Adolf Hitler: my part in his Downfall by Spike Milligan
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971 ISBN 0140035205
Like many others who love pure anarchic comedy, I love Spike Milligan...from The Goons, through his television shows, to his writing, his surrealistic take on life has given me more joy than I can express. So why has it taken me so long to read this book? I really don't know, but it's been a wonderful escape from the pre-Christmas mayhem that is swirling around me.
Spike writes in his preface that despite "garnishing some of them", "[a]ll the salient facts are true". And that being the case, it's no wonder that on a few occasions he wonders how the Allies ever won the War. This book is the first volume of what was to be a trilogy that describes his service from joining up to demob (it ended up being seven volumes...maybe that was part of the joke?). Adolf Hitler... describes his time from being conscripted to arriving in Algiers - so 144 paperback pages of a war memoir that involves no fighting....well, no fighting the Germans....
What the reader does get is an insight into the beginning of Milligan's career in comedy. He was definitely an unusual character, and one gets the impression that the only way he could cope with the inanity, absurdity and stupidity of being in the Forces was to make fun of it all. In this he was ably assisted by his good friend Harry Edgington, who together with Spike formed the nucleus of a regimental jazz band that seemingly was kept quite busy in Bexhill and other places around the traps as the regiment trained for it's eventual debut in action.
Adolf Hitler... is a memoir of vignettes, most often funny, but interspersed with some more serious, that speak of the looming cost that was to come for the regiment, and of the folly of war. Milligan's style, to lampoon what was in fact the most serious thing (after all, someone is actually going to get killed doing all this), has a certain piquancy given we know that he struggled with depression for the rest of his life.
That stated, this is a book that will make you laugh out loud. How can I not recommend Milligan?
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