Well, If You Don't Want The Adolf Waxwork, Send It To London

For historical reasons the Germans are very sensitive about the 1933-45 period (but most of them didn't mind until 1943 onwards (after Stalingrad and when Bomber Command got into gear). Consequently, the installation of a waxwork of their erstwhile Fuhrer in the new Berlin Tussauds has caused considerable guilt and anxiety and controversy and resulted in the removal by force of the maquette's skillfully crafted (each hair individually inserted etc) head by an outraged visitor. Good for him - if only he'd been around for the Stauffenberg plot, Adolf wouldn't have walked away with burst eardrums and no trousers.

Now, Madame Tussaud's in London doesn't have a Gordon Brown dummy. Why not fly the Austrian paperhanger over, shave off his 'tache, change his hair parting and dress him up in an old suit? Voila! And what a prudent use of scarce resources at a difficult time for the British economy due to global conditions outside our control.

(photo at top Bloomberg News, below Daily Mail)

I'm not comparing Brown with Herr Nasty in any way: Adolf had a relatively successful and popular first couple of years in power and he fought a general election after he was appointed Chancellor .

The Reichstag Fire Decree, an emergency measure to counter the terrorist threat facing Germany at the time, resonates across the decades.