Reason Magazine
- reason.com
- reason.tv
- reason.org
- Donate
- Site Search:
Reason on Facebook
Reason on Twitter
Reason on YouTube
Reason RSSGet Reason E-mail Updates!
Manage your Reason e-mail list subscriptionsadvertisements
The Button-Down Mind of Adolph Hitler
Still more evidence for the Roth Effect, the idea that reality is simply far too weird for novelists to credibly portray it in fiction:
[Adolph Hitler] would often break from the serious nature of waging his campaign to "pull the legs" of his entourage of generals and hangers on.
His favourite victim was the Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering, who was notoriously fond of awarding himself medals and decorations.
According to the book by the last surviving member of his bunker, Hitler recounted how Mrs Goering found her husband waving a baton over his underwear in the bedroom and asked him what he was doing.
"He replied: "I am promoting my underpants to OVERpants"", Hitler then joked.
Hitler was said to be so proud of his joke that he had medals made from gold and silver paper for Goering to wear on his pyjamas.
On another occasion he noticed his official photographer Heinrich Hoffman had drunk too much and told him: "Don't stand to near the fire Heini—you might burst into flames."
These laff-riot lines come from a book to be published later this year by "Rochus Misch, 90, the telephonist in the Berlin Bunker where Hitler spent his last days before killing himself in April 1945."
Random question: Does this change Pat Buchanan's opinion of World War II?
|7.8.08 @ 9:44AM|#
Ah, I remember those deleted scenes from Downfall. The director's right, they would have ruined the tone.
|7.8.08 @ 9:46AM|#
Random question: Does this change Pat Buchanan's opinion of
World War II?
No. Pat always thought Hitler was a scream. This only adds fuel to
the flames.
Elemenope|7.8.08 @ 9:47AM|#
So...evil genocidal maniacs are people, too.
So what?
(Entirely apart from the pointlessness of humanizing a monster,
from all reports on Goering's megalomania, the promoting underpants
joke isn't half-bad.)
Elemenope|7.8.08 @ 9:55AM|#
Will this book be banned in Germany?
Undoubtedly.
Those who ban history texts are condemned to be bored out of their
skulls in history class.
Nibble|7.8.08 @ 9:58AM|#
Wenn ist das
Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!...
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
|7.8.08 @ 9:59AM|#
"He replied: "I am promoting my underpants to OVERpants"", Hitler then joked.
I expect this is funnier in German. I also wonder whether that
shouldn't be "ABOVEpants", since that would more closely match the
naming of German ranks.
..."Rochus Misch, 90, the telephonist in the Berlin
Bunker where Hitler spent his last days before killing himself in
April 1945."
And, of course, in the original German the bolded text is only one
word.
Guy Montag|7.8.08 @ 10:01AM|#
So, Mel Brooks was right and everybody else was wrong?
HA! Now see who is having the last laugh!
ev|7.8.08 @ 10:08AM|#
nah that aint to bad.
probably was: Ich fördere meine unterhose zu überhose!
i thought the joke was übermensch related
|7.8.08 @ 10:14AM|#
I always figured Adolph was more likely to be a prop comic
rather than an insult comic. At least he wasn't an observational
comic.
"Vat's ze deal mit airline food?"
|7.8.08 @ 10:21AM|#
Also Sprach Fruit of der Loom
All crotches so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the plum-smugglers of this great flood and even go back to the man-thong rather than secure your little man with diginity? What is the jock strap to the boxer brief? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And the tighty-whitey shall be just that for the fancy nuthugger: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment...
JMR|7.8.08 @ 10:22AM|#
This proves the inherent danger in crappy humor (fear
"Newsbusted" if "conservatives" retain power, IOW!).
JMR
|7.8.08 @ 10:30AM|#
hold me i'm scared
"Fear is the mother of morality."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Purge yourself, Josh. Live free.
Episiarch|7.8.08 @ 10:33AM|#
Leave it to the Nazis to completely misunderstand and misappropriate Nietzsche's uberpants concept. It's given uberpants a bad name ever since.
D.A. Ridgely|7.8.08 @ 10:33AM|#
And the connection to Bob Newhart is what? The way he makes Don Rickles laugh?
Episiarch|7.8.08 @ 10:40AM|#
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!...Beiherhund
das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
"My dog has no nose."
"How does it smell?"
