Imagine what would happen, if Hitler woke up in 2011 in field in Germany, alive and well, thinking it was still 1945. Timur Vermes explores this idea in Look Who’s Back. In it, Hitler still has his old ideas about Jews, the French etc. and is soon discovered by TV producers, who find his ideas and delivery amusing and quickly find a spot for him on a popular TV show. The German nation loves his shtick and finds him to be a great Hitler impersonator and satirist, so he quickly gets his own show and plots to get back into politics.
A good joke needs the surprise element to unfurl its didactic effect to the full. How could it strike anyone as a surprise that a Turk is a nincompoop? Of course, if there was a joke about a Turk playing the role of a brilliant scientist, that the absurdity of this alone would raise a laugh.
The idea of Hitler navigating his way through the new world is novel and proves quite amusing. Due to dying in 1945 he of course was not present for the development of new technologies and the ways those have shaped our culture. Throughout the book, the writer tried to build the character of Hitler as most of us see him, a megalomaniac, obsessed with his own brilliance. This results in many internal monologues by Hitler, which can get quite tedious at times. The idea and the execution despite their ingenuity, become a bit stale and repetitive by the middle of the book. While it provides some commentary on modern culture and its perception of Hitler, it does not dig deep enough and merely stays at he surface of the issue. Overall a good idea, with mediocre execution.
Unfortunately I was detained from my research by an urgent communication. Someone with whom I was unacquainted had turned to me with a military problem, and as I was currently without a state to govern I decided to lend my comrade my support. Thus I spent the following three and a half hours engaged in a naval exercise by the name of “Minesweeper”.
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