WARSAW, Poland — JC Penney caused quite a Führer this week, unveiling a California billboard depicting a new teapot that viewers on the 405 Freeway and all across the Internet say looks “remarkably like Adolf Hitler.” The resemblance turned out to be more than an uncanny coincidence as, after several days of appeasement, the teakettle launched a ruthless and sudden invasion of Poland.

“We thought the teapot was spouting meaningless rhetoric, but it turned out to be far more than we could handle,” said Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, describing how the Polish military was totally unequipped to match the kettle’s cool-touch handle, space-saving design and delightful whistle.

JC Penney has maintained that the teapot, which was designed by Michael Graves (Michael “Mass, Unmarked” Graves to his friends) bears no intentional resemblance to Hitler, but the Plano, Texas-based company did acknowledge that the subsequent Blitzkrieg “does seem a little suspicious.”

Refugees evacuated from Poland described seeing the teakettle razing the countryside, killing and burning indiscriminately, and loudly singing different variants of, “I’m a little teapot, short and Kraut.”

JC Penney took down the billboard advertisement as soon as the controversy came to a boiling point,but the image had already done its work as only Nazi propaganda can. The $40 teapot sold out within hours, and while JC Penney has not confirmed it will manufacture more, many assume that the teapot itself has developed highly mechanized and efficient means of production.

Designers and engineers at JC Penney say they are determined to stop the Hitler kettle and are already working to produce a coffee pot that looks like Winston Churchill, a “Cup of Joe-seph Stalin” line of mugs, and even a Franklin D. Brew-sevelt coffee maker that is expected to be ready within three years.