Film mocking Nazis with The Lambeth Walk was first ‘viral’

  • A British Government parody film has emerged from 1942 which mocked Nazis
  • It editing Adolf Hitler and his army in time to music to look as if they are dancing 
  • It was a ‘viral hit’ at the time and angered Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels 
  • Goebbels put the editor,  Charles A. Ridley, on a Gestapo list for elimination
  • The jaunty music is eerily at odds with the atrocities that the regime committed 

A British Government parody film has emerged from 1942 which mocked the Nazis by editing Adolf Hitler and his army to look as if they are dancing to the Lambeth Walk.  

This hilarious British Government video was the equivalent to a viral hit in the 1940s.

It enraged Hitler’s right-hand man Joseph Goebbels so much that he reportedly ran out of the room kicking a chair and screaming profanities.

The video takes the 1934 German propaganda film ‘Triumph of the Will’ and re-edited it to make it comically appear as though Nazi soldiers and Hitler are doing the Lambeth Walk dance.

The ‘Lambeth Walk’ was a popular dance craze in the U.S. and U.K in the late 1930s.  

And the British parody film was all the more ingenious because a Nazi Party member had publicly denounced the Lambeth Walk dance after the craze caught on in Berlin, calling it ‘Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping’

The video, entitled ‘ Lambeth Walk-Nazi Style’, was edited by a British Ministry of Information official Charles A. Ridley and was screened in cinemas across the UK. 

It became an instant success – publicly ridiculing Hitler and boosting morale on the Home Front.

The Nazis were so infuriated by the parody video that Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels placed Mr Ridley on a Gestapo list for elimination if Britain was defeated in World War II.

Furthermore, ‘Lambeth Walk – Nazi Style’ was distributed uncredited to newsreel companies who would supply their own narration and became a roaring success across the world. This video is the Universal Newsreel company in America who called it:

‘The cleverest anti-Nazi propaganda yet! You will howl with glee when you see and hear what our London newsreel friends have cooked up for Hitler and his goose-stepping armies. The ‘Nasties’ skip and sway in tune to the Lambeth Walk!’

A British Government parody film has emerged from 1942 which mocked the Nazis by editing Adolf Hitler and his army to look as if they are dancing to the Lambeth Walk

The film is edited in time to music to make it look as if the soldiers are dancing

The film is edited in time to music to make it look as if the soldiers are dancing

The parody film was so effective that the Danish resistance allegedly used to enter cinemas in occupied Denmark and force projectionists to show ‘Lambeth Walk – Nazi Style’ to boost morale.

The Lambeth Walk was a song from the 1939 musical film ‘Me and My Girl’ and referred to a street in a Cockney district in London. In the dance, people stride back and forth, punctuating their ‘walk’ with high kicks and broad gestures.

The British Ministry of Information was a government department created briefly at the end of World War One and again during World War Two. It was the central department responsible for publicity and propaganda.

From 1933 to 1945, Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler

From 1933 to 1945, Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler

The Nazi government were responsible for a genocidal campaign, slaughtering millions of Jewish people, Romany gypsies, the disabled and other people deemed 'undesirable'

The Nazi government were responsible for a genocidal campaign, slaughtering millions of Jewish people, Romany gypsies, the disabled and other people deemed ‘undesirable’

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