Schiclegruber Doing the Lambeth Walk or A British Government Official Trolls Nazis with a 1940s-style Mash-up.
In 1942, Charles A. Ridley of the British Ministry of Information created a short propaganda film that combined clips from the 1934 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will and “The Lambeth Walk” - a song from the musical Me and My Girl.
The clip mocked:
1) the excessive militarism displayed in Triumph of the Will (which had already been mocked by many others as… overcompensating).
2) Alois Hitler’s original surname, Schicklgruber. Some Three Stooges shorts also referred to the Führer by this name. I imagine that an “Adolf Schicklgruber” might not have been taken as seriously as an “Adolf Hitler”.
3) the Nazi ideology itself - in 1939, the Lambeth Walk (a popular dance in Europe and the United States) was denounced by a Nazi official as “bestial hopping” and a “Jewish enormity”. Also, referring to the “Gestapo ‘hep-cats’” subtitle - a hepcat (hip-cat) is a slang term that typically refers to “a performer or devotee of jazz, esp. swing”. Jazz music was banned in Nazi Germany in 1935 because of its African roots, and because many performers of jazz were Jewish. Like many other forms of art, jazz was denounced as “degenerate” … summed up in this poster, which depicts a performer of jazz as an African caricature wearing a Star of David.
Very subtle.
Oops, I sort of went off on a little tangent again. Seriously, though, look at that poster.
