Home > Community

Alternative History of the German Invasion

Look, 12:00.

The History of Ice Cream class is letting out.

It's as informative as it is delicious!

That class should've been ours.

I hear the final is a sundae bar.

Mmm. TROY: I don't get history.

If I wanted to know what happened in Europe a long time ago,

I'd watch Game of Thrones.

Troy, that show takes place in a fantasy realm.

This class is about the real world.

(GASPS) Not the show.

You need to think before you speak.

I heard this teacher's a real hard-ass.

He's British, and he has a degree.

I can't have a hard-buns teacher.

I'm already starting a new business.

When am I supposed to see my family?

And last week, Ben took his first steps without me.

Quick impression. "Wah."

Who am I? You guys.

Ha! Dead on.

I know the History of Ice Cream would have been fun, but not only will this class be much less likely to give us Type 2 Diabetes.

We might actually learn... Son of a bitch!

(MIMICING TECHNO TUNE)

SHIRLEY: Those annoying Germans are back?

I thought they transferred after they lost their foosball scholarship.

I heard they were juicing.

No, them leaving would mean

Greendale got slightly better, which, as we know, does not happen.

Lukas, Karl, I see you've grown a new douche bag.

My name is Reinhold.

I believe you know my brother Juergen.

There was some bad blood between you two, ja?

(CHUCKLES) Don't worry.

If there is one thing Germans don't do, it's hold a grudge.

Unless we're talking about Die Hard 3.

Or the 20th century.

Morning, everyone.

MAN: Morning.

I am Professor Cornwallis.

I know what you're all thinking, and the answer is...

Yes. I am a direct descendant of General Sir Charles Cornwallis, who surrendered the British forces at Yorktown.

Was anyone thinking that?

ALL: No.

History is written by the victors.

Well, of course, we all know the quote. What does it mean?

According to Oxford University, it means that my 20 years' loyal service there means nothing next to a little slipup with a co-ed.

(CLEARS THROAT) But what it really means is that history can be seen from a multitude of vantage points.

So, for your first test on Monday...

(ALL GROANING)

I'm confused. When do we get our ice cream?

I want to challenge you to look at history from all perspectives.

How would the story read if it was written not by the victors, but by the vanquished?

Ja.

How indeed?

(CHUCKLES WICKEDLY)

(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)

(LAUGHING EVILLY)

I was recalling a very funny episode of the German version of The Nanny.

Franlein gets a...

It wouldn't translate.

♪ Give me some rope Tie me to dream

♪ Give me the hope to run out of steam

♪ Somebody said it can be here

♪ We could be roped up, tied up, dead in a year

♪ I can't count the reasons I should stay

♪ One by one, They all just fade away ♪

And I still have those pants. True story.

(CHUCKLES) Oh, we have fun.

(HIGH-PITCHED SCREAM) Sorry.

I should've realized that might be startling.

Dr. Ken Kedan, Greater Greendale Mental Health Services.

Kevin, does this gentleman look familiar to you?

I'm sorry. He doesn't.

Kevin? Uh-uh. His name is Chang.

Oh, of course. That explains the note.

"Hello, my name is Kevin. I have Changnesia"? What is that?

It's not uncommon for victims of memory loss to experience some syntactical confusion.

Thus the inappropriate insertion of his name into an unrelated phrase.

No, he's always Dean that.

Once we learned of the connection to Greendale, we realized it would be the perfect environment for some immersive therapy.

What? No, absolutely not!

I can't have an unbalanced nut job traipsing around on my campus!

Put that on the rack. Put that in the fridge.

Get him out of here!

Sorry. Your school board already signed off on it.

Kevin is now your responsibility.

(HIGH-PITCHED WAIL)

I just felt a strange disturbance.

Did you have dairy this morning?

Could be that.

Or it could be that great evil is nearby.

I'll take a provisional lactaid.

Won't be needing the lactaid.

Uh, guys? This is our study room.

Please leave, and take that mushroom cloud of Drakkar with you.

Why must he hurt so with his words?

He's like a less funny Hans Rickles.

I'm not here to argue, Angela Jerk-els. Beat it!

Ohhh! Someone must have changed the channel to USA,

'cause I just watched a Burn Notice. Oh.

Who's Angela Jerk-els?

I can assure you, we are here for no reason other than to study.

Our usual off-campus haunt,

Der Kaffee Hausen, is closed for the shooting of an esoteric art film.

Tomorrow it shall re-open, unt we shall be out of your heavily product-laden hair.

