Laughing With Hitler

[struggle4progress]

Punchlines from the abyss
Rudolph Herzog
Wednesday 25 May 2011 16.59 EDT

Hitler and Goering are on the radio tower in Berlin, looking at the crowds below. Hitler wants to do something to put a smile on Berliners' faces. So Goering says: "Why don't you jump?"

It is not the funniest joke, but a German woman, Marianne K, who told it at her workplace during the war was reported to the authorities, and executed as a result ...

... Joseph Müller, a Catholic priest in a small parish in northern Germany, who, late in the war, recounted a shaggy dog story about a wounded soldier to an ailing old man. "He <the soldier> is dying and they ask him: 'Do you have a last wish?' He says: 'Well, I'd like to see the people I am dying for.' They bring a picture of Hitler and put it on his right and one of Goebbels and put it on his left. The man says, 'Now I am dying like Jesus Christ, between two criminals.'"

The old man's son, a staunch Nazi, reported the priest's joke to the party. Eventually, the priest was condemned to death by the People's Court ...

[thucythucy]

1. My parents grew up in Nazi Germany.

Here's another joke:

A plane crashes. Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler are all killed.

Question: Who is saved?

Answer: the German people.

Also told in whispers, and only to people you absolutely knew you could trust.

[struggle4progress]

2. Thanks for that

[thucythucy]

3. Have you read "A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City?"

It's about the lives of civilians, mostly women, during the first weeks after the capture of the city by the Soviet army.

There's a lot of gallows humor in that.

It was a very controversial book when it was first published in the 1950s, written by "Anonymous," in that it described the mass rape of German women during those first days and weeks, a story most Germans (particularly men) cared rather to suppress and forget.

Through it all, again and again, women would echo the famous line from Nazi propaganda: "And for all this we have the Fuehrer to thank!"

It's pretty grim stuff, and makes me appreciate how lucky I've been, never having lived in a besieged or occupied city.

Best wishes.

[struggle4progress]

4. I'll add it to my list

[Mc Mike]

5. What a humorless bunch of guys.