Adolf Hitler in popular culture

Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889–30 April 1945) was the Führer of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.

Hitler was a gifted, charismatic orator possessed of a profound personal presence, who led Germany during the Second World War. His racial policies were extreme; declaring all non-"Aryans" (including Jews, blacks, Slavs and Gypsies) inferior, his Nazi regime disenfranchised them and sent them to concentration camps. He personally ordered the camps' extermination policies that culminated in the Holocaust. As one of the most significant leaders of world history, Hitler has been represented in popular culture since he first rose to power.

How Hitler was represented during his lifetime

Numerous works in popular music and literature feature Adolf Hitler prominently. Before and during World War II, Hitler was often depicted inside of Germany as a God-like figure who was loved and worshiped by the German people (Triumph of the Will), but outside of Germany was often shown as incompetent or foolish and treated as an object of derision. Later works continued the latter trend. Examples include:

• Many critics consider Fritz Lang's depiction of a homicidal maniac masterminding a criminal empire from within the walls of a criminal asylum to be an allegory of the Nazi ascent to power in Germany. The movie Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) (1933) was banned by the Nazi propaganda ministry.
• An early example of a cryptic depiction is in Bertolt Brecht's 1941 play, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in which Hitler, in the persona of the principal character Arturo Ui, a Chicago racketeer in the cauliflower trade, is ruthlessly satirised.
• Several Three Stooges shorts, the first being You Nazty Spy (1940) in which the boys are made dictators of the fictional country Moronica. This short in particular implies that business interests were behind Hitler's rise to power. It was also the first Hollywood production to satirize the Nazis.
• Charlie Chaplin made fun of Hitler as "Adenoid Hynkel," the dictator of Tomania in his 1940 movie The Great Dictator.
• In Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 movie To Be or Not to Be (as well as in Mel Brooks' remake in 1983), an actor from a Polish stage group imitates Hitler to enable the escape of the troupe to England
• Hitler was caricatured in numerous animated shorts during World War II, including Der Fuehrer's Face, a 1943 Disney wartime propaganda cartoon featuring Donald Duck, and Herr Meets Hare with Bugs Bunny.
• One of the more unusual late works of Salvador Dalí was Hitler Masturbating (1973), depicting just that in the center of a desolate landscape. Dali also painted The Enigma of Hitler (1939) and Metamorphosis of the Face of Hitler into a Moonlit Landscape (1958).
• George Grosz painted Cain, or Hitler in Hell (1944) showing the dead attacking Hitler in Hell.
• The photomontage artist John Heartfield made frequent use of Hitler's image as a target for his brand of barbed satire during Hitler's lifetime.
• In the opening scenes of Citizen Kane (1941), Charles Foster Kane is described and shown as supporting, then denouncing Hitler.
• Several comic book superheroes battled Hitler directly or indirectly in comics published during World War II. Superheroes that combated Hitler include Superman, Captain America, The Shield, and Namor the Sub-Mariner. Captain America's archenemy the Red Skull was established as being an apprentice to Hitler himself.
• Mocking satirical folk songs such as "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'", or new lyrics to old tunes, such as "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball" (to the tune of the "Colonel Bogey March").
• Hitler has been known by many nicknames including Awful Adolf and The Beast of Berlin.

How Hitler is represented after his lifetime

After his lifetime, Hitler continued to be depicted as incompetent or foolish. However, whilst Hitler's anti-Semitic policies were well known during his lifetime, it was only after his death that the full horrors of the Holocaust became known. This, coupled with Hitler no longer being a current threat, has meant that the way he is depicted in popular culture has changed since 1945 as a sinister and diabolical figure.

Mel Brooks' comedy The Producers featured a play-within-a-play called Springtime for Hitler, featured dancing Nazis and songs about the conquest of Europe. More recently, the final days of Hitler's life have been turned into a German film Der Untergang (2004) starring Bruno Ganz as the dictator. The stated intention of the director was to portray Hitler's "human side", which has caused the film to be criticised by some.

The television miniseries Hitler: the Rise of Evil stars Robert Carlyle in the title role and depicts Hitler's life from childhood through his appointment as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The 2002 film Max stars Noah Taylor as Hitler during his days as a failed artist in Vienna just after World War I. John Cusack plays the title character, Max Rothman, a Jewish art dealer who takes Hitler under his wing out of pity, only to find that the angry young loner is becoming dangerously popular as the rabidly anti-Semitic speaker for the emerging German Worker's Party (which later became the Nazi Party.)

Fiction about Hitler's death

• In the novel The Berkut, Hitler is revealed to have faked his own death after staging an elaborate act making it appear as if he had Parkinson's disease and then having a double apparently commit suicide in his place. Hitler escapes from Berlin with the aid of an S.S. colonel and is eventually tracked down by a Russian squad of secret agents. He is captured alive, taken to Moscow, and kept in a cage beneath the Kremlin for Stalin's amusement. Shortly after Stalin's death, Hitler is killed by the head of the squad which had captured him.

