4 thoughts on “Word of the day/Wort des Tages

  1. The Sun seems to have introduced a variation on the Hitler song – or got it wrong.

    We children of 2nd World War – UK military/RAF – families learned that the ditty went on as follows after the first line: ‘… Himler has something similar. But Poor Old Goebbels has no balls at all.’

    • Yes, exactly – that was what I implied. However, are you certain this version was sung during WWII? I suspect you picked it up later. The theory I encounter is that applying the ‘one ball’ to Hitler was only done after the Soviet post mortem, when the rumour came out; and the version quoted by the Sun really is the original one. I will ask my brothers when I next phone them.
      The first version of Colonel Bogey I remember hearing was a different text.

  2. I take your post-WWII generation point. But the only version I used to hear from children of UK military veterans, in Southern England in the 1950s, was a Guardian-like version which kicked off: ‘H. has only one ball. The other is in the Old Town Hall…’ Nothing about the Royal Albert Hall.

    • I see [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Has_Only_Got_One_Ball]Wikipedia[/url] got there before us. I second ‘the most common variant’, but I did not pick it up in the fifties or sixties.

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