The 1936 boy and his chocolate cigar: the Germany that fascinates
A 1936 video shows a boy smoking a cigar, but it was made of chocolate. Between luxury trains and motorways, Nazi Germany both fascinates and repels. An ironic take.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
The 1936 boy who smoked a chocolate cigar: the Germany that fascinates and horrifies
A 1936 video shows a nine-year-old boy with a cigar in his mouth. The footage, circulated as an example of the technological splendour of Nancy Germany — trains with leather seats, zeppelins, immaculate motorways — hides a detail that dismantles part of the myth. The boy is not smoking tobacco: it is a chocolate cigar. He gives it away by the absence of smoke and his mother's gesture, as she takes him to the bathroom to wipe the chocolate off his upper lip.
The contrast with Zapatero's Spain
The thread's title jokes with Zapatero's famous quip about electricity, contrasting 1930s German modernity with Spanish hardship. The discussion, however, veers into the grotesque: while Germany was building motorways, its chancellor was a rabid anti-smoker, a vegetarian and, according to some, of canine inclinations. The boy with the chocolate cigar becomes a symbol of an era when technical pogre coexisted with barbarity.
The cigar question: real or fake?
The video analysis reveals that at 2:39 the boy exhales no smoke. Chocolate cigarettes for children were sold back then, and the mother's gesture supports that theory. What would scandalise a "helicopter parent" today was then an innocent game. The image, nevertheless, keeps feeding historical morbid curiosity: the Germany that marvelled some and horrified others, as the popular English journalist who called it the most hideous country of his travels put it.
Most shared
Related debates in the forum
A 1936 video shows a nine-year-old boy with a cigar in his mouth. The footage, circulated as an example of the technological splendour of Nancy Germany — trains with leather seats, zeppelins, immaculate motorways — hides a detail that dismantles part of the myth. The boy is not smoking tobacco: it is a chocolate cigar. He gives it away by the absence of smoke and his mother's gesture, as she takes him to the bathroom to wipe the chocolate off his upper lip.
The contrast with Zapatero's Spain
The thread's title jokes with Zapatero's famous quip about electricity, contrasting 1930s German modernity with Spanish hardship. The discussion, however, veers into the grotesque: while Germany was building motorways, its chancellor was a rabid anti-smoker, a vegetarian and, according to some, of canine inclinations. The boy with the chocolate cigar becomes a symbol of an era when technical pogre coexisted with barbarity.
The cigar question: real or fake?
The video analysis reveals that at 2:39 the boy exhales no smoke. Chocolate cigarettes for children were sold back then, and the mother's gesture supports that theory. What would scandalise a "helicopter parent" today was then an innocent game. The image, nevertheless, keeps feeding historical morbid curiosity: the Germany that marvelled some and horrified others, as the popular English journalist who called it the most hideous country of his travels put it.
Most shared
Related debates in the forum
- Why did Hitler think the war could be won in the final months of the war? · 146 replies
- I'm revising NICHE and I'm getting a bad BEATING I can't take · 36 replies
- If the Romans were so visceral, why didn't they evolve in the field of anatomy? · 38 replies
- Why did the Germans keep fighting the war if it was hopelessly lost? · 35 replies
Also available in: Deutsch
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (11 replies).
More summaries
-
Mussolini vs Hitler: The Key Difference Franco Understood
Mussolini crushed the left without civil war; Franco died in bed. Hitler dragged Italy to ruin. The key wasn't ideology, but...
-
Hitler's plans for Africa: there were none, the target was the USSR
Hitler saw the colonial empire of the Second Reich as a mistake: his living space lay in Eastern Europe, and France's African colonies were run by Vichy.
-
Why Germany Could Never Win WWII: The Structural Impossibility
Analysis of WWII alternative history hypotheses shows structural flaws prevented a Nazi victory, regardless of tactical changes or ignoring the USSR invasion.
-
ETA and GAL: two arms of the same Gladio network in Spain
Investigation linking ETA and GAL as arms of the same NATO Gladio network, with drug trafficking funding and CIA control.
-
The Parsley Massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic (1937)
In October 1937, on Trujillo's orders, the Dominican army killed thousands of Haitians along the border. Death toll estimates range from 12,000 to 35,000 victims.
-
Al-Andalus: invasion or coexistence? The fact that shatters the myth
The first caliph of Córdoba was red-haired and white-skinned. A detail that fuels the debate over what Al-Andalus in medieval Spain really was.