The Great Dictator
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50 free The Great Dictator trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Charlie Chaplin spent years as the world's favorite silent clown, then risked his fortune and his reputation on a comedy that mocked Adolf Hitler while America was still at peace with him. The Great Dictator, released in 1940, became his biggest hit and one of the most argued-over films ever made. This quiz covers the whole picture: the barber and the tyrant Chaplin plays, the made-up countries and their real-life models, the supporting cast, the set pieces everyone remembers and the trouble the film ran into with censors and critics. A good share of the questions deal with the closing speech, its message and how it reached audiences, which makes the set handy for classes that study the speech as a text. The opening rounds suit anyone who has seen the film once. Later rounds reward viewers who know the production history, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which invented language, condemned by Hitler as a Jewish plot, appears on ghetto shop signs in The Great Dictator?
Esperanto
Esperanto was devised by a Polish Jew as a language for every nation, and Hitler attacked it as a scheme to destroy his country's culture.
Q 02In a famous scene of The Great Dictator, what does Hynkel dance with to music by Wagner?
A balloon globe
A balloon globe is tossed, kicked and bounced off his head as Hynkel dreams of owning the world, until it bursts. The film's composer said the choice of music for the scene was Chaplin's own idea.
Q 03Until The Great Dictator, every Charlie Chaplin feature had done without which staple of 1930s Hollywood films?
Spoken dialogue
Spoken dialogue had been standard for a decade, but Chaplin held out until he decided that talking was the best way to deliver a political message.
Q 04Which comedy team released a Hitler parody nine months before Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator reached cinemas?
The Three Stooges
The Three Stooges put Moe Howard on screen as a Hitler-like dictator named Moe Hailstone in the short You Nazty Spy!, released in January 1940.
Q 05Hannah, the heroine of The Great Dictator, was named after which person in Charlie Chaplin's own life?
His mother
His mother, Hannah Chaplin, was a music-hall singer whose voice and career failed when he was a boy. He gave her name to the brave young woman of the ghetto.
Q 06Charlie Chaplin read The Great Dictator's closing speech at a 1941 gala for which Franklin D. Roosevelt milestone?
His third inauguration
His third inauguration, in January 1941, was marked by a gala where Chaplin delivered the speech in person. Roosevelt had earlier let it be known that he hoped Chaplin would not abandon the film.
Q 07Charlie Chaplin later said he could not have made The Great Dictator had he known the true extent of what?
The Holocaust
The Holocaust changed how Chaplin saw his own comedy: in his 1964 autobiography he wrote that he could never have made fun of the Nazis' murderous insanity had he known.
Q 08Which comedy about a boy whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler is among the films The Great Dictator inspired?
Jojo Rabbit
Jojo Rabbit won Waititi an Oscar for its screenplay eight decades after Chaplin's satire. The Interview and Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator are counted among its descendants too.
Q 09In The Great Dictator, the barber shaves a customer in perfect time to a Hungarian Dance by which composer?
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms wrote the Hungarian Dance No. 5 that drives every stroke of the razor. Chaplin filmed the routine to a phonograph record, and the studio orchestra later had to match his movements.
Q 10What is the name of the fictional nation ruled by Hynkel in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator?
Tomainia
Tomainia is first seen losing the war of 1918, and by the time the barber leaves hospital twenty years later it has become Hynkel's dictatorship.
Q 11Benzino Napaloni, Hynkel's blustering rival in The Great Dictator, rules which comically named country?
Bacteria
Bacteria has a dictator who wants Osterlich for himself, which is why Hynkel must invite him on a state visit and sign a treaty before invading.
Q 12Osterlich, the peaceful neighbor Hynkel invades in The Great Dictator, is a thin disguise for which real country?
Austria
Austria is called Österreich in its own language, and the Nazis absorbed it in March 1938, while Chaplin was still developing his script.
Q 13Benzino Napaloni, the swaggering second dictator of The Great Dictator, is a broad parody of which real leader?
Benito Mussolini
Q 21In The Great Dictator, Hannah and the Jaeckels flee the ghetto for which kind of home in Osterlich?
