Those Wacky Nazis

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Illinois Nazis.[1]

When der Fuehrer says "Ve ist der Master Race",
Ve Heil! * Raspberry* Heil! * Raspberry* right in der Fuehrer's face!
Not to love der Fuehrer is a great disgrace,
So ve Heil! * Raspberry* Heil! * Raspberry* right in der Fuehrer's face!

Spike JonesDer Fuehrer's Face

Those Wacky Nazis covers a variety of Nazi stereotypes.

Before we get on with the list, we also suggest you take a look at Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler (closely associated with Nazis), World War II, Ghostapo, Stupid Jetpack Hitler, and A Nazi by Any Other Name

  • The "cultured" one who stands around in vest, braces and lederhosen listening to classical music on a gramophone, who says "You see, Herr Captain, ve are not all animals."
  • The loud one who is usually on the phone shouting "Get me ze Führer!".
  • The kinky, leather-coated Gestapo officer who is typically a Camp Gay; possibly inspired by Ernst Röhm and many of the high-ranking members of the SA, Hitler's original personal guard. By the time of their destruction on Hitler's orders, the SA was populated by numerous homosexuals or suspected homosexuals. Also possibly inspired by Rudolph Hess, known in some circles as "Fraulein Anna" and Hermann Göring, whose appearance was evidently rather campy.
  • The tight-assed Obstructive Bureaucrat who goes through the trouble of donning his entire uniform - including jodhpurs and wellington boots - before talking to someone (even if said someone is on the phone and unable to see what he is wearing). Ends every conversation with a "Heil Hitler!" and a loud click of his heels.
  • The round-spectacled, black-gloved torture master who emits a shrill giddy laugh after every sentence. May or may not overlap with "Gay Nazi" above.
  • A female officer in the mold of The Baroness. In more salacious productions she'll be a sadistic dominatrix who tortures prisoners and forces them to perform sex acts for her own (and presumably, the audience's) amusement.
  • The old guy who is constantly saying "This is not the Germany I fought for in the Great War," (pulls out medal from first war)
  • A bumbling Luftwaffe sergeant in direct charge of the American prisoners of war. May or may not be more devious than he appears. May have visited one city in America, and claims to have loved it ("I vas in New York, you know. I love America! Vhen ze var is over, ve vill all be friends.")
  • The officer with a consience, usually based on Erwin Rommel.
    • And the continuation, this being the high-ranking Nazi C.O. or senior civil servant who hates the party's ideology so much that he either just tries to abseil from what is happening around him, or suffers the consequences of persevering. If this guy will be asked by any real tight-assed Obstructive Bureaucrat (see above) about his faith and loyalty to the regime, the answer will merely be along the lines of "I am loyal to my men/country/work/job/principles/shit)" at most times. In short, the most awesome roles that can be accredited to Curt Jürgens, such as in The Devil's General or The Longest Day (as Günther Blumentritt).
  • The Nazi who kills because he simply enjoys it. The slightest provocation (or none at all) means certain death for prisoners and civilians. Possibly modeled after real life sadist and Nazi SS Josef Blösche aka "Frankenstein", who killed over 2,000 noncombatants on his own.
  • The "Oskar Schindler" type - the guy who really has a heart of gold and works to save the persecuted or works with the Resistance, a la Allo Allo.
  • The "I'm just a soldier doing my job" Nazi, either regular military officer or SS, who feels My Country, Right or Wrong.
  • The teenaged grunt who often finds himself in way over his head.
  • The mindless drone who simply does what he is told out of ignorance and lack of ambition. This stereotype isn't completely unfounded because German soldiers in WWII were trained to be extremely obedient, sometimes to a fault because they would at times not act unless given orders.
    • Actually, at the NCO and Officer level, soldiers of the Wehrmacht were very autonomous in how to act out orders, as the Wehrmacht was one of the few professional armies ever to use Mission-type tactics, which required a great deal of creativity and initiative from the troops. Wehrmacht training would train obedience, but also initiative and self-reliance in the absence of orders from higher up.
    • Sub-trope: the blond and innocent looking young recruit able to do the worst atrocities without slightest flinching, like a perfect robot. Common in Sven Hassel novels. Possibly inspired by the later war SS recruits subject to Training from Hell, from the 12th SS Division Hitlerjugend.
  • The mindless drone who does anything he is told, with a certain lack of ignorance but not ambition.
  • The Nazi Nobleman with a fancy aristocratic title and ancestral castle, who may overlap with any of these.
  • The mad doctor obsessed with purifying the race, discovering immortality, etc., through horrifying surgical/robotic/occult means. May also overlap with "Frankenstein", above. Basically Mengele, mixed with the alien vampire robozombie stereotype.
  • The aging (but evil) senior officer with cadaverous features, usually an SS member to link his skull-like visage with the death's head motif. Will normally be combined with one of the roles above, or feature in a minor role as a visitor from Berlin here to remind the Big Bad that "Zer Führer is not patient, he expects results". Partially based on SS-Oberführer Dr. Oskar Dirlewanger, whose physical features matched 100% the description and whose job had been anti-partisan combat. The abysmal performance of his unit was the only thing which limited his ability to do even more evil.
  • The traitor who wants to overthrow Hitler, either out of conscience, or because he wants to take over himself. Sometimes both. Expect him to fail, unless the story takes place in Alternate History
  • The Magnificent Bastard, a variation of the I'm just a soldier doing my job, after the traitor, the most sympathetic of all the Nazi stereotypes (which is why they usually overlap). Will usually be portrayed as a genius who isn't a complete monster, who at some point will befriend one of his enemies, or show admiration for them. This feeling is usually reciprocated. More often than not, is either executed as a traitor, or gets captured by the Soviets and sent to a concentration camp, usually the main character of the story will feel sorry for him.

