German TV mines Reich vein of comedy

Donner und Blitzen! A comic version of Adolf Hitler who hasn't time to attend a book-burning? A self-important manager - straight out of The Office - who complains to his super-efficient secretary, "Do we really have to plan everything a thousand years in advance, Erika?"

This Hitler also apes the clubfoot of Goebbels, his propaganda chief, by stomping around with his foot jammed in a wastepaper bin. He rationalises his own success simply: "Being a Fuhrer takes 10 per cent talent and 90 per cent practice."

The German TV show Switch Reloaded has been lampooning Hitler this winter in the style of Ricky Gervais's loser, David Brent. Yet the taboo-busting parody has raised scarcely a murmur of protest in the German press, even though it flaunts the swastika, which was banned after World War Two.

Switch Reloaded mainly parodies 'the worst of TV' - characters include the Dalai Lama competing on Who Wants to be a Millionaire - but it is the regular sketch, Obersalzberg, named after Hitler's mountain-top retreat at Berchtesgaden, that gets the YouTube hits.

Hitler, played by Michael Kessler, breezes into his office greeting the 'mockumentary' camera and colleagues with 'Morgen' - 'good morning'. They include Tanya, a blond sporting Teutonic plaits, and the lumpen Ernie, constantly fiddling with his typewriter, who complains that his Hakenkreuztaste - swastika key - is broken.

Viewers' reactions are mixed. One commented online: "I find it simply tasteless to make a poor parody on such a sensitive subject." Another wrote: "It's really good to be able to laugh about Hitler and Co. This gang is responsible for a depression which grips Germany even today." ·