When the Three Stooges dared to take on Adolf Hitler
There’s usually a certain limit regarding how far comedies can push themselves. As much as people might like to challenge their audience in terms of what they think is funny, you’re playing with fire whenever you touch on something that may or may not be considered insensitive to the people watching you. It’s always important to be delicate when talking about the more controversial figures of history, but The Three Stooges weren’t afraid to take on Adolf Hitler so soon after his heinous acts.
Before going into this, let’s get one thing out of the way: Hitler is already a fairly hot-buttoned issue for anyone. As much as there’s a general consensus that his actions were sick and abhorrent to almost anyone with a conscience, there’s a case to be made that every time someone speaks his name just ensures that he’s going to live on in the minds of generations to come.
There is a way to rewrite history, though. For instance, what if Hitler was treated in a way that made him look like a complete buffoon in every single aspect of his life? Enter Larry Mo and Curly.
Since the German psychopath was still a major part of the popular lexicon with The Three Stooges’ were popular, the trio’s decision to spoof was probably the gutsiest thing they could have put on television at the time. While many Americans like to look at wartime escapades through series like MASH or even Band of Brothers, the trio’s Jewish background put them in a bit of a unique position.
While they may have been just the people that Hitler wanted to eradicate from the Earth, the episode ‘You Nazi Spy!’ is one of the first major satires of what Hitler stood for in most of Western culture. Though they never mention the man’s name directly, the plotline about European weapons manufacturers forming a dictatorship under Moe is clearly meant to be a stand-in for Hitler, down to the way he dresses and the accurate haircut.
Just like all Three Stooges routines, though, this is the kind of slapstick that feels like it’s ripped straight out of the vaudeville tradition. Compared to most who were afraid of what the crazed Nazi would say, the episode depicts him as the equivalent of a mean-spirited Disney villain, hamming up his pouting over not getting his way.
Although an image of someone calling Nazis stupid might not seem as groundbreaking today, it did give a lot of prospective filmmakers carte blanche to deal with any other radicalists that they thought needed the piss taken out of them. Considering where America would be a few years later, it’s hard not to see the Three Stooges episode as the building blocks for Trey Parker and Matt Stone absolutely lambasting Osama Bin Laden at the turn of the millennium on South Park following the September 11th attacks.
Above all else, The Three Stooges were the ones who reminded us to laugh even when the scary monsters of the world were trying to intimidate us. If you let them scare you into not laughing, that means that they have won.
