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'Mein Fuehrer': Bathtime for Hitler

Coming soon to German cinemas: a demoralized, drug-addled Adolf Hitler who plays with a toy battleship in the bathtub, dresses his dog in a Nazi uniform and takes acting tips from a Jewish concentration camp inmate.

The movie opening Jan. 11 is treading ground that once would have been off-limits. This is not Mel Brooks's "The Producers" or Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator," but a German movie that dares to treat Hitler as comedy.

"Mein Fuehrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler" follows the Oscar-nominated "Downfall," the 2004 German film that broke new ground in portraying Hitler by offering a controversially intimate and lifelike portrait of his last days.

"Mein Fuehrer" director Dani Levy, a Swiss-born Jew who lives in Berlin, says he has long felt the need to explain for himself how it was possible for Germans to follow Hitler.
Read entire article at AP