It is not difficult to guess, the cover on
the paperback features the distinctive black hairline, and the title in black
type is placed to double up as a toothbrush ‘tache.
Yes Adolf Hitler finds himself back from the
dead, unchanged seventy years on from his Germany’s Armageddon. He may not have changed but Germany, and the
world, has. Initially he finds it all
very confusing but you don’t get to become Reich Chancellor without being able
to assimilate facts quickly and adapt rapidly to changes in circumstances.
Two broad strands develop. In one Hitler, as with any time traveller
from the past, gets to comment on the absurdities of the modern world with his
outsider’s eye. In the other he pursues
his (unchanged) political objectives, finding modern Germany a fertile ground
for his national socialist rhetoric.
But these days the road to social change is
not through politics (or violence) but through social media. He quickly becomes a controversial TV
personality and gains traction through the ‘internetworking computer thing’.
A knowledge of the rise and fall of the
Third Reich helps with the satire (otherwise an appendix provides a succinct
biography of the historical figures) and familiarity with modern German
politics would probably makes the comments thereon funnier than to an outsider.
For the non-German it is still an amusing
read though probably a longer one than the joke requires.
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