There were many branches of the Nazi military, each associated with the above subtropes to a varying degree. Most of the more evil, sinister Nazi archetypes tend to belong to the SS, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party (and the ones who ran the Holocaust). SS members are immediately recognizable by their ominous all-black uniforms. More mundane Nazis may belong to the Wehrmacht, the German military, where they are less likely to be members of the Nazi party at all and more likely to be conscripts. If Nazis are out hunting for La Résistance or Jews, you might encounter the Gestapo, the German Secret Police, though they tend to be less of a threat than their rivals in the SS. Last but not least are members of the German spy service, the Abwehr, who are the most likely to secretly be working with the Allies. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, loathed the Nazis and put much of the Abwehr's energy into feeding them false information, smuggling Jews out from under their noses, and unsuccessfully trying to kill Adolf Hitler.

Then there are neo-Nazis. Generally today they tend to be somewhat stereotypical skinhead punks, covered with tattoos, listening to rage rock, with no real agenda besides anger and violence, and generally representing a particularly nasty strain of disaffected youth, often led on by calculating hatemongers with more cynical motives. These are common in cop shows, and are given a particularly chilling representation in the film American History X. Other films, like The 51st State portrays them as asinine thugs, dumber than a box of rocks. It's also important to note that not all skinheads are Neo-Nazis, and making such an association around a traditional or anti-racist skin tends to invite a reaction.

On the other hand, during the earlier days of the Cold War, spy shows, such as Mission: Impossible or The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the protagonists would occasionally take a break from battling the commies in order to put a stop to someone's attempt to reinstate the "The Fourth Reich." These Nazi wannabes would invariably be vaguely Germanic, paranoid, arrogant, obsessed with "discipline," and usually very morally rigid (such as announcing that in the New Order, women would be limited to making babies, their "proper function"). In short, such characters were little more than broadly drawn cartoons. Given that the entertainment industry was is predominantly Jewish, and World War II was still a recent memory for most people, it's not surprising that any Nazi character would be denied even the tiniest human characteristic. As well, some German or Jewish actors who played Nazis, notably John Banner (Sgt. Schultz) and Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink) on Hogan's Heroes insisted that their character never succeed (in fact neither character was a party member, and Schultz sided with the prisoners on several occasions). Another with some (increasingly small) currency today is the fugitive Nazi war criminal, who may well be hiding out in Latin Land or even the continental United States. Perhaps he's working as a dentist...

The sheer use of them as antagonists practically makes them an arguable standout example of The Usual Adversaries.

Stock German phrases and words usually associated with Nazis:

