YOU NAZTY SPY: The Three Stooges vs. the Third Reich

The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin's 1939 satire of the Third Reich, is rightly regarded as a classic today. But it wasn't the first Hollywood comedy to mock the Nazis. Nine months earlier, the Three Stooges starred in You Nazty Spy. While not as brilliant as Chaplin's film (this is the Three Stooges, after all), You Nazty Spy is a commendably brave comedy, openly satirizing the Nazis at a time when this was still controversial.

In the troubled nation of Moronica, a trio of sinister munitions manufacturers decides that a nice war will turn the economy around. They overthrow the king and install three idiot wallpaper hangers - Moe, Larry and Curly - as the figureheads for a cruel dictatorship. Moe, naturally, takes on the Hitler role, complete with a wallpaper scrap mustache. Curly becomes the Mussolini, but of course, while Larry is the Goebbels.

We're used to seeing the Stooges as absolute goofballs, and seeing them take on a deathly serious subject like the Nazis is bizarre. The satire is not subtle, featuring book burnings and "concentrated camps", and there is a lot of righteous anger just beneath the usual Stooge puns and nyuks-nyuks. (And yes, X-Files fans, you did indeed glimpse the very familiar name Clyde Bruckman in the short's opening titles.)



Although the short ends in a way that makes a sequel seem unlikely, in 1941 the Stooges returned to Moronica in the short I'll Never Heil Again. By then, there was no controversy about an anti-Nazi comedy, everybody knew that Hitler was a stinker. If only America had listened to the Three Stooges before it was too late...


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