecdote that summed up the absurdity of situation in the supposedly liberal era of the early Third Reich. One evening he was approached by a man in civilian clothing. After some hemming and hawing, the man revealed that he was an officer in the SA. The man invited Finck to visit his office, saying that they could tell politically incorrect jokes there and have a lot of fun. The offer was meant completely ingenuously, although Finck, understandably, declined.

  The surprising instances of tolerance and the friendly remarks quickly came to an end. The propagandistic display of liberalism in the initial months after Hitler assumed power was just a step toward achieving the Nazis’ overall homicidal plan. Initially, the regime was careful to present a lenient face, especially to the rest of the world. The screws, however, would soon be tightened and the comedian from the Catacomb left staring into the abyss.

  ONE OF THE MOST portentous things the National Socialists did in the months following the Reichstag fire was to set up the first concentration camps in Germany. The paradigm of the camps was Dachau, near Munich. Set up in March 1933 under the direction of a sadistic commandant named Theodor Eiche, it rapidly achieved a tragic notoriety well beyond Bavaria. At first, Communists, union activists, and Social Democrats were the prisoners most frequently interred and occasionally tortured there. However, they were soon joined by Sinti and Roma, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and common criminals. Dachau was never an extermination camp like Auschwitz. Nonetheless, over the years thousands of people died there—shot or tortured to death.

  In the early days of the Reich, the Nazis kept up the pretence that Dachau was a “re-education camp” and that people confined there could hope to be released some day. But it was an open secret that the camp was actually an extralegal space in which torture and murder were allowed. Contemporaries relate that it was common for parents to tell misbehaving children that they would be sent to Dachau if they didn’t shape up. But the public outrage that should have arisen at this example of state terror never materialized. One man, Fritz Muliar, recalls that photos of Dachau were published in Austria in 1937 showing inmates with head wounds. Germans suspected the true dimension of the crimes that were being perpetrated at Dachau, but seeing them, and believing their eyes, would have required action. The public’s reaction to Dachau was silence. Germans kept their mouths shut and looked the other way.

  The name of Dachau became shorthand for the entire network of concentration camps—as illustrated by its prominence in the jokes of the time. An only half satirical prayer made the rounds: “Dear God, please make me silent and repent so that I don’t get to Dachau sent.” But many Dachau jokes seem to have been aimed more at accustoming Germans to this new phenomenon than articulating any real criticism of it. The following joke was attributed to Nazi sympathizer Weiß Ferdl:

  I took an excursion to Dachau, and boy what a place it is! Barbed wire, machine guns, barbed wire, more machine guns, and then more barbed wire. But I tell you: Nonetheless, if I want to, I’ll get in.

  It is ironic that Ferdl, who used to open the bill for Hitler’s speeches when the Führer was still a relatively unknown agitator, was sometimes credited with anti-Nazi jokes. Though the cabaret performer sometimes allowed himself an equivocal remark, his political orientation was beyond doubt. His reputation as an adversary of Hitler was undeserved and was probably owed to his audience misinterpreting ambiguous passages in his songs.

  But there was no need for even a Nazi loyalist to be enigmatic about Dachau, which was never mistaken for a sanatorium. The variety of popular idioms and jokes featuring Dachau as a concentration camp belies many Germans’ assertions after World War II that they didn’t know what was going on there. The following joke, for example, absolutely depends on the hearer’s assumption that a concentration camp is an extralegal realm where prisoners are terrorized and a place where one can be sent at any time for criticizing the Nazi regime:

  Two men meet up on the street, and the first one says: “Nice to see you out again. How was the concentration camp?”

  The second man replies, “It was great. Mornings we got breakfast in bed, with our choice of freshly ground coffee or cocoa. We did some sports, and then there was a three-course lunch with soup, meat, and dessert. After that we played some board games and took a nap. And after dinner, they showed movies.”

  The first man can’t believe his ears. “Wow! And the lies they spread about the place. Recently I was talking to Meyer, who also spent some time there. He told me horror stories.”

  The second man nods seriously and says, “That’s why he got sent back.”

  This joke makes clear that even in the early days of the Third Reich, Germans were afraid that if they said the wrong thing they’d be arrested and sent to a place like Dachau. Thus the danger of humor itself quickly became the subject of humor:

  Whaddaya got for new jokes?

  Three months in Dachau.

  Such jesting, ironically, is evidence that the concentration camps, along with emergency ordinances allowing things like “protective custody,” were indeed the effective deterrent to free speech—including free humorous speech—that they were intended to be.

