My Führer — The Really Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler (German: Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler) is a 2007 German black comedy/dramedy historical fiction film directed by Dani Levy.
Around New Year's of 1944 during World War II, Adolf Hitler (Helge Schneider), on an idea of Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth), prepares a big speech for his country. However, while he was once a formidable orator, he is so depressed that he can't speak in public anymore. On Goebbels' orders, a Jewish actor and acting coach, Professor Adolf Grünbaum (Ulrich Mühe, in his final film role), is taken out of a concentration camp to tutor Hitler.
This film provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adolf Hitlarious: He's depressed to the point he needs a coach from a group of people that he hates, and he ridiculously makes Nazi salutes in his bath. In an interview, the director said he wanted to "knock the Nazis off their throne of vicious admiration".
- Against My Religion: Before he meets Goebbels for the first time, Grünbaum is given a sandwich with ham and cheese. Being Jewish, he can't eat ham since it's pork and pork is prohibited by the Torah, so he takes it out of the sandwich and puts it under a rug. Then Hitler's German shepherd Blondi finds it and eats it.
- Alternate History: It's safe to say that such a situation never occured. The bigger picture of history is not altered otherwise.
- Artistic License – History:
- The Stock Footage from June 1940 in Berlin with Hitler's Rousing Speech about Germany's victory over France to an enthusiastic crowd at the beginning is used as "January 1, 1944". The German population was in a whole different mindset by early 1944 and Hitler didn't make such speeches anymore by that time, not to mention the conspicuous absence of ruins.
- Heinrich Himmler never went to a frontline under enemy fire.
- Hitler's German shepherd Blondi is addressed to as a male. She was a female.
- Believing Their Own Lies: Goebbels seems to believe in his own delusional ideas about his propaganda that's aimed at triggering a Heroic Second Wind in the German population that will crush the enemy (by the start of 1944, the situation on the fronts was already verging on hopeless for Germany).
- Driving a Desk: There's an obvious rear projection behind the car driving Grünbaum to the Reich's Chancellery in Berlin, with Real Life footage from 1945 Berlin.
- Evil Is Petty: When Grünbaum meets Goebbels, the latter asks him which concentration camp he comes from. He answers "Sachsenhausen", and Goebbels answers to him, a Holocaust deportee, that he thought he came from the "marvellous" Theresienstadt (Terezin), their "most beautiful camp" in his words.
- Fascist, but Inefficient: The Nazis have a Vast Bureaucracy, which means any decision-making takes much time and papers and signatures on the papers to apply, from top to bottom.
- Nothing Personal: When meeting Goebbels for the first time, Grünbaum gets told by him that he shouldn't see the Final Solution as "personnal matters".
- On One Condition: Grünbaum agrees to help coaching Hitler, but on the condition that his family gets released from the camps and lives in Berlin with him. Goebbels complies.
- Prisoner's Work: When he's called upon to help coaching Hitler, Grünbaum is found at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, digging a ditch alongside other inmates with submachine gun-equipped guards around.
- Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle: My Führer — The Really Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler.
- Stock Footage: The film opens with newsreel footage from Hitler's victory parade in Berlin in June 1940 after having defeated France.
- Stock Sound Effects: One of Blondi's growl sounds when she eats the ham is the same as the Anubites in Age of Mythology and the hyenas in World of Warcraft.
- This Is My Story: Grünbaum narrates the opening and says he'll tell his story.
- Those Wacky Nazis: They have a comically Vast Bureaucracy, and they get their SS titles mixed up between "Ober"/"Unter"-sturmführer and the like.
- Vast Bureaucracy: It takes 18 phone calls and 163 stamps on papers to take Grünbaum out of the concentration camp he's in.