  • Achtung - "attention!"
  • Führer - "leader/guide". In today's German this word on its own is often avoided in its meaning of 'leader', as it has become associated so much with Hitler; the words "Anführer" ('leader') or "Leiter," being not connotated that way, are used instead. In its other meaning of 'guide' and in compound words (eg. Führerschein = driver's license) , "Führer" still is commonly used.
  • Hände hoch! - "Hands up!"
  • Halt! - "Hold it!/Stop there!" which may be followed by
  • Ausweis! - "ID"
  • Jawohl!- "Yes, sir/ma'am!" Technically it actually just means emphatic yes (YES!) without the attached "sir" or "ma'am," but translations often include the honorific due to the way the word is used. "Jawohl, mein Fuhrer!" is enough of a Stock Phrase to deserve a specific mention.
  • Scheiße! - Shit!
  • Kommandant - A commander, regardless of rank.
  • Raus!- "Out!" Often used in the context of The Holocaust.
  • Schnell!- "Quick/Quickly!" General-purpose exclamation by anyone giving orders.
  • Was ist los? - "What's going on?" (or "What's wrong?") Usually uttered by a Nazi trooper after one of his comrades gets knocked out or killed.
  • Alarm!- "Alarm!" ("We're under attack!", from French "À l'arme", meaning "To the weapon" / 'to arms'; on U-boats, this is the order to start a crash dive).
  • Amerikaner! or Engländer! - "Americans!" or "Englishmen!" Usually followed by the German soldier who yelled the warning getting shot by said Americans or Englishmen.
  • Nicht schießen! - "Don't shoot!" (Not to Be Confused With Nicht scheißen! - "Don't shit!")
  • Sieg Heil! - "Hail victory!" (Always accompanied by a Nazi salute.)
  • Mein Gott in Himmel! - "My God in Heaven!" Expression of shock/surprise/disbelief, often when encountering Allied commandos. "Mein Gott!" "Gott in Himmel!" "Gott!" and "Himmel!" are also common.
  • Ach du Lieber! - "Oh dear!" Same usage as above. Yes, in direct translation, meaning, usage and force of utterance, the expression "Ach du Lieber" is pretty much identical to the English "Oh dear". Just what you'd shout while being ambushed. "Oh dear" indeed!
  • Ach, der Teufel! - "Oh, the Devil!" General curse. Suitable response to anything from allied attack to overdue library books. "Ach" and "der" are optional.
  • Donner und Blitzen! - "Thunder and lightning!" Angry curse or general expression of anger, more common with those who have underlings to rant at.

Luckily for English audiences, a lot of the more functional parts of speech are extremely similar-sounding in English and German, so the lines are often blurred between Poirot Speak and Just a Stupid Accent. Along with the list above, you can include "ja", "nein", "mein(e)" (my), "ein(e)" (one/a), "wo/was" (where/what), "das", "ist", "gut", and many others. Das ist gut, ja?

Stock slurs:

  • Schwein!- Almost-English stock insult, essentially saying Swine. Note: In contemporary German this is about as (in-)offensive as calling someone a "scoundrel".
  • Schweinhund - translated "pig dog". Might also be a compliment for especially resilient people.
  • Arschloch! - Asshole!
  • Ami: American - That is actually a contemporary and neutral shortcut for "US American" and wasn't in use in WW 2.
  • Tommy: Brit / Englishman - Also "Tommyboy".
  • Franzmann: Frenchman
  • Itaka: Italian - It has to be noted that fascist Italy was an ally of Nazi Germany; "Itaka" is short for "Italienischer Kamerad" or Italian comrade. Its true meaning became obscure over time and it was degraded to a slur for Italians. Also "Makaronis" (heard in Das Boot, among others), short for "Makaronifresser". "fressen" literally means "to eat" but is usually reserved for referring to animals or people eating excessively.
  • Polacke: Pole
  • Iwan (or "Der Iwan!"): Russian

Any low-ranking Nazi Mook will have a limited vocabulary, consisting solely of these phrases uttered in rapid succession, also called "voice achtung". In real life, the Wehrmacht did not print phrase books to its troops, essentially because most Germans already know a little English and French, and on the Eastern Front, the only words a German soldier needed to know was "Ruky Vverkh!" ("hands up!").

Examples of Those Wacky Nazis include:

