- from the old book Hans Peter Bleuel Sex and Society in Nazi Germany (J.B. Lippencott, 1973), page 47; original German: Das Saubere Reich, (Scherz Verlag Bern und München, 1971) and translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn)
The author sourced this from Boberach, Heinz: Meldungen aus dem Reich (Munich, 1968), page 141, adding in endnotes (page 252n):[Covert comment about Hitler's distance from women] eventually broke surface in the form of a popular lampoon:
(The shorthand typist Else W., who had entertained her office colleagues by reciting this piece of doggerel, was in 1943 charged under the Heimtückegesetz, or law of malicious denigration, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment by a special tribunal at Frankfurt. The public prosecutor had asked for twelve months.)
- He who rules in the Russian manner,
dresses his hair in the French style,
trims his mustache in the English fashion,
and wasn't born in Germany himself,
who teaches us the Roman salute,
asks our wives for lots of children,
but can't produce any himself,
he is the leader of Germany.
====================================Similar jokes had been in circulation for years. Kurt Hirsche [Die 'braune' and die 'rote' Witz (Düsseldorf / Wien, 1964) date its immediate precursor in 1937:
Or again: Hitler and Mussolini bathing, one in swim trunks and the other naked. Adolf wants to conceal the last unemployed member of the German national community, Benito to look down on the last Italian rebel.
- He who rules like a barbarian
and imitates Napoleon,
was born in Austria,
trims his whiskers English-fashion,
salutes like an Italian,
makes German girls have children
but can't produce any himself --
there's a German for you!
Besides the many variants of the above cited earlier, there was this one (Breuel, page 142, 257n; cf. Hirsche:)Witch-King of Angmar wrote:A true Aryan was: blond like Hitler, tall like Goebbels, slim like Göring, blue-eyed as Hess, clever as Eva Braun, and his name was Rosenberg. Alfred RosenbergRoderick wrote:From the British press in 1936: An aryan is tall like Goebbels, slim like Göring, blonde like Hess and heroic like Hitler.
This variant would seem to date after 1941 for its mention of Hess, although accuracy of the quote can't be told from here.... Malicious gossip and rumours [about senior officials' failings] spread like wildfire, as witness these 'Mottoes of a True German':
- Be prolific like Hitler,
simple and unostentatious like Göring,
loyal like Hess,
silent like Goebbels,
sober like Ley,
and beautiful like Scholtz-Klink!
-- Alan