(CHUCKLES)

Jeff, it's just a little table in the corner of the room.

Why don't we just let them have it?

Because that's called appeasement.

And everyone knows if you give the Germans something small, like the study room or Austria, they end up wanting something big, like Earth.

Oh. PIERCE: Jeff's right.

If there were more people in the world like Annie, we'd all be speaking Vietnamese right now.

(GASPS IN SHOCK) That was my war.

I had flashbacks for years.

Pierce, you moved to Canada.

And it was hell.

Those people call ham "bacon".

This is silly. I'm just gonna walk over there and tell them they are welcome to share our room.

Delightful.

So today, we study in here.

Unt tonight, we dine in hell.

(BEAT-BOXING TECHNO BEAT)

(ALL IMITATING TECHNO TUNE)

Doktor Blitz, Knight of the Atlantis Guild, wielder of the four-pronged trident on SpawnCraft?

How did you know?

I recognized your catchphrase, "Tonight we dine in hell!"

I'm spacetimer8032.

You are spacetimer8032?

The one and only.

It's wonderful to meet you. Brother.

What was that all about?

You two seemed pretty chummy.

That man saved my life.

In a video game.

Let me get this as straight as I can get things.

You authorized this?

After everything that happened last year?

Hear us out.

They offered money.

Did it ever occur to you that this man is a psychopath who may be faking his own Changnesia?

Oh, now he has me saying it.

Amdeansia.

Amdeansia... I'm all turned around.

If he is faking, you're welcome to prove it.

We get the money either way.

Mmm!

Oh, I will prove it.

And I'll have fun doing it.

Now, what to wear?

See?

I know those guys were annoying yesterday, but aren't you glad we didn't turn it into a whole big macho war thing?

Gosh, Annie, you're right.

I can't believe I doubted you.

Hey, apropos of nothing, what's that sound you make when you see something shocking?

(GASPS IN SHOCK) Oh, yeah, that's it.

What are you guys doing at our table?

What happened to Der Kaffee Hausen?

Our time in this room yesterday proved more pleasant than expected.

It's got a good energy.

That table is ours.

This room is ours! You guys need to leave.

Hey, Karl. Hi, Abed.

I am afraid it is you who must do the making like a tree, which is to say, leaving.

Uh, security!

You want us to leave?

There a problem here?

Yeah, there's a problem.

These dussle-dorks won't leave our study room.

Nice!

I don't understand any of these puns.

I think I need to learn history.

Do you have a sign-in sheet?

You're asking for our papers?

I thought this was America, not Arizona.

We have a sign-in sheet. Lukas.

Perhaps we should all just go home and see our families and think things through, huh?

Looks like the room is theirs. (CHUCKLES)

Shirley, call your babysitter, because this means...

Let me guess.

War?

Let the lady finish her sentence.

Thank you, Jeff!

War. Yeah.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)

We'd like to sign out study room "F".

It would appear that in this battle, our bulge was a little bit bigger.

(CHUCKLES) Guten bye-bye.

Excuse me. Don't touch.

Damn them and their perfectly crafted timepieces.

What else do you have available?

(SIGHS)

(LIGHT BUZZING)

It's like a Darren Aronofsky film.

I'll get this.

My fifth father-in-law was an electrician.

You pick up a thing or two.

(ALL SCREAMING)

Agh! Everybody grab me, please! Ugh!

Nobody grab him. (SCREAMING)

Pierce, just let go.

You'd like that, wouldn't you?

Of the thing, Pierce.

Oh, it smells like barbecue.

We're getting up earlier tomorrow.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

(EVIL LAUGHTER)

(AIR HISSING)

Oh, no.

Oh! Ugh!

(SOMBER MUSIC)

(MANIACAL LAUGHTER)

Oh, look at them!

(SOBBING)

(SAD MUSIC)

(CRASH)

Hi.

Thanks again for taking me in.

We must have been great pals before my Changnesia, huh?

Oh, my... That's it.

You may have fooled that handsome doctor, but you can't fool me.

Oh, how convenient.

Showing up here with Changnesia after you staged a coup, almost blew up the school, and locked me in a basement for months!

Without so much as a drop of moisturizer!

I did all that?

I mean, Chang did all that?

If that's true, then Chang, who is me, deserves to go to jail. Well, he did.

And you do.

This is the worst thing that's happened to me in my 96 hours of memory.

(DOOR OPENS)

And that failed ventriloquist's name was Slobodan Milosevic.

ALL: Ohh.

For the essay portion of your test on Monday, you will be asked to describe a historical battle from the perspectives of both the winners and the losers.