Anime and Manga

  • Brockenman and Brocken Jr. from Kinnikuman. Brockenman could actually breathe poison gas, as it happens.
    • Notable in that Brocken Jr. is a HEROIC Nazi.
  • Count Brocken from Mazinger Z was a Nazi ex-officer was considered particularly blood-thirsty by his comrades. The uniforms of his troops -called the Iron Cross- remind of Nazi soldiers, too.
  • Hellsing: It has more or less any possible (as well as impossible) Nazi variant, for example Schrödinger, a really annoying Schrödinger's Cat-Boy wearing a Hitler Jugend uniform. Lieutenant Rip van Winkle almost counts as one of the various potentially gay Nazi archetypes, except for the fact that Rip is a sharpshooter, and also apparently female. And then there's Dok...
  • Kurogane Pukapuka Tai gives us Captain Nina Stoltebeker, who plays into the 'kinky gay fetishist' type (lesbian with a body odour fetish) and 'Schindler' type (shelters a Jewish crewmember at the expense of a perfect personnel-loss record).
  • The neo-Nazis from Black Lagoon get the uptight, fanatical portrayal of them, as does the SS Officer in the flashback. The U-Boat crew, however, get a more hit a more amiable note, not quite hitting any of the more positive portrayals listed above. The captain even tells the SS guy that, considering how he, his peers and his Führer seem, it might be better that the Nazis lose the war.
  • Germany from Axis Powers Hetalia (a Japanese comic about anthropomorphic countries set primarily in WWII) is apparently quite into bondage, Drill Sergeant Nasty, and a tight-ass bureaucrat, though a constructive one. Canonically a Invisible to Gaydar Nazi as of the Buon San Valentino arc. Should be noted that over all, he's a nice guy.
  • The Legend of Koizumi has Nazis as the main villains. It turns out they all survived, including Hitler, Mengele, and Wagner. They live on their moon base, travel to Earth in classic UFOs, and have a giant cannon capable of launching meteor-bullets that hit with the force of a nuclear weapon. Earth's only hope? Beat them in a mahjong tournament.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure had the German army (technically not quite the full-blown Nazis yet, but try telling the writer that - the word is thrown around a lot) on the hero's side. It kind of helped that they were up against super-vampires. Also, the Nazis have cyborg technology.
  • The organization from Monster fall into this pretty well, of the "Fourth Reich" variety.
  • Lupin III had an entire second series episode dedicated to locating Hitler's lost treasure, which naturally played largely into this trope.
  • Even Bleach of all things can't escape from them nazis! While not quite Nazis per say, the newest threat to befall our heroes, the Vandenreich (German for "hidden kingdom") are a very Nazi-esque bunch, from the Germanic theme, to the dress code, to holding down their own Arrancar concentration camps, to even one of their guys being an Expy of Heinrich Himmler!

Comic Books

  • The Nazis facing the Rifle Brigade in Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, featuring such luminaries as Gestapo Hauptmann Wankshaft Venkschaft (who had many ways of making them talk), busty grudge-bearing dominatrix Gerta Gasch, and the Flaschman brothers, Otto and Ernst, the latter of whom seeks revenge on the brigade for killing the former before musing on the evils that men commit to one another and saying that he feels a certain kinship with the Brigade as a fellow soldier. So naturally, they kill him just like every other sympathetic German character in the series.
  • Donna Barr's comic The Desert Peach. Erwin "The Desert Fox" Rommel's younger, flamingly-gay brother; in command of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits unit of the Afrika Corps. The comic has an interesting subversion: the only honest-to-God Nazi party member in the unit is the Jewish Corporal Udo Schmidt.
  • The British war comics, such as Commando, were pretty much built on this. It got better in later years, mostly as a result of changing attitudes to war in general; one issue of Commando in the 90's even focused on a soldier realising the horrors he was having to perpetrate.
  • Neonazi skinheads appear several times in German comic Rudi. Sometimes just for a gag, but in one of the first stories they beat up the protagonists.
  • Almost any Frank Miller comic (Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns, Ronin, etc.) will feature at least one Nazi henchman or gang member who gets killed off in a violent and/or hilarious way.
  • Give Me Liberty has the Aryan Thrust, a group of gay white supremacists.
  • A staple of Captain America's Rogues Gallery. He was hardly alone, as pretty much any comic book hero during The Golden Age of Comic Books would fight them sooner or later.
  • A less common but still present staple of the Justice Society of America owing to its World War II origins but carrying to the present day blending with Stupid Jetpack Hitler and Disco Dan.
  • Alpha Flight founding member Puck (who is much Older Than He Looks) relates fighting Nazis among his accomplishments, claiming how "In Spain, I fought bulls and fascists -- and I let the bulls live."

