image Video hosting site YouTube have started removing many of the parody video clips that blossomed into the Hilter Downfall Rants meme after receiving DMCA takedown notices from the original films’ rights owners, German production company Constantin Film.

This move comes just a few weeks after the director of the 2004 motion picture Der Untergang (“The Downfall”), on which the parodies are based, Oliver Hirschbiegel told New York Magazine’s Vulture blog that he has “…seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I’m laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn’t get a better compliment as a director."

At the moment the impact of the takedown notices seems to be confined to YouTube, with many of my favourites (“Hitler and the iPad”,  “Hilter finds out about his fate in Inglorious Basterds”) all already taken down.

The irony of the parody clips below should be apparent:

[They were both still up when I posted this.]

Fortunately, the parodies on some other video hosting sites still seem to be live for the time being at least. Do make a definite point of visiting local scribe and social commentator Gus Silbers’ Posterous page. Gus recently put together his own Hitler parody video entitled “Hitler Learns That the AWB Have Called Off Their Machete Race War”!

Laughing Squid has a page with some classic Hitler parody clips on it here: Hitler Downfall Mashup Video Meme Über Alles – go see some before they all disappear too.

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