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A particularly persistent time-travel thought exercise in jokes, fiction and occasionally philosophy is what would happen if someone were to go back to the mid-20th century and kill Adolf Hitler before he became the most reviled German leader of all time.

The point of the scenario is that Hitler dies in it.

In October, a new film Er Ist Wieder Da ("Look Who’s Back") flipped that concept. What if, instead of dying in 1945, Hitler wakes up from an enchanted sleep 66 years later in 2011? How will modern Germans receive him? Will neo-Nazis take to him? And how, really, will Hitler react to the internet?

The film is based on a book of the same name published in 2013. As in the book, the film attempts to poke fun at Hitler and at society's continuing obsession with him.

The film has been in theatres for three weeks, but this weekend its trailer went viral in Germany.

Comedic modern representations of Hitler abound. An entire subplot in the musical The Producers (1968, 2005) involves staging a play on Hitler – as part of a nefarious money making scheme of the producers who are working towards staging a flop. The musical called Springtime for Hitler with a flamboyant Hitler singing "Heil myself" is misinterpreted to be satire by the audience and contrary to the producers plans, becomes the hit comedy of the year.

Er Ist Wieder Da is not as easily resolved. In an ambiguous interview with The Guardian, the film’s director David Wendt said, “Germans should be able to laugh at Hitler, rather than viewing him as monster because that relieves him of responsibility for his deeds and diverts attention from his guilt for the Holocaust.”

Evidently, not everyone is amused.