In "Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s", Thomas Schatz writes of "Chaplin's Little Tramp transposed into a meek Jewish barber", while, in "Hollywood in Crisis: Cinema and American Society, 1929-1939", Colin Shindler writes, "The universal Little Tramp is transmuted into a specifically Jewish barber whose country is about to be absorbed into the totalitarian empire of Adenoid Hynkel.
V nasprotju z njim pa Annette Insdorf v svoji knjigi "Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust" piše, da je bilo "Potepuhovo" oponašanje diktatorja »nenavadno primerno«, saj sta bila leta 1939 Hitler in Chaplin morda dva najbolj znana človeka na svetu.