Adolf Hitler in popular culture

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Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889–30 April 1945) was the Führer of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.

[edit] How Hitler was represented during his lifetime

Numerous works in popular music and literature feature Adolf Hitler prominently. Before and during World War II, Hitler was often depicted inside of Germany as a God-like figure who was loved and respected by the German people (e.g. Triumph of the Will, which Hitler co-produced), but outside of Germany often treated as an object of derision. Later works continued the latter trend. Examples include:

• The movie Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) (1933) was banned by the Nazi propaganda ministry. Many critics consider Fritz Lang's depiction of a homicidal maniac masterminding a criminal empire from within the walls of a criminal asylum to be an allegory of the Nazi ascent to power in Germany.
• An early example of a cryptic depiction is in Bertolt Brecht's 1941 play, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in which Hitler, in the persona of the principal character Arturo Ui, a Chicago racketeer in the cauliflower trade, is ruthlessly satirised.
• Several Three Stooges shorts, the first being You Nazty Spy (1940) in which the boys are made dictators of the fictional country Moronica. This short in particular implies that business interests were behind Hitler's rise to power. It was also the first Hollywood production to satirize the Nazis. In other Three Stooges shorts, Hitler is referred to as "Schicklgruber" in reference to his father Alois Hitler's birth name.
• Charlie Chaplin made fun of Hitler as "Adenoid Hynkel," the dictator of Tomania in his 1940 movie The Great Dictator. This is one of the most recognizable Hitler parodies.
• In Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 movie To Be or Not to Be (as well as in Mel Brooks' remake in 1983), an actor from a Polish stage group imitates Hitler to enable the escape of the troupe to England
• Hitler was caricatured in numerous animated shorts during World War II, including Der Fuehrer's Face, a 1943 Disney wartime propaganda cartoon featuring Donald Duck, and Herr Meets Hare with Bugs Bunny (though Hitler's first appearance on a Warner Brothers cartoon was in Bosko's Picture Show in 1932 in a short gag where Hitler is shown chasing after Jimmy Durante with an ax).
• George Grosz painted Cain, or Hitler in Hell (1944) showing the dead attacking Hitler in Hell.
• The photomontage artist John Heartfield made frequent use of Hitler's image as a target for his brand of barbed satire during Hitler's lifetime.
• In the opening scenes of Citizen Kane (1941), Charles Foster Kane is described and shown as supporting, then denouncing Hitler.
• Several comic book superheroes battled Hitler directly or indirectly in comics published during World War II. Superheroes that combated Hitler include Superman, Captain America, The Shield, and Namor the Sub-Mariner. Captain America's archenemy, Red Skull, was established as being an apprentice to Hitler himself.
• Mocking satirical folk songs such as "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'", or new lyrics to old songs, such as "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball" (to the tune of the "Colonel Bogey March").
• Hitler has been known by many nicknames, including Awful Adolf and The Beast of Berlin. In the USSR he had a nickname Asshole with mustache.^{[citation needed]}
• Whenever Hitler is portrayed in an old or modern piece of movie or other media, artists prefer to let the caricature speak in an odd and over-toned way, to parody Hitler's infamous style of speech, in a language that is somewhat similar to German in sound, but nevertheless a random mixture of rubbish. Of course, this is easier than to think of correct German sentences and gives Hitler's character the aggressive and ridiculously shouting speech that wasn't even normal to the German people during his lifetime (see Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator).

[edit] Representations of Hitler after his death

After his death, Hitler continued to be depicted as incompetent or foolish. However, while Hitler's anti-Semitic policies were well known during his lifetime, it was only after his death that the full horrors of the Holocaust became known. This, coupled with Hitler no longer being a threat, has meant that the way he is depicted in popular culture has resulted in Hitler being considered evil personified.

