Pat Dollard | Young Americans

I MUST admit to a rather sick and twisted … but so VERY sweet pleasure from this story.

My opinion of “Germans” just went up several pegs …

Berlin hails ex-policeman who decapitated Hitler waxwork

by Roger Boyes (Times Online)

The decapitation of Adolf Hitler is drawing widespread applause from German critics and politicians who feel that his wax dummy should never have been put on display in Berlin.

One commentator hailed it as “a successful assassination attempt – sadly 75 years overdue.”

The bizarre assault occurred only minutes after the Berlin affiliate of Madame Tussauds opened its doors to the public at the weekend.

The second visitor in the building, a 41-year-old former policeman known only as Frank L., headed straight for the darkened corner where a despairing Führer was shown hunched over his desk in his Berlin bunker.

Mr L. jumped the rope cordon, slid over the desk and grabbed Hitler in a rugby tackle. “Then he twisted his head,” said Andreas Fisch, 52, who watched the attack.

“The security men closed in to pull him apart from Hitler. When they fell to the floor, Frank L. shouted ‘never again war!’”

Prosecutors are investigating Mr. L on charges of assault – one of the security guards was slightly injured – and wilful damage to property.

The Hitler dummy cost €200,000. The body is made from fibreglass, the head from bees’ wax. Decapitation is thus relatively easy if you twist the head at the neck joints.

Mr L. was unrepentant. “I really enjoyed the fact that Willy Brandt was watching,” he said.

Brandt, a former West German chancellor was in the anti-Nazi resistance and became a hero for the Left; his dummy stands in the same room as Hitler.

Mr L. resigned from the Berlin police after being assigned to quell a May Day demonstration of leftwing anarchists (“I realised I belonged on the other side”). Since then, he has been active in the punk and squatter scene; since February he has been a care worker.

“I’m really proud of him,” said his girlfriend Yvonne, “I’ve been furious about Hitler for days.”

The approval went well beyond Mr. L’s girlfriend. The dummy has been highly controversial because the exhibition at Madame Tussauds was plainly meant to entertain rather than inform and Hitler was being used as a commercial magnet. Opponents said the dummy would become a source of pilgrimage for Neo Nazis, or at least those who could afford the €18 entrance fee.

The museum located close to the Brandenburg Gate imposed a “no touch, no kissing rule” for the Hitler dummy. Posing for photographs with him was also banned. Security guards were briefed to guard Hitler from open displays of affection.

“At last a successful attack on Hitler!” exclaimed Henryk Broder, columnist for Der Spiegel. His one quibble was the nature of Frank L’s political outburst – no more war.

“If the allies hadn’t waged war on Hitler, we might still be under the yoke of his heirs,” said Mr Broder. “He should have shouted: ‘Never Again Dictatorship!’ But that’s not a very fashionable rallying call on the Left.”

Politicians were shedding no tears for the wax Führer. “It’s more of an artwork to rip off Hitler’s head than to put him on display,” said the Social Democrat politician Frank Zimmermann.

Natalie Russ, spokeswoman for Madame Tussauds, said a decision would be taken on Monday as to whether Hitler will return. “It depends on the scale of the damage,” she said.

For the time being his dismembered body is being kept in a locked side room. The key decision will be whether to surround the Führer with a reinforced glass wall.

The Hitler dummy in the London branch of Madame Tussauds has been exhibited since 1933. Until 2002, it was the dummy that attracted the most protest: visitors spat at it and tried to deface it. After 2002, the model of Osama bin Laden became the most controversial figure in the exhibition.