Hail Hitler

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This clever book, published in 1934, uses a humorous take on the contradictions of National socialism as the spoonful of sugar that sweetens its true message: that the policies of Hitler and the Nazis were dangerous and needed to be called to the attention of a sometimes gullible public. "In periods of revolution and turmoil, it is essential that as many people as possible should retain the capacity to think as well as to talk and shoot. It may be said of the Nazis that they have made this necessity obvious," says the introduction.

The book excerpts public speeches, newspaper articles and policy documents and illustrates them with cartoons to underscore their ridiculousness.

Here are some examples:

"A copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf is in future to be presented to all couples who are married at the registry office at Dettingen, Wurtemberg. Up till now, it has been customary in Germany to present a Bible to newly-married couples." — From The Star, Feb. 21, 1934.

"If physical beauty today were not crowded into the background by our foppish fashions, the seduction of hundreds of thousands of girls by repulsive crooked-legged Jewish bastards would be impossible." – Adolf Hitler quoted in Mein Kampf, 1933.

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"Christ could not have been a Jew. Scientific proof is not necessary. It is so." — Josef Goebbels, quoted in the New Statesman and Nation, Aug. 5, 1933.

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