Nazi zombies

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Sculptures of Nazi zombies in an art exhibition by Jake and Dinos Chapman. Nazi zombies - Jake or Dinos Chapman show at the White Cube Gallery in London.jpg
Sculptures of Nazi zombies in an art exhibition by Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Nazi zombies are a stock character that depicts zombies who are affiliated with or controlled by Nazis. Nazi zombie fiction combines the Nazi exploitation genre with the horror genre. The earliest Nazi zombie films were King of the Zombies (1941) and Revenge of the Zombies (1943), which depicted Nazi scientists brainwashing and controlling others in the style of voodoo zombies. Further Nazi zombie films in the 1950s and 1960s featured Nazi scientists experimenting to create technological zombies or trying to raise the dead. Shock Waves (1977) was the first film to depict the modern style of shambling undead zombies as Nazis. It was followed by Night of the Zombies (1981), Zombie Lake (1981), and Oasis of the Zombies (1982). Interest in zombie fiction declined until returning in the 2000s. Horrors of War (2006) revived the Nazi zombie genre and was followed by another wave of films. Nazi zombie video games were also created at this time, beginning with Wolfenstein 3D (1992) and achieving popularity with Call of Duty: World at War (2008).

Contents

Nazis and zombies are both used in fiction to represent evil, and their combination allows audiences to reflect on lingering fears of Nazism. Depicting Nazis as undead creates a dehumanizing effect and makes it easier to other them or justify violence against them. While typical zombie fiction symbolizes the loss of individualism, this is treated more ambiguously with Nazi zombies because they still retain their Nazi identity.

History

Early examples

Zombie films first appeared as a genre in the 1930s. [1] The earliest zombie films featured masters who created and controlled the zombies, either through science or magic. [2] Films depicting Nazis as villains were avoided for political reasons until the release of Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). [1] The earliest Nazi zombie stories told of evil Nazi scientists brainwashing people to do their bidding. [3] [4] In the pulp magazine story Z is for Zombie (1937) by Theodore Roscoe, Germans manipulate the people of Haiti by appealing to their religious beliefs about voodoo zombies. [5]

The film King of the Zombies (1941) was created among a popular wave of voodoo zombie films. [6] King of the Zombies depicts an Austrian scientist who uses voodoo magic to create zombies in the Caribbean. [4] The scientist is not explicitly described as a Nazi, [7] but promotional material referred to him as a "secret agent for a European government". [4] King of the Zombies ends with the American protagonist snapping his friend out of a zombified state by appealing to their friendship, implying that American comradery and independence are more powerful than Nazi totalitarianism. [8] The first true Nazi horror film, Revenge of the Zombies (1943), was a spiritual successor to King of the Zombies. [9] Revenge of the Zombies follows the same general plot as King of the Zombies, but instead of having the female character play a sacrificial role for the American protagonists, she is weaponized after being taken by the Nazi antagonist. [10]

American horror comics during World War II occasionally featured Nazi or Imperial Japanese villains who controlled zombies. [11] The Timely Comics story "The Horror of the Haunted Cathedral" in Marvel Mystery Comics #28 (1942) depicted a Nazi raising corpses in Louisiana, making this one of the first zombie stories to depict zombies as the living dead. [12] Nazi zombie stories persisted into the 1950s, including a 1954 issue of the Dark Mysteries horror comic that featured the six-page story "The Living Dead", about the son of a Nazi creating zombies out of people who had been taken by his father. [13] Films like Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) and Teenage Zombies (1959) also depicted Nazi scientists as they created and controlled zombies, but these were influenced by the science fiction stories about radiation and nuclear technology. The films presented "atom-powered zombies" and experimentation on teenagers, respectively. [14] The films They Saved Hitler's Brain (1963) and The Frozen Dead (1966) were about evil Nazi scientists who tried to raise Nazis from the dead. [15]

Modern zombies

George A. Romero invented the modern conception of a zombie as a shambling revived corpse for his Night of the Living Dead films, beginning with Night of the Living Dead (1968). [16] [6] Nazi exploitation films were frequently made in the 1970s and 1980s, [9] and Nazi zombie films were created as part of the trend. [17] [18] Shock Waves (1977) was the first film to adapt the shambling corpses inspired by Night of the Living Dead into the Nazi zombie genre. [19] [20] This film popularized the idea of Nazi zombies. [21] [22] The defining trait of zombies in Shock Waves is that they are unkillable. Instead of being cannibals, they pilot U-boats indefinitely because they do not need to eat or breathe. [20] Shock Waves was followed by the Nazi zombie films Night of the Zombies (1981), Zombie Lake (1981), [17] [18] and Oasis of the Zombies (1982). [19] Night of the Zombies was originally going to be set in Japan and based on director Joel M. Reed 's experiences in the Vietnam War, but travel expenses led him to shoot the film in Germany instead. [23] Zombie Lake and Oasis of the Zombies were made as allegories for human nature, unlike previous films about the brutality of war. They presented the zombies as Nazis who were killed in surprise attacks and arose to seek revenge. [24]

World War II media proliferated in the 1990s and 2000s. [25] The genre of zombie films was then revived by films like 28 Days Later (2002) and Resident Evil (2002). [19] The second wave of Nazi zombie films began with Horrors of War (2006). [6] [26] This was followed by Nazi zombie films like Outpost (2008), [22] [27] Blood Creek (2009), [28] Dead Snow (2009), [22] [29] War of the Dead (2011), [30] and Frankenstein's Army (2013). [31] Nazi zombie films of this era incorporated the new style of swift running zombies popularized by 28 Days Later. [6] [26] Horrors of War director Peter Ross and Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola both cited a desire for the zombies to be efficient killers instead of typical shambling zombies. [32] The films of this period sometimes deviated from the standard zombie formula by allowing them to use weapons or eliminating their cannibalistic tendencies. Outpost, Dead Snow and Frankenstein's Army present zombies reminiscent of revenants, draugr, and cyborgs, respectively. [27] Horrors of War functioned as a work of historical fiction with zombies, rather than a traditional horror film. [33] Director Richard Raaphorst attempted to create a zombie film about the Normandy landings, Worst Case Scenario , but production never went beyond the creation of trailers and he instead turned his focus to Frankenstein's Army. [34] Later films such as Overlord (2018) continued the Nazi zombie film genre. [35]

As they returned in cinema, Nazi zombies also developed as a popular trope in video games. [16] The Nazi zombie first appeared as a video game enemy in the Wolfenstein series, beginning with Wolfenstein 3D (1992). [36] [37] The idea was then popularized by the Call of Duty franchise with its Call of Duty Zombies game mode, first appearing in Call of Duty: World at War (2008). Call of Duty Zombies remains the most well-known example of Nazi zombies in video games. [38] [39] In comic books, Nazi zombies appeared in the manga series Hellsing , the graphic novel War of the Undead (2007) and the Marvel Comics series Marvel Zombies Destroy! (2012). [37]

Genre

Nazi zombie fiction falls under the Nazi exploitation genre [40] [41] and the Nazi horror genre. [42] Nazi zombie films can also function as anti-war films that raise questions about good and evil. [42] Video games featuring Nazi zombies are primarily associated with the horror and action genres. [43] To explain the existence of zombies, stories about Nazi zombies may invoke the history of Nazi human experimentation, use paranormal explanations to create a sense of unnaturalness, [44] or use a combination of the two. [19] Unlike many genres, there are not significant examples of Nazi zombie media with the villains as the protagonists. [45] Critics of Nazi zombie fiction describe it as mere parody or as a misrepresentation of Nazism's threat. [27]

Nazi zombies are comparable to other examples of Nazi exploitation horror like the Nazi werewolves from Iron Wolf (2013) [46] and from the fictional film trailer Werewolf Women of the SS in the film Grindhouse (2007). [31] Horrors of War features both Nazi zombies and Nazi werewolves. [42] Frostbite (2006) similarly features a Nazi vampire. [46] There is also a connection to Nazi cloning stories like The Lucifer Complex (1978), where also depict a scientific explanation for Nazis returning. [47] Nazi zombies produce a thematic contrast when placed in an otherwise realistic environment from World War II, such as the battle-torn ruins and era-accurate weapons in the original Call of Duty Zombies. [48]

