For as far back as I can remember I and others in my family circle have long said this line jokingly to each other, sometimes the whole thing, sometime just part of it, but for the life of me I cannot recall where I first heard it. I assumed a relative, but where did they learn the line? I always assumed it was a movie quote, yet a google search for the phrase yields no quality results. Does anyone here know where the line is from, book, movie, TV, etc., etc.?
"You will now tell us where you have hidden zee documents!" or "But where are zee documents"
I can’t recall any movie where I heard either line as you give it, but there’s no shortage of stories where such hidden documents are crucial to the plot
Edgar Allen Poe’s The Purloined Letter
Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia and The Case of Charles Augustus Milverton
True, true, true and true and while I appreciate the reply, still no closer to answering the mystery. One possible clue is that it’s always performed with a German accent which goes over big around here since we are in fact German by descent.
Surely we didn’t invent the line. Only Mom and Uncle john were writers, but poets, not novelists, so that rules them out. Another clue, my cousin Charles says he remembers hearing it at a family gathering 20 odd years ago.
So it’s old, it’s got legs. But where did it come from?
Is this along the lines of “vee haf vays off makink you talk”? I always thought that was just generic bad guy talk and was meant to mock the Nazis. Or is that specific sentence about zee documents the part that you’re wondering about? I’ve never heard that particular phrase but both it and the example I gave make me think of Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes.
Hogans Heroes was big around my house too. I’ve watched and re-watched all the episodes, but still haven’t heard it mentioned there. Same thing with Get Smart.
Most often the shows ask for “zee papers”, not “zee documents”.
I just hit up aunt Amile and she assures me that she heard it too, but also doesn’t know where it all began. She’s got about 15 years on me and was often my babysitter. She recalls her brother’s saying it. Uncle John refutes that by saying he never said it and doesn’t recall hearing it. BUT he’s alone because everyone else I’ve asked so far remembers it.
I signed in to post an agreement with WOOKINPANUB that it’s generic Nazi-villain talk. With my friends, the equivalent saying was “You vill sign zee papers!” Then I found out from Johnny L.A. that ours really did spring from an actual source. So maybe ThatNJGuy’s did, too.
I had a roommate in college who frequently used the “sign ze papers, old man!” line. I always wondered where that came from. Given that he was something of a stoner, the Cheech & Chong thing makes sense.
Any chance that you, or one of your family, ever went by the name VVinter on the ars technica forum? See the fifth entry in the Give me random short phrases thread.
