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 their office, although subject to the dictator's authority, and continued in office until the expiration of their year, by which time the dictator had typically resigned. It is uncertain whether a dictator's "imperium" could extend beyond that of the consul by whom he was nominated; Mommsen believed that his "imperium" would cease together with that of the nominating magistrate, but others have suggested that it could continue beyond the end of the civil year; and in fact there are several examples in which a dictator appears to have entered a new year without any consuls at all, although some scholars