Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany (7 page)

In the first years of the Third Reich, German society was not only Nazified but militarized. The Nazis created numerous and, in part, competing organizations in which people from all walks of life and of all ages were required to appear in uniform. The result was a Kafkaesque confusion of official garb on German streets shortly after Hitler took power. That gave rise to the popular quip that soldiers would soon have to wear civilian clothing to distinguish themselves from the masses.

The spread of Nazism also meant the absurd spread of acronyms for the often clumsy names of Nazi organizations, which included not just the SS and SA, but also the BDM (Association of German Girls), the HJ (Hitler Youth), and the NSKK (National Socialist Corps of Auto Mechanics). The explosion in abbreviations quickly became the subject of mostly harmless jokes:

Jokes like this didn’t aim any serious criticism at the paramilitary nature of Nazi organizations. At most, such witticisms targeted the disruptions to normal family life party duties entailed:

The acronym BDM in particular was fodder for sexual jokes, with the abbreviation being made to stand for “Soon-to-be German Mothers,” “Commodities for German Men” or “Boy, Mount Me.” As was typical for the period, these jokes had no pointed political thrust and can hardly be interpreted as signs of a basic skepticism among the populace toward the regime.

GERMANS ENJOYED laughing at the bizarre particulars of National Socialism, but the new system, despite some initial criticism, was soon firmly anchored in German society. And as a gesture of gratitude, the regime repaid the populace with instances of seeming liberalness. The Nazis were apparently worried that they would be seen as thickheaded thugs with no sense of humor, and occasionally policies were aimed at communicating the message that the party leaders weren’t as fearsome as their reputations. One of the strangest results of this charm offensive was a compilation of foreign anti-Hitler caricatures that was published in Germany in 1933. The editor of the fancily bound volume was none other than the Nazi responsible for dealing with the foreign press, Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl.

In his introduction, Hanfstaengl wrote:

In fact, Hanfstaengl did not trust his readership to draw the correct conclusions. To ensure that readers laughed at the right things for the right reasons, Hanfstaengl added propagandistic glosses to the caricatures.

For instance, one image from
The Nation
depicted Hitler as a grim reaper with an army of skeletons marching at his feet. The reaper’s scythe was shaped like a swastika, and its blades dripped with blood. On the following page, Hanfstaengl interpreted the picture for his readers:

Another caricature in the compilation portrayed Hitler as a fearsome Indian chief with an enemy’s head impaled on a spear. The caption read: “The chief of a savage tribe after the Battle of Leipzig and in full war dress.” Hanfstaengl’s gloss:

Hanfstaengl’s “corrections” could hardly have been more cynical, but the fascist press applauded his machinations. In the publicity blurb on the book jacket, a director of nature films, Luis Trenker, wrote that
Hanfstaengl’s work would “recall to our minds the heroically pursued struggle of our Führer.”

Hanfstaengel’s declaration of loyalty to Hitler went for nothing. In 1937, he was forced to flee to America after a conflict with Goebbels. The man who had tried to stir up hatred against Jews and the Nazis’ political enemies became a
persona non grata
in the Third Reich. But his career continued. Franklin Roosevelt used him as a political and psychological adviser during World War II. In 1946, after the demise of the Nazi regime, Hanfstaengel returned to Germany and wrote his memoirs. He died there in 1975, without ever having been called to answer for his past.

A tragic destiny, on the other hand, awaited a man who had turned against the Nazis voluntarily, and much sooner. The caricaturist Erich Ohser, who was born in 1903, attracted the displeasure of the Nazis early in the 1930s after he published a number of satirical depictions of Hitler. One showed a man out for a walk in the snow urinating in the form of a swastika. Another image merged Hitler’s moustache and hairstyle into a frightening
grimace that cast the Führer as a warmonger. Ohser’s courage would not go unpunished. When he later applied for membership in the Imperial Chamber of Culture he was rejected and couldn’t get any work. The letter he received from the chamber on January 17, 1934, read: “On the basis of your earlier, explicitly Marxist public work, the Commission of the Regional Press Association of Berlin has decided negatively regarding your request for acceptance into the expert committee of journalistic illustrators in the Imperial Association of the German Press and for entry into its professional rolls.” Seized by panic, Ohser burned the originals of drawings he had done for the left-wing newspaper
Vorwärts
, but to no avail.
His anti-Nazi caricatures had appeared in mass circulation, and Goebbels and his henchmen could hardly be expected to forget his earlier criticisms of fascism.

Gritting his teeth, Ohser adapted to the times, at least externally, and began publishing apolitical cartoons under the pseudonym E. O. Plauen. His series
Father and Son
enjoyed enormous popularity, and that opened doors to the newspaper
Das Reich
, which was considered relatively liberal. There, he sold a number of political cartoons that were careful not to overstep fascist lines. Ohser drew anti-British and anti-Soviet caricatures, but in his private life he made no secret of his real political convictions. In the next-to-last year of World War II, this personal frankness undid him. A neighbor reported anti-Nazi remarks made in a conversation between Ohser and his friend Erich Knauf, and the two men were hauled up in front of the People’s Court. Ohser committed suicide before the trial; Knauf was executed in May 1944.

THE CABARET ARTIST Werner Finck had far better luck than Ohser. Nazi prosecutors ignored him for an astonishingly long time, although the courageous comedian became an underground hit in the early Hitler era for his risky political jokes. Finck had a standing engagement at the Berlin cabaret house Catacomb. This small theater became something of a legend in postwar Germany, but despite its later reputation, Catacomb was not strictly a venue for political cabaret. Instead, it put on variety shows that featured sketches and small-stage acts. A chanson singer usually appeared, and then a mime, before Finck took the stage. One could say that he was responsible for the political segment of a general entertainment. Indeed, some artists who worked in the Catacomb in the early 1930s considered it too apolitical and founded a harder-hitting cabaret house of their own.

Those artists were forced into exile after Hitler’s assumption of power, while Finck became a master of ambiguity. His performances were famous for what they
didn’t
say. Every one of his appearances was a dance on a knife’s edge. Finck knew that if his criticism of the regime became too explicit, the Nazis would ban his act, label him a political enemy, and send him to a concentration camp. He was forced to adopt a number of tricks in order to conceal political messages in harmless packaging. His audiences knew the point of Finck’s game, and the comedian’s daring verbal acrobatics gave his act an additional appeal. The kick one got was similar to watching a high-wire artist working without a net. People thrilled to the danger and laughed because they were able to read between the lines. Finck himself accurately described the situation when he said that during the Third Reich, one only had to strike a tiny bell with a tiny hammer to create a deafening uproar, whereas later you could hit a giant bell with a giant hammer and only a tiny sound would come out. Germans under Hitler
were highly sensitized and could tell when invisible boundaries were being crossed.

Finck, the master of humorous transgressions, was also a sly operator. In 1933, for instance, he founded the seemingly innocent “Fighting Association for Harmless Humor” (KfhH), an organization whose name sounded well in Nazi ears. In the Catacomb’s program, the “Association” published the following Finck verses:

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: