Some may find it surprising that Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator was released in 1940. In the film that Chaplin also directed, he plays the parts of a Jewish barber suffering from memory loss and Adenoid Hynkel, the great dictator, who is very friendly with Benzino Naplaoni. Hynkel and the barber manage to swap roles.
The film became Chaplin's greatest financial success.
Hynkel's speech at the end could fill us all with hope, even today. However, even though he sends a positive message, his tone is similar to Hitler's at the Nuremberg rallies.
This was also Chaplin's first film with dialogue.
My character becomes dissatisfied with just making fun of Hitler. She realises they must show his evil side as well. So, she exaggerates the near hysteria that is both Chaplin's speech and in Hitler's ones at the rallies. She begins to sound like a Dalek. The early Daleks' sink plungers were used almost like a Nazi salute. They use that same hysterical voice as Hitler and Chaplin in their 'Exterminate. Exterminate.' Gabriela uses this in her scene.
Terry Nation, the first writer of the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who, based the Daleks on the Nazis. Nation died twenty-five years ago and grew up in the shadow of World War II.
The Daleks share many qualities with the Nazis, including their claim to be the master race and therefore all who get in their way must be exterminated.
I was a small child in the early 1950s and Doctor Who was first broadcast in my first year at secondary school. The Daleks filled me with the same horror as the swastika and the Nazi flag.
I can’t remember how I know about the latter. And we should remember that the swastika was originally a symbol for prosperity and good luck.
Even as a small child I recognised this as absolute evil. That black hooked cross against startling white and vivid red backgrounds. It was almost as if I could remember the horror of all that that represented even though I hadn't lived though those times. Was I accessing other people's memories? Had someone told me something about it and though I’d forgotten that actual conversation the emotional memory remained?
Such is our reaction to the Daleks, and indeed sirens which resemble the air raid and even that all clear ones. Were they designed to instil fear or is that a learnt response now?
The Nazis, Hitler and the Daleks have become the 20th century equivalent of the bogey man. Are we, though taking enough heed of any 21st century recurring patterns?
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