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In a Baker Street basement, at the height of the Blitz, Adolf Hitler was enjoying a shampoo.
Not the real McCoy, of course, but his waxwork likeness. Madame Tussauds suffered a direct hit from Nazi bombs in December 1940, destroying the cinema and 352 head moulds. Hitler's own head was merely soiled from the dust clouds, and he was duly fixed up. But what was he doing in Madame Tussauds in wartime London in the first place?
Hitler's waxwork first appeared in London's Madame Tussauds when he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. British attitudes towards Hitler and the Nazis were still mixed then; this was a time when planes with swastikas on their tails were still buzzing in and out of Croydon Airport. Even in February 1939, Madame Tussauds was running ads in the Daily Mirror, encouraging Londoners to go and see the man who — in a year and a half — would be dropping bombs on them:
But one group of visitors was less than impressed with the Führer's cameo. In May 1933, three young men — Gerald Bradley, Don Irving and Hugh Slater — poured red paint over Hitler's head, and hung a sign around his neck: "Hitler — the mass murderer." A Madame Tussauds employee, Mrs Burton, told the press: "The paint had spilled in such a realistic way that it looked as though Hitler had a deep gash on the crown of his head." One newspaper reported: "the damage to the Nazi uniform alone was about £10." A scuffle ensued between the paint-pourers and staff, which spilled out onto the street. There were similar scenes in the courtroom, where the young defendants shouted in unison: "Down with Hitler, down with fascism," leading to a literal pile-on of policemen. Comparisons with the Colston Four are perhaps inevitable, the difference being that they were found not guilty of criminal damage, while the three men at Tussauds (plus a young woman who aided and betted them) were.
This was just one of the protests against Hitler, and the London waxwork had to be replaced outright in 1936, after repeated vandalism. You'd have thought at least once the war was over, Hitler and Co would have been ousted from the London tourist attraction altogether, but not so. In June 1946, the London Daily News published a fascinating vignette, depicting visitors shuffling past a group of waxen war lords — Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Rommel and Goebbels — positioned in an isolated alcove on the topmost landing. In the centre of them was Hitler. The overheard remarks are priceless:
"They're horribly lifelike aren't they?"
"I'd like to stamp on 'is foot."
"They don't look as big as I thought they'd be."
"Why aren't they in the Chamber of 'Orrors?"
"Crummy bunch."
"Let's go, Bill."
In fact, Hitler continued to be an on-and-off fixture of Madame Tussauds for many decades — sometimes stuck next to nemesis Winston Churchill, and eventually demoted to the Chamber of Horrors 'Orrors. Whether Hitler's likeness should have ever been on display is contentious — amid reports of tourists regularly posing for pictures with Hitler, pulling Nazi salutes, and even 'Heil Hitlering' — the Jewish Journal wrote a damning letter of complaint and Madame Tussauds London finally got rid of their Hitler in 2016.
Speaking of ruthless dictators, in 2022, when Russia waged war on Ukraine, a number of Putins around the world were boxed up. But Madame Tussauds London had already taken down its Putin several years before, as part of general rotation. The Telegraph reported you could still see a Putin in Bangkok's Madame Tussauds, which looked "distinctly like Andrew Marr lost in his garden".
So no Putin in London then. Although. If you head upstairs at the Sherlock Holmes pub in London's Northumberland Avenue, you will discover a mannequin of Conan Doyle's hero which looks remarkably like the Russian tyrant.
Researched with help from the brilliant British Newspaper Archive