No dioramas.

(ALL GROANING)

Guten luck on the examination.

We will be preparing for it in study room "F", as in "fictory".

I like the way your old chair cradles mein knaidels.

(LAUGHTER) I just made that up.

You know, English is my second language.

Jeff, stop.

It's over. No.

These guys are horrible.

Totally. Except Karl.

Really, Abed? Mmm-hmm.

Karl's not horrible?

Even though he took your home?

When I was growing up, it was just me and my mom.

I didn't have much of a family.

That is, until I met you guys.

So excuse me if I'm not willing to give up the place where we became a family.

So what are we gonna do?

We literally can't get up any earlier.

Many years ago, before the concept of "too soon" existed, there was a show about a bunch of goofy Nazis running a prison camp, and that show was called... Hogan's Heroes?

Hogan's Heroes. Yes.

And while, for a latchkey kid with no Jewish friends, it was a bit desensitizing, it still taught me that the lovable misfits always win.

And the bumbling Germans always lose.

All we need is a clever ruse.

Strike that. All we need is a ruse.

You had me at "ruse."

That was the last thing I said.

Good thing you said it.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

(LIVELY GERMAN MUSIC)

Ah!

Welcome to Oktoberfest.

What is this? Call it a peace offering.

You won. We lost.

Let's end this dumb war and move on.

Care for some authentic blutwurst?

This stuff's the real deal.

We got it down in little Munich.

(WHISPERS) It's been banned by the FDA.

Ooh! No, Karl!

That blutwurst was probably injected with a laxative to make us pull a Grete Waitz in our trousers.

I promise you, there's nothing gross in this sausage.

It's just pig's blood stuffed into a cow's intestine.

Gott, that must be nearly 100 luftballons!

(LAUGHING)

Idiot! Do not accept their gifts.

Something is clearly up.

Please, these are just small tokens of our friendship.

Oh, come on.

Dirndls, blutwurst, luftballons.

A cartoonishly large cake.

This is a ruse.

It is exactly like an episode of Hogan's Villains.

Ruse? This is no ruse.

Just take that large cake back to the study room and enjoy it there.

So there's nothing hiding inside this giant German chocolate cake?

Ask Abed. You can trust him. He's a friend.

Nope. Just solid cake.

Hmm.

Then you wouldn't mind if I...

Cut the cake?

Or you could save it for later.

You don't have to share it.

Shirley stayed up all night baking that for you.

No problem. I just used the eggs

I would've used for my son's breakfast.

But it would be so easy for me to carve into this cake.

And serve us all! Wait!

Damn it. Sorry.

We thought you were stupider than this.

Troy.

Should I release the tear gas, or has that ship sank?

(CHUCKLES)

An excellent attempt, Winger, but we are smarter than you, and once again, it shall be us who are savoring the smooth and somewhat ha-ha-hoppy taste of victory.

Beer me, bitte.

Here you go.

As they say in Ferris Bueller, danke schoen.

And as they say in the movie, Gotcha...

Gotcha.

Busted. Busted?

For what?

But there were dozens of students at that Oktoberfest.

But you were the only German students celebrating German culture, and here at Greendale, that is a big, fat no-no.

We frown on anyone celebrating their own cultural heritage.

I mean, if the Hasidic student union wants to host a kwanzaa celebration, you go, Jews!

Hanukkah? No, sir.

It's why I keep a detailed list of every student's race and nationality to prevent racism and nationalism.

This is an outrage! Relax.

It's not like you're expelled.

You're just banned from certain campus amenities, uh, water fountains, swimming pools... Huh.

Most of these are water-based.

Oh, and the study rooms.

Oh! Uh!

(PHONE RINGS) Oh, I gotta take this.

Bye-bye.

Dean Pelton, if I don't offer you a receipt, your education is free.

Chang did what?

(TRIUMPHANT MUSIC PLAYING)

(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)

Oh, cool.

What are we protesting? WOMAN: You guys.

You've been hogging that study room for three years.

Somebody finally stood up to you, and you had them banned.

Why must our people always be the victims?

What do we want? ALL: Justice!

When do we want it? Now!

What do we want? Justice!

Oh, my God. When do we want it?

Now! This whole time, we thought the Germans were the Germans.

But it turns out, we're the Germans.

Hang on. You guys are all siding with the Germans?

You realize these guys are, like, contractor-grade tools.

They signed out that room fair and square, and then you had to take it too far, like you always do with that room.

Yeah!

(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)

(SIGHS) Damn it!

