An image authentically shows a newspaper article from Feb. 4, 1939, reporting that Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda for the German Third Reich under Adolf Hitler, banned five comedians for joking about the Nazi Party and its leaders.
A rumor that circulated online in September 2025 claimed an image showed a real newspaper article from Feb. 4, 1939, reporting that high-ranking Nazi Party leader Joseph Goebbels — the minister of propaganda for the German Third Reich under Adolf Hitler — banned five comedians for joking about the party and its leaders.
Users shared this matter in an effort to draw parallels with ABC's Sept. 17 announcement about suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel's late-night TV show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," as well as with CBS' and Paramount Global's abrupt July 17 cancellation of comedian Stephen Colbert's "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" — a program ending its run in May 2026. (ABC reinstated Kimmel's show within a week of announcing the suspension, though broadcast companies Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group continued preempting the show on their stations. Sinclair ended the blackout on Sept. 26, 2025.)
For example, on Sept. 19, a Reddit user posted an image only featuring the newspaper article's first few paragraphs. The user shared the sarcastic text caption, "Glad I didn't live back then." The story's headline and subheading read, "Herr Goebbels Angered By Anti-Nazi Wit. Comedians Banned For Humorous Remarks on Leaders." The beginning of the article displayed authorship attribution to the United Press, later called United Press International.
A reverse-image search for the newspaper article image located numerous users sharing and discussing the clipping after Kimmel's suspension, including on Bluesky (archived), Facebook, Imgur (archived), Instagram (archived), LinkedIn (archived), Reddit (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived). Some users questioned if the article was real. The oldest post located in Snopes' search appeared on Sept. 18, on the morning after Kimmel's suspension.
The image truly showed a genuine newspaper article printed by The Montreal Daily Star, and potentially other newspapers, on Feb. 4, 1939. Newspapers.com, a website archiving over 1 billion pages from more than 29,400 newspapers, hosted the entire article (page), which Snopes transcribed and has presented later in this story.
This fact-check article first lays out all of the context regarding the present-day situation involving Kimmel, Colbert and the U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, then provides the entire newspaper article — again, an article longer than the one users commonly shared — in a full-length transcript.
The image truly showed a genuine newspaper article printed by The Montreal Daily Star, and potentially other newspapers, on Feb. 4, 1939. Newspapers.com, a website archiving over 1 billion pages from more than 29,400 newspapers, hosted the entire article (page), which Snopes transcribed and has presented later in this story.
This fact-check article first lays out all of the context regarding the present-day situation involving Kimmel, Colbert and the U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, then provides the entire newspaper article — again, an article longer than the one users commonly shared — in a full-length transcript.
We transcribed the entire authentic newspaper article from February 1939, including keeping intact all word usage and spelling from the time period:
Herr Goebbels Angered By Anti-Nazi Wit
Comedians Banned For Humorous Remarks on Leaders
BERLIN, Feb. 4 — (U.P.) —When Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels yesterday blasted Germany's cafe society, he called it "society rabble and intellectual snobs," for laughing at comedians who make Nazi leaders the butts of their jokes.
Goebbels turned his anger upon the "society rabble" after announcing that five German actors had been banned from the stage for publicly rediculing Nazi party and state functionaries. He denied that there was any lack of humor in Nazi Germany, but said that it must be kept "good-natured, decent and clean."
"There is plenty of humor in Germany, more than enough," he said in a three and one-half column editorial in the Nazi party's newspaper Voelkischer Beobachter. "But we do not permit ourselves to be ridiculed."
The five actors were Werner Finck, actor-author; Pete Sachse, vaudeville comedian, and Helmut Buth, Wilhelm Meissner and Manfred Dlugi, the latter three members of a vaudeville combination known as "The Three Rulands." The five were said to have been warned repeatedly to stop making jokes about the Nazis.
"How would it be if they offered their services for building the western fortifications? Then they would learn something about the things about which they have been making jokes."
Those who work for the state have a right to make jokes, he said, "but others have only the right to keep their mouths shut."
One of the best-known cabaret jokes frowned upon by the Nazi leaders originated in Munich recently. Weiss Ferdl, a comedian, approached an empty table and began disgorging watches and jewelry from his pockets. He turned to the audience with a leering remark:
"Ach, you were asleep that night," referring to the anti-Jewish disorders.
Another one was based on the four-power meeting at Munich last September. One comedian representing Premier Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain looked appealingly at Chancellor Adolf Hitler and said:
"Can't I have something to take back with me to London?"
Hitler replied:
"All right, I'll give you your umbrella back."
Goebbels said comedians have no right to be jocular about such things as the Nazi four-year economic plan or Adolf Hitler's demand for colonies because they are too important and require too much careful thinking on the part of big minds.
"Such jokes make us retch," Goebbels said.
"Jokes about them by people who know nothing about them cannot be permitted. Things which are holy to us also are holy to the people."
"Just imagine that a variety show existed in the Vatican City in which the sacrament or beliefs of the Catholic Church were made the subject of cabaret jokes. It is absurd to think of such a thing."
"For some time a certain depravity and lack of discipline has become noticeable and has greatly angered a wide section of the population, particularly members of the party."
The Government decided to stop the jokes, Goebbels said, before Nazis "resorted to self-defense measures."
The Propaganda Minister said that actors like the five suspended yesterday never were in the party and "now will have no further opportunity to burden down the public with their rude remarks."
We did not yet locate online Goebbels' "three and one-half column editorial" from the former Nazi Party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. The Feb. 3 entry in Goebbels' diary (only visible when borrowed) identified the editorial as published on Jan. 30 — the same day as Hitler's Reichstag speech, in which he told the German public and the world that the outbreak of war would mean "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." Goebbels wrote in his diary, in part, "My piece on the 30th January appears in a prominent position in the Völkischer Beobachter. I think it works well."
The New York Times reported a similar article about the banned comedians on its front page, also on Feb. 4, including additional noteworthy information, saying Goebbels himself ended the entertainers' careers, and that their actions most amusing the public were their "unmistakable" caricatures including "gestures, poses and physical characteristics of National Socialist leaders — sometimes with bon mots that made the rounds of the country."
The final paragraph of the article read, "If the anti-German press of Paris, London and New York, Dr. Goebbels says, or the democratic governments in Western Europe, should now again complain about the lack of freedom of opinion in Germany, it does not matter, "for after all during the last year the Fuehrer reconquered 10,000,000 Germans for the Reich."
Sources: snopes
