Hitler and Goering are on the radio tower in Berlin, looking at the crowds below. Hitler wants to do something to put a smile on Berliners' faces. So Goering says: "Why don't you jump?"
It is not the funniest joke, but a German woman, Marianne K, who told it at her workplace during the war was reported to the authorities, and executed as a result. Film-maker and author Rudolph Herzog, son of the German director Werner Herzog, includes the anecdote in his book Dead Funny: Humour in Hitler's Germany, as well as the court documents relating to her death. Published in the UK next month, the book originated with Herzog's documentary on the same subject, Ve Have Vays of Making You Laugh.
Herzog's thesis is that, during the Third Reich, Germans relished jokes about their leaders. Throughout Hitler's 12 years in power, there were plenty of caustic gags doing the rounds – about Dr Goebbels's club foot, or Hitler's limp Nazi salute, which made him look like a waiter carrying a tray, or the widely held suspicion that Goering wore his medals in the bath. "These jokes were mass phenomena," Herzog says, "partly because political humour for some reason thrives under dictatorship."
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