Themes

A Nazi zombie NaziZombie03A.jpg
A Nazi zombie

Nazis and zombies are both culturally depicted as villains and can be used as a simple representation of evil. While zombies are a fictional creation, historical Nazis have been used as villains in popular culture such that they can be used as a stock character. [40] [49] [50] In both cases, they represent a more dangerous side of humanity, including the potential of the audience to act evilly. [51] Zombies are often used in fiction to express modern societal worries, [6] [40] and in the case of Nazi zombies, this includes lingering anxieties about the threat of Nazism. For nations where Nazism is part of their history, stories about Nazi zombies can be used as a form of self-reflection or a means to address historical trauma. [52] [17] Making them into zombies can present Nazism as something that "literally refuses to die". [53]

Using Nazi zombies as villains allows for the depoliticization of a conflict while still having an ideological enemy. [54] [55] They are unthinking, but they are not separated from their living identities the way that many zombies in fiction and still retain their Nazi affiliation. [56] [49] [57] Turning Nazis into zombies means their role as villains can be further simplified by dehumanizing and othering them. [58] Placing Nazi iconography alongside the undead strips the Nazi ideology of its self-perceived superiority. [59] Othering the perpetrators of the Holocaust in this way can comfort the audience by implying regular humans are not capable of such acts and such a thing cannot happen again. [58] Nazi zombie films can also address the harms caused by Nazism and the Holocaust using dark humor. [60] Media about Nazi zombies rarely mentions the Holocaust directly, as the presence of zombies provides a new moral justification for killing them while the Holocaust is only remembered implicitly. [61] [45]

Unlike traditional zombie stories where humanity is turned on itself and may even be responsible for its own downfall, Nazis are depicted as an external threat separate from the rest of humanity. [62] Sometimes this is a threat that brings other countries together to fight a common enemy, which is represented in films like Outpost and War of the Dead. [49] When in conflict with Nazi zombies, the Allies of World War II are presented as inherently on the side of good and fighting on behalf of humanity instead of solely for their own nations or ideologies. [63] [64]

Traditional zombie fiction derives horror from the lack of identity or free will possessed by the zombies. They mindlessly seek to kill, contrasting with the individualist philosophy that is common in the Western world. [3] Early stories about Nazis creating and controlling zombies reflected fears of Nazi subjugation. [11] When the Nazis themselves are zombies, it subverts the common trope of zombies symbolizing the oppressed. [65] The genre may still consider themes of the individual having their individuality robbed from them, which reflects the Nazi characteristic of individuals giving up their individuality to the Volksgemeinschaft . [65] [66] In many cases, Nazi zombies will be organized and militaristic instead of entirely mindless. [67] Nazi zombie fiction leaves open the question of whether all people who give in to a totalitarian government, regardless of their reasons or circumstances, are culpable and warrant a violent response. [68] Discourse around Nazism, such as the banality of evil argument proposed by Hannah Arendt, considers whether Nazis were driven primarily by ideology or by self-interest. [56] Arendt suggested that the public dismissed belief in totalitarian ideology as merely the result of "propaganda and brainwashing" to cope with how popular it became. [69]

Video games involving violent gameplay require moral disengagement on behalf of players and must prevent them from feeling uncomfortable about violence they carry out as the player character. [70] Nazis and zombies both assist in this process by presenting targets that players can justify fighting; zombies have no moral considerations because they are soulless and aggressive, while Nazis are identified as inherently evil. [22] [71] [36] German and Japanese characters are sometimes playable in Nazi zombie video games, such as in Zombie Army Trilogy and Call of Duty Zombies, respectively. This creates sympathy for non-ideological members of their nations while further othering Nazis, though zombie fiction related to World War II may sometimes also include zombification of the Imperial Japanese Army, which presents the risk of Orientalism. [44] Nazi zombie video games follow the tradition of an individual zombie being easy to defeat and the danger instead coming from a large number of zombies at once. This takes on additional meaning when it is compared to ideology like Nazism, where it becomes stronger as its numbers grow. [72]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Miller 2011, pp. 140–141.
  2. ↑ Faragher 2021, pp. 70–71.
  3. 1 2 Miller 2011, p. 139.
  4. 1 2 3 Miller 2011, p. 140.
  5. ↑ Luckhurst 2015, pp. 60, 116.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Whittall 2020, p. 171.
  7. ↑ Whittall 2020, p. 178n1.
  8. ↑ Faragher 2021, pp. 82–83.
  9. 1 2 Whittall 2020, p. 167.
  10. ↑ Faragher 2021, pp. 85–87.
  11. 1 2 Kee 2024, p. 15.
  12. ↑ Kee 2024, p. 39.
  13. ↑ Luckhurst 2015, p. 115.
  14. ↑ Luckhurst 2015, p. 112.
  15. ↑ Miller 2011, p. 141.
  16. 1 2 Webley 2015, p. 201.
  17. 1 2 3 Jüngerkes & Wienand 2012, p. 239.
  18. 1 2 Bridges 2012, p. 72.
  19. 1 2 3 4 Höglund 2016, p. 181.
  20. 1 2 Miller 2011, p. 142.
  21. ↑ Whittall 2020, p. 170.
  22. 1 2 3 4 Luckhurst 2015, p. 116.
  23. ↑ Miller 2011, pp. 144–145.
  24. ↑ Miller 2011, pp. 143, 147.
  25. ↑ Höglund 2016, p. 177.
  26. 1 2 Höglund 2016, pp. 181–182.
  27. 1 2 3 Whittall 2020, p. 172.
  28. ↑ Ward 2015, p. 59.
  29. ↑ Chapman 2019, p. 48.
  30. ↑ Ward 2015, p. 56.
  31. 1 2 Ward 2015, p. 55.
  32. ↑ Miller 2011, pp. 145–146.
  33. ↑ Bishop 2014, p. 181.
  34. ↑ Ward 2012, pp. 106–108.
  35. ↑ Ordoña 2018.
  36. 1 2 Webley 2015, p. 206.
  37. 1 2 Bishop 2014, p. 183.
  38. ↑ Whittall 2020, p. 168.
  39. ↑ Webley 2015, pp. 206–207.
  40. 1 2 3 Chapman 2019, p. 44.
  41. ↑ Jüngerkes & Wienand 2012, p. 238.
  42. 1 2 3 Whittall 2020, p. 174.
  43. ↑ Webley 2015, p. 207.
  44. 1 2 Chapman 2019, p. 49.
  45. 1 2 Whittall 2020, p. 177.
  46. 1 2 Whittall 2020, p. 175.
  47. ↑ Bridges 2012, p. 78.
  48. ↑ Höglund 2016, p. 182.
  49. 1 2 3 Whittall 2020, p. 173.
  50. ↑ Miller 2011, p. 144.
  51. ↑ Ward 2012, p. 108.
  52. ↑ Whittall 2020, pp. 171–172.
  53. ↑ Jüngerkes & Wienand 2012, p. 246.
  54. ↑ Chapman 2019, pp. 47–48.
  55. ↑ Webley 2015, pp. 206, 212.
  56. 1 2 Chapman 2019, pp. 51–52.
  57. ↑ Höglund 2016, p. 184.
  58. 1 2 Chapman 2019, pp. 46–48.
  59. ↑ Miller 2011, pp. 147–148.
  60. ↑ Whittall 2020, pp. 177–178.
  61. ↑ Chapman 2019, p. 47.
  62. ↑ Chapman 2019, pp. 52–53.
  63. ↑ Chapman 2019, pp. 48–49.
  64. ↑ Höglund 2016, p. 185.
  65. 1 2 Chapman 2019, p. 50.
  66. ↑ Jüngerkes & Wienand 2012, p. 240.
  67. ↑ Bishop 2014, p. 180.
  68. ↑ Chapman 2019, p. 53.
  69. ↑ Faragher 2021, p. 83.
  70. ↑ Chapman 2019, p. 45.
  71. ↑ Chapman 2019, p. 46.
  72. ↑ Chapman 2019, p. 51.

References

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