Nazi zombies

This article is about the horror trope. For the Call of Duty game, see Call of Duty Zombies.

Nazi zombies are a horror trope found in films, video games, and comic books. Nazi zombie narratives usually feature undead Nazi soldiers resurrected to fight for the Third Reich. The book Nazisploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture described the theme as a small subgenre of horror films.

Sculptures of Nazi zombies in an art exhibition by Jake and Dinos Chapman.

History

An early example of Nazis being associated with zombies comes from the pulp magazine stories by Theodore Roscoe.^[1] In Z is for Zombie (1937), Germans manipulate the people of Haiti by appealing to their religious beliefs about voodoo zombies.^[2] The film King of the Zombies (1941) was created at a time when many films about voodoo zombies were being made.^[3] Although it depicts an Austrian scientist, it does not explicitly describe him as a Nazi.^[4] The first true Nazi horror film, Revenge of the Zombies (1943), was a spiritual successor to King of the Zombies.^[5] American horror comics during World War II occasionally featured Nazi or Imperial Japanese villains controlling zombies, representing fears that these powers intended to subjugate others.^[6] The Marvel Comics story "The Horror of the Haunted Cathedral" in Marvel Mystery Comics #28 (1942), a story about a Nazi general raising corpses in Louisiana, was among the first zombie stories to depict zombies as the living dead.^[7]

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.^[8] Films like Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) and Teenage Zombies (1959) followed the trend of science fiction stories about radiation and nuclear technology in the 1950s by depicting Nazi scientists creating and controlling zombies, taking the form of "atom-powered zombies" and experiments on teenagers, respectively.^[9]

The modern zombie was developed by George A. Romero in his Night of the Living Dead films, beginning with Night of the Living Dead (1968).^[10][3] Nazi zombies returned in popular culture through The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975) by Robert Anton Wilson.^[11]

The first wave of Nazi zombie films as a popular trend took place in the 1970s and 1980s,^[12][13] following a broader trend of Nazi exploitation films.^[5] Shock Waves (1977) first popularized Nazi zombies as a film genre.^[14][15] This continued with a trend of films in the 1980s such as Night of the Zombies (1981) and Zombie Lake (1981)^[12][13]

The second wave of Nazi zombie films arose in the 2000s,^[12] accompanying a revival of the zombie film genre.^[16] Horrors of War (2006) launched a new wave of Nazi zombie films, stylized after more recent developments in zombie fiction like swift running zombies introduced in 28 Days Later (2002).^[3] Other films included Outpost (2008),^[15][17] Blood Creek (2009),^[18] Dead Snow (2009),^[15][19] War of the Dead (2011),^[20] and Frankenstein's Army (2013).^[21] Some of these films 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.^[17] 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.^[22]

Later films such as Overlord (2018) continued the Nazi zombie film genre.^[23]

Nazi zombies later developed as a popular trope in video games.^[10] The Nazi zombie first appeared as a video game enemy in the Wolfenstein series. They were introduced in Wolfenstein 3D (1992), and the franchise built on the idea in Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001).^[24] The use of Nazi zombies as a video game element was 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.^[25][26]

Themes

Nazi zombie fiction is an example of the Nazi exploitation genre^[27][28] and the Nazi horror genre.^[29] Nazi zombie films can function as anti-war films that raise questions about good and evil.^[29]

Nazi zombies are comparable to other examples of Nazi exploitation horror like the Nazi werewolves from Iron Wolf (2013)^[30] and the fictional film trailer Werewolf Women of the SS in the film Grindhouse (2007).^[21] Horrors of War features both Nazi zombies and Nazi werewolves.^[29] Frostbite (2006) similarly features a Nazi vampire.^[30] There is also a connection to Nazi cloning stories like The Lucifer Complex (1978), where both can depict a scientific explanation for Nazis returning.^[31]

Nazis and zombies are culturally depicted as villains. While zombies are a fictional creation, the use of historical Nazis as villains has elevated their status in popular culture to that of a stock character.^[27][32] Zombie films can be used to express the worries of society in the time that the film is created.^[3] Nazi zombies express ideological concerns, including the fear that Nazis can still be a threat or the reconciliation of nations where Nazism is part of their history.^[33] This allows nations affected by Nazism to express and evaluate lingering anxieties and trauma about this history.^[12] The use of zombies allows the memory of Nazism to be symbolized as something that "literally refuses to die".^[34]

The Nazi zombie allows media to draw from themes associated with both the Nazi and zombie elements: the collective memory of the Nazis in World War II and the modern societal themes represented in zombie fiction.^[27] Nazi zombies can be used as a simple representation of evil.^[32] Nazis and zombies are both used in fiction to represent a more dangerous side of humanity and the potential of the audience to become destructive in this manner.^[35] Unlike many genres, there are not significant examples of Nazi zombie media with the villains as the protagonists.^[36]

Using Nazi zombies as villains allows for the depoliticization of war while still having an ideological enemy.^[37][38] Turning Nazis into zombies means their role as villains can be further simplified by dehumanizing and othering them.^[39] 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.^[40] 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.^[39] Nazi zombie films can also allow the harms caused by Nazism and the Holocaust to be addressed with dark humor.^[41]

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.^[42] Nazi zombies can be used as a threat that brings other countries together to fight a common enemy, which is represented in films like Outpost and War of the Dead.^[32]

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.^[43][36]

Stories about Nazi zombies may use supernatural explanations for the existence of zombies instead of biological ones, further allowing Nazi zombies to be seen as unnatural.^[44] Others invoke the history of Nazi human experimentation to justify their zombies.^[24]

Nazi zombie fiction subverts the common trope of zombies representing the oppressed being controlled.^[45] 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.^[45][46] 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.^[47] 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.^[48] Nazi zombies add an additional layer to this consideration as they are unthinking but are not separated from their living identities the way that many zombies in fiction and still retain their Nazi affiliation.^[48][32]

Critics of Nazi zombie fiction describe it as mere parody or as a misrepresentation of Nazism's threat.^[17]

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.^[49] 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.^[15][50][24] 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.^[51]

Video games featuring Nazi zombies are primarily associated with the horror and action genres.^[52] 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]

See also

• Zombie film