  After the Reichstag fire, Germany was kept in a permanent state of emergency to justify the government’s exercise of autocratic powers. The Nazis argued that “enemies of the state” could not be stopped using the regular instruments of the Weimar judicial system and with this excuse stacked the deck against those they accused of treasonous activities. There was no appeal against the decisions of the special courts the Nazis introduced, and those merely under suspicion were hardly safe, for suspect persons could be held without charge. The Gestapo, which acted independently from the regular Nazi legal system, was empowered to detain people for whatever reason and for however long it deemed fit. Those who were released from protective custody bore the stigma of being criminals, and other Germans avoided them as if they carried a contagious disease. Government authorities rendered decisions about what behavior was permitted or forbidden more or less arbitrarily.

  Most of the laws the Nazis enacted were little more than pseudo-legal window-dressing. On March 21, 1933, the “Ordinance of the Imperial President for the Defense against Malicious Attacks on the Government of National Renewal,” proclaimed that the dissemination of “untrue” (that is, critical) statements about the regime was punishable by a term of imprisonment. And although in the very first year of its existence 3744 violations were recorded, Nazi authorities felt the law was not strict enough, and it replaced it one year later with the “Law against Malicious Attacks on the State and the Party and in Defense of
Party Uniforms.” This new edict included privately made criticisms of the government among the offenses to be punished by incarceration.

  The exact wording of the law was as follows:

  §1

  Whosoever intentionally makes or spreads an untrue or grossly distorted statement of fact of the sort that could seriously damage the welfare of the Empire or the reputation of the Imperial government or the National Socialist German Workers Party is subject, insofar as other statutes do not stipulate a greater punishment, to up to two years’ imprisonment. Moreover, if he makes or spreads such a statement in public, he is subject to imprisonment of not less than three months.

  Whoever commits such an offense through gross negligence is subject to imprisonment of up to three months or a fine.

  If such an offense is directed solely at the reputation of the NSDAP or its members, it will be prosecuted in consultation with the Führer’s representative or an officer named by him.

  §2

  (1) Whosoever makes hostile, incendiary, or belittling public remarks about the leaders of the state or the NSDAP, or its ordinances or measures, of the sort that could undermine the trust of the people in its political leadership, is subject to imprisonment.

  (2) Nonpublic hostile remarks are to be treated as public insofar as the author could or should have reckoned with them becoming public.

  (3) Offences will be pursued by order of the Imperial Minister of Justice; if an offence is aimed at a leading personality of the NSDAP, the Imperial Minister of Justice will issue his order in consultation with the Führer’s representative.

  (4) The Imperial Minister of Justice will determine in consultation with the Führer’s representative which persons are included in the leading personalities of the party in line with paragraph 1.

  The law thus accorded the Nazi party and its representatives special legal protection, almost as though they were an endangered species, and also invited Germans to denounce one another.

  Even so, the populace was not completely cowed by the new law’s harsher terms. It is impossible to determine precisely what effect the changed political climate had upon the telling of political jokes. In the end, the system never functioned as comprehensively as the Nazis would have liked. It wasn’t possible to keep all German citizens under surveillance or to watch over what happened in every house and on every street corner. And Germans going about their daily lives no doubt knew that the state was not omnipotent.

  Nonetheless, the postwar compilers of Third Reich jokes were convinced that all wisecrackers had lived dangerously. One editor, Kurt Sellin, wrote in the introduction to his book Hitlerisms in Popular Speech, published in 1946 with the approval of the Allied occupying forces:

  People often described jokes and irony as being deadly. The Third Reich did not perish because of the jokes that were made about it. And it was not exclusive to the Third Reich that a joke could prove deadly for the person who told it. But the Third Reich did yield a number of instances of precisely that.

  Sellin went into great detail about the “personal dangers” that came with telling popular jokes. He also asserts that Germans, fearing draconian punishments, only told political jokes in private, in hushed tones or after first looking around to make sure no one else was listening in. That picture, though, does not conform to the reports of other witnesses interviewed for this book. The majority of them said that they were indeed able to tell political jokes freely, openly, and without fear of punishment.

  The historian Meike Wöhlert has analyzed and compared the judgments rendered by courts responsible for malicious acts of treason in five cities. Although her research only deals with registered cases and not unofficial ones, the results suggest that the telling of political jokes was a mass phenomenon beyond state control. In 61 percent of official cases, joke-tellers were let off with a warning, alcohol consumption often being cited as an extenuating circumstance. (People who had had one too many in bars were considered only partially responsible for their actions, and because most of the popular jokes that made it to court had been told in bars, the verdicts were accordingly lenient.) Fines were rarely handed down, and in only 22 percent of cases were those found guilty sentenced to any time in jail. Strangely, the harshest sentences for “maliciousness” were rendered in prewar Nazi Germany, but even then the term of incarceration seldom exceeded five months.

  The historical record contradicts the assumption that the Nazis sentenced large numbers of people to death during World War II for telling jokes. In the final phase of the Third Reich, some cases did receive capital sentences, but they were extreme exceptions to the rule. (We will return to them later.) The compilations of jokes that circulated in Germany after the war bore titles like Deadly Laughter and When Laughter Was Dangerous, but there is not much evidence that the jokes they contained were inevitably risky for the teller.