"Awful!"
|7.8.08 @ 10:58AM|#
They thought they would find Nietzschean unterpants in Paraguay, but only discovered in-breeding.
ed|7.8.08 @ 10:58AM|#
And the connection to Bob Newhart is what?
Tenuous at best, but I'll admit the thought of Adolf talking on the
phone to an imaginary person--pausing, stuttering, blinking--just
cracks me up. Dress Eva Braun up like Suzanne Pleshette and you've
got a surefire hit.
|7.8.08 @ 11:02AM|#
Who knew that libritarians had a sense of humor?
Everybody except assholes like you, troll.
|7.8.08 @ 11:05AM|#
Onion article, in case you've never seen it:
New Nietzschean
Diet Lets You Eat Whatever You Fear Most
"By conquering your Fear, by eating it in Heroic Portions, by laughing at that Fear which you have eaten, one avoids the Eternal Recurrence of cyclic 'Yo-Yo' Weight Loss and Weight Gain," Nietzsche wrote. "And in so doing, one transcends Thinness. One discovers that he need not dwell forever on the chill, Wind-swept Borderland between Thin and Superthin."
|7.8.08 @ 11:06AM|#
I always hate when someone tries to explain a joke, so I won't do that here. I will say, though, that knowing the German terms for military ranks (especially during the Nazi period) makes that a lot funnier. This will be such a bizarre thing to say: that was excellent wordplay from Hitler.
|7.8.08 @ 11:11AM|#
Epi,
Close, but without Steve Guttenberg.
Biography had a show on Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and they spent
the last 15 minutes on Nueva Germania. Hydrocephalic kids with
owl-eyes, so pale you can see the veins in their faces. So much for
pure Aryan blood.
|7.8.08 @ 11:11AM|#
Hitler was a better dancer than Churchill; Hitler was a better dresser than Churchill; Hitler was a better painter than Churchill: he could paint a whole apartment in one afternoon, two coats!
|7.8.08 @ 11:16AM|#
At last, the foundation built by Hogan's Heroes can be added to by the new sitcom, Hi, Hitler! Next week, see a very special episode where Adolf and the gang have to deal with Blondie's life-threatening illness.
|7.8.08 @ 12:04PM|#
Hogan! Hoooooooo-GAN!
Seriously, those guys probably got it more right than any number of
earnest dramas.
It took me years to appreciate the kind of brass, not to mention
genius, that was necessary to sell Hogan's Heroes as a prime-time
network comedy. Fortunately, Bing Crosby Productions was up to the
task.
Across town, it took another iconic yet iconoclastic, creator-owned
enterprise, Desilu, to bring us Star Trek.
Perhaps a pattern involving the conditions necessary for the
development and promotion of brilliant outliers begins to emerge
... and if not, I'm just happy for those two instances of
television "getting it right."
|7.8.08 @ 12:13PM|#
"At last, the foundation built by Hogan's Heroes can be
added to by the new sitcom, Hi, Hitler! Next week, see a very
special episode where Adolf and the gang have to deal with
Blondie's life-threatening illness."
I can't wait for the very special 2 part episode of Hi,
Hitler, when Adolph, and Heinrich trick Herman Goering into
showing up for his intervention by telling him he's getting a
medal.
|7.8.08 @ 12:38PM|#
I expect this is funnier in German. I also wonder whether
that shouldn't be "ABOVEpants", since that would more closely match
the naming of German ranks.
My conjecture is confirmed, I think, by the Google translation of a
Finnish
post...
Adolf Hitler's humor, and other bad diktaattorivitsejä
Recently, Ilta-Sanomat reported himself to Adolf Hitler's "told jokes natsikavereistaan", in at least some fresh muistelmateoksen. One example cited from other sources to us the field of the men already familiar with the story of Göring kalsareilleen by doing something incomprehensible rituaalia marsalkansauvallaan (kaksimielisten räävittömyyksien amateurs informed that the last word should be at this point consists of the letter). When the wife wonders what Göring right is in the process, Marshall is responsible ylentävänsä Alushousut päällyshousuiksi. Vitsi operates in Germany a lot better, because there are words Unterhosen and Oberhosen - and prefixes Unter-and-Ober is also used to rank the name of things such as "deficit" and "overzealous".
|7.8.08 @ 12:43PM|#
Hi, Hitler will also have an eponymous drinking game associated with it. Like Hi Bob, but with Nazis.
ed|7.8.08 @ 12:44PM|#
Mel Brooks was right: Hitler is one funny dude. Compare him with mass-genocidal monsters like Mao and Stalin and it's no contest. Did Stalin ever say anything funny? No. Could Pol Pot carry his own sitcom? Doubtful. But with the right cast, edgy writers and an attractive co-star, Hitler could rule the Nielsens.
|7.8.08 @ 12:54PM|#
Maybe it should be an HBO series, where evil edginess and naked women are par for the course.
|7.8.08 @ 1:55PM|#
"... but with Nazis."
