If you were a German, how would you feel if you saw This Guy walking the streets of your city?

It happened recently in Germany. Actor Oliver Masucci, portraying Hitler in a new social satire film entitled Er Ist Wieder Da (“He’s Back”), walked through German cities for unscripted, reality-type scenes as part of the movie. Little did he know he would be embraced by citizens begging him for selfies, for hugs, and to bring back labor camps. He reported feeling ‘relief’ that one person began assaulting him.

In an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Masucci expressed how uncomfortable he was with such demonstrations of devotion. “During shooting, I realised I didn’t really have to perform – people felt a need to talk, they wanted to pour their hearts out to a fatherly Hitler who was listening to them. I found it disturbing how quickly I could win people over. I mean, they were talking to Hitler.”

During filming, “Hitler” also encountered members of German populist movements such as Alternative for Germany and the neo-Nazi NPD. The movie also includes scenes of a rally by the European nationalist movement PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident).

German journalists were horrified. ‘A fake Hitler, a small moustache clearly helped people lose their inhibitions and. . . allowed insights into Germany’s dark side. The far-right ideology smoulders to this day and has found new forums. . . in the form of the Alternative for Germany and the PEGIDA movement,’ wrote the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost. The weekly Die Zeit was disturbed that even 70 years after the end of World War II, ‘The German public in this film accompanies Hitler as someone who dominates the stage . . . he embodies a history that is incomplete.’

It is disturbing, to be sure. But the people of Germany are becoming frustrated and desperate as they see their nation invaded by millions of Middle Eastern Muslim refugees, and the horror stories accompanying them are shocking.