Bertolt Brecht, translator of "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui": "Arturo Ui is Al Capone, Hitler, Donald Trump, all the tyrants of the world deep down"

In February 1941, exiled playwright Bertolt Brecht, then 43, began conceiving "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" while seeking refuge in Finland. Stripped of his German nationality by the Nazis in 1935, the communist and dandy found himself planning a move to the United States. However, he was preoccupied with the power struggles of Chicago's gangs, which he saw as a potent mirror to Adolf Hitler's ascent and the infamies of Nazi Germany in 1932-1933.

Brecht, along with his collaborator and mistress Margarete Steffin, a gifted actress and translator who would die a few months later, aimed to forge a language that resisted fatalism. Their ambition was to alert and enlighten audiences through pastiche and humor, mobilizing them rather than succumbing to despair. They developed a system of allegorical doubles for the play.

In "Arturo Ui," the titular character embodies Al Capone, who becomes Hitler. Dogsborough, a cautious patriarch, represents Hindenburg, the aging German president who yielded to authoritarian pressure and appointed Hitler chancellor in 1933. The "cauliflower trust" symbolizes the industrialists and landowners who supported the regime. Brecht's intention was to illuminate the mechanisms of tyranny through this satirical lens.