"Hitler has only got one ball"

The "Colonel Bogey March" is familiar to most people as the theme song from The Bridge on the River Kwai. It's almost universally known, but for those who need a hint, here's a clip played by the United States Coast Guard Marching Band:

Before it was used in the movie in 1957, the song had a 40-year history in Britain and Canada, and it had acquired a variety of verses, many or most of them vulgar. As WWII approached, the popular lyrics of the time were as follows:

Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler is somewhat sim'lar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.

Last night I was watching a DVD of the Hitchcock film "The Lady Vanishes." In one scene Michael Redgrave whistles this tune, and the analyst doing the voiceover analysis proceeds to explain the song's bawdy history. By an incredible coincidence, an hour later as I'm checking the web for the last time for the evening, I encounter an article in the Telegraph suggesting that Hitler may, in fact, have been monorchic. This subject is discussed in Wiki, but generally dismissed as propaganda; the Telegraph article revives the speculation.

Now you know the rest of the story. It's not terribly important, except that this background does add a certain poignancy to the scene in The Bridge on the River Kwai when the WWII prisoners of war march into camp whistling a tune without lyrics, but which the movie audience of the day knew quite well was an insult to Hitler. Here's the whistled movie version:


update: more of this topic in a Slate article.