Hitler in popular culture

Hitler was a gifted, charismatic orator possessed of a profound personal presence, who led Germany into the Second World War. His racial policies were extreme, and he personally ordered 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 outside of Germany as incompetent or foolish and treated as an object of derision. Later works continued the trend. Examples include:

• 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.
• Charlie Chaplin made fun of Hitler as "Adenoid Hynkel," the dictator of Tomania in his 1940 movie The Great Dictator.
• 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 this 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.
• The well-known German satirical comic book series Adolf by Walter Moers.
• Mocking satirical folk lyrics to the Colonel Bogey March, such as "Hitler has only got one ball," as well as "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'."
• Hitler has been known by many nicknames including Awful Adolf and The Beast of Berlin.
  

  How Hitler is represented after his lifetime

Mel Brooks' comedy The Producers featured a play-within-a-play called Springtime for Hitler, featuring 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". The film has sparked a controversy among critics, some of whom feel that it is an attempt at whitewashing history.

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.

• 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

• Robert Harris's novel Fatherland briefly features Hitler, and also other prominent Nazis such as Odilo Globocnik.
• Alec Guinness's depiction of Hitler in (1973) was a curiously idiosyncratic take on Hitler's persona.
• In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Hitler signs Indy's dad's diary at a book burning event.
• 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 sings "O Tannenbaum" in Hell on the South Park Christmas album Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics and in its corresponding South Park episode
  

  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)
  

  See also

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