Mel Brooks had this guy beat by 30 years.
Posted on 06/24/2008 5:19:53 AM PDT by Coffee200am
Adolf Hitler found time amid the bloodiest war in history to crack jokes with his cronies.
Hitler the comedian is one side of the Fuhrer painted in a new memoir called ‘The Last Witness‘ by one of the Nazi leader's bodyguards.
Comedian: Hitler often cracked jokes according to his bodyguard
Hitler, the mass killer, “had a small fund of jokes,“ recalled Misch, who is now 90.
“The boss was said to be particularly fond of a couple jokes and told the best ones over and over,“ he said.
While Misch did not divulge Hitler's favourite jokes ahead of the book's publication, one joke that Hitler liked to tell was at the expense of his pompous Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering.
Goering was a man forever designing himself new uniforms and giving himself new orders and decorations.
“One day,“ Hitler used to say, “Mrs. Goering came into the bedchamber and found her husband waving his Field Marshall‘s baton over his underwear.
“‘Hermann, darling, what are you doing?‘ she enquired.
“‘I am promoting my underpants to overpants!‘“
Several instances of Hitler‘s humour ended up in a dossier called simply "The Hitler Book" which was compiled for Soviet leader Josef Stalin at the end of WW2.
It relates how Joseph Goebbels, the evil propaganda minister, told Hitler a latest scurrilous rumour: that the immensely vain Goering went to bed wearing medals on his pyjamas. Rochus Misch
Rochus Misch in 1944: He was in the bunker when Hitler killed himself
“Hitler liked the story so much,” according to the report “that he ordered Hoffmann to make some medals out of gold and silver foil as well as a bombastic citation for bravery to be presented to Goering.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
You’re in for a ZOT, NEWBIE!
Wow. So evil people can be unbearably boring and vain as well. What a revelation.
Not for nothing, but a good read “Hitler’s Table Talk: 1941-1944.”
A fascinating read.
Mel Brooks had this guy beat by 30 years.
Yep, that Hitler fellow was a bundle of laughs, wasn’t he?
Sounds almost as good as some of John Kerry’s jokes.
Hitler killed himself? And to think for the past 64 years I thought he slipped on some ammunition and broke his neck. /s
what’s the ZOT for? This seem s like a valid post- did you read it?
Good freaking grief...a NEWBIE posting that Hitler was a funny guy...geesh....just wait for the blowback, bud.
Interesting, thanks for posting.
Not quite sure why some factual information about Hitler is causing conniptions on this thread. One of the most tragic things about History’s monsters are their good points.
Here we go again, heh heh!
Reminds me of Monty Pythons, “The Deadliest Joke.”
Welcome to Free Republic, sport.
Geez dude- it was interesting reading- We generally like that kind of stuff here.
He was not expressing his personaly feelings of love for the guy. He posted a general interest article.
Misch was the switchboard operator in the bunker, and [I believe] was assigned to the commo section of Hitler’s HQ. He was NOT one of his bodyguards. That was either a police detachment under Rattenhuber, or a guard battalion from the LSSAH. Misch was, I think, a member of the LSSAH, but not in the guard detachment.
“The Producers”, featuring “Springtime for Hitler” was filmed in 1968, when the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust were raw living memory for tens of millions of early middle-aged people. And the lead character depicted Hitler as a harmless Teutonic buffoon spouting hippy-talk.
Where was the outrage, then?
If the real Hitler had spent every waking moment shrieking, foaming at the mouth and cursing the Jews, he would have been in an asylum, not the Reich Chancellory.
It is necessary to understand every facet of the personalities of evil human beings who succeed at tyranny. Most of them knew how to laugh.
But what does the 90 year old Rochus Misch really think of Hitler? Does he, like Leni Riefenstahl at age 100, still refuse to pass judgement?
Not many people know it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer.
Leni's dead.
And she still refuses to pass judgement?
I guess when a dictator tells a “joke,” you laugh.
