Read Online Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany by Rudolph Herzog - Free Book Online
Authors: Rudolph Herzog
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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:
The press: On September 25, 1930, Hitler testified before a Leipzig court that “heads would roll” when the Nazis took power in Germany.
The facts: After taking power, Hitler did indeed cause a number of heads to “roll” into the concentration camps. This was because he had decided to be a generous victor and becausehe wished to spare the healthy productive masses of the German people from a bloody confrontation with their enemies.
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 thatHanfstaengl’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 frighteninggrimace 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
The press: On September 25, 1930, Hitler testified before a Leipzig court that “heads would roll” when the Nazis took power in Germany.
The facts: After taking power, Hitler did indeed cause a number of heads to “roll” into the concentration camps. This was because he had decided to be a generous victor and becausehe wished to spare the healthy productive masses of the German people from a bloody confrontation with their enemies.
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 thatHanfstaengl’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 frighteninggrimace 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
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