Film

  • The German film Rosen Fur Den Staatsanwalt (Roses For The Prosecutor), in which a peddler from post-war Germany attempts to blackmail the local prosecutor, a rabid ex-Nazi officer who had unsuccessfully sentenced him to death during the war for acquiring two boxes of military-issued chocolate.
  • The Three Stooges short You Nazty Spy! is the Ur Example, though Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator is quite possibly the Trope Maker.
  • The Blues Brothers: The Illinois Nazis (I hate those guys). All of them get to be the Butt Monkey.
  • Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark is the torture master. His name is probably a play on the German words "Tod" (death) or "tot" (dead).
  • The title character of Doctor Strangelove, black gloves, shrill laugh and all. He's a sinister secret project leader. He's allegedly based on Werner von Braun.
  • Major Koenig in Enemy at the Gates, who seems like he's skirting the borders of sympathy until he pretty much catapults over the Moral Event Horizon.
  • In the film The Sum of All Fears, an atomic bomb is smuggled into the U.S. by a group of German neo-Nazis, who expect the Americans to blame the destruction of Baltimore on the Soviets, leading to a war that would destroy or cripple both nations, leaving a power vacuum in which a new Reich can arise. (In Tom Clancy's novel, the villains were not Nazis but Palestinian extremists.)
  • Two-thirds of the bad guys from The Movie of Hellboy (the last third was Rasputin): Ninja Scientist Steampunk Cyborg Karl Kroenen and The Baroness Helga Ilsa Hauptmann.
  • The plot of The Producers revolves around the made-up play "Springtime For Hitler", a musical romp into the lighter side of the Third Reich. Noted by Mel Brooks as the most tasteless topic for a musical he could think of. Influenced by Lenny Bruce's 'How Hitler Got Started'/'Hitler and the MCA' bit.
    • Not to mention the author of the play who, went confronted said "Who are you? What do you want? My papers are in order. I was only following orders. I love my adopted country!"
  • Colonel Erhardt in To Be or Not to Be is a ridiculous buffoon, but is also extremely dangerous.
  • The horror film Frontiers features a group of French students escaping a future Paris where the Neo-Nazi Party has taken power. They stumble across an abandoned inn and stay the night, where the patriarch of the family that owns it wears an SS uniform. He tries to get the men to have sex with his daughters to propagate the Pure Race, but upon discovering that one is Muslim and one is already in love, orders his family to kill them all. They are also cannibalistic.
  • Inglourious Basterds is basically a deconstructor fleet of this entire article. Most of the archetypes are there.
    • SS Colonel Hans Landa is a primary example mixture of several of the above types - cultured, multilingual, sadistic, silly and prone to making ze important phone call vich vill change zee war. Gestapo Major Dieter Hellstrom being also the bossy cultured one - he even listens to classical music on a scratchy gramophone. Both constitute Evil Is Sexy with ze kinky Cherman accents und leather trenchcoats.
    • Fredrick Zoller is the "I'm Just Doing My Job" Nazi - even though that involves killing Allied soldiers from a clock tower in Monte Casino.
    • Several Mook cannon fodder types appear - some with Swastikas carved on their forehead.
    • Celebrity Pantomine versions of Hitler, Goebbels and Goering amongst others.
  • Dr. Christian Szell from Marathon Man is a perfect example of the torture master and the sadist. He is upset that thus far he has only been referred to cryptically and in passing. He wants to ask you a question. "Is it safe?"
  • Tarantino's Grindhouse features the mock trailer for Werewolf women of the SS with Udo Kier as a secret project leader creating... oh well, I don't want to spoil it for you.
  • Several Greek films set during WWII present Nazis that fall under this trope. In most cases the German officers are presented as a combination of the "cultured" one with the Obstructive Bureaucrat that yells "Heil Hitler" every chance he gets, even when drinking a glass of water. Examples similar to the "look how evil I am" SS-Standartenführer seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Hans Muller (played by Klaus Kinski) in Five For Hell (1969) are not rare either. A notable example is the film Ipolochagos Natassa (Lieutenant Natassa, aka Battlefield Constantinople), where SS Captain Max (played by Kostas Karras) is introduced not only as the "cultured" one and Obstructive Bureaucrat, but one that has personal story with the heroine before the war. Naturally, the most evil ones wear the black Allgemeine-SS uniform, which maybe fits under the Good Colors, Evil Colors trope.
  • Max in Bent is taken into a concentration camp by the Nazis, and mistakenly thought pretending to be Jewish would make him be treated better.
  • Goldfinger. While Goldfinger's German accent and reaction to Nazi gold lead many fans to assume Nazi roots, the character is specifically described as a Soviet agent in the book. Ironically, the actor Gert Frobe was a member of the Nazi party, causing the film to be banned in Israel until after his death, when it was discovered that he used his position to save a family of Jews, like a mini-Schindler.
    • The German accent is an illusion. Gert Frobe didn't speak a word of English and had to be dubbed by English actor Michael Collins. Frobe was such a good actor that the dub is completely unnoticeable.
  • Jackboots on Whitehall has Those Wacky Nazis scaled down to 1/6 size.
  • In the future of Surf Nazis Must Die, various criminal gangs rule the beaches of California and the strongest one is, well, Surf Nazis.
  • "Klaus Schmidt" from X Men First Class is a mixture of cultured and mad doctor; he tells young Erik that he is not like the Nazis, and mocks their obsession with genetics—or at least, blue eyes and blonde hair. Bring mutants into the equation it's a whole different ball game.
  • In the 2012 film Iron Sky, the Nazis who escaped Germany after World War Two ended up heading to the moon and establishing a base there to prepare for an earth invasion. For bonus points, their mothership is named the Götterdämmerung.
  • In Tarzan Triumphs(1943), after Tarzan has defeated a Nazi invasion of Africa, Cheetah stumbles upon the German radio, and begins gibbering into the microphone. In Berlin, the radio operator believes he is finally receiving a message from the mission commander and summons the general. The general listens to Cheetah for a few seconds, then chews out the operator. "This isn't Colonel Von Reichart! IT IS THE FUEHRER!" All present snap to attention and give the Nazi salute.

