NEAR THE END OF THE film version of Timur Vermes’s satire Look Who’s Back (2015), a journalist who has just thrown the reborn Adolf Hitler from the roof of an office building turns around to find himself looking once more into the eyes of the dictator, revitalised again. The message is hardly subliminal, but why should it be?
Since 1945, Europe has been enthralled with the prospect of Hitler’s return. At first, this fascination was bound up with conspiracy theories lodged in uncomfortable facts. Thriller writers feasted on the chilling truth that the suburbs of Europe were full of ex-Nazis — a prominent theme also in early Cold War spy fiction, including the work of both Ian Fleming and John Le Carre. By 1946, Alfred Hitchcock’s and Orson had already established a staple of postwar Hollywood: the cabal of elite Nazis plotting at the end of a ratline.
