Advertisement

German card game features Hitler, Stalin

Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter

BERLIN, July 16 (UPI) -- A Berlin-based publisher has raised eyebrows with a card game that includes images and information on famous dictators, including Adolf Hitler.

Das Fuehrer Quartett, a card game based on a popular children's game, includes cards representing 32 tyrants including Hitler, Francisco Franco and Joseph Stalin, Deutsch Welle reported Wednesday.

Advertisement

The game's publisher, Onkel & Onkel, said that while the cards include historical facts about the dictators, they also mock the tyrants -- for example, the card for Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet describes him as "somehow stupid."

"We didn't really have a clear political idea in mind with the game," said Volker Oppmann of Onkel & Onkel. "But we did want to take away some of the power that these figures still have. When you can laugh at them, you don't fear them as much."

The cards have proved popular with the public but some say using tyrannical dictators in a card game is no laughing matter.

Berlin Senator Ehrhart Korting, 66, said the game is tasteless while historian Arnulf Baring argued that the game downplays the heinous crimes committed by the historical figures in question.

Advertisement

"The further back the Third Reich recedes in history, the more bizarre the way it is dealt with becomes," he said.

Latest Headlines