Analysis: Hitler on stage in Berlin

BERLIN, May 20 (UPI) -- Adolf Hitler is back in Berlin, 64 years after the end of World War II.

This time, though, do not fear: His army includes a pretzel- and bratwurst-adorned group of long-legged showgirls, and in his first appearance in downtown Berlin, he was met by roaring laughter.

"The Producers," the Mel Brooks musical that took Broadway by storm eight years ago and won 12 Tony Awards, opened in Berlin this past weekend. Judging from the first show's crowd, it seems that Germans are now able to laugh at Brook's hilarious interpretation of the Fuehrer.

In Berlin, this is far from obvious:

The city's historic buildings still bear the scars of World War II in the form of bullet holes. From here, the real Hitler plotted a war and atrocities that killed 20 million people, and the Nazi era still burdens Germans with a sense of collective guilt.

The venue where "Producers" is set to play for at least two months, the 1920s Admiralspalast theater, is right around the corner from where Hitler committed suicide in 1945. The Admiralspalast still sports the original "Fuehrerloge," a VIP box built for Hitler so he could take a break from waging war by watching Wagner operettas.

The musical is about two Jewish Broadway producers trying to stage the worst possible flop so that they can run away to Rio de Janeiro with the investors' money. They settle on "Springtime for Hitler," a play about the Fuehrer's romantic time in the Alps written by an exiled Bavarian Nazi fan who has trained his pigeons to do Hitler salutes with their right wings. The producers hire the worst possible director and actors to produce a sure flop. But in the end, would you know it, the play becomes a huge success. The press lauds it as great satire, aided by the fact that its gay director steps in to play Hitler at the last moment and gives a pretty glittery performance.

Brooks has tried to tell Germans that they can laugh at his play without guilt, but the show has flopped in Austria, and many Germans still feel uneasy about watching what at times seemed like an unnecessary accumulation of Nazi paraphernalia on stage.

The German press had extensively discussed whether Germans could or should laugh about Hitler. The play's organizers had played to that tune, causing controversy by hanging what looked like Nazi flags (featuring a pretzel instead of the swastika, which can't be displayed in public) outside of the Admiralspalast, right over its entrance at busy Friedrichstrasse boulevard. Several concerned Germans called in the police.

This should come as no surprise. Hitler may be dead, but neo-Nazism isn't.

Germany saw an upshot of far-right extremism in the 1990s, with hoards of bald-headed neo-Nazis torching asylum homes and clashing with German police. The democratic reaction was swift: Hundreds of thousands of Germans marched peacefully against xenophobia and neo-Nazism.

Today, the far-right National Democratic Party, or NPD, has made it into a few state parliaments, but experts say the group's national support is far below the 5 percent needed for the German Parliament. The NPD is nevertheless closely watched by agents from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, an agency designed to monitor all forms of extremism in Germany.

In the case of "Producers," the office won't have to send in its agents. The Hitler in Brook's play is not the mad dictator whose ghost still haunts Germans -- he is a stupid figure who likes his SS men in black tights. For many in the audience, laughing at that seemed to be a liberating experience.