  There is no doubt, however, that the situation became tense after the law was passed enabling the Nazis to legally target their political enemies. Even the adroit Werner Finck had to watch his step. Every night, Nazi “cultural monitors” came to the Catacomb and jotted down everything he said. These spies were so indiscreet that Finck often recognized them and built them into his act. Sometimes, he’d interrupt his performance to address them directly: “Do you want me to talk slower? Are you keeping up? Or should I wait for you?”

  The Nazis among Finck’s audience weren’t amused by these impromptu barbs. In a protocol with the Kafkaesque designation Nr. 41551/35II2C8057/35, the fascist monitors reported the following:

  The Catacomb’s audience is largely made up of Jews, who frenetically applaud the common insults and biting, destructive criticism of the performer Werner Fink [sic]. Fink is a typical cultural Bolshevik who apparently does not understand the new times, or in any case doesn’t want to, and who tries, in the same manner of earlier Jewish writers, to drag National Socialism and everything holy to National Socialists through the mud.

  Two years after Hitler took office, the authorities had had enough and suddenly reversed their policy of ostensible tolerance toward Finck. Up until 1935, the cabaret artist had been given minor roles in state-produced films, such as the harmless comedy A Fresh Wind from Canada. But his next role, in the film April Fools, was to be his last. Finck was arrested while on the set and taken to the much feared Gestapo headquarters in the center of Berlin.

  Finck later recalled that he initially thought the whole thing would be over in an hour. But as the interrogations dragged on, and the time he was scheduled to perform at the Catacomb drew ever nearer, he started to suspect that this time the authorities were serious. What he didn’t know was that the premises of his employer had also been closed—forever. After a bit of hemming and hawing, the officials, some of whom were fans of Finck’s, told him he was being “kept on.” Finck later described the scene, which was not without some black comedy of its own, in his memoirs:

  Finally, my watchers had to fess up. In embarrassed and genuinely polite tones, they said they had no other choice but to arrest me. Then they accompanied me to the prison across the way. As I entered, an extremely tall SS man leapt in front of me and asked: “Do you have any weapons?” “Why?” I responded. “Do I need any?”

  The Nazi press made a meal of Finck’s arrest. The SS organ Das Schwarze Korps dismissed the Catacomb as a “cultural refuse heap” and mentioned in passing that other cabaret houses, such as Larifari and the popular Tingel-Tangel, had also been forced to close their doors permanently.

  Finck’s arrest was part of a larger, concerted action against cabaret performers who had gotten under the Nazis’ skin. The measures taken had been planned down to the smallest detail. One of Goebbels’s intimates, a Major Trettelsky, had even recommended that the “breeding grounds of Jewish and Marxist propaganda should be closed during their performances and everyone involved, including the audience, should be taken into protective custody.”

  Not all the performers arrested ended up in jail cells. Ekke
hard Arendt pulled out his Nazi Party membership book, for example, and Rudolf Platte expressed regret and swore to change his ways. Both were released. But no such leniency was shown to Finck, Walter Gross, Walter Trautschold, Günter Lüders, or Heinrich Giesen, who were all taken to the Esterwegen concentration camp on Germany’s Dutch border. The theater formerly occupied by the Catacomb was taken over by the cabaret troupe Tatzelwurm, whose directors, Tatjana Seis and Bruno Fritz, made sure that any humor in their shows was too harmless to offend the authorities.

  For Finck and his colleagues, it was the beginning of a long stretch of hard time. Esterwegen was no extermination camp, but prisoners were hardly treated gently. One form of ordeal there that shouldn’t be underestimated was the uncertainty about whether one would ever be released.

  Finck was luckier than most inmates: his relative fame and popularity meant he was spared the guards’ full brutality. In fact, he was even allowed to stage an evening of cabaret while inside. His routine “Have no fear, we’re already here” has been preserved. It’s a prime example of Finck’s black humor:

  Comrades, we are going to try to cheer you up, and our sense of humor will help us in this endeavor, although the phrase gallows humor has never seemed so logical and appropriate. The external circumstances are exactly in our favor. We need only to take a look at the barbed wire fences, so high and full of electricity. Just like your expectations.

  And then there are the watchtowers that monitor our every move. The guards have machine guns. But machine guns won’t intimidate us, comrades. They just have barrels of guns, whereas we are going to have barrels of laughs.

  You may be surprised at how upbeat and cheerful we are. Well, comrades, there are goods reasons for this. It’s been a long time since we were in Berlin. But every time we appeared there, we felt very uneasy. We were afraid we’d get sent to the concentration camps. Now that fear is gone. We’re already here.