Did You Hear The One About Hitler?
Hitler visits a lunatic asylum. The patients give the Hitler salute. As he passes down the line he comes across a man who isn’t saluting.
“Why aren’t you saluting like the others?” Hitler barks.
“Mein Führer, I’m the nurse,” comes the answer. “I’m not crazy!”That joke may not be a screamer, but it was told quite openly along with many others about Hitler and his henchmen in the early years of the Third Reich, according to a new book on humor under the Nazis.
But by the end of the war, a joke could get you killed. A Berlin munitions worker, identified only as Marianne Elise K., was convicted of undermining the war effort “through spiteful remarks” and executed in 1944 for telling this one:
Hitler and Göring are standing on top of Berlin’s radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Berlin. “Why don’t you just jump?” suggests Göring.
From Der Spiegel.
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Comment by Mediayug — September 8, 2006 @ 5:58 am
I love jokes, and not only because they’re funny. I love them because they’re constructed– they stimulate the same part of the brain that responds to origami.
There’s a goog longish piece somewhere on the joke under Communism (ah, that sounds almost like a political opinion, “the joke under Communism”). The LRB, perhaps, or the NYRB. I’ll let you know if I find it.
My favorite is of the guy who gets fed up waiting in line for bread and says, “Enough of this. This suffering is unbearable. I’m going to go kill Stalin!” And off he goes, angrily clutching a pistol.
He returns three hours later. “Damn this country,” he says, “the line over there is even longer!”
Comment by Teju — September 8, 2006 @ 10:18 am
Right, it was in PROSPECT in May 2006, and was entitled “Hammer and Tickle”:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7412
Comment by Teju — September 8, 2006 @ 10:37 am