The Great Dictator is a 1940 American political satire black comedy film written, directed, produced by, and starring, British filmmaker Charlie Chaplin.

Chaplin's film advanced a stirring condemnation of the German and Italian dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, as well as fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis.

At the time of its first release, the United States was still at peace with Nazi Germany and neutral during what were the early days of World War II.

In 1997, it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

In his 1964 autobiography, Chaplin stated that he could not have made the film if he had known about the true extent of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps at that time.

[7] On the Western Front in 1918, a Jewish soldier fighting for the Central Powers nation of Tomainia[8] valiantly saves the life of a wounded pilot, Commander Schultz, who carries valuable documents that could secure a Tomainian victory.

Meanwhile, Hynkel tries to finance his ever-growing military forces by borrowing money from a Jewish banker called Hermann Epstein, leading to a temporary ease on the restrictions on the ghetto.

The two dictators argue over a treaty to govern the invasion, while dining together at an elaborate buffet, which happens to provide a jar of English mustard.

He announces that he (as Hynkel) has had a change of heart and makes an impassioned speech for brotherhood and goodwill, encouraging soldiers to fight for liberty, and unite the people in the name of democracy.

He used it to inspire many elements of The Great Dictator, and, by repeatedly viewing this film, Chaplin could closely mimic Hitler's mannerisms.

[12] Hynkel's rally speech near the beginning of the film, delivered in German-sounding gibberish, is a caricature of Hitler's oratory style, which Chaplin also studied carefully in newsreels.

Filming began in September 1939 (coincidentally soon after Germany invaded Poland, triggering World War II) and finished six months later.

Chaplin wanted to address the escalating violence and repression of Jews by the Nazis throughout the late 1930s, the magnitude of which was conveyed to him personally by his European Jewish friends and fellow artists.

I got the screen credit for The Great Dictator music score, but the best parts of it were all Chaplin's ideas, like using the Lohengrin "Prelude" in the famous balloon-dance scene.

[24][26][27] Chaplin repeated the use of the Lohengrin prelude near the conclusion when the exiled Hannah listens to the Jewish barber's speech celebrating democracy and freedom.

Commenting on this, Lutz Peter Koepnick writes in 2002, How can Wagner at once help emphasize a progressivist vision of human individualism and a fascist preview of absolute domination?

Unlike Adorno [who identifies American mass culture and fascist spectacle], Chaplin wants his audience to make crucial distinctions between competing Wagnerianisms.

Both...rely on the driving force of utopian desires, on...the promise of self-transcendence and authentic collectivity, but they channel these mythic longings in fundamentally different directions.

[Chaplin suggests] Hollywood needs Wagner as never before in order to at once condemn the use of fantasy in fascism and warrant the utopian possibilities in industrial culture.

"[32] The film was also popular in the United Kingdom, drawing 9 million to the cinemas,[33] despite Chaplin's fears that wartime audiences would dislike a comedy about a dictator.

"[42] Vance further reports that a refugee from Germany who had worked in the film division of the Nazi Ministry of Culture before deciding to flee told Chaplin that Hitler had watched the movie twice, entirely alone both times.

[47] DVD reviewer Mark Bourne asserts Chaplin's stated position: "Granted, the barber bears more than a passing resemblance to the Tramp, even affecting the familiar bowler hat and cane.

[49] Annette Insdorf, in her book Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (2003), writes that "There was something curiously appropriate about the little tramp impersonating the dictator, for by 1939 Hitler and Chaplin were perhaps the two most famous men in the world.

In Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s, Thomas Schatz writes of "Chaplin's Little Tramp transposed into a meek Jewish barber",[52] while, in Hollywood in Crisis: Cinema and American Society, 1929–1939, Colin Shindler writes, "The universal Little Tramp is transmuted into a specifically Jewish barber whose country is about to be absorbed into the totalitarian empire of Adenoid Hynkel.

"[53] Finally, in A Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age, J. P. Telotte writes that "The little tramp figure is here reincarnated as the Jewish barber".

[54] A two-page discussion of the relationship between the barber and The Tramp appears in Eric L. Flom's book Chaplin in the Sound Era: An Analysis of the Seven Talkies.

Chaplin may have created a new character from the old, but he nonetheless counted on the Charlie person to bring audiences into the theaters for his first foray into sound, and his boldest political statement to date.

[56] In 1997, The Great Dictator was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

The consensus reads, "Charlie Chaplin demonstrates that his comedic voice is undiminished by dialogue in this rousing satire of tyranny, which may be more distinguished by its uplifting humanism than its gags.

Sean McArdle and Jon Judy's Eisner Award-nominated comic book The Führer and the Tramp is set during the production of The Great Dictator.