Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun (16 page)

Hungarians have a (perhaps undeserved) reputation for arrogance. An ethnic joke in circulation among the Austrian officer corps back in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire went as follows: An evening of carousing in Vienna by Austrian officers and their Hungarian guests ended with the officers retiring to their chambers in the company of "ladies of the evening," as it were. Though the Austrians were the hosts, they had neglected to pay the
prostitutes in advance. In the morning one woman said to her Hungarian client, "Und das
Gelt
? "
i.e., "And the money?" The Hungarian replied in thickly accented German, "
Magyari
offyizer
net
ernahmen
das
Gelt
.” Hungarian officer not take money.

 

 

Hermann! You have gone too far!

 

Hungarians were not the only objects of unkind Austrian mirth. One nasty quip made by
Austrians about one of their subject peoples, the Slovaks, was that the Slovak language consisted
of a scant 1440 words, of which 800 were words for various agricultural implements and 200 were terms describing different consistencies of manure.

 

Soon after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, the German government began a program
of clandestinely violating the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Privately owned "glider clubs" began to train fighter pilots, for example, and "rifle clubs" began training
infantry. Additionally, industries were secretly retooled for military production purposes, which
led to this joke, circa 1934:

A young husband with a pregnant bride was employed by a company that manufactured
prams (i.e., strollers, baby carriages.) They could not afford to buy one for their soon-to-be
blessed event, so he hit upon a scheme: he would steal a pram a little bit at a time, a wheel here,
a screw there, a metal bar here, a handlebar there, until eventually he would have all the parts
necessary to construct the pram. When at last he had stolen everything he needed, he went into the basement to put it all together. Hours passed. His wife began to hear agitated and impatient
grumblings coming from the basement, until eventually he came upstairs and said angrily, "I
give up! I can't do it! I've put the damned thing together five times, and it keeps ending up a
machine gun!"

 

Ethnic jokes have been around from time immemorial, unfortunately: most of them are nasty, demeaning, and insulting. Some of them are also quite funny. An example is this old joke current in France during the Reign of Terror (c. 1793), making fun of country bumpkins from a region of France called Gascony.

Beheadings were daily occurrences during the Terror, and a new device, the guillotine, had become the standard means of execution. The guillotine consisted of a flat platform upon
which the condemned would be placed and then slid forward beneath a large rectangular frame. His head would be secured by a brace, and then a large, heavy, slanted blade would be released and would slide down the frame and sever the head from the body.

One day the executioner was in an expansive mood as three condemned prisoners were brought to him for execution. "Today," he said, "I'm giving the condemned a choice: you can lie
on the platform face down as is customary, or face up."

The first prisoner, a Parisian, said, "I wish to be face down when I die, because I wish to hang my head in shame for the horrible crimes being committed by my country." He was placed on the platform, his head was secured by the brace, and the lever was pulled to release the blade;
but as it descended, the blade got stuck in the frame and did not reach the prisoner's neck. The
age-old tradition was that it is to be regarded as an act of God if a condemned man survives his execution, and his life must thus be spared. The Parisian was therefore released.

The next prisoner, a man from Normandy, was brought forward and offered the same option. "I wish to be face up when I die. I am a devout Catholic, and I wish to gaze up a God's
blue heaven as my life ends." He was placed upon the platform face up, his head was secured by
the brace, the blade was released, and once again it got stuck in the frame. An act of God: the
Norman was released.

The
Gascon
was now brought forward and was offered the same choice. "First things first," he said. "Fix the damned guillotine!"

 

And while we are on the subject of ethnic jokes, the election of a Polish pope in 1977
gave rise to many of them. Most people who tell Polish jokes are unaware that the origin of this
particular kind of ethnic insult is a legacy from Nazi Germany, whose racist propaganda
portrayed the Poles as stupid, porcine people. (Prior to that, Poland was actually best known for the beauty of its women, something to which Napoleon could enthusiastically attest.)

In any event, the accession of John Paul II to the papacy was the occasion for a rash of Polish Pope jokes. (e.g., his first miracle was turning a blind man into a leper.) But a comment popular in England at the time was that he had no sense of humor. If he had one, he would nothave named himself after his predecessor, John Paul I. Logically, Pope John Paul should have
been followed by Pope George
Ringo
.

 

In the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Purge, many of the victims were targeted
because of their level of education on the assumption that intellectuals could not be relied upon for loyalty to the Stalinist system. A joke from Moscow circa 1936:

Two women, old friends who had not seen each other for years, met on a bus near Red Square. After embracing and expressing delight at their reunion, they exchanged information
about their families. "I have three sons," said one woman. "My eldest is an engineer. My middle
boy is a professor of literature. My youngest is also in Siberia."

 

And speaking of Red Square, Lenin's tomb is there. When the founder of the Soviet
Union died, his body was embalmed, placed in an airtight glass case, and put on display (where it
remains to this day as a major tourist attraction.) Two Muscovites were visiting the tomb during the wrenching and traumatic First Five Year Plan, circa 1933. As they gazed at Lenin's body,
one of them said, "He's just like us. Dead, just not buried."

Hermann Goering, number two figure in Nazi Germany and Hitler's right hand man, had
a penchant for preposterously theatrical clothing. He was frequently seen in public holding an ebony walking stick with a grip of solid gold, wearing a flowing black silken cape with a red lining, a military
uniform of his own design spangled with scores of self-awarded medals, and his ample waist girdled by a golden belt from which dangled a ceremonial sword in a bejeweled scabbard.

A joke from Berlin circa 1940: Hitler, an avid opera enthusiast with a particular devotion
to Wagner, was attending a performance of
Die
Walkure
when he nodded off to sleep. He awakened somewhat groggily just as
Brunhilda
the
Valkyr
appeared on stage. Following the
custom of
Wagnarian
tradition, she was a hefty woman wearing a horned helmet, armor that included an iron brassiere, and carrying
both shield and spear. Startled by the image that presented itself to his abruptly awakened eyes, Hitler leapt to his feet and cried, "Hermann! You have gone too far!"

 

From 1921 until 1937 Ireland occupied an ambiguous status as the Irish Free State, a Dominion of the British Empire like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but one whose existence was a temporary compromise between the Irish Republican Army and the British government, a
compromise which had been preceded by civil war and a century of rebellion. In short, the Irish
had no loyalty to the British crown and no affection for the "Brits."

This led to a general sense among the British that Irish were security risks, a not
insignificant concern given the rampant espionage current in Europe during the 1930's. It also led to this joke, from England c. 1935:

A British covert operative (spy) was sent to the small Irish town of
Tullamore
with instructions
to contact another covert operative named O'Brien, who would deliver to him certain classified German documents he had secured from the German consulate in Belfast. His identification statement to O'Brien was to be, "The raven is in the hayloft. Repeat: the raven is in the hayloft."

He arrived in
Tullamore
in the wee hours of the morning and, with difficulty, found the
address of O'Brien on the dimly lighted, twisting streets. He knocked softly on the door. After a
few moments the door opened. An elderly man said, "Yes?"

"The raven is in the hayloft," the Briton said. "Repeat: the raven is in the hayloft."

The old man smiled broadly. "Oh, you want O'Brien the spy! He lives two doors down."

 

The presidential election of 1860 was one of the most significant in American History. Passions ran high as the Democratic Party fragmented and the incipient election of the
Republican Lincoln threatened the nation with its own fragmentation. At the same time a popular
preacher named
Miller predicted that January 1, 1861, would be the date of the Second Coming of Christ. This would of course precipitate Judgment Day and the end of the world.

A joke from somewhere in the middle of the country circa 1860: on a train from Chicago
to New York, a group of men began discussing national politics. The conversation became an argument, and the argument soon became so loud, bitter, and acrimonious that a real danger of violence soon became evident. A preacher who was a
Millerite
interposed himself between two of the most frenzied arguers and said, "Gentlemen, please! This is all irrelevant. It makes no
difference who wins the election, because on January 1
^st
, Jesus Christ will be president of the
world."

"Oh yeah?" one of the men yelled. "Well, he won't carry New Hampshire!"

 

At about the same time that Alzheimer's disease was first identified in the 1980's, it was discovered that the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim of Austria, had a
less than pristine military record during World War II. Allegations about involvement with both the S.A. and the S.S., awareness of (if not involvement in) the murder of civilians, and various recorded anti-Semitic comments, led to a British joke that a new disease had been
identified:
Waldheimer's
Disease. The salient characteristic of this syndrome was that when you get old, you forget you were a Nazi.

 

Engelbert
Dollfuss, chancellor and
de facto
dictator of Austria from 1931 to 1934, was
four feet ten inches tall, and was sometimes referred to as the "
Minimetternich
." (Metternich was Austria foreign minister during the Napoleonic Era.) Jokes about Dollfuss' diminutive size were
quite popular in Vienna. He broke his leg falling off a ladder while picking dandelions; a new postage stamp was going be adorned with an image of his face, life-size; instead of taking the train to visit Mussolini, he went by air mail; Austrian physicists were experimenting with splitting the atom, using Dollfuss as their subject; and the police foiled an assassination attempt when they discovered a mouse trap in his bedroom.

 

The failure of Communism to provide even the most basic consumer needs was one of
the causes of the system's collapse. In every city in the Soviet Union, people had to wait in lines for hours on end in the hopes of purchasing whatever was available. Hence this joke from Moscow when Leonid Brezhnev was still running the country, circa
1981:

Two friends, Ivan and Boris, are waiting on a very long line to buy turnips. When they
get toward the front of the line, an announcement is made to the effect that the store has just run out of turnips, but that a store three blocks away has a supply of asparagus. They run over to the
other store and get on the end of another long line, only to have the experience repeated.

As they are standing on the fifth long line of the day, Ivan's face grows red with rage and
he says to Boris, "Keep my place in line."