[Ads-l] Nazi Wit and Humor

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

The English translation of the term (with explanation) was circulating by 1934:

Date: September 14, 1934
Newspaper: The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle
Newspaper Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Article: Strictly Confidential: Tid-Bits From Everywhere
Author: Phineas J. Biron
Quote Page 4, Column 4
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
Beefsteak Nazis--Brown outside but Red inside -- are said to be the
latest political phenomenon in Hitlerland; from which we gather that
at least the Communist are still working against Hitler.
[End excerpt]

On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 4:50 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Nazi Wit and Humor
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I've just finished reading a book about the rise of Hitler.  (I assure you
> that this interest has nothing to do with recent developments in American
> politics.  Surely one or two of you will believe this.)
> Anyway, I know nothing about the author, but he seems to be a scholar and
> certainly reads German, but there is not a word of German quoted in the
> book.  He writes on p. 120:
> Most of the Strasser people were, in fact, anti-Semitic socialists -- what
> the SA men would call "Beefsteak Nazis": brown on the outside and red on
> the inside.
> This expression, if indeed used by Nazis in the mid-1920s, as chronology of
> the book suggests, anticipates the American disparaging expression "Oreo"
> by about 45 years, per HDAS, which dates Oreo to 1969.
> The author does not give the German version.
>
> The book is Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., *Why Hitler? The Genesis of the Nazi
> Reich*, Westport, Conn & London: PRaeger, 1996.
>
> GAT
>
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998..
>
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