Is it ok to laugh about Hitler? This seems to be the one big question critics have been asking themselves about Timor Vermes’s Look Who’s Back – a novel about Adolf Hitler waking up in 21st-century Berlin seeing a confusingly modern world through a Nazi lense.
Some teenage boys playing football on a field must be the Hitler Youth training, the large number of Turks in Berlin an indicator that they did support Germany in World War II after all. But Hitler is also impressed by the clever demagogy of the German Bild newspaper with its many pictures and extra large type, regretting that ‘the zealous Goebbels’ did not have that idea first, or the Nazis would have found ‘much more enthusiasm’ for their ‘cause’ amongst the elderly population.
The sight of what they take to be a Hitler lookalike shocks many Germans in the book. Yet, none of them take…
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First Night History 
This review raises an interesting point. Are we laughing at the absurdity, or is a part of us agreeing with his observations and conclusions?
I would have to read the book to be certain, but I feel that this is one monster best left consigned to history.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I don’t think he should be consigned to history for it’s too important to know about him and, without having read the book either, it seems to me it might make for a good talking point about how easy it is for some to be lured in.
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That is indeed a possibility Sarah, and it might be useful to attract a younger audience.
Using the phrase ‘consigned to history’, I failed to express myself correctly. I meant that his reputation should stand as it is, not that he should be buried away, and unknown.
Best wishes, Pete.
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