• Mel Brooks' comedy The Producers featured a satirical play-within-a-play called Springtime for Hitler, featuring dancing Nazis and songs about the conquest of Europe. Brooks' later comedy, History of the World, Part I, featured "Hitler on Ice."
• The final days of Hitler's life have been turned into a German film, Der Untergang (2004) starring Bruno Ganz as the dictator. The stated intention of the director was to portray Hitler's "human side", which garnered a certain amount of criticism.
• The television Hitler: The Rise of Evil stars Robert Carlyle in the title role and depicts Hitler's life from childhood through his appointment as Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
• The 1981 television film The Bunker starring Anthony Hopkins portrays Hitler's last days.
• The 2002 film Max stars Noah Taylor as Hitler during his days as a failed artist in Vienna just after World War I. John Cusack plays the title character, Max Rothman, a Jewish art dealer who takes Hitler under his wing out of pity, only to find that the angry young loner is becoming dangerously popular as the rabidly anti-Semitic speaker for the emerging German Worker's Party (which later became the Nazi Party.)

[edit] Fiction about Hitler's death

• In the novel The Berkut, Hitler is revealed to have faked his own death after staging an elaborate deception making it appear as if he had Parkinson's disease and then having a double apparently commit suicide in his place. Hitler escapes from Berlin with the aid of an SS-colonel and is eventually tracked down by a Russian squad of secret agents. He is captured alive, taken to Moscow, and kept in a cage beneath the Kremlin for Stalin's amusement. Shortly after Stalin's death, Hitler is killed by Jahmar Baron and Ritch Tenor who had captured him.

• The novel by Ira Levin, The Boys from Brazil, and the film of the same name, indicates that Hitler conspired with Josef Mengele to clone himself prior to his death. Using a litre of Hitler's blood, Mengele begins a project in the 1960s to clone several Hitlers and distribute the Hitler infants to families throughout the world. Mengele later attempts to recreate the sociological environment of Hitler's youth, beginning with killing the fathers of all the Hitler clones. Mengele's plan is to eventually create a second Hitler who will come of age in the 21st century and establish the Fourth Reich.

• A 1973 film, Hitler: The Last Ten Days starred Alec Guinness as Hitler and chronicles the final events in the bunker. In 2004 a German film Der Untergang (English title: Downfall) starring Bruno Ganz as Hitler covered the same events with much greater historical accuracy.

[edit] Hitler in fiction

WorldCat lists 553 published books under this heading [1].

[edit] Novels

• Ron Hansen's historical fiction novel Hitler's Niece parallels Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 30s with his relationship with his niece (and secret mistress) Geli Raubal.
• In Philip K. Dick's alternate history novel, The Man in the High Castle, Hitler, after being stricken by the later stages of syphilis, was confined to a lunatic asylum shortly after WWII, and his place taken by Martin Bormann and, later, Joseph Goebbels and possibly Reinhard Heydrich.
• In the Settling Accounts tetralogy of Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series of alternate history novels, Hitler is still a sergeant in the German Army due to the German Empire's victory in World War I, but a character named Jake Featherston, the dictatorial President of the Confederate States of America, assumes a role similar to the real-life Hitler's.
• In Philippe van Rjndt 's 1978 novel, The Trial of Adolf Hitler, Hitler survives the suicide attempt (Eva Braun does not), assumes the identity of a murdered Home Guard soldier, Werner Busse, flees into the war-torn countryside and settles in a Bavarian village, where he lives undetected under Busse's name for 25 years. At this time, in his 80s, he decides to reveal his existence to the world and is put on trial in a globally-televised tribunal at the United Nations (using the exposure to lay the foundation for the rise of a Fourth Reich).

[edit] Theatre

• Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima wrote a play called My Friend Hitler (Tonari no Hitora), retelling the Night of the Long Knives purge of Ernst Röhm and others in 1934.

• The Hungarian writer George Tabori wrote a comedy called Mein Kampf which portrayed Hitler as a poor young man who enters Vienna, wanting to become an artist.

• Hitler, The Struggling Artist as a stage play: A conceptual form of this play was privately showcased in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. http://www.angelfire.com/planet/adolphplay It depicts Adolf Hitler selling his wares and lecturing onlookers on the power of the arts. Portraying Hitler, actor Bill Breuer apparently created an astonishingly accurate look alike and vocal reproduction using a Bavarian/Austrian accent for speaking the English lines.

