Those Wacky Nazis - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Nazi; Nazis

Illinois Nazis.

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

— Spike Jones, Der Fuehrer's Face

Those Wacky Nazis covers a variety of Nazi stereotypes.

Before we get on the list, we also suggest you take a look at Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler (closely associated with Nazis, in case you didn't know), World War Two and Stupid Jetpack Hitler.

Though not always a Nazi, the German officer with a peaked cap, knee-length leather boots, and enormous thigh breeches usually pops up somewhere, holding in his hand a riding crop or equivalent instrument of discipline. Usually a Drill Sergeant Nasty.
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 probably "a bit gay".
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 "The 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 first 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 Nazi who kills because he simply enjoys it. The slightest provocation (or none at all) means 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 people or works with the Resistance, a la Allo Allo.
The Secret Project Leader. This is the guy in charge of the demonic alien vampire robozombies and the divine/infernal Artifact that's sure to give Hitler the edge against those darn Allies. The battle between him and the heroes usually doesn't make it in the history books and Hitler himself continues on as cosmically planned. May be a dupe or trying to out-Führer the Führer. It helps that, historically, people high up in the Third Reich hierarchy were, and Hitler entertained their fancies from time to time, but he himself thought all that occult stuff was just silly.
The mook that gets killed as soon as he appears.
The "I'm just a soldier doing my job" Nazi, usually a regular military officer (not SS) who feels My Country Right Or Wrong.
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 means. May also overlap with "Frankenstein", above. Basically Mengele, mixed with the alien vampire robozombie stereotype above.
The aging (but still 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 Fuhrer is not patient, he expects results".

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 main German army, 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 Resistance 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 by far 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. The 51st State portrays them as asinine thugs, whom Sam Jackson brutalizes with a set of golf clubs, and then tricks into consuming vast quantities of laxatives.

On the other hand, during the earlier days of the Cold War, spy shows, such as Mission Impossible or The Man From Uncle, 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...

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 word "Anführer" ('leader'), being not connotated that way, is used instead. In its other meaning of 'guide' and in compound words, "Führer" still is commonly used.
Hände hoch!- "Hands up!"
Jawohl!- "Yes, sir/ma'am!"
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.
Los!- "Go!", often used interchangeably with "Schnell" or "Raus". It also means "Fire" in a U-boat context.
Was ist los? - "What's going on?" Usually uttered by a Nazi trooper after one of his comrades gets knocked out or killed.
Alarm!- "Alarm!" ("We're under attack!", from Old French "à l'arme", meaning "To the weapon". 'to arms').
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 sh**!")
Polizei! ( Police!)

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".
Schweinehund - translated "pig dog". Might also be a compliment for especially resilient people.
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
Itaker: Italian - It has to be noted that fascist Italy was an ally of Nazi Germany.
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".

Examples

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 page picture of the Illinois Nazis (I hate those guys) from The Blues Brothers - all of them get to be the Butt Monkey.
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.
- Consider that one of his faces is modeled after a certain accented Californian governor, and draw your own conclusions.
  - Ironic, as Hitler wasn't a Native German, he was from Austria first.
In the comedy "Allo Allo", there's a Nazi for every stereotype.
- Although the "probably a bit gay" Nazi and the Gestapo members are three different people. Herr Flick appears quite kinky when he is alone with Helga, Herr Von Smallhausen is somewhat bumbling.
I KNOW NOTHING! NOTHING!!!
- Actually, any German from Hogan's Heroes (except Klink's secretary) qualify for these tropes. And then there are the fake Germans impersonated by Hogan's team...
Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark is the torture master.
- Elsa Schneider in Last Crusade fills some part of the Noble Scientist role
Brockenman and Brocken Jr. from Kinnikuman
The title character of Doctor Strangelove is possibly the ur-Torture Master, black gloves, shrill laugh and all.
- He's more the secret project leader, albeit more grounded in reality. He's allegedly based on Werner von Braun.
The Doctor Who novel Just War features a "cultured" Nazi who's quick to say he loathes Wagner.
- No mention of Doctor Who and Nazis can be complete without mentioning the Daleks, who were actually modelled after the Nazis (although taking the policy to the logical extreme).
  - 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 episode Silver Nemesis has a Wagner-obsessed Fourth Reich restoring Neo Nazis vs. the Cybermen
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.
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.
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.
They still pop up now and then. 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.)
Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich involves the most gratuitous references to the most awesome of wartime comics. Including Nazi gorillas with machine guns.
Anybody forgetting 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...
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.
Made in Britain for the neo-Nazi "disaffected youth" version.
The Medal Of Honor videogames, 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 5 seconds.
- It didn't hurt you were disguised as a high-ranking officer at the time.
Kamen Rider X gives us the magnificence that is Starfish Hitler◊.
- Complete with Punny Name: Hitora Hittora (Hitler Starfish/Hitler Hittler)
"HEIL KAIBA!"
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.
  - And unquestionably influenced by Lenny Bruce's 'How Hitler Got Started'/'Hitler and the MCA' bit.
Wolfgang, a recurring Arte Johnson character on Rowan And Martins Laugh In. ("Verrrrrry interestink...but shtupid!")
1990s comedy duo Smith and Jones explored this trope in one of their sketches here (first three minutes or so).
The "Hitler in England" sketch on Monty Pythons Flying Circus.
The "A Bit Gay" stereotype is brought to its logical extreme in the Alternate History webcomic Roswell, Texas where the standard SS uniform is pink. Bondage gear also makes an appearance.
Megabyte's minion Herr Doktor in ReBoot is a reasonably good approximation of the mad doctor mentioned above, albeit toned down for kids.
- "Mein digets!"
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?
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).
Colonel Erhardt in To Be Or Not To Be is a ridiculous buffoon, but is also extremely dangerous.
The horror film Frontier(s) 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.
Inglourious Basterds is basically a deconstructor fleet of this entire article.
While never directly stated to be a Nazi, it's pretty apparent that Team Fortress 2's Medic is a thinly veiled torture master/mad scientist. "Raised in Stuttgart, Germany during an era when the Hippocratic oath had been downgraded to an optional Hippocratic suggestion, the Medic considers healing a generally unintended side effect of satisfying his own morbid curiosity."
- Word Of God has jossed this theory. While some of his backstory does suggest some ties to nazi science, with that "morbid curiosity" part, it may be more of a result from the nazi regime than actually being a nazi himself.
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 Fuhrer seem, it might be better that the Nazis lose the war.
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.
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 Straight Gay Nazi as of the Buon San Valentino arc. Should be noted that over all, he's a nice guy.
- There may also be a hint of My Country Right Or Wrong too as he often complains his Boss is insane.
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.
- With an interesting subversion: the only honest-to-God Nazi party member in the unit is the Jewish Private Udo Schmidt.
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.
Doc Richtofen of Call Of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombie maps (at least, the latter two) sounds pretty gay and loves killing his creations. (That is to say, zombies.)
HEIL MONDO BURGER!!
- The itsy-bitsy spider, went up the water spout. Down came the rain, and '''HEIL HITLER!!!'''
The Legend Of Koizumi has nazis as the main villains. It turns out they all survived, including Hitler, Menegle, and Wagner. They live on their moon base, travel to Earth in classic UF Os, 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.
Nazi Science sneers at not being mentioned sooner.
Averted with Schindlers List. After making that movie, Steven Spielberg felt that he could never touch this trope again.