Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany

IS IT PERMISSIBLE to laugh at Hitler? This is a question that is often debated in Germany, where, seeing the magnitude of the horrors the Third Reich committed in their name, many citizens still have difficulty taking a satirical look at it. And when others dare to do precisely that, they are accused of trivializing the Holocaust. Nonetheless, German humorists are always trying to tackle this most sensitive of topics, and jokes at the expense of the Nazis are at their most powerful and revealing when they are spoken in the economical, matter-of-course tone of the satirist.

Is it legitimate to approach Auschwitz using techniques of satire, or would doing so downplay crimes so monstrous that they can hardly be put into words? Whatever one’s answer to this question, the fact is that Germans have always laughed at Hitler, even during the twelve years of his terrifying reign. There was no end to political jokes under his regime. Today some of these jokes retain their power, though others seem banal, or simply bad. What they all have in common, however, is the insight they give into what preoccupied and moved Hitler’s “racial community.” Ordinary people aimed sarcastic remarks at aspects of life that got on their nerves, and Nazi-era humorists—whether they sympathized with the soon to be defunct left-wing opposition or supported the fascist powers-that-were—made political jokes.

By analyzing these jokes, we get unusual access to what people really thought during the “thousand-year Reich,” what annoyed
them and what made them laugh, and also what they knew and otherwise took pains to repress from their conscious minds. At the same time, the reactions of the Nazi state to challenges from comedians and others who told political jokes reveal what types of humor the fascist leadership actively feared. This book is intended as a journey back to what is thought of as a humorless age, not to make readers laugh but to give them a new perspective on the most terrible era of German history. It does not ignore the moral debates of the postwar period, but it does not focus upon them, either.

The sources used include interviews with people who lived though the Third Reich, among them the friends of a Protestant pastor who was murdered by the Nazis, the son of a famous comedian and animal trainer, and a well-known German cabaret artist. Other important sources were the biographies of prominent German humorists and
the various collections of “whispered jokes” that were published in the immediate aftermath of World War II. People who laughed at Hitler within their own four walls, the authors of such compilations tried to suggest, disapproved of the Nazis and were perhaps even part of a tacit resistance. Recent research, however, has revealed that this notion, though a comforting idea, is little more than wishful thinking and historical legend–making.

Political jokes were not a form of resistance. They were a release valve for pent-up popular anger. People told jokes in their neighborhood bars or on the street because they coveted a moment of liberation in which they could let off a bit of steam. That was in the interests of the Nazi leadership, no matter how humorlessly they may have portrayed themselves in the public sphere. Many Germans were conscious of the dark side of the Nazi regime. They were also annoyed at laws forcing them to do this or
that and at party bigwigs who treated themselves to lives of luxury while making arbitrary decisions about the lives of others. But that didn’t translate into anti-Nazi protests. Those people who let off a bit of steam with a few jokes didn’t take to the streets or otherwise challenge the Nazi leadership.

Conversely and significantly, the vast majority of the joke tellers who were denounced and brought before special Nazi courts received a mild punishment, if any. Usually they were let off with a warning. “Whispered jokes” were a surrogate for, and not a manifestation of, social conscience and personal courage. People who lived through the Third Reich also assert that political jokes were by no means spoken only in hushed tones in the private sphere. Only during the final phase of the war, when it was clear Germany was losing, were draconian punishments handed down for people who made fun of the Nazis. They will be discussed later in this book. As the Nazi system entered its death throes and tried to resist its inevitable demise, there were a conspicuous number of especially cutting jokes, but
we have no way of knowing precisely how widespread they were.

The vast majority of political jokes during Hitler’s reign were basically uncritical of the system, playing on the human weaknesses of Nazi leaders rather than on the crimes they were committing. Imperial Marshal Hermann Göring, for instance, was a popular target because of his pompous appearance and his love of glamour and medals. One typical joke ran:

Like many Göring jokes, the tone here is familial and affectionate,
rather than harsh. The political humor of the time never alluded to the fact that Göring was a sadist who became a mass murderer as well. On the contrary, the imperial marshal appears most often as a sort of pompous but ultimately likeable Falstaff. In fact, Göring’s all too apparent human weaknesses endeared the second most powerful man in the Third Reich to broad segments of the population. The fact that he was a cold-blooded, cynical despot with no regard for human dignity did not prevent Germans from sympathizing with him right up to his postwar suicide while in Allied captivity.

THERE WERE SOME JOKES, of course, that expressed sheer hatred for and rejection of the Nazi regime. These were known in Berlin, with its coarse, blunt, cosmopolitan sense of humor, as surefire jokes not because they were certain to get a laugh but because they were guaranteed to land anyone caught telling them in front of a firing squad or the middle of a concentration camp. But a good argument could be made that even these most critical jokes ultimately served to stabilize the system. For though some jokes expressed dissatisfaction with the Nazi regime, they also conveyed the message that there was nothing anyone could do about it—a message of paralyzing fatalism. For example, one joke during the Third Reich parodied the Nazi slogan “The Führer leads and we follow” as “The Führer takes the lead and we take what follows.” The subtext was that ordinary Germans had no means of affecting disastrous decisions made from on high. Another joke, which was popular in Vienna after Germany’s annexation of Austria, was similar in tone:

The Winter Relief Fund was a propagandistically inspired Nazi charity that helped poorer Germans with heating and other costs in the colder months of the year.

The resigned attitude expressed in such humor was not unique to jokes told by Germans with what the Nazis considered the proper racial pedigree. It was typical of Jewish humor too, where it had a harder edge and much sharper sarcasm. One typical Jewish joke plays on the color of the fascists’ trademark uniforms:

But the fundamental difference between German and German-Jewish jokes was less a matter of tone or edge than of function. Whereas “whispered jokes” among Germans served primarily as a release valve for pent-up popular frustration, jokes told by their Jewish countrymen can be interpreted as an attempt to muster courage—or, as the great compiler of Jewish-German jokes Salcia Landmann put it, as
an expression of Jews’ will to survive against all odds. These jokes make fun of the terrors Jews experienced every day. As such, the blackest Jewish humor expresses defiance: I laugh, therefore I am. My back is to the wall, and I’m still laughing. One example from the final years of World War II takes this attitude to a macabre extreme:

The situation for these two Jews may be hopeless, says the punch line, but there’s hope for the Jewish people: the Nazi regime is about to collapse.

Jewish humor was uniquely bleak and pulled no punches. The contrast in message and tone between this joke and the toothless gag about Göring’s medals could hardly be more stark. It demonstrates with painful clarity how drastically the perspective of Hitler’s victims diverged from that of the millions of accessories to the Führer’s crimes.

HUMOR IS NOT just determined by the group affiliations of its makers and audience. It can only be understood with reference to the social context of its time. Many of the jokes in this book, especially those of the professional humorists and comedians of the Nazi era, can barely be recognized as funny today. It’s difficult for us to imagine that people could have laughed at jests so stale, superficial, and sedate. What makes them important today is the way they reflect, as all old jokes do, what truly occupied, amused, and annoyed the people of their time. They open a window on the Third Reich, giving us an inside view more authentic in its way than can be found in official historical documents.

Modern Germans don’t like to admit it, but their perception of the Hitler years is based largely on the propaganda films of the era. Weekly newsreels and Leni Riefenstahl’s films are the artifacts their documentaries always cite—artifacts that were calculated and ideologically tainted. They were never a representation
of reality or an expression of what was truly going on in the Nazi system. Even today they deceive the viewer, through the force of images that even the most cautionary commentary can hardly put into proper context.