• In the British science fiction show The Tomorrow People, Hitler is revealed to have been a shapeshifting alien who was frozen by cryonics at the end of World War II. He emerges in the 1970s and attempts to take control of the world through mind control of young people. An earlier episode of The Tomorrow People gave reference that Hitler was a time traveler, although this contradicted the information in the later episode which revealed him to be an alien.

• The film The Boys from Brazil indicates that Hitler conspired with Josef Mengele to clone himself prior to his death. Using a liter of Hitler's blood, Mengele begins a project in the 1960s to clone several Hitlers and distribute the Hitler infants to families throughout the world. Mengele later attempts to recreate the sociological environment of Hitler's youth, beginning with killing the fathers of all the Hitler clones. Mengele's plan is to eventually create a second Hitler who will come of age in the 21st century and establish the Fourth Reich.

• A 1973 film, Hitler: The Last Ten Days starred Alec Guinness as Hitler and chronicles the final events in the bunker. In 2004 a German film Der Untergang (English title: Downfall) starring Bruno Ganz as Hitler covered the same events.

• The bizarre 1968 TV movie They Saved Hitler's Brain. Hitler's death is faked with a double, and his living head smuggled out of Berlin in a jar, where it plans a Nazi takeover from South America.

Hitler in fiction

• The novella The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. by George Steiner features an elderly Hitler discovered living in the rainforests of the Amazon.
• Robert Harris's novel Fatherland briefly features Hitler, and also other prominent Nazis such as Odilo Globocnik.
• In the comedy movie The Fuhrer runs amok by Philippe Clair, Henri Tisot stars as Hitler who challenges other European countries in soccer matches.
• Robert Hansen's historical fiction novel Hitler's Niece parallels Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 30s with his relationship with his niece (and secret mistress) Geli Raubal.
• In an Astro Boy manga episode, Astro Boy is confronted to an European country where the dictator is called Hitlini (an obvious mix of "Hitler" and "Mussolini") and looks just like a caricature of Hitler, wearing a bow tie.
• Alec Guinness's depiction of Hitler in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) was a curiously idiosyncratic take on Hitler's persona.
• In the 1974 adult animated film The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, directed by Robert Taylor, Hitler is portrayed as a canine and tries to rape the title character, Fritz, in a fantasy sequence where Fritz imagines himself as a member of the Nazi party. In the beginning of the segment, Hitler has only one testicle, which eventually gets blown off. Fritz comments "Gee, Füehrer, now you got no balls."
• In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Hitler signs Indy's dad's diary at a book burning event.
• In Phillip K. Dick's alternate history novel, The Man in the High Castle, Hitler, after being stricken by the later stages of syphilis, was confined to a lunatic asylum shortly after WWII, and his place taken by Martin Bormann and, later, Joseph Goebbels and possibly Reinhard Heydrich.
• In a Monty Python sketch Hitler, appearing as Mr. Hilter, runs for the regional elections in Minehead.
• In Fawlty Towers Basil Fawlty imitates Hitler to 'cheer up' a German guest.
• In the Alfred J. Kwak cartoons series a crow called Dolf carries strong resemblances to Hitler. Dolf leads the Crow's Party.
• Hitler has been featured in numerous episodes of The Simpsons. In (Bart vs. Australia), Bart is telephoning various locations in the Southern Hemisphere and phones is an aged Hitler. In Rosebud, where the history of Mr. Burns' teddy bear Bobo is revealed, Hitler is shown picking up Bobo in Paris. Later, in his Berlin bunker, he curses the bear as Allied forces lay siege to the city. In Curse of the Flying Hellfish, Grandpa Simpson talks of his service in World War II, and is shown nearly assassinating Hitler with a sniper rifle, only to have his shot interrupted by an errant tennis ball from Mr. Burns. In yet another episode, Grandpa tells of how he was separated from his army unit after parachuting into Dusseldorf, only to spend the rest of the war posing as a cabaret singer. He is shown, in drag, performing for Hitler and a figure resembling Mussolini. In Itchy and Scratchy: The movie Bart and Lisa watches a WW2 propaganda movie, where Hitler heils, is beaten up by Itchy and Scratchy, gets the head cut off by Itchy, Itchy and Scratchy shakes hands and Itchy cuts then the head of Scratchy, followed by Roosevelt kicks both Hitler and Scratchy in the butt.
• In the twelfth Dragonball Z movie Hitler escapes from Hell and attempts to overrun a city before he is killed by Gotenks.
• There is a well-known German satirical comic book Adolf by Walter Moers.
• Little Nicky, a movie starring Adam Sandler, had Hitler in Hell dressed in a French maid dress. His eternal punishment is having pineapples shoved up his butt.
