10 Memorable Fictional Nazis in Movies and Television
10.
Dr. Strangelove
The US Director of Weapons Research and Development, this titular character from the 1963 comedy
classic is an illustration of how America was embracing fascist ideology and policies
in its rivalry with Communism.
With his voice, and mannerisms like an arm with a mind of its own that forces him to
do Nazi salutes (a real condition, it turns out), Strangelove is definitely one of the
more bizarre Nazis in an acclaimed comedy.
Of course, the American government was in real life using Nazi scientists for our space
program as part of the infamous Operation Paperclip, but they weren’t known to be
in any war rooms debriefing the President during national emergencies.
He barely conceals his history of working for the Third Reich, doing things like changing
his name to the more American sounding Strangelove (originally it was Merkwürdigliebe, which
is German for “Strangelove”) and makes slips like referring to Mr. President as “Mein
Fuhrer.”
It’s odd that when we first see him, he plays practically a straight man who asks
the Soviets why they would ever keep their doomsday weapon secret when that negates the
whole point of the thing.
Sometimes the real world is too crazy even for broad caricatures to make sense of it.
9.
Kurt Dussander
One of the two villainous protagonists of the 1982 Stephen King novella Apt Pupil, Dussander
is a concentration camp commandant hiding in Los Angeles under the name Arthur Denker.
A neighborhood boy named Todd Bowden recognizes him and rather than turn him in, he blackmails
Dussander into describing the horrors he saw and inflicted during the final solution from
a perspective he could never get from some dry history book.
Dussander reluctantly complies and in the process, awakens dark urges within himself.
Dussander is probably the most vivid illustration of pure love of power as it related to the
Reich.
He develops a grudging affection for Bowden solely because the boy has the power to get
what he wants and the will to do what is required to keep it.
He begins killing animals and derelicts because it gives him power over life and death while
still having the wherewithal to stay free.
When he dreams, it’s of his victims pursuing him like feral animals, but he has the power
to keep them away from him seemingly forever so the dreams are not nightmares.
Many who read the book will find Bowden, an average American boy who toys with evil mostly
out of boredom, more disturbing than Dussander, but Dussander was the one who knew what he
was doing enough to cause much greater damage than Bowden’s impulsiveness.
8.
Renate Richter
Because Nazis are history’s villains, it’s rare to see them portrayed in even slightly
sympathetic roles, particularly in comedies.
This character from the Finnish film Iron Sky, a movie so bizarre that it plays the
notion the last of the Nazi high command somehow managed to escape the Allies by flying to
the moon and establishing a base on “the dark side,” surprisingly has one of the
more nuanced and sympathetic Nazis ever portrayed.
Renate Richter, as a school teacher and fiancee to a soldier aspiring to be the Fuehrer, is
someone who has lived her whole life inside the Reich, cut off from the rest of humanity.
As a result, she completely swallows all the positive propaganda they produce that even
though the military overtly controls her life while espousing a need for racial purity,
she still has convinced herself that her nation believes in truth, unity, and peace.
While it’s not a perfect film (the way her loss of belief in her nation’s lies comes
from chancing upon a showing of The Great Dictator is a bit contrived and a lot of the
movie’s humor is limp) it serves a good satirical point: Even the most corrupt and
vicious societies can function if good people are naive enough to fall for the propaganda.
7.
Major Koenig
This expert sniper who engages in a sniping duel with the Soviet hero Vasily Zaitsev in
the 2001 film Enemy at the Gates, which is about the battle of Stalingrad, turns out
not to have ever existed.
Still, Ed Harris’s stoic, polite portrayal of the man makes him surprisingly sympathetic.
He isn’t trying to kill Zaitzev out of any belief in his racial superiority.
He’s there because his son was killed at this battle and he’s here for personal revenge.
It’s completely misdirected rage, but it’s misdirected in a very human and relatable
way.
On the other hand, he is willing to do such evil things as hang a child that he has interacted
with more than enough to humanize just to antagonize his Zaitsev, so there’s no shying
away from the darker side of what such motivations can do to a person.
6.
SS Colonel Hans Landa
Landa is introduced in the opening scene of the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds (a scene
which even negative reviews of the movie often praise, and which many single out as the scene
that won Christoph Waltz his Oscar for the role) trying to present himself as the least
threatening Nazi in the world, being more interested in milk and tobacco than harming
anyone.
But he still has a brutal intelligence that makes him more dangerous than most men in
uniform.
He aligns himself with the Third Reich not because he believes in his racial superiority
or he’s a nationalist.
He dismisses his comrades all the time, prides himself on being able to think like a Jew,
and happily betrays them.
He does it because it’s a sanctioned way to hunt down and kill people.
He carries around a big, affected pipe like the type Sherlock Holmes smoked and inspects
crime scenes despite his position of authority.
He’s not a soldier, he’s a detective who loves finding clues.
It makes his cynical decision to put on an SS uniform seem even more depraved than those
of the true believers, however more insightful his choice might be.
5.
SS Colonel Hans Muller
So oblivious that he makes Sgt.
Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes look like Hans Landa, Muller is probably the funniest Nazi
ever portrayed.
He has all the absurd bluster and nonsensical beliefs of the Nazi ideology, and from what
we see, it constantly undercuts him.
