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IN the dear, dead days almost
beyond even my recall, David Willis, a Scottish comedian with a
Hitler-type moustache, cheered-up theatre-goers at the start of the Second
World War with hilarious imitations of the Nazi dictator’s outlandish
gestures, verbal frenzy and goose-steps. Deep in juice-gurgling rapture,
soor plooms and ice-cream cartons, his act reassured them that, when it
came to the crunch, Britain would lick Hitler.
The
world, however, realised that Hitler was no joke. One of the most graphic
illustrations of the menace of the new Germany was shown in Triumph of the
Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary film of the 1934 Nazi congress at
Nuremberg, a brilliantly-conceived and visually-stunning tribute to the
Nazi concept of the super race.
One of the most disturbing
propaganda films ever made, it is an extravaganza of fluttering swastika
flags, robot-like, precision-marching ranks and dramatically-angled shots
of jut-jawed, Teutonic profiles symbolically facing the future that would
belong to Deutschland uber alles. There was also the shining-eyed sea of
devotees of the Austrian-born miracle worker who would secure Germany’s
place in the sun and be a scourge of the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracies and
capitalist, worker-exploiting cliques that had shamed and betrayed the
nation.
Then he arrived. Adolf Hitler, born Schicklgruber,
son of a minor customs official, failed artist, one-time, it is said,
house-painter, twice holder of the iron cross for bravery in the First
World War, temporary doss-house occupant and now, courtesy of the artistry
and lens mastery of Leni, looking like the man of destiny he undoubtedly
was and also suggesting something other-worldly but ill-natured,
descending from Mount Olympus to rouse the mesmerised masses to new
sacrifices.
HIS speech started quietly. Then he began shouting
and it was as if he heard Joan of Arc-type voices. His hypnotic eyes
glowed, his arms described semaphore signals of destruction to democratic
decadents and other enemies of renascent Germany, his hands orchestrated
menace to malcontents in the new order and his body, in fury, convulsed
like that of a medieval flagellating monk.
It was ham acting, but the
crowd loved it. "I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance
of a sleepwalker," he told a Munich audience in 1936, and
somnambulistically, it could be said, Germany followed him - "This
monstrous product," said Churchill, "of former wrongs and shame" - and his
plans for territorial aggrandisement that led to Second World War in which
an estimated 55 million people were killed.
In a Twilight of the Gods
scenario, amid war-ravaged Berlin, with Russian army units nearing, Hitler
and his newly-married wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide at his last-stand
bunker; an end fit for the camera of Riefenstahl, of a perverse political
genius and the greatest tyrant, genocide-instigator and mass murderer in
history.
The guns are silent, the war dead are, mainly,
tidily arranged over much of Europe and Hitler’s bones are scattered, who
knows where. His memory, nevertheless, lingers like a mist that resists
dispersal.
THE great dictator who believed that his plans to
establish the 1,000-year Reich was God’s work, has been and still is,
understandably, the subject of concentrated scrutiny in literature,
theatre, cinema and the media.
The internet has 2,340,000
references to the dictator including, At Home with Hitler, Was Hitler a
Rothschild/Christian/Atheist? Hitler was a Lefty and - shockingly - Hitler
was a Vegetarian. Doubtless, there will be, Was Hitler a Woman? The Hitler
Cookbook and Sing-along with Hitler’s Beer Cellar Favourites.
Rochus
Misch (87), the former switchboard operator at Hitler’s bunker, says his
"boss" was "nice, so friendly". Now, a new film, The Downfall, will be
released in Germany next month that portrays Hitler as a softly-spoken,
dreamy, possibly even cuddly dictator, in the last 12 days of his life,
kind to his pet dog, gentle to his secretary and a great lover of
chocolate cake.
The film is seen as indicating a Germany coming to
terms with its past but, from increasing anti-Semitic outbreaks and other
racist attacks by neo-Nazis in Germany and other parts of Europe, there
would seem a growing hard-core of extremists who revere Hitler’s memory
and are eager to follow his poisonous precepts.
Dave
Willis, like other comedians, derided Adolf and rocked audiences in these
isles. Let us hope that the unrepentant and dangerous fuhrer admirers do
not have the last laugh. |
