Interviewed for a 2001 documentary, Reinhard Spitzy, an intimate of Hitler, said he could easily imagine Hitler laughing privately at Chaplin’s burlesque of him.

The following year, they were among a group of visitors who congregated outside Hitler's retreat on his birthday, April 20.. When the Fuhrer was when informed that the child shared his birthday, he invited her up to the house and gave Rosa strawberries and whipped cream on the terrace. Goldstein and McGhee describe over 10 theories of humour from biological to psychological in The Psychology of Humor. Aaron Smuts focuses on four main theories: superiority, relief, incongruity, and play in his internet essay in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Schonwald, Josh, “The Rise of Hitler Humor,” in Otium, Vol 2 # 4, 13 January 2006. Available at http://otium.uchicago.edu/articles/hitler_humorist.html. In a number of interviews, Levy justifies the use of humour even when treating subjects such as Hitler and the Holocaust, arguing that laughter can diminish Hitler’s hold on the public’s imagination. For Levy, too much authenticity and believability in a portrayal of Hitler, even if that portrayal is critical, create a cult-figure. Laughing at Hitler can prevent that from happening. (36) Moreover, Levi comments that given the exaggerated theatricality to which the Nazis were prone, they parody themselves. He relies on the received historical image of Nazism as transmitted by texts, photos and film archives of the period to show that his portrayal derives from reality, for the Nazis were in Levy’s opinion self-caricatures. (37) Whether Hitler and the Nazis are intrinsically funny is not in dispute, nor is whether comedy is suitable for dealing with historical trauma, over seventy years of comedy and laughing at Hitler suggests they are and it is. The question asked directly and indirectly by detractors and supporters of the film is whether Levy’s comedy helps viewers overcome the trauma of the past or simply ignore it.

But that view changed too. A much more nuanced history became accepted, one where the German people were too fully involved. The first full-fledged comedy on Hitler appeared in 1989. 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler: Die letzte Stunde im Führerbunker (Christoph Schlingensief, 1989) exploits the legend of the excesses of Nazi sexuality. To be sure, Schlingensief’s film is far from mainstream; indeed, it is at the extreme end of the class of films sometimes described as alternative cinema. Nonetheless, the film broke ‘an unofficial taboo for German artists against lampooning Nazi leadership and portrayed Hitler and the Nazi cohort not merely as comedic figures but as outrageous buffoons. In his sixty-minute feature, Schlingensief creates a travesty of the received historical portrait of Nazism and fascism, as found in films such as Luchino Visconti’s La Caduta degli dei ( The Damned, 1969), Liliana Cavani’s Il Portiere di notte ( Night Porter, 1974) or Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò o le giornate di Sodoma (1975), all serious explorations of the relationship between fascism and sexuality. Schlingensief blends the cinematic portrait of Nazi and fascist perversion found in these films with the comedic distortions of Chaplin, Horwitz, and Brooks. As an alternative film, not widely distributed, 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler: Die letzte Stunde im Führerbunker passed relatively unnoticed. It was then set on fire by retreating SS troops in early May, and looted after Allied troops reached the area. The rhyme is a good illustration of Thomas Hobbes’s theory that “the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others…”

Though used to controversies over the past 200 years, even by its noisy standards the Cambridge Union has caused uproar this week with a spat that may well go down in the annals. The cause? Adolf Hitler, and the rights and wrongs of deploying him in a debate about artistic taste, and whether it is allowable to impersonate him to make an argumentative point, even if that point is to condemn him. That particular chapter may well have been inspired by extra3, one of the few reliable funny comedy shows on German television, which allows a dubbed Hitler to rant about the ineffectiveness of the modern German far right. "It works because for the neo-Nazis, this guy is still someone they look up to," says programme editor Andreas Lange. Und Äktschn! (And Action!), a critically acclaimed comedy released in German cinemas last month, tells the story of an amateur film-maker trying to make a movie about Adolf Hitler's private life. In an interview with Der Spiegel, its director, veteran Bavarian satirist Gerhard Polt, argued that there must have been a likable side to Hitler – otherwise how could he have penetrated the salons of Munich high society? "The likable guys are the dangerous ones. When a likable person gives you a hug and says something terrible, it's much harder to let go." Vermes's modern Hitler, too, doesn't only spout repellent ideas that would instantly alienate the reader. On the one hand, he rails against parliamentary democracy, decries press freedom, and rejoices at the fact that 65 years after the end of the war, Germany's Jewish population is still only a fifth of what it was in 1933. But on the other, his complaints about hunting, food scandals and drivers racing through inner-city areas would fit perfectly into any modern party manifesto. "That's why many readers thought my Hitler was too real: he was too normal," Vermes says. For a discussion of these films and others see Georg Seeßlen, “Zu Hitler Muss Uns Immer Wieder Etwas Einfallen,” 179-199, in Mein Führer: Die Wirklich Wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler: Das Buch zum Film, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007.Major incident' declared on south coast as Storm Ciaran smashes into Britain: Gales 'that could hit 110mph' batter seaside towns, tear down trees, shut schools and leave flights and ferries axed - with the worst forecast to hit later today