[edit] Film

• There is widespread use in German film.^[1]
• In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is disguised as a German officer while trying to retrieve his father's Grail diary. Pushed backwards by the crowd, he bumps into Hitler (played by Michael Sheard), who, not recognizing the significance of the diary, signs his name in it, thinking the "officer" wanted his autograph.
• The thriller The Boys From Brazil (1978), starring Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck centres around a plot by Nazi fugitives to clone Hitler.
• There was also a science-fiction film entitled They Saved Hitler's Brain, in which Hitler's mind is encased in a tank to continue the Nazi regime after the end of World War Two.

[edit] Television

• Heil Honey I'm Home! was a controversial 50s-styled British sitcom about Hitler and Eva Braun living in suburbia, with next door neighbors who were Jewish. Eight episodes were produced, but only one, the pilot, was ever broadcast (in 1990), as both television executives and the viewers alike thought the show in deplorably bad taste.
• The Twilight Zone included Hitler on several occasions. Among the more prominent were:
  • In "He's Alive," the ghost of Hitler tutors a neo-Nazi (Dennis Hopper) in rabble-rousing techniques.
  • In "The Man in the Bottle," a man (Luther Adler) who has been granted four wishes by a genie attempts to find a way to wish himself into a position of wealth and power as a head of state who cannot be voted out of office, only to find he is Hitler and it is the end of World War II, with an SS officer handing him a bottle of cyanide "for you and Miss Braun." Shaking in horror, the man quickly uses his final wish to be restored to normal. Adler had already played Hitler in two movies from 1951: The Magic Face and The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel.
  • In "No Time Like the Past," a time traveller (Dana Andrews) tries to alter the past in several ways, including an attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1939. He is thwarted when a suspicious maid brings the authorities to his hotel room. The episode features newsreel footage of the real Hitler.
  • In a similar fashion, an episode of the 2002 Twilight Zone entitled "Cradle of Darkness" features a time traveller (Katherine Heigl) going back in time to kill Hitler as an infant. The time traveller kidnaps the Hitler baby and leaps from a bridge, killing herself and the baby. A horrified housekeeper, who had witnessed the murder of the baby Hitler, does not tell Hitler's parents but rather bribes a homeless woman to sell her baby. The baby is then returned to the Hitler household where he takes the place of the murdered infant, growing up to become the Hitler that the world knew.
• A significant part of the South Park episode The Passion of the Jew revolves around Cartman pretending to be Hitler and also dressed like Hitler for Halloween in the episode Pinkeye.
• Hitler is a frequent object of satire on the animated comedy series Family Guy and The Simpsons.
• An episode of the Mexican TV superhero comedy El Chapulin Colorado has the title hero encountering Hitler. According to this episode, Hitler's death was an accident caused when someone activated his bunker's self-destruct system. Note that both el Chapulin and Hitler were played by the same actor, series creator Roberto Gomez Bolaños.
• Fictional homunculus Pride (King Bradley) from the Fullmetal Alchemist anime series is like Hitler in that he achieved absolute power through military rule. Moreover, President and Fuhrer are his titles of power over the fictional country Amestris.

[edit] Video games

• The PC video game series Command & Conquer: Red Alert is based on an alternate reality in which world-renowned physicist Albert Einstein had traveled back in time and chronoshifted (or "deleted from time") Hitler before his rise to power. The resulting power vacuum led to the Soviet Union invading Europe with Joseph Stalin assuming a role very similar to Hitler's. Ironically the General who gives the player's orders in the FMA is a German general.
• The video game Wolfenstein 3D features Hitler as the third boss. He battles first wearing a mechanical battlesuit, then later carries two miniguns after the suit is heavily damaged.
• In the PC video game War Front: Turning Point Hitler is killed in the early days of the World War II. A new chancellor comes to power and under his rule, Operation Sealion succeeds and Nazi Germany successfully conquers Britain.
• Adolf Hitler also makes an appearance in the Playstation game Persona 2.
• In the Japanese version of the game Bionic Commando, the main character has to fight futuristic Nazis. The last boss of the game is Hitler, who was resurrected by evil scientists. In the US version of the game, the name of the boss was changed to Master-D, although he still resembles Hitler.

[edit] Comics

• The New Adventures of Hitler by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell deals with the idea that Hitler stayed in Liverpool, based on rumors that he visited local family members like William Patrick Hitler.
  

  

  Steve Yeowell's cover to Crisis #48
• In DC Comics, the character known as the Unknown Soldier killed Hitler, impersonated him for a short time, then pretended his death was a suicide.
• In DC Comics' Adventures of the Outsiders #33-35, a clone of Hitler is created by Baron Bedlam. Planning to give the clone the same persona as the original, Bedlam gives him a mentally retarded Jewish maid, several films of the Holocaust, and a handgun, Bedlam's intention being for the clone to embrace Nazism and ultimately murder the maid to "prove himself" as Hitler. However, the clone, realizing his connection to the atrocities he views, instead commits suicide.
• There is a well-known German satirical comic book Adolf, die Nazisau (Adolf, the Nazi pig), an absurd interpretation of Adolf Hitler in today's world, by Walter Moers.
• In Osamu Tezuka's manga Adolf, Hitler is one of the three men named Adolf around whichthe story revolves.
• In DC Comics' Elseworlds imprint, The Golden Age, Hitler's brain was successfully transplanted into the brain pan of Dyna-Mite. Now pretending to be a superhero called Dynaman, he plots in resurrecting Nazi ideals with the aid of the Ultra Humanite.
• In Marvel Comics the villain Hate-Monger was revealed to be the consciousness of Hitler transferred to a cloned body. Rather than committing suicide, he was confronted by the Human Torch and his sidekick Toro after Eva Braun had committed suicide. The two heroes set Hitler ablaze as he attempted to set off a bomb. As he died, he commanded one of his loyal followers nearby to tell the world he had committed suicide.
• The Spanish comic series Hitler (1978), published in Spain by Mercocomic and in France by Elvifrance, is a fictional story in which Hitler fakes his death by using a double, escapes Germany along with Martin Bormann (both disguised as Russian soldiers), then suffers from amnesia and, of all things, becomes an agent of the KGB with the mission of hunting down Nazis. Later on in the story, he recovers his memory and ends up in an asylum for the mentally disturbed.^[2]
• In Fantômas' Mexican comic book series, a multi-part storyline titled "The Son of Hitler" had the son of Hitler and Eva Brown raise a Fourth Reich that conquers France. He succeeds in capturing and torturing Fantomas, however he falls in love with Fantomas' Agent Taurus- a Black woman.
• In the comic book The Savage Dragon by Erik Larsen (published by Image Comics), it is revealed that Hitler did not die in 1945, but after a fight against Hellboy in Romania in 1952. His body ruined, the brain was transplanted to the body of a large gorilla. Suffering amnesia and calling himself Brainiape, the chimera possessed great psionic powers and joined the Chicago, IL criminal organization known as the Vicious Circle, eventually becoming its leader. He remembered his past only in 1996 when he encountered Hellboy again, alongside the Vicious Circle's enemy, the policeman called Dragon. The ape body was killed, and it is revealed that Hitler's brain had mutated and could live unaided by any technology or host body, ambulatory on tiny legs.^[3]

