YouTube silences ranting Hitlers

Adolf Hitler, for years a vessel of frustration in a popular viral internet video, has been silenced by YouTube.

Downfall, a German film released in 2004 about Hitler's last days, has been adapted for wildly popular YouTube parodies that have spanned mock rants about topics as varied as playing Xbox video games, to the management at Hull FC, and latterly Apple's new iPad.

Every spoof is from the same scene in the film: A furious, defeated Hitler, played by Bruno Ganz, unleashes an impassioned, angry speech to his remaining staff, huddled with him in his underground bunker and casting shamefaced looks at each other.

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The scene takes on widely different meaning when paired with English subtitles pretending to translate the rant, made even funnier by the scene's intense melodrama, artful staging and timely cutaways.

But Constantin Films, the company that owns the rights to the film, has asked for them to be removed, and YouTube complied.

Many Hitler clips were still online, however, and new parodies have even been popping up featuring Hitler ranting about his removal from YouTube.

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