My fellow Germans! It is over! Darkness will descend and envelop us. The sun will no longer warm us. The German people will be destroyed. Is that what you want? [The crowd responds “No” and Hitler continues to lip synch Grünbaum’s words. ] No, we want to lie on the Adriatic, soaking up the sun with bodies that deprivation and defeat have turned to steel. The German soul is a clean soul. We are proud of that! We have to look to the future with united strength. Let us not forget the many problems that we have already solved: those involving communists and those concerning homosexuals! Above all, however, we have solved the Jewish problem. (42) The younger the reader, he says, the more they enjoyed his book. His mother, who was born in 1942, failed to see the funny side. "'But that's what Hitler was like,' she said." The photo, taken by his official photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, is signed by Hitler in dark blue ink: 'The dear and considerate Rosa Nienau, Adolf Hitler Munich, the 16th June 1933.' At the beginning extra3 used to get regular complaints from viewers, but their number has decreased over the years. "It has become increasingly difficult to provoke audiences with the Nazis. Jokes about animals and the church always get complaints – jokes about Hitler less and less so."

Es ist eine ganz wichtige und durchaus moderne Erkenntnis, dass Führer und Politiker, die ungeliebte Kinder waren, besonders gefährlich sind, weil sie in ihrem Gerechtigsempfinden völlig gestört sind, in ihrem Empfinden, was richtig und was falsch ist.”

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Chaplin regarded Hitler as one of the finest actors he had ever seen. ( Hitler carefully monitored his public persona, studying photographs and film of his speeches, and taking lessons in public presentation.) Nonetheless, Chaplin, whose international success was based on little people challenging and defeating powerful institutions and individuals, recognized that comedy could be used against Hitler. Quoted in Shai Oster, “Holocaust Humor”, Utne Reader, 31 October 2007, available online at http://www.utne.com/1999-09-01/holocaust-humor.aspx.

The film portrays Hitler as an impotent man who plays with battleships in the bathtub and wets his bed. Most critics have not been amused. But this is difficult territory. Hitler as buffoon is a joke as old as Charlie Chaplin. But Hitler as human being also makes many uneasy. The reviewer, Cornelia Fiedler, of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, attributed the book’s success not to its literary quality but to an unsettling obsession with Hitler. “A very strange fixation on Hitler has developed in Germany and it has something of the manic about it. The focus on Hitler – be it as a comic figure or as the embodiment of evil – risks washing away the historical reality”. Auctioneer Bill Panagopulos said: 'The signed version is a never-before publicly seen piece, Adolf Hitler inscribing a warm photograph showing him with a charming little girl whom, amazingly, he knew to be a Jew. Kaplan, for example, writes: “The latter-day naysayer [Chaplin] to Holocaust humor (‘Had I known …’) is challenged by the compelling insistence of the Chaplin who proclaimed that he ‘had to do it.’”

Grunbaum's eldest son and wife want Grunbaum to kill Hitler, which he tries but cannot bring himself to do. This is an important storyline, says Moritz Reininghaus, editor of a Jewish paper here, Juedische Zeitung. In contrast, Agnieszka Holland’s Europa Europa (1990) became an international cause célèbre because of its reception in Germany. Appearing one year after Schlingensief’s film, Europa Europa had wide distribution. The controversy that ensued after its release suggests how sensitive the subject of Hitler and laughter was in Germany at the time. Holland’s images of Hitler dancing with Josef Stalin to Johann Strauss’ “Blue Danube Waltz” or her depiction of the German dictator hiding in a closet holding his crotch, an allusion to the jokes about the Nazi leader’s scrotum missing a testicle, were tame in comparison to Schlingensief’s salacious satire. Nonetheless, the German film jury responsible for nominating a German film in the foreign film category of the Academy Awards caused a minor sensation by passing over the film. They argued that the film was directed by a Pole, not a German. Yet, in 1986, the jury had nominated Holland’s Bittere Ernte ( Angry Harvest) as Germany’s entry in this category, negating their argument that the director was not German. The decision to overlook Europa Europa, titled Hitlerjunge Salomon ( Hitler Youth Solomon) in German, occasioned a debate between defenders of the film, who reflected Germany’s cinema élite (26), and opponents, who represented many critics and apparently the public, as the film was not successful in Germany. Arguments cantered on whether the film was being slighted because it dealt with the Holocaust, an issue that critics of the decision felt Germany might not be ready to confront, or quality, which the jury was claiming. Bittere Ernte had also dealt with the Holocaust, without obviating its acceptance as a German film, suggesting that the topic by itself was not behind the negative decision. Quality could indeed have been the reason, as members of the jury described the film as “trash” and “embarrassing”. A review in Die Welt called it “voyeuristic” and “sexually overwrought”, and a critic for taz wrote that it was “unbelievable” (27). Yet, the film won a Golden Globe as Best Picture, suggesting its cinematic value. It was then set on fire by retreating SS troops in early May, and looted after Allied troops reached the area. The satirical programmes relied on an unlikely coalition between the BBC, British propaganda officials and disaffected German-speaking exiles. On the one hand, the British officials insisted that the message of the German Service had to sound “as English as Yorkshire pudding”. But it also needed to demonstrate an intimate knowledge of the German psyche, and for that it was much in debt to the contribution of the exiles. But the relationship was not always easy; as an “enemy alien”, Lucas and his fellow exiles were often regarded with suspicion.