In the first sketch on the comedy sketch series Key & Peele, his belief in comically stupid
race theories seems to blind him to the obvious fact he’s dealing with the very black people
that he’s hunting.
In another, he leaves himself horribly vulnerable to an American GI and ended up costing his
unit a loyal, competent soldier purely because of his ego.
Ty Burrell’s performance is surprisingly able to make him seem both somewhat menacing
and still likable.
His delivery even sells anachronistic jokes like referring to one of the waist high salutes
that Hitler did as “down low, very cool.”
4.
Hando
Romper Stomper is an extremely controversial movie from 1992 because it does not overtly
condemn the actions of skinheads and really, aspects like Russell Crowe’s star-making
performance as gang leader Hando are too compelling to be comfortably enjoyed.
Hando leads his gang with courage (he begs for an Asian gang his gang provoked a war
with during a long fight to break into a warehouse so he can fight them) and something like intelligence
used for a horrible purpose.
A scene where he coolly, almost rationally tells an Asian immigrant “I want you to
listen to me very carefully, this is not your country,” is almost worse that the beatings
the other members of his gang are giving.
Still, the movie doesn’t idealize the neo-nazi movement at all.
In the same scene where Hando is itching to fight the Asian gang, he has to retreat because
the rest of his gang doesn’t stand with him.
He sees through the many failings of his gang members and when several of them try to quit,
he accurately berates them with how weak they are as people to keep them in line.
Even Hando admits it’s likely that his status as a white person may soon be all he has,
which sounds very defeatist for a supposed member of the master race.
Writer/director Geoffrey Wright says the title for the movie came from hearing a skinhead
refer to his shoes that way because that was a kid term for them, and that child-like appeal
nails Hando.
He’s big, tough, and knowledgeable, but he’s nowhere near able to really accept
the responsibilities of adulthood.
3.
Capt.- Lt. Henrich Lehmann-Willenbrock
Das Boot is one of the most acclaimed German movies ever made.
It is probably the only movie where audiences, according to TVTropes, began watching cheering
how many German u-boat crew members died during WWII and ended the movie pulling for the crew
to survive even after they sunk Allied ships.
It’s no wonder that Jürgen Prochnow became an international star on the basis of his
performance as the commander of U-96 in this film.
This Captain is openly contemptuous of the notion that his mission is anything but, as
he puts it, a “children’s crusade.”
He’s one of the few Nazis who relatably deals with his terrible working conditions
by joking about it, such as when he praises the free home-cooked meals.
He praises the British that he’s dealing with, and, unlike just about any member of
the Reich’s armed forces, is horrified by the sight of his enemies dying in agony, even
when it’s his own fault.
He’s one of the rare Nazis who is shown realizing that even when he’s victorious,
all he accomplishes in the long run is fruitless destruction.
2.
SS-Obersturmfuhrer
He doesn’t get a name, but it’s hard to forget this fanatical officer from the 1985
Russian classic Come and See.
The movie is set in Belarus, a nation on the Eastern front which was particularly devastated
by the war, and one of the units which murdered the most civilians was the Dirlewanger Brigade.
We see one of their frequent atrocities where villagers are crammed into a church, then
the Obersturmfuhrer tells them that adults will be allowed to leave, but only if they
leave their children behind, and then the church is set on fire.
Almost no one escapes.
Later in the movie, he and his unit are taken prisoner by a group of partisans and survival
does not look likely.
Unlike the leader of the unit who begs for his life, claiming he’s an old man that
never personally killed anyone, the Obersturmfuhrer calmly admits what he did and why.
As he explains to the partisans that they’re subhumans and should be wiped out, his eyes
seem to go dead.
This warped, psychopathic sort of bravery is one of the most unsettling shots of an
actor portraying a nazi soldier even though the character is pretty much helpless, and
takes away some of the satisfaction the scene might provide a viewer sympathetic to the
Soviets.
1.
Derek Vinyard
Acclaimed when it was first released (on the strength of Edward Norton’s powerhouse performance),
the general consensus about American History X has shifted to the point many will now admit
it’s not a very good movie.
The script includes some bad contrivances, nonsensical plotting, and the black characters
too often act as ciphers there to serve the growth of the white characters.
However, the one redemptive aspect of the movie by the same consensus is how neo-nazi
Derek Vinyard is written and how Norton plays him.
Derek Vinyard is a neo-nazi, but his hatred comes with much more intelligence and thought
than most people are willing to admit.
He doesn’t just lash out and froth at the mouth with his prejudices, he will describe
in detail, and just enough accuracy to be unsettling, such things as how the media has
been deliberately misleading about the actions of some black people and how condescending
it is to treat them like they have no control over their own behavior.
During the infamous dinner scene, he also uses the Rodney King event in a very convincing
way to explain why the media should never misrepresent news events to promote a social
agenda.
No matter how well-meaning it is, it will get used by the opposition to undermine the
movement.
Plus the character has some amount emotional justification for his racism, having been
effectively indoctrinated by his father who died being killed by a shooting in a majority
black neighborhood, which confirmed his father’s prejudices in his eyes.
Ultimately, Derek Vinyard sees the error of his violence and racism and tries to redeem
himself to some degree by getting his brother out of that life, but he was not a blind follower
before that.
He was the sort of charismatic person who would make joining even an evil, self-destructive
organization seem seductive for a poor, vulnerable kid just to interact with him.