Hitler: The Comedy Years

May 10, 2007

0h 48m

★ 5.0

Overview

A documentary about the portrayal of Adolf Hitler in popular culture.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

World of Wonder

Channel 4 Television

Hitler: The Comedy Years Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self

Neil McCaul

Self

Guy Siner

Self

Richard Gibson

Arthur (archive footage) (uncredited)

Arthur Askey

Norman Stanley Fletcher (archive footage) (uncredited)

Ronnie Barker

Joe Walker (archive footage) (uncredited)

James Beck

Self (archive footage) (uncredited)

Boris Becker

Self (archive footage) (uncredited)

Neville Chamberlain

Singer in 'Springtime for Hitler' (archive footage) (uncredited)

Mel Brooks

Adenoid Hynkel (archive footage) (uncredited)

Charlie Chaplin

Joachim von Ribbentrop (archive footage) (uncredited)

Graham Chapman

Adolf Hitler / Basil Fawlty (archive footage) (uncredited)

John Cleese

In 1961, history was on trial... in a trial that made history. Just 15 years after the end of WWII, the Holocaust had been largely forgotten. That changed with the capture of Adolf Eichmann, a former Nazi officer hiding in Argentina. Through rarely-seen archival footage, The Eichmann Trial documents one of the most shocking trials ever recorded, and the birth of Holocaust awareness and education.

7.3

Hitler & Stalin: Portrait of Hostility

Apr 8, 2009

A double portrait of two dictators who were thousands of miles apart but were constantly fixated on each other.

6.0

Opus pro smrtihlava

Jan 1, 1984

No overview available.

8.0

Ashes

Apr 17, 2025

The nephew of a Republican exiled during the Spanish Civil War is pushed to discover the fate of his uncle by a forgotten letter. Meanwhile, a researcher tries to discover what happened to another deportee after reading the novel "El impostor" by Javier Cercas. When the two coincide, they discover that the lives of their two ancestors are intertwined and end up unearthing the story of František Suchý and his son, who risked their lives and defied the Nazi regime from the Prague crematorium to save the ashes of more than 2,000 victims.

6.5

Forbidden Films

Mar 6, 2014

Between 1933 and 1945 roughly 1200 films were made in Germany, of which 300 were banned by the Allied forces. Today, around 40 films, called "Vorbehaltsfilme", are locked away from the public with an uncertain future. Should they be re-released, destroyed, or continue to be neglected? Verbotene Filme takes a closer look at some of these forbidden films.

6.9

Triumph of the Will

Mar 28, 1935

A showcase of German chancellor and Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.

8.0

Poland 1939: When German Soldiers Became War Criminals

Aug 31, 2019

September 1st, 1939. Nazi Germany invades Poland. The campaign is fast, cruel and ruthless. In these circumstances, how is it that ordinary German soldiers suddenly became vicious killers, terrorizing the local population? Did everyone turn into something worse than wild animals? The true story of the first World War II offensive that marks in the history of infamy the beginning of a carnage and a historical tragedy.

5.7

Who was Hitler

Nov 16, 2017

Hitler's biography told like never before. Besides brief historical localizations by a narrator, only contemporaries and Hitler himself speak: no interviews, no reenactment, no illustrative graphics and no technical gadgets. The testimonies from diaries, letters, speeches and autobiographies are assembled with new, often unpublished archive material. Hitler's life and work are thus reflected in a unique way in interaction with the image of the society in the years 1889 to 1945.

7.3

Riefenstahl

Aug 29, 2024

Explores Leni Riefenstahl's artistic legacy and her complex ties to the Nazi regime, juxtaposing her self-portrayal with evidence suggesting awareness of the regime's atrocities.

7.2

Hitler's War on Oil: Objective Baku

May 4, 2015

This film tells the story of World War II as experienced by the inhabitants of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, at the time a satellite of Moscow. The very rich oil deposits of the region aroused the covetousness of Hitler who needed the oil from Baku to carry out his program of world domination. His entire campaign of 1942-1943 was aimed at seizing them. But the Soviets and the Allies were determined to prevent him from doing so, by all means, including the most radical, even if it meant wiping the city off the map.

4.5

100 Years of the UFA

Aug 28, 2017

The intricate history of UFA, a film production company founded in 1917 that has survived the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, the Adenauer era and the many and tumultuous events of contemporary Germany, and has always been the epicenter of the German film industry.

6.5

Dictator: One Crazy Job

Jun 12, 2013

They’ve become the human face of inhuman barbarity. Leaders like Hitler, Idi Amin Dada, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceausescu, Bokassa, Muammar Kadhafi, Khomeini, Mussolini and Franco governed their countries completely cut off from reality. These paranoid leaders were driven to abuse their power by the pathology of power itself. Dictators are driven by a relentless, thought-out determination to impose themselves as infallible, all-knowing and all-powerful beings. But they are also men ruled by their caprices, uncontrollable impulses, and reckless fits of frenzy, which paradoxically render them as human as anyone else. The abuses they committed were clearly atrocious, yet some of them were as outlandish as the characters portrayed in the film The Dictator. They sunk to depths worthy of Kafka: so incredibly absurd, they are outrageously funny.

0.0

Osteuropa zwischen Hitler und Stalin - Das große Sterben

Jun 10, 2025

Between 1930 and 1945, Eastern Europe experienced mass violence on an unprecedented scale. Hitler and Stalin exploited the vast region for their respective expansionist plans. It is estimated that around 14 million civilians were murdered—primarily Jews, Poles, Balts, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.

0.0

Crisis

Mar 13, 1939

A documentary about the conquest of Czechoslovakia by the Nazis just prior to World War 2.

7.4

Hitler: A Career

Jul 8, 1977

A keen chronicle of the unlikely rise to power of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and a dissection of the Third Reich (1933-1945), but also an analysis of mass psychology and how the desperate crowd can be deceived and shepherded to the slaughterhouse.