Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany

by Rudolph Herzog

  Ernst Lubitsch, the director of the other great anti-Nazi wartime comedy, would receive none of the laurels enjoyed by Chaplin. In fact, To Be or Not to Be, which is today rightly regarded as a classic, caused him substantial difficulties. Above all, it was bad timing that caused audiences to reject and critics to lambast the film. Chaplin’s Great Dictator hit the cinemas in 1940, well before the United States entered the war. It was easy for people in the U.S. to laugh at the terrible events in Europe when the conflict still seemed so far away. But a year later, when Lubitsch began shooting his masterpiece, the situation had changed. The Stars and Stripes now flew over the battlefields of Europe and Anerican blood was being shed to help free the world of the terror of Nazism, and that was no laughing matter. For many, it was a completely inappropriate time to release a comedy about the Third Reich.

  But although critics and public resisted the idea behind it, To Be or Not to Be was a very funny film. The plot was a twisted work of genius. A young Polish fighter pilot, Stanislav Sobinski (Robert Stack), falls in love with the theater actress Maria Tura (Carole Lombard). Every time Tura’s actor husband takes the stage and launches into the famous Hamlet soliloquy, Sobinski leaves the audience and has a backstage rendezvous with Tura. Just as their affair is discovered, World War II breaks out, and Sobinski leaves his lover to go fight. When it becomes clear that Poland is no match for the more powerful Germany, he travels on to London, where he and other exiles volunteer to fly dangerous missions for the Royal Air Force. But a Gestapo spy called Professor Siletzsky has insinuated his way into the ranks of the Poles fighting in exile, and by a simple ruse, he gets his hands on a complete list of individuals active in the Polish resistance. On that list is Maria Tura, and when the unsuspecting Sobinski asks Siletzsky to pass on the words “To be or not to be” to her, the fake professor misinterprets this as code. The pilot discovers Siletzsky’s true identity, but not before the latter has made his way to Poland to hand over the list to an SS officer named Ehrhardt. Sobinski sets off to avert the catastrophe and parachutes into occupied Warsaw.

  There he contacts Maria. Her troupe is distressed by the bad news but has no idea how they can prevent Siletzsky from passing the list with Maria’s name to the Nazis. Sobinski and she then come up with a daring plan. They convert their theater into a fake Nazi headquarters and set a trap for Siletzsky. The actors dress up as Nazis, and Maria’s husband Joseph takes the role of Gruppenführer Ehrhardt. The deception works, but during a conversion between the supposed Ehrhardt and Siletzsky it emerges that the spy has made a copy of the list, which he has left in his hotel room. So Joseph assumes a new role: the Gestapo spy Siletzsky. As the situation in Warsaw begins to heat up, the Turas dress up another actor as Hitler and flee with the entire troupe in the Führer’s private plane.

  Lubitsch approached the material with light hand and effortlessly mastered all the somersaults of the plot. The cast—especially Jack Benny, who plays the pompous thespian Joseph Tura—obviously had fun with the script. But the first screenings in early 1942 made it abundantly clear that the movie was going to flop. The specially invited audience greeted the clever punch lines with steely silence. In particular, many viewers were enraged a scene in which the real Ehrhardt says, “What [Tura] did to Shakespeare, we are now doing to Poland.” Reviews were constantly citing this line as proof of how tasteless the film was, and whole rows of viewers left movie theaters when it was uttered. A wave of outrage was aimed at Lubitsch, who was accused of laughing at Polish suffering.

  The following review illustrates the critics’ incomprehension and knee-jerk rejection of the film:

  Frankly, this corner is unable even remotely to comprehend the humor—or possibly the satire—in such a juxtaposition of fancy and fact. Where is the point of contact between an utterly artificial plot and the anguish of a nation which is one of the greatest tragedies of our time? What is the element of mirth in the remark which a German colonel makes regarding Mr. Benny’s acting: “What he did to Shakespeare, we are doing now to Poland?” Even if one were able to forget the present horror which this implies, the butchery of a people would hardly be a matter for jest. Yet all the way through this picture runs a strange imperception of feeling. You might almost think Mr. Lubitsch had the attitude of “Anything for a laugh.”

  And this brings us back to the question: what is the conception behind a film that trades so distastefully upon the grim human tragedy now in effect? Why should a Hollywood producer endeavor to give significance to a fanciful tale by pretending that it is connected to the real events of today? Why, if he wants to make a picture with a story of such incredible proportions, should he not set it off in the realm of absolute make-believe?

  Judging by what we have seen, the answer which stares us in the face is that some people in Hollywood still see the world through theatrical eyes. So deeply accustomed have they become to reflecting illusions and story patterns, not life, that the drama of current events becomes mere grist to their image-grinding mills. Poland, France, England and soon Wake Island are just locales for their same old story lines. Civilizations may crumble—but the hero and heroine come out all right in the end.

  The Philadelphia Inquirer was even more drastic in its dispraise, and, ironically, there was an anti-Semitic component to its negative review. Lubitsch, the critic wrote, was a jaded Jewish director.

  To this day, To Be or Not to Be retains its stigma of tastelessness in the American popular consciousness. Contemporary film historians may be far milder in their judgments about Lubitsch’s work than the critics of his own day, but the moral objections to it persist—with many viewers still finding some scenes inappropriate in light of the Nazi genocide in Eastern Europe.

  Lubitsch himself was mortified by the harsh commentary of his contemporaries, but he refused to cut the offending Shakespeare-Poland joke. Instead, he mounted a vigorous defense of his work in the American and British press. It took him two years to react to the particular hostility directed at him by the Inquirer, but when the same reviewer panned his next movie, Lubitsch submitted a long, well-argued open letter:

  I am not writing this letter with the intention to make you reconsider your criticism—nothing is farther from my mind. I am merely writing this letter to point out to you that several times in your criticism you resort to what one calls in sports circles a “foul.”

  The purpose becomes very clear when in the next sentence in regard to To Be or Not to Be you call attention to my “callous, tasteless effort to find fun in the bombing of Warsaw.”

  Being an experienced newspaper woman you are surely aware of the effect such an allegation must have on the reading public, particularly at a time like this. Such propaganda is not very gracious, but when it is based on false facts it becomes outrageous.

  Naturally, your statement that I “find fun in the bombing of Warsaw” is completely untrue. When in To Be or Not to Be I have referred to the destruction of Warsaw I have shown it in all seriousness; the commentary under the shots of the devastated Warsaw speaks for itself and cannot leave any doubt in the spectator’s mind what is my point of view and attitude towards those acts of horror. What I have satirized in this picture are the Nazis and their ridiculous ideology. I have also satirized the attitude of actors who always remain actors regardless of how dangerous the situation might be, which I believe is a true observation.

  Never have I said in a picture anything derogative about Poland or the Poles. On the contrary I have portrayed them as a gallant people who do not cry on other people’s shoulders in their misery but even in the darkest day never lost courage and ingenuity or their sense of humor.

  It can be argued if the tragedy of Poland realistically portrayed as in To Be or Not to Be can be merged with satire. I believe it can be, and so did the audience which I observed during a screening of To Be or Not to Be; but this is a matter of debate and everyone is entitled to his point of view, but it is certainly a far cry from “the Berlin born director who finds fun in the b
ombing of Warsaw.”

  It is doubtful how effective Lubitsch’s missive was, given the emotionally charged atmosphere of wartime America. It wasn’t until after his death that To Be or Not To Be achieved the status of a classic.

