Hitler and the clown

Looking beneath the hyper-distinctive persona

Chaplin challenges Adolf Hitler dressed as his The Great Dictator character, Adenoid Hynkel

In 1940 a film was released that was one of the most shocking in the history of mainstream cinema. It quickly gained fame throughout the world, except in Germany. Until this moment, the comic genius Charles Chaplin had been known as ‘the tramp’. This was the character that, in the days of silent cinema made him the “most famous man in the world”¹ in films such as The Kid (1921) and City Lights (1931). He was the lovable clown. But as the 1930s grew to a close, two developments collided in this one film: the inclusion of sound and speech, and the rise of Adolf Hitler. As the second world war gained momentum, Chaplin released The Great Dictator. Not only would his audience see a serious side to the actor/director, but they would also, at this same moment, hear his voice.

The Great Dictator is remembered as a brave, mocking and poignant strike against Hitler’s ambitions. In 1940, the scale of the global disaster Hitler was spearheading was not yet clear. I want to take nothing away from the innovation and bravery of the film. It capitalised on Chaplin’s popularity to score a blow to an authoritarian dictator who had begun causing destruction. Its highlighting of the dangers of antisemitism, was not at the time a safe move to make. The film was a force for good. But if we are thinking about narcissism, then there is a story beneath this story.

I have been looking at the lives of the iconically famous through a lens of narcissism. I have noticed how reliance on performance develops over time. A persona is slowly constructed. Early in the lives of these icons a need to be admired and powerful was apparent. What we ultimately remember though, is a single persona with one shared characteristic: it is distinctive from those of other icons. I noticed this most strikingly in rapper Tupac Shakur. In his life, we see a point early on where the rap persona is embraced, and acting, poetry and yes, politics are put away. In these lives, any features that detract from the chosen distinctive persona, are hidden.

The Great Dictator as a film, is a play on the contrast between Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin the much-loved clown. The joke hinged on something very small: the ‘toothbrush’ moustache. Chaplin’s tramp character was famous for it. And now so was Hitler. And beyond this detail, so the joke went, these two men could not be any more different.

In this age of narcissism, we miss one other small detail in addition to the toothbrush moustache: Hitler and Chaplin were both obsessed with achieving world fame. And as a strategy for living, this is narcissistic. If they both used this narcissistic strategy of performance to the extreme, were there other narcissistic strategies in the background? We remember one man for performance and the other as a perpetrator. We remember one as a clown, and the other as an authoritarian dictator. But in the iconic lives I have looked at so far, we have found that where the performance face of narcissism, is found in the extreme, we should look out for its perpetrator face. And where its perpetrator face is visible, its performance face may also be found. Here, I want to ask whether, beneath these two distinctive personas, this David and this Goliath shared more than a moustache. I will start with Hitler and then turn to Chaplin.

German Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler (20/4/1889- 30/4/1945)

Adolf Hitler’s appearances before the more distinctive toothbrush moustache, and before the persona we remember today had developed.

History knows Adolf Hitler as a perpetrator. He has become the archetype authoritarian dictator and the archetype narcissist. We know that he masterminded some of the worst crimes against humanity. If he had a persona, it was first that of a politician. A leader. It was serious and passionate about the future of Europe.

So, as the second world war began, why did Hitler say to British Ambassador Nevile Henderson, "I am an artist and not a politician. Once the Polish question is settled, I want to end my life as an artist"²? At the ages of 18 and again at 19, young Adolf had been rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He continued painting throughout his life. Before developing the political persona that was devastatingly successful, this man wanted to be an admired artist. We can say that these careers have nothing at all in common. Or we can say they are ways of achieving admiration, and social power on a large scale, from an emotional distance.

Once Hitler’s political persona began forming, was there evidence of this being an active narcissistic pursuit, rather than an incidental consequence of his approach to politics? We can come back to the moustache – that small feature that instantly makes us recognise Hitler in a photo. Hitler had worn different moustaches during World War One. As tight-fitting gas masks became essential, soldiers were for a time told to reduce their moustache. After the war, comrades such as Rommell abandoned the look. For Hitler, it was perhaps a badge of honour – a reference to the gas attack he had been injured in. But there was something else. Hitler had been admiring the distinctive beard of Lennin, and the public style of Mussolini. And the toothbrush moustache had, as part of an iconic persona, not yet been claimed. Hitler claimed it. When his friend Ernst Hanfstaengl urged him to abandon the quirky feature, he said “If it is not the fashion now, it will be later because I wear it”.

Hitler was a powerful speaker. In archive footage, we can see that it was not only his voice and words, but the use of his body. In an actor, we might think of these qualities as carefully honed and practiced performance. In a political persona we think more in terms of communication skills – tools of the politician’s trade. But I don’t think Heinrich Hoffmann would have watched Hitler’s speeches and thought like this. Hoffmann was the German Reich’s official photographer, and Hitler arranged private sessions to rehearse a huge range of physical gestures, auditioned in photographs for Adolf to review, select and develop further. After failing as an artist, Hitler was the millionaire author of Mein Kampf, on the rise as a politician. Now this was like a unique acting school in which one man played both the tutor and the only pupil. Hitler ordered Hoffmann to destroy the evidence of this developmental process. The pictures were, he said, “beneath one’s dignity.”⁴ Hoffmann disobeyed the order, captioning one set “Adolf Hitler rehearses supposedly spontaneous gestures whilst listening to a recording of one of his speeches.”⁴ Looking at the photos now, we can see which poses would be discarded and which were enhancing. Here is Adolf – caught on film in the act of creating the persona, Hitler.

