Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany Read Online Free PDF Page B

even joy, that democracy was coming to an end. Many Germans felt that the system was ineffective, outmoded, and incapable of solving problems. Hitler achieved overnight what the Weimar Republic had been unable to do in fifteen years: he won over the hearts of the people.
    With this change in the political mood and the growing desire for a strong political leadership, criticism of Hitler receded into the background. German humor, too, changed sides. Many comedians aligned themselves with the political winners, although that didn’t make their jokes any funnier. Cabaret performer Dieter Hildebrandt, who spent his boyhood in the Third Reich, recalls an evening of entertainment staged by the Hitler Youth, in which the older members played a cabaret skit skewering Weimar politics:
    “What moved people in Germany, what made them split their sides laughing, was the musty old Weimar Republic and its democracy. The entire public shared this view, and they rolled on the floor giggling. On the evening in question, the skit was set in parliament. One of the boys, dressed as a parliamentary deputy, slept the entire time. When suddenly an alarm clock went off, the audience cried with delight. Another deputy had a speech impediment; a third, a problem with flatulence. The entire evening was devoted to making fun of a democracy that had passed its sell-by date, and the audience couldn’t get enough. That was the mood. Even back then, there was a saying: Germans didn’t just reject democracy—they positively hated it. But they didn’t want their former monarchy back, either. That also put them off. In this sense, the Nazis arrived on the scene at precisely the right moment.”
    The only aspect of the Nazis’ rise that attracted popular displeasure was the abruptness with which party bigwigs seized coveted positions in society. On every front, from the police force to civic offices, people were pushed out of their jobs and replaced by party loyalists. The speed with which this happened was unprecedented. For example, in Germany’s largest bureaucracy, the Prussian Interior Ministry, dozens of “voluntary commissioners” were appointed for the purposes of political “cleansing.” They immediately began firing people and hiring replacements.
    Not everyone was pleased by the new career paths opening up for fascist loyalists, and the jokes of the period include a number of barbs directed at Nazi social climbers. More than anything, people were concerned about their own welfare, which suddenly seemed in doubt. What happens if your new director, superior commissioner, or department head is a Nazi? How do you reach an arrangement with the new fascist bosses? These were the worries expressed in a number of sarcastic jokes. One untranslatable example played on the party acronym, NSDAP. The letters, as the joke ran, actually stood for “Na? Suchst du auch Pöstchen?”—“So, you’re looking for a comfy little job as well?” For non–party members, the fear of losing positions of authority and privilege to Nazis was hardly unreasonable, and such worries stirred Germans far more than any concern for their Jewish fellow citizens or for members of the political opposition, even though the Nazis left no doubt that the future would be most unpleasant for both groups. Charity, as far as the future was concerned, began at home.
    Interviewing witnesses to this history and analyzing jokes from the time about fascist officeholders and unofficial community sheriffs, one quickly comes to the conclusion that the citizens of Hitler’s Germany did not take small-time Nazis very seriously at this point. Germans did not see them as the executors of a deeplycriminal regime but rather as brazenly comic figures who were elbowing their way into the public sphere. One joke played on the occasional jibes against “reactionaries” found in Nazi propaganda:
    Question: What is a reactionary? Answer: Someone who occupies a well-paying job coveted by a