THE ARTICLE · 7 MIN
The Great Dictator Speech Analysis
The speech is the last scene of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, which opened in New York on 15 October 1940. It is spoken by a Jewish barber who has been mistaken for the dictator he resembles, and it is not a satire: it is a plain plea for kindness, freedom and unity, addressed to the soldiers in front of him and to everyone listening. The film historian Jeffrey Vance, in an essay for the US Library of Congress, calls it “the five-minute speech that concludes the film”.
Below: what happens in the film, why Chaplin made it when he did, what the speech says and how it is built, and how it has been received since.
Contextual Setting
Two roles, one face
Chaplin plays two roles: a little Jewish barber living in the ghetto, and Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomainia, a parody of Adolf Hitler. The joke the film runs on is that the two men look alike.
How the barber ends up on the platform
The American Film Institute’s catalogue sums up the plot. At the end of the First World War the barber saves the life of an officer, Schultz; a plane crash leaves the barber with amnesia, and he spends years in hospital while Hynkel rises to power. Back in his shop in the ghetto, he resists the persecution around him and is arrested with Schultz, who has also spoken out; both are sent to a prison camp. They escape on the eve of Hynkel’s invasion of the neighbouring country, Osterlich, and Hynkel himself is mistaken for the escaped barber and arrested. The barber, taken for the dictator, takes his place on the parade platform and gives the speech.
Why Chaplin made it, and what it cost him
The Great Dictator was Chaplin’s first film with dialogue. The Library of Congress essay puts it this way: “Over a decade after the rest of the film industry had accepted talking pictures, the greatest star of the silent-film era began his first full-dialogue film.”
- He made it while the United States was still out of the war. Britain, Chaplin’s native country, had declared war at the beginning of September 1939, but the United States, where he lived, had resolved to keep out of the conflict. The film opened in New York on 15 October 1940, at two Broadway theatres at once. The United States entered the Second World War only after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
- There was pressure against it from the start. According to the Production Code files cited by the AFI catalogue, in October 1938 the German consul, George Gyssling, wrote to Joseph I. Breen objecting to Chaplin’s intention to make a film that would “burlesque” Hitler. Vance writes that Chaplin went ahead “despite death threats once his project was announced”.
- Chaplin and Hitler were born four days apart. Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889, and Hitler within four days of him. Chaplin’s official site notes that when he was writing the film in 1939, he was as famous worldwide as Hitler, and his tramp character wore the same moustache.
- Chaplin later said he could not have made it. In his 1964 autobiography, as Vance quotes it, he wrote: “Had I known the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made ‘The Great Dictator’; I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.” Satire was possible in 1940 in a way it was not once the camps were known.
- It was banned widely and still made money. According to Vance, the film was banned throughout occupied Europe, in parts of South America and in the Irish Free State, and was first seen in Germany and Italy only when it was reissued in 1958. It cost $1,403,526 and became “Chaplin’s most profitable film up to that time”, earning $5 million worldwide in its original release.
Rhetorical Analysis
The quotations below follow the transcript of the speech published on Chaplin’s official website.
How the speech is built
The speech moves in four steps.
- A refusal. It opens by turning down power: “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone.”
- A diagnosis. The world could provide for everyone, the barber says, “but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.” The failure he describes is moral, not technical: “Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. … We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity.”
- A turn to hope. The same inventions point the other way: “The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all.”
- An appeal to the soldiers. He speaks straight to the troops: “Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes”, “You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!”, and closes, “Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!”
Universal Themes
The speech names its themes plainly: kindness, freedom, the end of “national barriers”, and “a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness”. It cites one text: “In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: ‘the Kingdom of God is within man’”. The King James Version of Luke 17:21 reads “the kingdom of God is within you”; the speech widens it to “not one man nor a group of men, but in all men!”
Satire and Irony
The irony is in who is speaking. The man the regime persecutes stands where the tyrant should be and uses the tyrant’s platform to ask for the opposite of everything the regime stands for. The speech does not mock the regime’s ideas from inside; it rejects them outright.
Whether the speaker is still the barber is a matter of reading. Chaplin’s official site describes the ending as a speech “made by the barber, speaking Chaplin’s own words”. Vance goes further: “The final speech, however, is not given by the Barber character but by Chaplin himself,” who “drops his comic mask and speaks directly to the world”. Both readings describe the same scene; the second explains why the tone changes so completely.
Enduring Impact
A divided reception
The speech has divided opinion. The AFI catalogue records that contemporary reviews “objected to the final speech as too preachy”. Chaplin’s official site says many people thought it “superfluous to the film” while “others found it uplifting”. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, as Vance quotes him, found the film too long in places but still called it “a truly superb accomplishment by a truly great artist”.
A growing reputation
Vance writes that critical opinion of the film, “particularly of the final speech, has risen greatly” over the decades since. In 1989, the centenary of Chaplin’s birth, it opened the Moscow International Film Festival, and in 2002 it closed the Berlin Film Festival. He also records one story about its most important viewer: according to an agent who fled Germany after working in the film division of the Nazi Ministry of Culture, Hitler screened the film alone, two evenings running. Chaplin’s reply, as Vance quotes it: “I’d give anything to know what he thought of it.”
An Appeal for Peace
The speech has lasted because it names things that do not date: greed, fear, cleverness without kindness, and ordinary people’s power to refuse. It is a speech against dictatorship given by a character who, a moment earlier, was one of its victims.
What to take from it
A few habits for reading any famous speech, which this one rewards:
- Read the whole text, not the clip. The most shared lines of this speech sit inside a four-step argument; the ending to the soldiers changes what the opening means.
- Ask who is speaking, and to whom. Here it is a persecuted man in a dictator’s place, speaking to an army. The same words from a ruler would mean something else.
- Check the date against what the speaker could know. Chaplin wrote this before the United States was at war and, by his own later account, before he understood the camps. That is part of reading it fairly.
- Separate the story from the reception. The speech was called preachy in 1940 and a masterpiece later. Both are facts about audiences, not about the text.
Sources
- Charlie Chaplin official website (Roy Export S.A.S.), “The Final Speech from The Great Dictator” (transcript and notes): https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/29-the-final-speech-from-the-great-dictator-
- Charlie Chaplin official website, “Overview of His Life”: https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/21-overview-of-his-life
- Christian Delage, “Filming The Great Dictator”, from Chaplin Facing History (2005), on Chaplin’s official website: https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/biography/articles/13-The-Great-Dictator+The%20Great%20Dictator/
- Jeffrey Vance, “The Great Dictator”, National Film Registry essay, US Library of Congress (archived copy): https://web.archive.org/web/20190902100006/https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/great_dictator.pdf
- American Film Institute Catalog, “The Great Dictator” (synopsis and notes): https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/27635
- US National Archives, “Joint Address to Congress Leading to a Declaration of War Against Japan (1941)”: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/joint-address-to-congress-declaration-of-war-against-japan
- The Bible, King James Version, Luke 17:21, Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
Checked September 2026.
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