Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall (Spike Milligan War Memoirs)

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Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall, is the first of Spike Milligan's seven memoirs that recount his recollections of life in the army during World War 2. There are lighter comic digs made at stiff-upper-lipped authority, the abysmal cooking, the futile marches and camping trails that only amount up to idleness, farce and trivial affairs. The regiment is also blessed with soldiers who are no use to anybody, disruptive or even mentally disturbed. The film is about Spike being drafted into the army at the beginning of WWII and covered his basic training.

It starts with Milligan joining his regiment (56th Heavy Regiment Royal Artillery) late and immediately being singled out as a troublemaker. But along the way Spike and his friends get involved in many amusing - and some not-so amusing - scrapes. One of the gunners, however, loses a hand when a shell he is pushing into the howitzer's breach explodes. Milligan's flippant, conversational tone keeps things wonderfully lively and balances both morbid darkness and cheery camaraderie on an even keel; for all the hilarity and horror, there are also lovely, leisurely moments when the troops celebrate with song, dance and fervent affairs with ladies in between. It is while playing jazz that he meets his lifelong friend, self-taught pianist Harry Edgington, a man "with moral scruples that would have pleased Jesus".Since my copy of Spike Milligan’s Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall is on Kindle and to get it out of the way there are some nice drawings throughout the book and they do not show well on a Kindle Viewer.

The film Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1972) was produced by Gregory Smith and Norman Cohen, and directed by Norman Cohen. Filled with bathos, pathos and gales of ribald laughter, this is a barely sane helping of military goonery and superlative Milliganese.About then, in an attempt to impress girls at a gym, he slips a disc, whereupon he's hospitalised to determine whether he's faking. Another reason for reading this book from a more serious point of view is that so much of the humor is dated, insider and to a modern ear flat. Milligan then facetiously describes the last of them as being found "naked save for a vest one sock" sitting on the back of a lorry, "waiting to be posted".

I'm a big Jim Dale fan and love comedian Spike Milligan, so when I swa this movie was based on Spike Milligan's sidesplitting autobiography and that Jim Dale was plying Spike and the wonderfully demented Spike was playing his father I was looking foward to this film, but was very disapointed. Horn dogs, given to being slackers, dubious of authority and at once eager and afraid of the dual nature of war, boredom and violence.Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall is a 1973 British comedy film adaptation of the first volume of Spike Milligan's autobiography. If you roared with laughter after finishing 'Catch 22', this one comes highly recommended to you, to see the other side of the Atlantic going bonkers over the war long before the actual fighting began. The humor is pithy and nearly constant, but there's a good look into what was happening in Britain in the early days of World War II, which is entirely different from the picture most of us have of the US during the same period, since beyond Pearl Harbor, none of us had to worry about the major enemy forces attacking us personally every day. A squadron of Tommies, all gloriously drunk on wicked mischief, set out to launch a surprise attack on the Turkish bath in London where their Commanding Officer Major General Clive Candy is relaxing in the welcome warmth before the actual drill begins.