Putin has only got one ball

tyranny is a deviant form of monorchism

Hello,

This post started with me whistling in the shower. The tune was annoyingly catchy, but at first I couldn’t figure out where I knew it from. After some post-shower inspired googling, I realized that it was in fact this tune from the movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai”:

I did not stop here and learned that this tune, although most famous as a whistle, in fact, has words. And what words they are!

The official name for this song is “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball”. And it goes something like this:

Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler is rather sim'lar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.

Rommel has four or five, I guess,
No one's quite sure 'bout Rudolf Hess,
Schmeling's always yelling,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.

You can listen to it here, with appropriate visuals. Needless to say, I absolutely love it. The tune (originally called “Colonel Bogey March”) was written during the First World War, and the song (obviously) some time during the Second. The movie version originally had the words in it, but they didn’t pass the censors, and only the whistling remained.

There are several people who claimed to be the author or to know the author of the words, but no single clear author is identified, making it a true folk song.

One of the funniest things is that there were some actual claims that Hitler did have only one ball—enough to merit a Wikipedia article with the beautiful title “Possible monorchism of Adolf Hitler”¹. Notably, all these claims have appeared only after the song became popular, which made it either prophetic or extremely suggestive, so that the researchers wanted to establish its factual nature.

an ad for a beer using this historical fact

A reasonable question one might ask is whether we should treat such a serious existential threat to humanity as Hitler and his friends were with buffoonery. Allow me to answer with the words of Mel Brooks, the author of the “Hitler on Ice” sketch, among thousands of other things:

“Of course, it is impossible to take revenge for six million Jews. But by using the medium of comedy, we can try to rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myths. […] We take away from him the holy seriousness that always surrounded him and protected him like a cordon.”

[…] “There is only one way to get even with Hitler. You have to bring him down with ridicule.”

So, to keep the flame going, and finally to get this goddamn tune out of my head, I decided to modernize it a little bit. After all, Hitler is a bit of old news. And you know, there is a chance, fleeting as it may be, that in 50 years, a report from some high-end secret Russian clinic will be discovered, and it will decidedly state that…

Putin Has Only Got One Ball

Putin has only got one ball,
Kim Jong has two but very small,
Khamenei has one too many,
And poor ol' Donald's no gonads at all.

Shoigu has got his shot clean off,
No one’s quite sure about Lavrov,
Orban has a faulty organ,
But poor ol' Donald's no gonads at all.

Fico has got his just for show,
The same is with Lukashenko,
Assad has just a facade,
But poor ol' Donald's no gonads at all.

And a little bonus for my Russian-speaking friends:

У Вовы всего одно яйцо,
Как и у Орбана с Фицо,
У Лукашёнки - лишь пол-мошонки,
Ну а у Донни там все заподлицо!

Being musically inept, I refrain from singing it myself outside of my shower, but I will appreciate a vocalized version. If you do make one, please send me a copy.

einen, aber groß!

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This song was published for the Soaring Twenties Social Club Symposium. This cycle, the theme was “Spring Cleaning”.

Best,

Ꙝ

1. my spellchecker politely suggested “monarchy” as a correct spelling