• Family Guy also has had several gags involving Hitler. In one, a dream sequence shows him hosting a daytime talk show and fawning over American actor Christian Slater. In another, he is shown playfully attempting simultaneous suicides with Eva Braun in their bunker. In the pilot, Hitler is working out at Das Gym and casting envious looks at the better-built Jewish weightlifters.
• In Capcom's NES version of the video game Bionic Commando, an army known as the Badds were attempting to revive Hitler in order to prepare an invasion. In the American version he is called Master-D, although he is clearly Hitler. Also, when he dies, a screen showing his head being blown apart follows.
• The Twilight Zone included Hitler in numerous episodes. In He's Alive, aired in 1963, Hitler tutors a neo-Nazi in rabble-rousing techniques. An episode of the 2002 Twilight Zone features a time traveler going back in time to kill Hitler as an infant. The time traveler kidnaps the Hitler baby and leaps from a bridge, killing herself and the baby. A horrified housekeeper, who had witnessed the murder of the baby Hitler, does not tell Hitler's parents but rather bribes a homeless Jewish woman to sell her baby. The baby is then returned to the Hitler household where he takes the place of the murdered infant, growing up to become the Hitler that the world knew.
• The PC video game series Command & Conquer: Red Alert is based on an alternate reality in which world-renowned physicist Albert Einstein had traveled back in time and chronoshifted Hitler before his rise to power. The resulting power vacuum led to the Soviet Union invading Europe with Joseph Stalin assuming a role very similar to Hitler's.
• The short story How I lost the Second World War and helped turn back the German invasion by Gene Wolfe shows Hitler in terms of a car salesman.
• The PC game Wolfenstein 3D featured a heavily-armored Hitler as its third episode's final boss.
• The arcade game Total Carnage features a villain named Ahkboob, who as it turns out is really Hitler.
• In South Park episode Passion of the Jew, Hitler appears as an alter ego to Cartman who donned a Hitler uniform when he organized the Passion of the Christ fan club. After that, Cartman leads the citizens of South Park on a march where he commands them to repeat the phrase "Wir müssen die Juden ausrotten" ("We must exterminate the Jews"). Nobody in South Park speaks German, so they think Cartman is speaking Aramaic, "God's language", and start following Cartman believing they're expressing their approval towards the movie. In another episode, Pinkeye, Cartman is costumed as Hitler for Halloween, constantly repeating "Sieg Heil!" before his Hitler costume was replaced by Principal Victoria with a Ku Klux Klan vesture. In another episode, "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics," Hitler, with a photo-realistic head, appears in hell singing a mournful rendition of "O Tannenbaum."
• In Mr. Show episode "Life Is Precious and God and The Bible" a scene called "Cloning Hitler" is included. In it, clones of Hitler are created by the Committee for Holocaust Reparations with the intention of living a life of servitude to Holocaust survivors. They are generally subjected to many humiliating tasks and complain that they cannot get dates with women when it is discovered that they are Hitler clones. In the rare event that a Hitler clone outlives his master he is allowed a life of freedom. One such aged Hitler clone is shown living a typically mundane life, clipping coupons and watching daytime television. On his wall are various invasion-strategy maps.
• In an episode of Chappelle's Show, the Player Haters use a time-traveling automobile to travel to Germany during a year when Hitler was still in power and beat him up in his office.
• Hate-Monger is a supervillain from the Marvel Comics universe, a fictional representation of Adolf Hitler.
• In DC Comics' Outsiders, a clone of Hitler is given a mentally retarded Jewish maid, several films of the Holocaust, and a handgun. He commits suicide rather than embrace the atrocities shown to him.
• In Bob the Angry Flower, Hitler returns from centuries spent in Hell, rehabilitated and devoting his life to peace and good works.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shambala, Hitler is seen during the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.

Other

• Forged journals of Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries, were published in Germany by the magazine Stern in 1983.
• Alvin Rosenfeld - Imagining Hitler (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985)
• In an episode of Hey Arnold, Grandpa Phil tells Arnold and his friends his experience in World War II. Known to be senile and embellish the truth, he said he fought Hitler and won.
• The 2004 German film Der Untergang (English title: Downfall) was severely criticized by many people (though the critics generally enjoyed it) for depicting Hitler as a frail and war-ravaged human being with very strong feelings, with many complaining that Hitler and the upper-echelon of the Nazi hierarchy were depicted in a slightly sympathetic light in many scenes.
• "Adolph Hitler" was the name of Linda Lovelace's cat.
• In the Justice League cartoon, he becomes Führer after Vandal Savage is defeated.
• In Hellboy, he derives immortality and power from the legendary Spear of destiny.

See also

• Adolf Hitler section of the List of real people appearing in fictional context