The Softer Side of a Genocidal Madman: Hitler The Comedian

Guy must have been a laugh riot.

Adolf Hitler found time amid the bloodiest war in history to crack jokes with his cronies.

Hitler the comedian is one side of the Fuhrer painted in a new memoir called ‘The Last Witness‘ by one of the Nazi leader's bodyguards.

The book, by Rochus Misch - who also served as telephonist in the Berlin bunker - also depicts the scene after the dictator committed suicide.

Hitler, the mass killer, “had a small fund of jokes,“ recalled Misch, who is now 90.

“The boss was said to be particularly fond of a couple jokes and told the best ones over and over,“ he said.

While Misch did not divulge Hitler's favourite jokes ahead of the book's publication, one joke that Hitler liked to tell was at the expense of his pompous Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering.

Goering was a man forever designing himself new uniforms and giving himself new orders and decorations.

“One day,“ Hitler used to say, “Mrs. Goering came into the bedchamber and found her husband waving his Field Marshall‘s baton over his underwear.

“‘Hermann, darling, what are you doing?‘ she enquired.

“‘I am promoting my underpants to overpants!‘“

I'm surprised the guy didn't do stand-up with material like that.