Headscratchers / Overlord (2018)

• Why are there African-American soldiers in the Airborne here, when units like the Paratroopers were segregated units during WWII?
  • To make 1940s America look less racist than Nazi Germany.
  • Not to defend it, but this seems to be an alternate history where paratroopers are not elite all-volunteer units but rather conscripts.
• Where are all the officers? Could one not be spared to lead a mission such as this?
  • It's a small simple commando raid led by a sergeant. Parachute, destroy the objective, bunker down and wait for reinforcements. Why would an officer be absolutely critical?
  • Not critical, per se, but still a curious omission considering the amount of men involved.
  • It seemed a really important objective for a single sergeant to lead an entire platoon who require more NCO's and at least one officer to be in command like a 2nd Lt.
  • Historically, almost every plane would have at least one officer in its "stick" of paratroopers, both to ensure leadership and to make sure that no unit could be decapitated by the loss of a single plane. The rare C-47 that wasn’t carrying at least one officer would have an SNCO aboard. On top of this precaution, US Army paratroopers in WWII as well as today would be briefed on the entire Airborne operation, so that if the drop went wrong, LGOPs (Little Groups of Paratroopers—yes, that's the actual term) would assemble and hit whatever objective they could reach, even if it wasn’t their own, even if the highest-ranking man on the ground was a slick-sleeve private.
• Why did the Nazis capture Rosenfeld for experimentation but they kill Eldson on the spot?
  • Eldson not being 'pure' would be obvious straight away while Rosenfeld in the dark might be mistaken for the 'right' experimentation material.
    • It may also be the case that the Nazi patrol who found Eldson were a different group of soldiers than the ones guarding the village.
• Something bugs me with the dog thing they find in the woods. I understand the Foreshadowing, but how did it die? Did it escape and the Nazis shot it? Why wouldn't they try to destroy it or bring it back for dissection instead of letting it rot in the woods where it might give away that they're up to inhumane experiences?
  • It may have been injected with a less refined version of the serum, or the serum behaves differently in dogs than humans, causing the dog to die on its own and partially melt after escaping.
    • It may also have been a hint that there was more supernatural goings-on beyond the horrors in the laboratory. Remember how Boyce only gets on to the truck hauling corpses after he was chased by a dog?
  • WMG here, but I think the mutated dog was a trial of the tar's effects on living beings, which probably were wild, uncontrolled physical mutations. We also see that in the brief glimpse of Chloe's aunt, wone of the poor souls who got injected with the tar in order to extract the refined serum from their blood.
• How exactly did the Nazis find out about the Tar? Judging by the fact that the village didn't have a bunch of torn apart Nazis in the Square, The villagers never used it, and even if they did its specified that the unrefined version is unstable so it's not like the village was full of undead monstrosities, my only assumption is that they were part of the Thule, and probably found some old religious text along the lines of "found a pit of black ooze that turns man into demon so we built a church on it" and went there.
  • The villagers were aware of the tar's existence, Chloe comments on it being what caught the attention of the nazis, and we do see in the movie that some villagers did collaborate with them. Your guess is exactly what I thought, that there were old legends about a hellish substance that the villagers sealed by building a church on top of it. One of the villagers told the germans, one of them decided to check if there was some truth to that superstitious nonsense, and things deteriorated from there.
• Why hide the tar's existence? Sure, what the Nazis did was horrendous, but the tar is still a breakthrough in medical science, and surely there must be other ways to refine it.
  • That question is clearly answered in the film: They witnessed what the tar was capable of in the wrong hands and wanted to ensure that no one would ever be able to weaponize it again. And considering that the serum developed by the Nazis was already an attempt to refine the tar and still turned the test subjects into uncontrollable, murderous rage zombies, it's safe to assume that whatever medical applications it might have are not worth the risk of a possible Zombie Apocalypse.

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