When the National Socialist German Workers' party (Nazis) assumed power they vowed to cleanse the German theater of all things "un-German," which ostensibly included comedy. During the Third Reich nearly all German theaters, supported by enormous state funding, presented thousands of comedy productions. Perhaps it was a propaganda tool, however only a tiny fraction of these productions were outright propagandist efforts. French playwright and filmmaker, Marcel Pagnol described laughter as a "song of triumph... that] expresses the laugher's sudden discovery of his own momentary superiority over the person at whom he is laughing. That explains burst of laughter in all times in all countries." Hitler and his followers gladly embraced this triumphal expression. Yet, what did this laughter mean to the Nazi agenda and in what ways did it undermine its goals? Hitler Laughing offers insight into the world of comedy during the Third Reich and its role in the Nazi cultural agenda.

In Nazi Germany, telling jokes about Hitler could get you killed Hitler and Göring are standing on top of the Berlin radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on the Berliners’ faces. Göring says, “Why don’t you jump?” When a woman told this joke in Germany in 1943, she was arrested by the Nazis and sentenced to death by guillotine—it didn’t matter that her husband was a good German soldier who died in battle. In this groundbreaking work of history, Rudolph Herzog takes up such stories to show how widespread humor was during the Third Reich. It’s a fascinating and frightening history: from the suppression of the anti-Nazi cabaret scene of the 1930s, to jokes made at the expense of the Nazis during WWII, to the collections of “whispered jokes” that were published in the immediate aftermath of the war. Herzog argues that jokes provide a hitherto missing chapter of WWII history. The jokes show that not all Germans were hypnotized by Nazi propaganda, and, in taking on subjects like Nazi concentration camps, they record a public acutely aware of the horrors of the regime. Thus Dead Funny is a tale of terrible silence and cowardice, but also of occasional and inspiring bravery.

In this work, Nagorski chronicles Hitler's rise to power and Germany's march to the abyss, as seen by Americans--diplomats, military, expats, visiting authors, Olympic athletes--who watched horrified and up close.

When advertising legend Jim Riswold is stricken with leukemia and prostate cancer, he quits the business that made him famous to become a “fake artist,” creating a controversial body of work with a controversial cast of characters, from Hitler to Mao to Kim Jong-Il. It was a decision that would save his life. Advertising legend Jim Riswold is a Big F****** Deal. Ask him, he’ll tell you. But when Riswold is stricken with leukemia and prostate cancer (a two-fer!), the freewheeling adman quits making commercials, and starts making art. But not just any art—Hitler art. Mussolini art. Stalin-in-a-bathtub art. This is not a sad cancer story. This is a molotov cocktail of raunch and heart and 18-gauge biopsy guns. This is a taboo-busting laugh riot, a raspberry blown straight at dying-guy preciousness and monsters of all kinds—cancer and world-historical bad guys included. Be warned—contents of this book include: One profanity-spiked TEDx talk. Several very public, full-frontal dick picks. Two adorable children. Something called “Interferon Family Fun Night.” Jim Riswold leading a crowd of people in a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” to his oncologist. Relentlessly funny, and scorchingly subversive, this is a bruised and bruising memoir—it is also tubed, scarred, stapled, and irradiated. But here’s the secret: Jim Riswold, enfant terrible, the man Charles Barkley once called “a role model for morons,” is kind of a sweetheart. The wise-guy posturing is just a cover for his pulpy heart. Another secret: This book isn’t about Hitler. It’s about the beautiful, stupid, gross, foolish, and fantastic things we’re willing to do for love and family and not-dying. It’s about a guy who, with due respect to Lou Gehrig, considers himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Really, Jim Riswold owes cancer a thank-you. Thanks to cancer, his tombstone will no longer read: Here Lies That Guy Who Did That “Bo Knows” Commercial. Now, it will say Here Lies the Guy Who Put Cancer in Its Place—and Mussolini on a Tricycle.

HE'S BACK AND HE'S FUHRIOUS! "Desperately funny . . . An ingenious comedy of errors." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times "Satire at its best." --Newsweek "Thrillingly transgressive." --The Guardian A NEW YORK TIMES SUMMER READING PICK In this record-breaking bestseller, Timur Vermes imagines what would happen if Adolf Hilter reawakened in present-day Germany: YouTube stardom. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of open ground, alive and well. It's the summer of 2011 and things have changed--no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognizes his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman. People certainly recognize him--as a flawless impersonator who refuses to break character. The unthinkable happens, and the ranting Hitler goes viral, becomes a YouTube star, gets his own TV show, and people begin to listen. But the Fuhrer has another program with even greater ambition in mind--to set the country he finds in shambles back to rights. With daring humor, Look Who's Back is a perceptive study of the cult of personality and of how individuals rise to fame and power in spite of what they preach.

An eminent historian recounts the Nazi rise to power from his unique perspective as a young Jewish boy in Munich, living with Adolf Hitler as his neighbor. Edgar Feuchtwanger came from a prominent German-Jewish family--the only son of a respected editor and the nephew of a best-selling author, Lion Feuchtwanger. He was a carefree five-year-old, pampered by his parents and his nanny, when Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, moved into the building opposite theirs in Munich. In 1933 the joy of this untroubled life was shattered. Hitler had been named Chancellor. Edgar's parents, stripped of their rights as citizens, tried to protect him from increasingly degrading realities. In class, his teacher had him draw swastikas, and his schoolmates joined the Hitler Youth. Watching events unfold from his window, Edgar bore witness to the Night of the Long Knives, the Anschluss, and Kristallnacht. Jews were arrested; his father was imprisoned at Dachau. In 1939 Edgar was sent on his own to England, where he would make a new life, a career, have a family, and strive to forget the nightmare of his past--a past that came rushing back when he decided, at the age of eighty-eight, to tell the story of his buried childhood and his infamous neighbor.

A look at Adolf Hitler’s residences and their role in constructing and promoting the dictator’s private persona both within Germany and abroad. Adolf Hitler’s makeover from rabble-rouser to statesman coincided with a series of dramatic home renovations he undertook during the mid-1930s. This provocative book exposes the dictator’s preoccupation with his private persona, which was shaped by the aesthetic and ideological management of his domestic architecture. Hitler’s bachelor life stirred rumors, and the Nazi regime relied on the dictator’s three dwellings—the Old Chancellery in Berlin, his apartment in Munich, and the Berghof, his mountain home on the Obersalzberg—to foster the myth of the Führer as a morally upstanding and refined man. Author Despina Stratigakos also reveals the previously untold story of Hitler’s interior designer, Gerdy Troost, through newly discovered archival sources. At the height of the Third Reich, media outlets around the world showcased Hitler’s homes to audiences eager for behind-the-scenes stories. After the war, fascination with Hitler’s domestic life continued as soldiers and journalists searched his dwellings for insights into his psychology. The book’s rich illustrations, many previously unpublished, offer readers a rare glimpse into the decisions involved in the making of Hitler’s homes and into the sheer power of the propaganda that influenced how the world saw him. “Inarguably the powder-keg title of the year.”—Mitchell Owen, Architectural Digest “A fascinating read, which reminds us that in Nazi Germany the architectural and the political can never be disentangled. Like his own confected image, Hitler’s buildings cannot be divorced from their odious political hinterland.”—Roger Moorhouse, Times