[edit] Hitler in Music

• "Der Fuehrer's Face", an elaborate parody on Nazism created by musical comedian Spike Jones is one of his most well-known tunes.
• The song "Crystal Night" by Masterplan tells the history of Crystal Night when the Nazis destroyed many shops and commerce of Jews. The song calls Hitler a liar and a fool.
• A novelty rap song entitled "To Be or Not to Be (The Hitler Rap)" performed by Mel Brooks is on the movie To Be or Not to Be's soundtrack album, however it was not in the movie itself.
• The song "Gotterdammerung" by Stratovarius tells the history of Hitler and his actions in Second World War.
• "Quicksand" from the LP Hunky Dory by David Bowie is a song about a heart-broken Nazi after the death of Hitler. Bowie has also been quoted saying "Hitler was the first rock star" and, at one time, wanted to direct a film based on the life of Himmler.
• "Hitler as Kalki" by apocalyptic folk band Current 93, which makes use of Savitri Devi's idea that Hitler was an avatar of the Hindu god Kalki.
• "Heads We're Dancing" by Kate Bush tells the story of a woman who dances all night with a charming stranger, only to discover the following morning that he was Adolf Hitler.
• "Two Little Hitlers" by Elvis Costello, a song about a loveless couple, on the album Armed Forces.
• Thrash metal group Flotsam and Jetsam recorded the song "Der Fuhrer" for their album Doomsday for the Deceiver. The song discusses the devastation Hitler caused in Europe.
• New York metal band Anthrax recorded the song "The Enemy" for their album Spreading the Disease. The song discusses Hitler's role in the Holocaust.

[edit] Other

• One of the more unusual late works of Salvador Dalí was Hitler Masturbating (1973), depicting just that in the center of a desolate landscape. Dali also painted The Enigma of Hitler (1939) and Metamorphosis of the Face of Hitler into a Moonlit Landscape (1958).
• Forged journals of Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries, were published in Germany by the magazine Stern in 1983.
• "Adolph Hitler" was the name of Linda Lovelace's cat.
• Third Reich & Roll is a 1976 album by the U.S. avant-garde pop group The Residents.
• A feline version of Hitler appears on posters in the comic strip Maus.
• In Robot Chicken, Hitler is a frequent character in jokes.
• In a satirical routine on one edition of The Daily Show, Stephen Colbert tells Jon Stewart his name is actually Ted Hitler, and that Adolf Hitler is his grandfather.
• The website CatsThatLookLikeHitler.com features pictures of cute felines that bear an uncanny resemblance to the German leader.
• Warner Bros. produced wartime cartoons which constantly parodied Hitler and his personality traits and quirks. Most (if not all) cartoons with Hitler and the Nazis as the antagonists ended up with the American hero cartoon character (such as Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck) making a mockery out of Hitler and his people.
• Godwin's Law states that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
• In the BBC comedy Bottom one of the main characters was named "Edward Elizabeth Hitler". When asked if he was any relation to Adolf Hitler, Eddie replied on one occasion that Adolf Hitler had been his mother. In another episode, a man jokingly asks, "Any relation?" and Eddie grins manically and replies, "Yes". He also remarks, while hitting himself over the head with a glass, that "If it's stupidity you're after, there's no one stupider than the Hitlers."

[edit] References

[edit] General References

• Faschismus in der populären Kultur [Fascism in popular culture] by Georg Seesslen Berlin : Edition Tiamat, 1994-1996. ISBN 3923118244, OCLC: 80476144
• The world Hitler never made : alternate history and the memory of Nazism by Gavriel David Rosenfeld. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0521847060 OCLC: 58052431
• Hitler's imagery and German youth by Erik H Erikson; Berkeley, Calif. : Institute of Child Welfare, University of California, 1940-1950? OCLC: 26533155

v • d • e Adolf Hitler Politics Political beliefs · Speeches · Mein Kampf · Zweites Buch · Last will and testament Events Rise to power · Third Reich · Holocaust · World War II · Death Personal life Home · Medical health · Religious beliefs · Sexuality · Vegetarianism Perceptions Books · In popular culture · Der Sieg des Glaubens · Triumph of the Will · The Empty Mirror · Hitler: The Last Ten Days · Max · Hitler: The Rise of Evil  · Der Untergang (Downfall) Family Eva Braun (wife) · Alois (father) · Klara (mother) · Alois (half-brother) · Angela (half-sister) · Gustav (brother) · Ida (sister) · Otto (brother) · Edmund (brother) · Paula (sister) · William Patrick (nephew)