A vineyard
A vineyard belonging to Mr Jaeckel's brother is their refuge, and Hannah writes to the barber about how beautiful Osterlich is shortly before Hynkel's troops arrive.
Q 22In The Great Dictator, why does Hynkel briefly ease his persecution of the ghetto midway through the story?
He wants a banker's loan
He wants a banker's loan to pay for his war machine, and the only man who might lend is Jewish. When the financier refuses, the purge returns worse than before.
Q 23Which emblem, worn by Hynkel's stormtroopers, takes the place of the swastika in The Great Dictator?
Benito Mussolini was known as Il Duce, so Chaplin gave his stand-in the mock title Diggaditchie, while the surname nods to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Q 14Garbitsch, Hynkel's icy right-hand man in The Great Dictator, is a caricature of which Nazi official?
Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels ran Nazi propaganda, the same job Garbitsch holds, and the character's name was chosen to sound like garbage.
Q 15Herring, Hynkel's bumbling war minister in The Great Dictator, is a caricature of which Nazi leader?
Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring is mocked through a minister whose new weapons keep failing; at one point a furious Hynkel rips every medal off his chest.
Q 16Which American comic actor earned an Oscar nomination for playing Napaloni in The Great Dictator?
Jack Oakie
Jack Oakie was in a career slump when Chaplin cast him, and the blustering Napaloni revived his career and brought him his only Oscar nomination.
Q 17Which actress, married to Charlie Chaplin at the time, plays Hannah in The Great Dictator?
Paulette Goddard
Paulette Goddard and Chaplin never discussed their marriage in public, apart from his calling her his wife at the film's premiere. They divorced in 1942.
Q 18Billy Gilbert, who plays the war minister in The Great Dictator, also voiced which dwarf in Disney's Snow White?
Sneezy
Sneezy got his voice because Gilbert was famous for a routine built around one enormous sneeze, which made Walt Disney think of him at once.
Q 19After his plane crashes in the opening of The Great Dictator, the barber spends twenty years with which condition?
Amnesia
Amnesia keeps him in hospital for two decades, so he walks back to his shop with no idea that Hynkel has taken power.
Q 20In The Great Dictator, what is Hynkel doing in civilian clothes when his own troops mistake him for the barber?
Duck hunting
Duck hunting was his cover story, a country holiday meant to hide the coming invasion of Osterlich. Instead it gets the dictator knocked out and locked in his own prison camp.
A double cross
A double cross, drawn as two X shapes, lets Chaplin brand the whole regime with a pun on betrayal.
Q 24In a one-upmanship gag in The Great Dictator, what do Hynkel and Napaloni each keep raising to tower over the other?
Their barber chairs
Their barber chairs rise turn by turn as each dictator tries to look down on the other. Bugs Bunny later paid homage to the gag in a 1950 Looney Tunes cartoon.
Q 25In The Great Dictator, what is hidden in a pudding to pick the man who must blow up Hynkel's palace?
A coin
A coin was supposed to mark one volunteer, but Hannah sabotages the plan by slipping one into every pudding, leaving the barber to swallow several in silence.
Q 26Hannah fights off stormtroopers in The Great Dictator by hitting them over the head with which kitchen item?
A frying pan
A frying pan swung from her window floors the troopers, but one stray blow also catches the barber, who staggers the length of the street in a daze.
Q 27The opening battle of The Great Dictator shows the barber helping to fire a giant cannon with which nickname?
Big Bertha
Big Bertha is aimed at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, but its first shell flattens a nearby outhouse and the second barely leaves the barrel.
Q 28In The Great Dictator's opening escape flight, the barber and Schultz fail to notice their plane is doing what?
Flying upside down
Flying upside down, the pair puzzle over a sun that seems to shine from below while a pocket watch floats up on its chain.
Q 29How do Schultz and the barber disguise themselves to escape the prison camp in The Great Dictator?
As army officers
As army officers in stolen uniforms, they walk right into the invasion force, where the barber is taken for the dictator he resembles.
Q 30Hynkel's ranting rally speeches in The Great Dictator mock Hitler's oratory by being delivered in what?
German-sounding gibberish
German-sounding gibberish let Chaplin copy the rhythm and fury of the newsreels he had studied while saying nothing at all, apart from the odd food word such as sauerkraut.