  Contemporary critics were unable to see beyond their own immediate horizons, which was why The Great Dictator and To Be or Not To Be were measured with different yardsticks. Nazis were supposed to be portrayed as teeth-baring monsters, and Poles as helpless victims—no other depictions were permissible. Lubitsch ignored such clichés. His Nazis were grotesque petty bureaucrats, and his Poles were clever Davids who put one over on the Goliath Hitler with their inventive tricks. Although the plot of To Be or Not to Be featured stock comic routines, the depiction of the Nazis as philistine lunkheads contained a truth that exceeded what was usually found in cinematic comedies. Lubitsch’s biographer Herbert Spaich was right when he said that the director understood, much earlier than most of his contemporaries, the “banality of evil.” Most of Hitler’s henchmen were not demons. They were overly obedient petty bourgeois who had mutated into murderers. Their testimony about the Holocaust during the postwar trials showed that this view of the Nazis was largely correct. But America in 1942 was not ready for it.

  RADIO PROGRAMS produced by the Allies had few qualms about making the Nazis look ridiculous. The BBC began German-language broadcasts in 1938, and the content was generated almost exclusively by German and Austrian émigrés. Estimates late in the war put the number of Germans who tuned in between 10 and 14 million. Listening to foreign radio was of course illegal, but the threat of punishment doesn’t seem to have deterred many people.

  It was a bold idea to combine news bulletins and swing music—which was very popular in Germany but had been banned by the Nazis—with satire. But the head of the BBC’s German service, Robert Lukas, an Austrian Jew (born Robert Ehrenzweig, he had had emigrated in 1934), convinced his colleagues to give it a try. They had no ethical qualms about poking fun at the Nazis or fears of being too inventive in doing it, and their first comedy show went over the airwaves in December 1940. The main character in the BBC’s anti-Nazi satire was a private named Adolf Hirnschal, who reported back the news from the front to his “beloved wife.” At times, Hirnschal’s unit was surrounded, and at other times they were advancing against the Russians, and he refracted all the insanity of the war and of National Socialist ideology from his on-the-ground perspective. For every sacrifice he was called upon to make for the fatherland, he had a telling commentary.

  Critically minded Germans who defied the law and tuned in to the BBC were delighted by these missives from England. The series featuring the fictional private who always said the first thing that popped into his head became a huge hit. The babbling, wisecracking Hirnschal would make his way through the remains of Europe right up until the end of the war, and the creative minds at the BBC used daily events as sources of inspiration.

  For instance, the day after a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler at his Wolf’s Lair retreat, Hirnschal sent an especially nonchalant letter home:

  July 21, 1944

  Dear Amalia, my beloved wife,

  You can’t imagine the commotion among our ranks on account of the attack against our beloved Führer. Hans-Joachim Blitz said you can’t believe how suddenly a twist of fate can happen. If the assassin had put his briefcase a footstep to the right or the left, we’d perhaps be enjoying peace right now. But thankfully Divine Providence intervened. And as Blitz was saying this, First Lieutenant Hanke came up and made a short speech, in which he explained that there had been a major miracle, and that it was proof that fate was on our side, and that the entire German people stood as one behind our beloved Führer, and that we would achieve victory with the help of the Führer and fate and our new V-rockets … Then there was an air-raid alarm, and immediately the bombs starting falling. One was a direct hit, and when we starting looking for the dead and wounded, we saw that poor Hans-Joachim Blitz’s time was up. Jaschke and I stood in front of the body, and I said, “He may have walked with a limp, but he was a stand-up-straight guy.” I had never seen anything like the expression of Jaschke’s face before, as he said in a raspy voice, “Yep, that’s the way it is. Today it’s him. Tomorrow it may be me, and the day after that it could be you, Hirnschal.” And I said: “Yep, Emil, that’s the way it is. Tens of thousands who are alive today will die pitiful deaths. And many cities that today stand tall and lovely will be reduced to ash and rubble. And lots of women and children will starve to death or succumb to disease. And that’s all because a briefcase was placed a footstep too far to the right or the left. If that’s the way fate wanted it …”

  And in that spirit, my beloved wife, you have my hugs and kisses,

  Love, Adolf

  Private on the Western Front

  The success of the Hirnschal program inspired the BBC to try other satiric shows. Author Bruno Adler decided to go Private Hirnschal one better and came up with “Mrs. Wernicke,” a sharp-tongued, never-say-die Berlin woman who offered commonsense mockery of the coercive fascist state. She also subtly advertised the BBC’s German-language news programs. We can only guess today how many Germans tuned into the shows created by Robert Lucas and his comedic cohorts.

