Crew

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Written and directed by Rudolph Herzog

Camera: Henning Brümmer

Producer: Ilona Grundmann for ARD and

Brümmer & Herzog Film for BBC

Line Producer: Hennes Grossmann

Actors: Zack Michalowski and Klaus Stiglmaier

Music: Georg Reichelt

Editor: Armin Riegel

Stills: Valerie Stahl, Henning Brümmer

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Description

 

Documentary which examines the history of the Third Reich through the jokes told by and about the Nazis and the fate that befell some of the joke tellers. In the early days of the Nazi era, jokes about Hitler were punishable as treason, and during the war they were even seen as unpatriotic, a crime punishable by death. Cabaret artiste, Werner Finck, was imprisoned in a concentration camp, but then released, while actor Fritz Muliar's anti-Hitler jokes landed him in a penal battalion in Russia. The film features comedic sequences with actors impersonating Hitler, at the time a first in Germany that attracted much press attention, from the Times to Al Jazeera.

 

Press quotes 

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Breaking a long-standing taboo in Germany

—THE TIMES

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A thrilling book and a lavish documentary

—DER SPIEGEL

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Entertaining and illuminating... wonderfully offbeat acting...

far more than a string of jokes

—DER TAGESSPIEGEL

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Explodes the myth that the Germans were so hypnotised by

Adolf Hitler that they were blind to the brutality, and at times absurdity, of his rule.

—AL JAZEERA

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This documentary manages to reveal something new even to

those viewers who consider themselves to be fully informed

on Nazi history

—SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG