Hitler Stars on Youtube
January 19, 2007
The two-and-a-half-minute short was made by film student Florian Wittmann from the northern German city of Bremen. It marries footage of Hitler delivering a speech from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will with the sound of a routine by German cabaret performer Gerhard Polt.
The result is a film in which the Führer appears to deliver a tirade, replete with all his characteristically hysterical gesturing, about how a car dealer swindled him into a costly leasing agreement for an auto he thought he was buying outright. An enthusiastic German crowd applauds him as he works himself up into a petty bourgeois frenzy.
Watching Adolf rant and rave is all the rage among German YouTube users. And Wittmann's film has drawn praise in high places as well -- author Henryk M. Broder said viewers learned more about Hitler's true character from Wittmann's spoof than from most anti-fascist documentaries.
But not everyone's a fan. Polt's publisher sued Wittmann for breach of copyright, which ended up costing him 2,000 Euros ($2,586) in legal fees.
In the end, "Hitler's Leasing Contract" was never graded because Wittmann had to leave school -- not because of controversy, but because he lacked the money to continue his studies.