Heinrich Hoffmann’s private photos of Adolf Hitler (1927)

History knows this designed persona– the iconic leader Hitler. And we know something larger that has been elaborated since – the oppressive, criminal monster. But Hitler was driven to perform. To be admired. And yes - to dazzle. He painted, he wrote books, he acted. He was obsessed with his appearance and performance intellectually and physically. In true rockstar fashion, he became reliant on both opiates and cocaine in the process⁵. At this level of narcissism, the drugs are never really about the music. They are about servicing a persona that, developed meticulously, is unrealistic to maintain.

Actor, director, Charles Chaplin (16/4/1889-25/12/1977)

Charles Chaplin as his iconic tramp character in The Kid

It was the clown who created the 1940 film The Great Dictator. It was the comic with this same toothbrush moustache. Although Chaplin’s moustache was removable, cinema audiences had only seen Chaplin with it in place. Apart from this one detail of their facial hair It was Chaplin who contrasted these two men so sharply in his 1940 film. One online post I came across refers to ”that little toothbrush moustache sported by both Hitler and the much more agreeable Charlie Chaplin”. But there was a man behind the performing comic persona. Born in London in the same week that Adolf Hitler was born in Vienna, Chaplin was also a complex man.

Chaplin’s impulsive, sometimes power-wielding sexual activities increasingly drew the attention of American authorities. Four years after the release of The Great Dictator, he was charged with sex-trafficking one of his lovers, Joan Barry¹. In 1945, Senator William Langer put forward a bill calling for Chaplin to be deported because of “his unsavoury record of law breaking, of rape, or the debauching of American girls 16 and 17 years of age”³. In 1947 a congressman demanded Chaplin be deported on grounds that he was “detrimental to the moral fabric of America.”¹ This did not fit with the helpless lovable clown persona. And it did not contrast so nicely with his arch-nemesis, Hitler.

One biographer summarises performing talent together with a ruthless personality:

“Chaplin’s art overflowed the bounds of cinema and raised the tides of history; but Chaplin’s life also overflowed the bounds of law and norms and submerged those who stood in the path of his desires.”³

As a director, Chaplin’s method centred, according to some, around “bullying and humiliation.”¹ His oldest son Charles Jr remembered, “The violence of his anger was always so out of proportion to the object that had stirred him that I couldn’t help being frightened at it.”¹ He was at times cruel and denigrating. Marlon Brando, who starred in Chaplin’s final film, described him as “probably the most sadistic man I’d ever met…an egotistical tyrant.”¹

Putting aside the moustache and helpless tramp costume, Charles Chaplin appears in court in 1944 charged with sex-trafficking.

David and Goliath

History describes Adolf Hitler and Charles Chaplin as people with different kinds of strengths and weaknesses. But this is based on persona. In reality, this archetypal political perpetrator was an obsessive performer and drug addict. And this archetypal clown was a controlling dictatorial perpetrator. The joke was that they shared only this mark - a square of facial hair beneath the nose. But beneath personas, they shared more than this.

On today’s world stage, we have the portrayal of a David and Goliath exchange between Zelenski and Trump. Trump’s detractors cast him in the Hitler role, whilst his supporters laugh at the comparison. Trump is the underdog real estate mogul TV presenter. This is a persona developed partly by a TV production company. Like Chaplin, President Zelenski has turned from being a comic actor, (and the voice of Paddington Bear), to political leadership in an underdog sweatshirt-wearing persona. Both present themselves as taking their political role reluctantly. Both men, before politics, were actors.

My point is not that persona is necessarily a red flag. In the extreme, it indicates narcissism, which can be used for good and bad. My point is that every new Hitler, in their persona, will be nothing like Hitler and nothing like any other Hitler to come. Over time, these personas become archetypal and hyper-distinctive in the same way as Charles Chaplin and Tupac Shakur. They become, by design, non-comparable. And they might point, like Chaplin, at a dehumanised archetype, and ask, “how could you compare me with them?”

If persona itself is not a red flag, then what is? What should really alarm or reassure us about the next divisive leader who also is nothing like Hitler? Chaplin faced court. Hitler committed suicide to avoid it. He had deceived a nation and committed genocide. Heavy reliance on persona should prompt us to take behaviour seriously. If we want to follow someone, we need to be concerned with how they treat people, how honest they are, and how they negotiate relationships.

But each time, it is the persona – looking like none before it - that seduces us. We saw this one develop. They have the boy down the street quality. In an age of narcissism, we ignore behaviour as a marker of who to trust. Instead, we are reassured by distinctiveness. We applaud it, we pay for it – this thing that might otherwise warn us that we are in a high-risk relationship.

After making The Great Dictator, Chaplin was one day speaking to his son, Charles Jr. He said of Hitler, “he’s the madman, I’m the comic; but it could have been the other way around.”⁶ It could have been. But the son knew both the persona and the man. The big joke – that the dictator and the clown were so different, had worn thin long ago.

Chaplin, in costume, directing The Great Dictator (1940)

Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own unless otherwise stated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any institution I have been employed by. The content here is for information and should not be interpreted as advice.

Notes

1. Ackroyd, P. (2014). Charlie Chaplin. Vintage books.

2. The Great Britain Foreign Office. (1939) The British War Blue Book.

3. Brody, R. Charlie Chaplin’s Scandalous Life and Boundless Artistry. In The New Yorker, September 18^th, 2015.

4. Hitler Practices his Speeches (2010). Iconic Photos. Downloaded from: https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/heinrich-hoffman

5. Cooke, R. (2016) High Hitler: How Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history. The Guardian, 25/9/16.

6. Chaplin, C. (1960). My Father, Charlie Chaplin. New York