Mr. Misch could have done a lot of folks a big favor using one bullet.
Then Goebbels could have spent his career making Uncle Leo’s hamburgers.
Several years ago, a friend of mine was at a pre-opening night rehearsal for the Broadway production of "The Producers," and Mel Brooks and his (late) wife Anne Bancroft happened to be sitting behind him making notes on the performance.
My friend was a New Yorker whose parents were in the theatre scene, and knew Mel Brooks, so my friend spoke to him and then went out for a drink after the show. As the group crossed the street, an old man with a cane approached Brooks and started screaming at him about his depiction of Hitler. The old gent showed him his concentration camp tattoo.
True, Leni is dead, but in a televised interview following her 100th birthday, Riefenstahl dug in her heels and refused to offer any moral characterization of Adolf Hitler or the Third Reich.
Hitler was her employer and nothing more.
Charlie Chaplain and the Three Stooges beat Mel Brooks by years.
As did many U.S. cartoonists.
And of course the German V-Joke: "Der ver zwei peanuts, valking down der strasse, and von vas... assaulted! Peanut. Ho-ho-ho-ho."
True enough, but there is a pre-and post-Holocaust difference.
His favorite limerick:
Dere vonce vas eine man from Koblenz,
His balls vere really immense!
.. Vun day playing soccer
.. He gehrsprungen his left knocker
Und kicked it right over the fence!
Ya dats a gut one Blondi, ser gut?
Don’t forget the scene in Blazing Saddles in the cafeteria where an actor in Hitler costume says, “They lose me after the bunker scene.”
Very true.
They had two German actors recreating some of the jokes. My favorite was the skit showing a German soldier who laid dying. His last request was to have photos of Hitler and Goering set down on either side of him. He said he wanted to see what he was dying for. After the photos were brought in and placed on either side of him, he said: "Now I can die like Jesus. With two criminals on either side of me."
Ah, the Nazi response to the funniest joke in the world.
That was a good one.
At first I thought Buchanan had penned a new book. He should collaborate with this guy for his next book aimed on humanizing the monster.
How can you tell if he was funny? Tell me you are in the bunker with hitler and he tells the same flippin joke for the 400th time.... you don’t laugh?
Yeah. Most don’t know he was the winner of “Last Comic Standing in a Bombed Out Bunker”. I’m guessing the vote was rigged.
Well—if we can laugh at Hitler and the Nazis, maybe we can get a laugh out of Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy, Boxer, Feinstein, Obama and the rest of the Democrats!
actually, he is posting about the publication of a book by an ancient eye-witness to events.
What is the deal with history censorship self-appointed police here? Some of us here on FR are actually INTERESTED in history, and the publication of a book about one of the most destructive men of the 20th century (and human history, in straight numbers) is a valid topic, and expecting to always agree with the content of historical publications is something you might need to change countries to be able to achieve.
Maybe this is not the FR I remember?
“It is necessary to understand every facet of the personalities of evil human beings who succeed at tyranny. Most of them knew how to laugh.”
Any many were quite charismatic, I don’t get where the thought-control stuff here is coming from. Historical ignorance is fine as a personal choice, but imposing it on all as some on this thread would do is rather orwellian.
none of us can tell, but an eyewitness without fear of being shot for his opinion 60 years later probably would be considered an informed source.
If you haven’t figured it out, the point is more important that what you would suppress. The monsters in human history are often very human, and the charismatic variety are often very popular with contemporaries in real-time.
THAT is what is frightening.
I don’t see the value in suggesting that people shouldn’t learn this.
"But here is a new one from Amerika...
FDR walks into this bar and..." (gets interrupted)
'but Mein Führer, FDR can't walk?'
"Yeah, I know --- that's the joke!"
Stalin was a laugh riot too.
Though all his jokes involved Gulags and your relatives.
(tended to get tedious after a while)
"Hitler vas better looking than Churchill, he vas a better dresser than Churchill, had more hair, told funnier jokes, and could dance the pants off Churchill!
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