Literature

  • The Doctor Who novel Just War features a "cultured" Nazi who's quick to say he loathes Wagner.
  • The third book of the Maximum Ride series was allegedly focused on the discovery of Max's parentage. Dr. Roland ter Borcht, however, stole the show by answering the question: what would happen if Arnold Schwarzenegger had been a mad doctor of this type?
  • The Choose Your Own Adventure book Shadow of the Swastika cast the player character as a Jewish teenager in wartime Vienna trying to survive the Holocaust. This concept had the potential to go very wrong indeed, but the goons who rediscovered the book were pleasantly surprised (or disappointed) to find a mature, sensitive and well-researched handling of the subject material.
  • In Andrew Vachss' Burke books, neo-Nazis are recurring antagonists and occasional partners in an Enemy Mine situation, although how important they are runs the gamut.
  • In Gentlehands by M. E. Kerr, Grandpa Trenker is the "cultured" one who tortured Italian Jews by playing opera to make them homesick.
  • In Herman Wouk's The Winds of War and War and Remembrance the hero, as an assignment for the US navy translates the writings of one "von Roon", a German staff officer. Quotes are put in between chapters. This helps the reader agree how much he really dislikes Nazis. Von Roon is an arrogant, pigheaded, jerk, with more then a touch of Insufferable Genius in him. He constantly plays down his own side's evil deeds while heaping scorn and vilification on his enemies. Wouk's Nazis are very well done and believable. In a series that contains war, and Holocaust scenes, they are the creepiest part.
    • Roon wasn't a Nazi in the sense of a signed on member, and he was not one of the most evil characters. He was exceedingly obnoxious however. But the best picture of what a Nazi would be like was when two of them had an elegant meeting to discuss the contradictory "needs" of killing more innocent people and getting rid of the corpses of those already buried, and one generously offers to delay the elimination of the next batch of victims so they can do slave labor. They discuss this as casually as any librarian would discuss sorting books which makes it more chilling then the stereotyped monocled and jackbooted thug. In the process one of them congratulates himself on doing his duty, a harder duty then the guys at the Russian Front have of course.
    • The Auschwitz Commandant who is either Rudolf Hoss or a combination of him and several others is a craftsman at the art of mass murder. He does not really have an emotional investment in the cause or a particular hatred of his victims but he turns out corpses like Henry Kaiser turns out Liberty Ships.
  • In Ian Fleming's Moonraker, Hugo Drax is the classic cold-war era fictional neo-Nazi. (The movie gives him an obsession with a race of perfect physical specimens, but eliminates all specific reference to Germany or the N.A.S.D.P.)

