I have a soft spot for old school lowbrow humor, and it doesn’t get lower brow than The Three Stooges. Their knockabout absurdist slapstick humor made them lowbrow comedy legends. The Stooges also snuck in some satire amongst the eye-poking, nose-twisting, and head bonking. The Three Stooges weren’t dipshits offscreen, they were Jews acutely aware of the Nazi menace, so they made two anti-Nazi shorts: 1940’s You Nazty Spy and I’ll Never Heil Again in 1941.

The short films were produced and released before America entered the war; that took guts as most of the major studios were afraid to criticize the Nazis for fear of an anti-Semitic backlash. That timidity ended on December 7, 1941.

You Nazty Spy and I’ll Never Heil Again tell the story of the dictator of Moronica as played by Moe Howard. Like Charlie Chaplin, Moe bore a striking resemblance to Hitler. In fact, You Nazty Spy was released before The Great Dictator and is every bit as sharp satirically as the Chaplin feature. That’s right, I said the Stooges were as sharp as Chaplin. They were the ones who came up with Blintzkrieg, not Chaplin.

Moe Howard makes a convincing dictator. He was the dictator Stooge, after all. His characterization of Moe Heilstone is sharper than your basic Moe performance, which typically involved tormenting Larry and chasing Curly around with a hammer. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

In seeing the shorts for the first time in many years, I was struck by the wittiness of the maps. The Persian puns are particularly amusing:

Where’s Moronica? This second map corrects that omission:

Dig this snaky and clever banner:

Heilstone and his henchmen are depicted as dangerous buffoons who shouldn’t be allowed within a mile of power. Sound familiar? The same could be said for the Kaiser of Chaos and his minions.

In I‘ll Never Heil Again, the former King tries to take back power from Moe. King Herman 6 7/8 bears a striking resemblance to Kaiser Bill who was also a buffoon who shouldn’t have been allowed within a mile of power. As you can see, Herman, Kaiser Bill, and George W. Bush had something in common:

What kind of idiot thinks chopping wood is fun? Oh yeah, the King of Moronica and Dubya. Hereditary monarchy is for the birds. That goes for the Bush dynasty as well.

The other Stooges play characters ripped from the headlines too: Larry Pebble is modeled on Joseph Goebbels and Curly Gallstone/Herring is modeled on the vainglorious Hermann Goering. Curly is so proud of his medals that he not only wears some on his back, he’s willing to serve as a human dartboard for the cause:

There’s always been a heated debate about satirizing the Nazis. Some think it’s an abomination, others like me think it’s imperative. Laughter is an antidote to the horrors of Nazism; they were not supernatural beings but evil human beings. In this I stand with Ernst Lubitsch, Mel Brooks, Charlie Chaplin, the makers of Hogan’s Heroes, and Moe, Larry, and Curly. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

It’s not just me: the Holocaust Museum has a page at its web site devoted to I’ll Never Heil Again.

The first 18 minute short is You Nazty Spy which was directed by Jules White and written by veteran comedy writers Clyde Bruckman and Felix Adler.

I’m not sure who came up with this brilliant exchange that happens when Moe is recruited to be dictator by some Moronica plutocrat:

“Plutocrat: My partners and I are going to make you dictator of Moronica.

Moe: Dictator? What does a dictator do?

Plutocrat:  A dictator? Why, he makes love to beautiful women, drinks champagne, enjoys life and never works.

He makes speeches to the people, promising them plenty, gives them nothing, then takes everything.

That’s a dictator.

Moe: Hm, a parasite. That’s for me.”

Did I just call part of a Three Stooges short brilliant? I told you I had a soft spot for old school lowbrow humor.

Dig this disclaimer:

Let’s watch You Nazty Spy. The title is supposedly a take on comedian Joe Penner’s catch phrase, You Nasty Man. Who was nastier than the Nazis?

The title of I’ll Never Heil Again is a pun on a popular tune of the day. It has the same writing and directing team as well as the same Stooges. One of the best moments is when Curly steals Moe’s toothbrush Hitler/Chaplin mustache:

Before we heil again, check out this disclaimer:

Now that we’ve declaimed the disclaimer, let’s watch I’ll Never Heil Again:

The Moronica Nazis lost in the end. This image kinda sorta foreshadows what happened to Mussolini when the partisans got ahold of his shiny head:

Grading Time: These two shorts do a fine job of pointing out the absurdity of dictators and their underlings. Dictatorships are invariably stupid and corrupt. The Three Stooges nail that. I give You Nazty Spy and I’ll Never Heil Again 3 1/2 stars and an Adrastos Grade of B+. High marks indeed for lowbrow comedy.

It’s time for Curly to dance in a different uniform in a different short film:

The Three Stooges were entertainers. They weren’t out to change the world, but they understood the Nazi menace and mocked it. Good on them. Who among us wouldn’t have wanted to poke Hitler in the eyes? Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. Apologies for overusing that Curly-ism but I’m not sure how to write the others except for this:

The last word goes to Spike Jones with more Fuhrer mocking: