The appeal of watching Hitler Rant

I am sure that a great many people would be expecting some sort of video involving a certain series of clips from the movie, Downfall. Too bad, I am just going to talk about it. The meme revolving around the ‘Hitler Rants‘ videos specifically.

The meme of Hitler ranting originates from a movie called Downfall. Downfall is a 2004 historical war drama film meant to depict Hitler and war-time Germany in a semi-historically accurate manner. The reason for being semi-accurate is due to the fact that it is not a documentary so the actual events are either written or thought up according to whatever evidence history provides the creators of the movie. In any case, one of the scenes is based off a fact recorded from a book called ‘Inside Hitler’s Bunker’.

That is more or less the premise for the movie. In the film, there is a particular scene where Hitler is faced with the option for his eventual suicide while trapped in his own bunker with several people. That particular scene is what is used for the meme that is ‘Hitler Rants‘. The meme is a video that is cut and edited with the original German audio but different subtitles implemented in it.

Now for a time stamp directly from the site:

On April 4th, 2006, YouTuber Edilson66 uploaded an edited version of the scene with edited Portuguese subtitles (shown below, right) .

On August 10th, 2006, YouTuber user DReaperF4 uploaded a spoof titled “Sim Heil: Der untersim”^[2] and subbed in Spanish, the video shows Hitler fuming over the lack of new features in the demo trial of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X, which was released in October 2006.

On August 30th, DReaperF4 uploaded the English sub version of “Sim Heil” after popular request in the comments, making the joke accessible to the rest of Flight Sim fans on YouTube. 

In April 2009, YouTube channel HitlerRantsParodies^[4] was launched to serve as an archival platform and forum for the parody community at large

In May 2008, Wired^[14] and Laughing Squid^[15] covered the phenomenon. On October 28th, 2008, New York Times Magazine^[5] reported on the mass appeal of “Downfall” parody phenomenon

On October 6th, 2009, Telegraph^[6] also published an article explaining the meme, as well as a selection of 25 best parodies. 

Know Your Meme

In any case, the sensation spread like wild fire. All from someone’s idea of “wouldn’t it be funny if Hitler said this instead” or so I would imagine. The reveal to the internet truly made the meme immortal and still lasting till today. But why would someone create this in the first place?

According to Laura Mulvey, “The scopophilic instinct and in contradistinction, ego libido acts as formation, mechanisms which would mold this cinema’s formal attributes”. There is a certain visual appeal about seeing this sort of sight. Sure, I could go into some ramble about making the vision into a reality, but that is not the topic.

Although it is not exactly commonly recommended by YouTube, the meme is still on going with many different versions of the parody continuing on since 2009 when the channel was first created. The channel has several hundred thousand subscribers with millions of views per video. The parody possesses a large variety of topics from complaints of video games, to antagonizing beans, or our last presidential election. There is a certain appeal to watching these videos. I imagine that there is another appeal for the creator who has been making those videos for the public to watch.