Live-Action TV

  • In the comedy Allo Allo, there's a Nazi for every stereotype.
    • Although the Kinky Sex Nazi, the Gay Nazi and the Gestapo members are three different people.
    • Herr Flick appears quite kinky when he is alone with Helga (that will be the transvestite tendencies perhaps).
    • Herr Von Smallhausen is somewhat bumbling as do the comedy Wehrmacht Colonels and other officers.
    • Lt Gruber and his "little tank" being the Gay Nazi. Subverted at the end of the series run when he marries Helga, has six kids and hires his old boss as his chaffeur.
  • Hogan's Heroes: Any German (except Klink's secretary) qualify for these tropes. And then there are the fake Germans impersonated by Hogan's team...
  • Doctor Who: The Daleks were actually modelled after the Nazis (although taking the policy to the logical extreme). Their creator, Terry Nation, was a World War II scholar. Michael Wisher once said that he had played Davros based on what he thought Hitler would have been like after a hundred years in power.
    • The similarities between Nazis and Daleks are lampshaded in the novel Timewyrm: Exodus, which implies that the aliens who helped Hitler forge the Third Reich modelled it on the Dalek civilization.
    • The Cybermen also have certain Nazi parallels. The serial Silver Nemesis has Neo-Nazis admiring and allying with the Cybermen (before inevitably being betrayed by them).
    • The Daleks are so obsessed with their proliferation of the Dalek Master Race that in Victory of the Daleks, the old batch is positively delighted at being destroyed at the hands of the newer, more "perfect" Daleks they had created.
    • A meta comparison is invoked by the Sixth Doctor in the radio play Jubilee. On an alternate 20th Century Earth that barely survived a Dalek invasion at the turn of the century, the Daleks came to be portrayed in the popular culture as buffoonish, incompetent, ineffectual villains that were the go-to guilt-free enemy in any scenario. The Doctor complains about the human tendency to defang historical evils, resulting in ignorance of the larger applicable truths about them (like racism and cruelty), and directly compares how that Earth treats the Dalek to how the non-alternate Earth treats the Nazis. Incidentally, that alternate Earth is dominated by a inhumane, fascist British Empire wielding Dalek-derived tech. So they basically became the very thing they once fought against.
  • Made in Britain for the neo-Nazi "disaffected youth" version.
  • Kamen Rider had Shocker, a Cobra-like Nebulous Evil Organization of Neo-Nazi terrorists, and its many regrouped and renamed successor organizations. Strangely, only one German member, Colonel Zol, was ever seen.
  • Wolfgang, a recurring Arte Johnson character on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. ("Verrrrrry interestink...but shtupid!")
  • The "Mr Hilter" sketch on Monty Python's Flying Circus - Hilter (John Cleese), Ron Vibbentrop (Graham Chapman) and Bimmler (Michael Palin) stay in a guest house in Minehead (spelled Meinhead) and are entertained by Terry Jones as a shrill enthusiastic landlady. One of the best sketches in the whole of Python.
  • Several of these turn up in this Alas Smith And Jones sketch.
  • Sue White "being a Nazi from a film" complete with leather glover, sinister cigarette smoking and phone call to Berlin - in Green Wing.
  • A Bit of Fry and Laurie classic Major Donaldson sketch plays upon many tropes - including the Gay Nazi and the "Ve are not animals" Nazi. Hugh Laurie, complete with sexy disfigurement eye-scar, does the best pretend Cherman accent.
  • In the Fringe episode "The Bishop Revival" the bad guy is a mad doctor who wants to purify the world with the help of a virus that detects special genetic characteristics.
  • In Top Gear, the presenters (especially Clarkson and May) usually tend to portray German car companies as this. Examples include a a "quintessentially German car" with "ein fanbelt that will last a thousand years" and a Mercedes whose sat nav would only point toward Poland.
  • An episode of CSI New York featured three flavors of Nazis - an original, a skinhead street punk, and a businessman who kept his affiliation secret.
  • Danger 5 is set in an Alternate History WWII. The enemy is Stupid Jetpack Hitler commanding Nazis who are capable of cloning dinosaurs and using Japanese robots in their plans for world domination. It's as awesome as it sounds.
  • MacGyver clashes with neo-Nazis in "The Seven Per Cent Solution".

Music

  • Steely Dan's "Chain Lightning" is about two former Nazis returning to the site of Hitler's Nuremberg speech.
  • Many of Gackt's musical performances, including Requiem et Reminiscence, Ghost, and more.

Professional Wrestling

  • Jack Adkisson and Walt Seiber made a name for themselves in the 1950s and '60s as Fritz and Waldo Von Erich, a pair of unrepentant Nazi heels.

Radio

  • Radio 7's Play and Record has the Time Nazi - basically a parody of this trope and Per Degaton from DCU. He travels back in time to defeat his opponent, before they become a threat. Eventually he ends up fighting the past, present and future versions of himself
  • Doctor Who: Doctor (and later Colonel) Elizabeth Klein from the audios "Colditz", "A Thousand Tiny Wings", "Klein's Story", "Survival of the Fittest" and "Architects of History". She's from a parallel universe where because of something Ace did the Nazis won. She's not naive, she knows the Nazis have done terrible things, but she does believe in the "survival of the fittest" ideology of the Nazis. She is a medical doctor and as compassionate as the Doctor, but she's also cold-blooded enough to abandon the Doctor, steal the TARDIS and edit history to the point where the Nazis have a Moonbase and have beaten the Daleks (think about that for a second).
  • Superman and his co-workers fought more than a few of these during the war years.

Video Games

  • Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich involves the most gratuitous references to the most awesome of wartime comics. Including Nazi gorillas with machine guns.
  • The Medal of Honor video games, although supposed to be serious WWII shooters, often are filled with prime examples. For instance, in Allied Assault, the Nazi guards on the submarine who salute every five seconds.
    • It didn't hurt you were disguised as a high-ranking officer at the time.
    • Underground's Panzerknacker level, full stop.
  • Pretty much every Nazi from Wolfenstein. As befitting a first person shooter, most fall under the "hapless Mook" category, but there are notable exceptions. Senior Colonel General Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse ("Willy" to his good friend Herr Himmler) is a paragon of the "cadaverous and utterly evil Secret Project officer" and "Mad Doctor" types, while his crony Hans Grosse embodies the "kill-crazy muscle-bound grunt" traits.
  • Doc Richtofen of Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombies maps (at least, the latter two) sounds pretty gay and loves killing his creations. (That is to say, zombies.)
  • Laura Bow: The Dagger Of Amon Ra features tall, hot-tempered, sadistic martinet security guard Wolf Heimlich working at the Leyendecker Museum. Apart from being ridiculously strict and dressed in military uniform, he has a suspicious-looking goose step, his dialogue is interspersed with stock German phrases (often shouted/in capital letters), and the game frequently draws attention to the arsenal of weapons in his office. The game does take place in 1926 - three years after the infamous Beer Hall Putsch which put the Nazis on the map, but a considerable amount of time before Hitler's rapid rise to power.
  • Dino D-Day: The year is 1942. Adolf Hitler has succeeded in resurrecting dinosaurs. The reptilian horde has trampled Europe and the Mediterranean. Can nothing stop the Nazi’s dinosaur army?

Web Comics

Web Original

  • Binder of Shame features the appropriately-named Psycho Dave, who apparently turned to the white supremacist philosophy when he failed the fireman's entrance exam and decided to blame affirmative action. One of his game campaigns turned out to involve the player characters being summoned to get the Wand of Orcus so Hitler could win the war with it, much to the horror of Only Sane Man Ab3. Another player saw it as an opportunity for a Pun: "This is cool, kind of like a 'Schindler's Lich'!"
  • The most common villains in the Global Guardians Golden Age campaign were these. The specific villains ranged from Baron Maltus, the head of the Nazi Super Soldier Program, to Herr Doktor Ubrist, Adolph Hitler's personal astrologer and a powerful mystic, and pretty much all the other stereotypical Nazi villains in between.
  • Reds!: Currently the primary villains of the AlternateHistory.com timeline.

Western Animation

  • Blitzwing from Transformers Animated manages in some way to be an example of a number of the above stereotypes with his Multiple Personality Disorder. In fact, even single faces manage to involve various stereotypes.
  • Donald Duck (!), in the anti-Nazi propaganda short "Der Fuehrer's Face" (the source for the page quote), dreams that he is a bumbling Nazi mook driven mad by working in a munitions factory, where he is required to heil at every picture of Hitler. This is enforced by an armed oom-pah band.
  • ReBoot:
    • Megabyte's minion Herr Doktor is a reasonably good approximation of the mad doctor mentioned above, albeit toned down for kids. "Mein digits!"
    • There's also the fourth-season Mainframe Neo-Virals. "I hate Mainframe Neo-Virals!"
  • Pretty much any cartoon character (most Disney characters, Looney Tunes characters, Popeye, etc ) who was around at the time fought the Nazis in one or more propaganda cartoons. Some examples:
    • Daffy Duck in the wartime short Daffy the Commando with their own take on a Schultz.
    • The old Merrie Melodies WWII short "Russian Rhapsody" has der Fuhrer himself fly a plane to Moscow to bomb it but gets foiled by Russian gremlins. At the end, after crashing, he declares: "Nazis is the craaaziest peoples!"
    • In "Spinach Fer Britain", Popeye's trip to donate spinach as war rations hits a snag when he's targeted by a German U-boat; turned out to not be their wisest choice.
  • In the fourth season of The Venture Brothers, the nazis bring Rusty a dog who is the reincarnation of Hitler, asking him to clone Hitler back to human form.

Doc Venture: Clone Hitler, that's all you nazis ever want to do!

  • In one episode of Hey Arnold!, Grampa tells the story of how, during his days as a soldier in World War II, he was caught by a Nazi panzer division while looking for a place to dump some bad meet. In addition to having smiley faces in place of swastikas, the CO of the division uses highly convoluted logic to decide that Phil's earlier warning ("Don't! It's bad meat!") to mean that the meat is good. Phil recognizes that his best hope for survival is letting the CO think he's the smarter of the two. The result is the Nazis becoming sick from food poisoning.

Real Life

  • Neo-Nazis and other racial nationalist groups. Some of the more colorful examples include:
  1. We hate Illinois Nazis!