The figure of Hitler long ago ceased being a historical one. He is portrayed as a monster, to be used as a symbol of ultimate evil, or alternatively he is the object of jokes akin to the Youtube variants on the rant from Der Untergang. He is a conversation killer on the Internet according to a so-called “Godwin’s Law”, a terminus post quem for any rational discussion.

Despite that, Timur Vermes’ new book, Er ist wieder da (soon to be translated into English as He’s Back), picks up the Hitler conversation at precisely this point. The premise of the book is that Hitler returned in 2011. The book doesn’t waste its time attempting to explain how this happened. He simply wakes up in his uniform, remembering nothing after sitting down with Eva Braun on the couch in the Führerbunker on April 30, 1945. His clothes reek of gasoline. Was he magically transported in time? Is this a karmic punishment? Was he cryogenically frozen? Or perhaps he’s just a crazy man who believes he’s Hitler? The book doesn’t explore any of this, nor should it.

Initially, the book borrows heavily from the “fish out of water” and political satire tropes, but after the reader has had a chance to become familiar with this Hitler-narrator (the book is written from Hitler’s point of view in the first person), it becomes clear that the aim of the book is far higher, and its scope is far more ambitious, than simply to set up some cheap Nazi jokes.

Vermes’ Hitler is a very complex and very human person. At times, the reader finds him endearing, particularly when he expresses, with a Hitlerian level of aggression, his disgust for the various irritations of modern life, such as this reaction to modern daytime television:

Es war ingesamt eine vollendete Schmierenkomödie, und man bekam unabläßig große Lust, einmal mit einer 8,8-Flak ordentlich in das versammelte Gesindel hineinzuhalten, daß diesen Erzgaunern ihre Lügen nur so aus den Eingeweiden spritzen mussten.

It was, by and large, a complete farce, and one incessantly had a great desire to let right into this assembled filth just once with an 8,8-Flak, so that the lies of these archrogues would have to spill out of their bowels alone.

As the novel progresses, the reader begins to see that choosing Hitler for the subject of his book was a stroke of genius. The book spills over from being a political satire to being a political commentary. Opinions that are not “politically correct” in modern Germany are expressed by Hitler, and the reader must determine for himself in each instance whether the author thinks that someone should be allowed to express that particular opinion, or whether the opinion might have merit if only someone would have the courage to raise it. By having it come from the mouth of Hitler, however, the author doesn’t have to distinguish between good ideas or bad ones. The simple act of airing them is enough. His audience can decide, for example, if the Green Party is a bit like the Nazis, or whether Germany’s integration policy is a failure.

For a long time I thought the book might avoid directly discussing the Holocaust, or from forcing some sort of response from Hitler, but later on in the book it is directly addressed in a scene that is explicitly not comical. Vermes, to his credit, does not have Hitler apologize; although he has been made human by the book, the author reminds us that people can be terrible to one another, particularly when they believe that they are always right. More generally, Vermes does not have his Hitler apologize for anything because he still believes he is always right. Any time he starts to talk about any error, he diverts the conversation to avoid admitting anything. He simply sees his long absence as a setback and starts doing what he has always done once again, in a world that ultimately accepts him. The way he is accepted is handled in such a way that it is implicitly believable. This is another brilliant move by Vermes, because he leaves it without commentary but very obvious. Is he simply trying to say our society is jaded? Or does he see a resurgence of pro-Nazi sentiment generally? Is it warning or resignation to a particular sentiment? Again, it is up to the reader to decide the significance of the reception that Hitler gets.

At the end of the novel, I found myself coming to one firm conclusion, and only one, about all of the issues that the book raised, and that is one that is implicit in the title. Hitler has never left, and never will, and any attempt to whitewash history or to avoid talking about it, is useless. However, it is also equally useless to attempt to completely eviscerate German society of any sense of national pride solely due to the end result of German militarism and Nazism. As Vermes has Hitler put it:

Diese Nürnberger Veranstaltung ist doch nichts gewesen als die reine Volkstäuschung. Wenn Sie Verantwortliche suchen, haben Sie letzlich nur zwei Möglichkeiten. Entweder Sie folgen der Linie der NSDAP, und das heißt, die Verantwortung trägt, wer in Führerstaat nun einmal die Verantwortung trägt – das ist der Führer und niemand sonst. Oder Sie müssen diejenigen verurteilen, die diesen Führer gewählt oder aber nicht abgesetzt haben. Und das waren ganz gewöhnliche Menschen, die entschieden haben, einen außergewöhnlichen Mann zu wählen und ihm das Schicksal ihres Landes anzuvertrauen.

This Nuremberg Event has become nothing but a pure popular delusion. If you are looking for those responsible, you ultimately have only two choices. Either you follow the line of the NSDAP, and that says that the person who bears responsibility is he who then bears sole responsibility in an authoritarian state – that is, the Führer and no one else. Or else you have to condemn those who either elected or didn’t get rid of him. And those were totally normal people who chose to elect an extraordinary man and entrust him with the fate of their nation.

The point, as I see it personally, is not an attempt at reviving a collective penance for Germans over what happened. That time is done, and Germany needs it to be done in order to make rational decisions about its future, something that the book makes clear. However, it is also a warning, that as Germany, or any other nation for that matter, moves away from knee-jerk reactions and collective brainwashing, and boldly lifts the veil of political correctness to re-exert its Will to Power, so to speak, it needs to make its choices carefully, to avoid inflicting unspeakable evil.

And to make that warning, no one is better suited than Hitler. To quote a line from near the end of the novel:

Schließlich konnte allein ich in dieser so liberalbürgerlich verblendeten Scheinwelt die Wahrheit erkennen und aufdecken.

After all, I alone could discern and reveal the truth in this so liberal-bourgeois blinded world of illusion.

I highly recommend the book. I think it is the most intriguing contemporary book I’ve read in the past five years.