  The zenith of the BBC’s satiric efforts came in 1940 when Austrian exile Johann Müller, who went by the pseudonym Martin Miller, began parodying Hitler’s bizarre speeches. Müller’s Hitler imitation was so perfect that the CIA is said to have asked the British intelligence service MI6 what they thought of the Führer’s new pronouncements—referring to a Miller broadcast. Moreover, after the war, it emerged that this fake Hitler had attracted a considerable German audience. A contemporary from Berlin, Manfred Ormanowski, told of how his father, a Social Democrat, transcribed and secretly reproduced Müller’s Hitler speeches, using a basement printing press. Ormanowski himself distributed the satiric leaflets to German critics of Hitler. He kept them hidden in the fake bottom of a fish tank and would visit friends of his father ostensibly to swap fish, but actually to hand out the witty pamphlets.

  Müller’s performances hardly convinced hardcore Nazis that their ideology was ridiculous. But the BBC program did boost the spirits of Hitler’s German critics. As Ormanowski described it, they felt as though they were not alone in their views. Müller knew that the best way to amuse his audience was to go after Hitler where he was most vulnerable. After Hitler promised “final victory” in 1941, for instance, Müller had the fake Führer hold a year-in-review speech:

  My message today coincides with the conclusion of a year in which I guaranteed final victory. But the year has only concluded according to the calendar, the same Gregorian calendar that was forced upon the Germanic world by international Jewry and a Roman pope named Gregor who had been bribed by Freemasons. Do we National Socialists, who have given the world a new order, want to be told by shadowy foreign forces when a year begins and when it ends? No, my racial comrades, I alone am entitled to decide when a year commences and when it concludes.

  For the Nazi party, the highlights of the BBC’s anti-Nazi satire initiative were unheard-of provocations, but the fascists were unskilled in the use of real humor as a weapon and came up with little in the way of a comic counterattack.

  Ironically, earlier on in the war, it had looked as though the Nazis had an advantage on the propaganda front, and for a short time the English-language service of the German public radio broadcasters had almost as many listeners in England as the BBC. The broadcasts always began with “Germany calling,” although the nasal voice of the announcer William Joyce made the words sound like “Jermany calling” and promptly earned the moderator the nickname Lord Haw-Haw. Instead of satire, the Nazis’ English-language programming offered listeners cynical tips on how to treat injuries suffered in bombings. Joyce read out such advice in perfect Oxford English, though he was not at all an aristocrat, but rather an untamed thug with a large scar in his face that he’d received in a street fight. A
fter the war, he was captured in Hamburg, where, as a former British citizen, he was executed for high treason.

  DESPITE THE INITIAL propaganda inroads the Nazis made, the BBC maintained the upper hand in the “radio war” until the demise of the Third Reich. Goebbels and his henchmen may have meted out draconian punishments to those found listening to foreign broadcasts, but such shows of force were an expression of helplessness. Even the gravest sanctions failed to deter Germans from secretly tuning in to the BBC. In 1939, for instance, a law was enacted making it a capital crime to pass on news from foreign broadcasters. The text of that piece of legislation left no doubt how seriously the Nazis took propaganda:

  In modern warfare, the adversary does not fight only with military weapons, but also with instruments intended to influence and exhaust the people psychologically. One of these instruments is radio. Every word the adversary broadcasts is of course a lie conceived so as to harm the German people. The Imperial government knows that the German people are aware of this danger and consequently expects that every German will see it as a matter of responsibility and decency to avoid listening to foreign broadcasters. For those racial comrades who lack this sense of responsibility, the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Empire has issued the following decree. The Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Empire has decided it shall be law for the entire territory of the Greater German Empire: