Jojo Rabbit: A crash course on Hitler satire, from Charlie Chaplin to Yertle the Turtle, ahead of the new Nazi comedy.

Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, a comedy about a 10-year-old member of the Hitler Youth who must decide what to do when he discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in his attic, will be released on Friday. The writer-director, who is the child of a Jewish mother and a Maori father, plays Adolf Hitler himself, as the boy’s imaginary friend, and early reviews have already focused on what my colleague Sam Adams, who saw the film at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, called the “tricky balancing act” of Hitler humor: “There will be plenty of people who object to the movie on concept alone.” This is the eternal debate: Is it right to make comedy of a man who did such transcendently horrible things? Day 1: Wartime 1939: “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball,” British popular song 1940: The Great Dictator, directed by Charlie Chaplin 1940-1: “You Nazty Spy,” “I’ll Never Heil Again,” by the Three Stooges 1943: “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” Disney, featuring Donald Duck Early satires of Hitler could aim directly at Adolf’s pomposity and self-seriousness without having to worry so much whether it was right to make humor out of the total devastation Hitler had only begun to wreak. As for “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball,” set to the popular World War I tune “Colonel Bogey’s March,” this song mocking Hitler’s rumored right-side cryptorchidism emerged out of the British military sometime in 1939. In a recent profile, Brooks told David Denby that when he got critical letters about the movie, he would write back to explain his theory of Hitler satire: “The way you bring down Hitler … you don’t get on a soapbox with him … but if you can reduce him to something laughable, you win.” By 2001, when a new musical version of The Producers hit Broadway, public opinion had shifted along with distance from the war, and reception was universally positive: The show won 12 Tony Awards, which remains the record.