Surviving the Big Smoke

I went to see The Producers on Wednesday night with my brother and a group of people from work and it was absolutely hilarious. It's about 2 guys who try to produce the worst show on broadway because they have worked out that they can keep any money left over from their sponsors if the show flops. So they get $2 million in sponsorship and spend as little as they can on the show. They go about choosing the worst play possible and get the worst director and the worst actors in town. The opening number of their show, "Springtime for Hitler" is one of the funniest things I have seen recently. It's a huge 1930's Hollywood affair with beautiful show girls (not these ones though - who are actually from Nottingham) descending a massive staircase, their costumes celebrating different German icons, like one girl has a huge Wurst on her head, another a Pretzel and another has wings like the Third Reich's black eagle itself. Finally Hitler appears at the top of the staircase. Because the main actor has just broken his leg, the camp director is playing the part tonight and so he positively minces down the staircase in his lederhosen.

Meanwhile, the dancing girls have given way to a line of stormtroopers all marching in time to "Springtime for Hitler and Germany". Most of them are mechanised dummies, either side of a real person. They change formation to make the sign of a swastika on the stage which rotates clockwise, then anticlockwise, just like the girls with feathers in the movies. Anyway, the show goes on and of course it is a huge success so the two producers are ruined but you'll have to see it yourself to find out what happens at the end.

By the way, I usually find Lee Evans irritating when he's within the confines of a tv screen but on stage he was brilliant, especially his panic attack.
Most of my party really enjoyed it, but 3 people were not amused. 2 said it was "alright" and I haven't yet quizzed them why, but one was quite vocal about how presenting Nazis in this way was not funny. "Why would you laugh when people have suffered so much?" and "wouldn't Germans be offended?" A colleague from Hamburg said only ex-Nazis and a few older Germans might take offence but most people would probably laugh. I think the question should have been whether these people would be offended. I tried to explain the joke to the objector but then realised that by the time I had finished, it would definitely not be a laughing matter. But it did make me wonder how long after a tragedy are we able to laugh at it? And is it a matter of time or just a shift in mood? And has this show ever been produced in Germany, seeing as it is against the law to buy anything with a swastika on it (and indeed to display it - correct me if I'm wrong)?
Would it incite violent acts amongst some of the nutters that are still around today?