Hugh Fitzgerald: Timur Vermes and “Look Who’s Back”

Timur Vermes is a German writer who back in 2012 published Look Who’s Back, a supposedly comic novel based on the premise that Adolf Hitler wakes up in 2011 Berlin, destitute and confused. Everyone who sees him believes he is a superbly nutty, fantastically accurate impersonator of Hitler, a master of method acting. He begins to attract notice, appears on radio and television shows, where he offers views of what he sees around him in Germany in 2011, views entirely consonant, we are supposed to believe, with those of Hitler. This enables Vermes to strike blows against the neo-Nazis of today, by showing — or so Vermes thought — how close the positions Hitler himself would have taken on such subjects as the Muslim migrants in Germany mirror those of his nostalgic followers today. So this protagonist, whom everyone assumes is a brilliant actor, but who is in fact the real Hitler, expresses the views we all know Hitler would have held, had he been alive today.

And chief among those views is the “islamophobia” that today “neo-Nazis” are accused of holding. In fact, in Germany today, if you hold views severely critical of Muslim migrants, and of Islam, you will often be labelled, and only for that reason, as a “neo-Nazi.” Vermes’ novel does not take issue with this, but accepts such characterizations of Islamocritics.

The novel was an astounding success in Germany, selling more than 1.2 million copies. It has been translated into 19 languages.

But there is one thing fatally wrong with this book about an imagined Adolf Hitler in 2011. Vermes makes his Hitler “islamophobic.” As it happens, we don’t have to guess what Hitler thought of Islam. He tells us. He is unambiguously admiring. He regretted that Islam had not conquered Europe. “It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion,” Hitler complained to his favorite architect Albert Speer. “Why did it have to be Christianity with its weakness and flabbiness?” Islam for Hitler was a “Männerreligion—a “religion of men.” Unlike Christianity, which celebrated the meek and mild, “Mohammedanism [is] that cult which glorifies heroism and which opens the seventh heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so.” Islam, Hitler claimed, was much more suited to the “Germanic temperament” than the “Jewish filth and priestly twaddle” of Christianity.

So what would Hitler really have done in, if he woke up to find himself in Germany in 2011? According to Vermes, he would have been delighted to make common cause with those whom Vermes calls “islamophobes” and “neo-Nazis” who were opposed to Islam. Vermes apparently did not know that Hitler had expressed a deep admiration for Islam. Far from enrolling in the ranks of its opponents, Hitler would almost at once have converted to Islam, the only religion that he felt suited the “bold warriors” of the “Germanic races.” And because he did not have a high opinion of the Arabs, whom he regarded as racially inferior, he would have wanted to convert as many Germans as he could, as quickly as he could, so as to fill the ranks of Islam in Germany with the superior Aryans, and thereby to ensure that the Arab Muslims were reduced to a lesser position in what they regard as “their” religion.

Vermes’s novel about Hitler in 2011 has one great virtue. It invites, it virtually demands, discussion of Hitler’s views on Islam. Not the views Vermes thinks he held, but the quite different views we know, from Hitler’s own words, he in fact held. To many in Germany, who have been quite convinced that Der Führer would have wanted nothing to do with Islam, this should come as a salutary revelation.

People will begin to think. About Islam. About Hitler’s admiration for the faith. What more can anyone ask?

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aebe

5 years ago

Who was the guy who called hitler’s mother a Jewish prostitute ? Had a show on PBS .

Validate your 2nd Amendment Rights………. Carry !

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IzlamDownpressesHumanity

5 years ago

The largest division of the Waffen-SS in terms of manpower was the all muslum Handshar division. I’ve read elements of this division were among the diehard defenders of the Fuhrer bunker in ’44’.

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Suresh

5 years ago

Hitler friends are well and thriving in western countries because of ignorance of its masses. Crooks and pro-jihadi criminals all around.

CNN and MSM canonises Mc Cain while Egyptian media expose him for being Leading supporter of Muslim Brotherhood in America and Middle east https://tinyurl.com/y9hk3dpk

Its absurd and farcical how MSM Lies and brainwashes American citizens

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R. Arandas

5 years ago

He would probably be proud that the Muslims have taken over Europe in ways that even he failed to dream of.

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Michael Copeland

5 years ago

“Islam’s worldview is very similar to ours”
Heinrich Himmler

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TD

5 years ago

Muslim Nationalists are smarter than Hitler.

Hitler never posed as a “civil rights” leader or “feminist”. He never used words like “multi-cultural understanding” as a trojan horse to spread his anti-semitism in the west. Hell, the Palestinians even cheer his name and still get legitimacy from liberals like Gloria Steinem. It’s would’ve been a dream come true for him.

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YancyHomes1

5 years ago

When the German army went through the Middle East, their objective was Egypt. If they controlled Egypt, they felt they would control the entire region. And, they planned to build concentration camps in Egypt, similar to those in Europe…to wipe out the Jews in that region. until that occurred, they had gas trucks following their armies, so they could kill Jews that they found on the way to Egypt. Hitler and the Muslims were on the same side, during WWII, and this article is correct in its assessment.

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mortymooze

5 years ago

Popular Islamic adulation of Hitler and the Nazis is that they slaughtered the Jews en mass.
What is not realized is that between Hitler and Stalin about 75 million Europeans were wipe out.
This has lead to a demographic hole and lack of workers.
Merkle and her friends thought they could fill the breach with mass immigration.
So, put on a hijab ladies …

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Dennis

5 years ago

Hitler’s commentary referring to “Jewish filth and priestly twaddle,” is commentary that one would expect from a man as crazy as Hitler proved himself to be. This article only reinforces, in my mind, the propriety of understanding that I find my own Islamophobia to be very rational. I will give Hitler credit for recognizing the evil nature of the Islam belief system, as has many statesmen in the past. Today we see the accuracy of Hitler’s observations about those believers in the abhorrent conduct that they commit against non-believers, the same kind of conduct Hitler committed during the 1930’s and 1940’s. I can only hope that we have learned the lesson that appeasement does not stop the crazies out there, and that we all must steadfastly oppose those types of believers.

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IzlamDownpressesHumanity

5 years ago

Reply to  Dennis

Sh!tler admired islam:
“You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t
we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the
Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have
been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be
Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”

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