A new book out in Germany chronicles joke-making under the Third Reich. Most of these samples, reprinted in a Der Spiegel article, are hopelessly soft-boiled and don't even yield the ghost of a smile:
Hitler visits a lunatic asylum. The patients give the Hitler salute. As he passes down the line he comes across a man who isn't saluting. "Why aren't you saluting like the others?" Hitler barks. "Mein Führer, I'm the nurse," comes the answer. "I'm not crazy!"
Sadly, my favorite bit of Nazi era humor — which had been adapted by Jews from an old thigh-slapper from tsarist Russia — goes as follows:
Two Jews in the Warsaw ghetto get word that Hitler himself will be taking a tour of the place tomorrow at noon. They plot to assassinate him. Having procured and stowed an SS officer's misplaced rifle, they agree to meet on the top of a building at noon and await Hitler's motorcade. The next day comes, they take their posts. 11 o'clock passes, no Hitler. 11:30, no Hitler.12:00, still no Hitler. Finally, at 12:30, with still no sign of the Fuhrer, one Jew says to the other, "Gee, I hope nothing happened to him."
Gallows humor the way it was meant to be: ironic and mordant in the face of death. So much better, incidentally, than Chaplin's fluffy farce The Great Dictator.