I get it.
Kind of like...Our government is based on the US Constitution....
but with Nazis.
Try our new __________ (fill in the blank), now with more
Nazis.
Things go better with Nazis.
|7.8.08 @ 2:02PM|#
"Things go better with Nazis."
Because if they don't, they are told there is a gun in the desk in
the adjacent room and they should go in there and do the
"honorable" thing, or go before a firing squad.
|7.8.08 @ 2:12PM|#
Woodard says his clients have included rockers Kurt Cobain, Iggy Pop and Beck
One of those guys committed suicide, one's a Scientologist and one turned out alright (but then again Bowie's that cool). I'm just saying. Don't buy a Dreamachine.
|7.8.08 @ 2:15PM|#
Maybe to forestall the inevitable outcry, it could be Hitler in
an alternative universe, where he is an Austrian-born psychologist
who lives in Chicago. Same personality, same everything, except
that he doesn't invade other countries or kill people. And he's a
psychologist. Göring could be an airline pilot who lives across the
hall.
I think Bob Newhart would make an excellent Hitler.
Guy Montag|7.8.08 @ 2:36PM|#
Maybe it should be an HBO series, where evil edginess and
naked women are par for the course.
Not naked! Hottie Nazi fetishwear, with 5" spike heeled boots.
Guy Montag|7.8.08 @ 2:38PM|#
Pro Libertate,
He could work for a comic book publisher. That Newhart show did not
run long enough for folks to notice it was on, or something.
|7.8.08 @ 2:52PM|#
Not naked! Hottie Nazi fetishwear, with 5" spike heeled boots.
Max Mosley, that's the guy's name. There was a thread on here back
in the day.
Mike M.|7.8.08 @ 3:01PM|#
"I just flew in from Nuremburg, and boy are my arms tired!" (rim shot) "Try the bratwurst!"
Guy Montag|7.8.08 @ 3:14PM|#
Hows things shakin' down there on the orange
line?
I rarely go near the Orange line, unless I am driving one of the
Organic Hydrocarbon Powered vehicles of mine.
I am on the Blue and Yellow lines.
Guy Montag|7.8.08 @ 3:17PM|#
Nein! Ze Bob Newhart Show! Vit ze dentist! Is it
safe?
Don't forget Howard Borman, Flight Engineer! Could be the Hermann
Goering character.
|7.8.08 @ 3:27PM|#
The airline pilot across the hall? Didn't I mention him, at least obliquely? Of course, if he's named Borman, we may have another Nazi candidate for his role.
Guy Montag|7.8.08 @ 3:34PM|#
PL,
He was not a Pilot, just a Flight Engineer, but yea, I missed where
you mentioned him already.
I still would prefer a Nazi version of Bob, that one
deserves another shot.
|7.8.08 @ 5:33PM|#
Incidentally, going with the Bob Newhart title reference, my son
and I are real fans of Salman Rushdie's "Haroun and the Sea of
Stories," in which the key villain, Khattam Shud, is literally the
shadowy embodiment of the banality of evil.
I have always hoped to see a faithful animated version of this
story someday, and I sometimes wonder who would be the ideal voice
actor to bring each character alive. From Rushdie's description of
K.S. as "clerk-like" and nondescript in appearance and voice, I
long ago decided that this animated feature needs to be made while
Bob Newhart is with us. His voice is Khattam Shud's if any real
person's could ever be.
Adolf Hitler|7.8.08 @ 10:40PM|#
I spell my first name with an F, not a PH, you dumköpfe!
Menjou used a PH, and added an E for extra fruitiness. But good
Germans use a fucking F.
Why people can't get this right, I don't know. To go down in
history as evil I can live with (so to speak). But to go down as a
fruity French Adolph is too much to bear.
Site comments/questions:
Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions:
(310) 367-6109
Editorial & Production Offices:
3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
Suite 400
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 391-2245