The Great Dictator noted Chaplin's use of Wagner's "Lohengrin" prelude when Hynckel dances with the globe-balloon. Chaplin repeated use of the "Lohengrin" prelude near the conclusion, when the exiled Hannah listens to the Jewish barber's speech celebrating democracy and freedom. The music is interrupted during the dictator's dance but it is heard to complete and climax in the barber's pro-democracy speech. Commenting on this, Lutz Peter Koepnick writes in 2002, Chaplin's film was released nine months after Hollywood's first parody of Hitler, the short subject "You Nazty Spy!" by the Three Stooges, which premiered in January 1940. Chaplin had been planning his feature-length
Roman dictator was nearly absolute. However, as a rule he could not exceed the mandate for which he was appointed; a dictator nominated to hold the "comitia" could not then take up a military command against the wishes of the Senate. Some dictators appointed to a military command also performed other duties, such as holding the "comitia", or driving a nail into the wall of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus; but presumably they did so with the Senate's consent. The "imperium" of the other magistrates was not vacated by the nomination of a dictator. They continued to perform the duties of