I signed this room out!

And I have a final tomorrow!

They lost a pen.

Can you come back in a few hours?

We're playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Yes? I left my notebook in there.

Well, you're going to have to come back later.

I'm trying to prove a point.

You're like those guys on Hogan's Heroes.

The Nazis.

(GASPS) You take that back!

I'm Jewish. Yeah, Leonard.

Don't call me a Nazi.

You are wearing an SS T-shirt.

Oh. Oh!

Oh! Oh.

(KEYS JINGLE)

Open two.

(DOOR LOCK BUZZES)

What are you doing here?

You, sir, have been bailed out.

We are going to nurse you back to health.

But why?

Why take me back in after everything I did to you?

When I heard that you had checked yourself into jail,

I realized you couldn't be faking.

The real Chang would never have remorse for what he did.

I believe you...

Kevin.

Plus, curing Changnesia, that's a human interest story.

That puts Greendale on the map.

But your health comes second, whoop, first, to the school.

Oh, let's not hug. Do you mind getting my...

Okay.

Probably shouldn't step on it.

I feel guilty eating this cake.

And not for the usual reasons.

Hate to say it, but this is what happens when a group of people blindly follows a charismatic, golden-throated leader.

Are you actually comparing me to Hitler?

(OVERLAPPING AGREEMENTS) There are similarities.

Hang on. Nobody's even willing to consider that I might be the Hitler of this group?

We were the good guys.

How could everybody think we're the bad guys?

We are.

When Karl and I were raiding the diamond north caves,

I was facing 50 death beatles.

I would've perished for sure, but he saved me.

Then when I had a chance to return the favor,

I looked him in the eye, and I told him it was solid cake.

You were just following orders.

There's probably a way I can make it up to him.

Oh.

Maybe I'll give him my four-pronged trident.

Why don't you call it a "quadrident"?

Shh. Ah!

There you people are.

I believe we have something to discuss.

Oh, my God.

You clever British bastard.

You set this whole thing up to teach us a lesson.

What? Making the school pretend to hate us, to show us that one man's hero is another man's villain.

Of course! We aren't Nazis.

(LAUGHTER)

I tip my cap to you, sir.

Lesson learned.

Are you actually suggesting that a professor at Greendale would set up an elaborate ruse just to teach seven students a lesson?

Uh, yes. Yeah.

Yes. That's a Wednesday.

Oh, my God.

I've made a terrible mistake coming here.

So this wasn't part of the class?

Then why are you here?

Because you had a test today, and you all missed it!

"F"s FOR EVERYONE.

Oh.

Maybe it's not too late to get out of my contract.

I really am Hitler. Yeah.

So it's just decided.

No vote or anything.

I hate this.

I wish there was a way that we could make it up to people.

That's it.

We need to make reparations.

We have to start giving back because Greendale has given us so much.

It gave us the study room.

And that study room is our home.

But our home is more than those four walls.

And our family is more than the seven of us.

It's all of Greendale.

And everyone deserves to have what we have.

What do you know? Greendale just got slightly better.

It's good to be back.

Should we go celebrate at Skeeper's?

Oh, come on, Shirley. We all have lives.

There you are!

I am so proud how you stepped up and made amends.

And everyone forgave you.

Because when it comes right down to it,

Greendale's a forgiving place.

It really is.

Please keep that in mind the next 20 seconds.

Remember that people can "Chang".

People can what?

Hmm?

Hi, I'm Kevin.

(ALL SCREAMING)

He has Changnesia.

(TROY AND ABED HUMMING)

And you know what that sound is.

BOTH: It's the Troy and Abed Podcast.

Sponsored by Shirley's sandwiches, home of the fried chicken skin wrap.

Is it inside? Is it outside? You find out.

Okay, our guest today is from Germany, Europe.

Karl, guten tag. How are you doing?

Sehr gut. Great.

Now's the part of the show where we get real.

Friendship, loyalty, betrayal, redemption.

Is this an apology? Yes.

And for being a guest on the show today, we want you to have this.

It's a gift certificate to Shirley's sandwiches, home of the triple-fried Monte Cristo.

We challenge you to taste the bread.

This coupon is a $5 bill.

Well, that's all the time we have today.

For Troy Barnes, I'm Abed Nadir.

And for Abed Nadir, I'm Troy Barnes.

BOTH: And we're out.

Thanks so much for doing this.

So will you be on my podcast tomorrow?

We've got a thing.

Beep, boop, bow! (SMOOTH JAZZ PLAYING)