No, he was an SS officer, the black uniform with the stylized S's wasn't the designation for the Gestapo. Many group the 2, but they were distinct and separate. Contrary to popular belief, there were very few gestapo agents.

The SS were originally Hitler's personal guards after he abolished the SA(brownshirts).

Dead, this is the nicest way I can think to say this: Maybe you'd be happier watching Star Wars.

Inglorious Basterds is the best Tarintino film since Pulp Fiction not in spite of your complaints, but because of them.

Despite your choice to paint every SS officer with the same brush and say that every one of them were evil, most of the civilized world believes that even in a state of war, there are some things you just can't do--no matter how bad you think your enemy is.

Even if your enemy is threatening genocide on a segment of it's population--you are NOT allowed to dress up in their uniforms, go behind enemy lines, and wreck havoc.

Even if your enemy has killed children--you are NOT allowed to torture him, even if by torturing you might save lives.

No matter what your enemy has done or might do, it is never okay to mutilate them in an attempt to instill fear in their allies who might find their bodies.

Despite what Walter Sobchak might tell you about 'nam, there most definitely ARE rules in war and even your enemies unwillingness to play by them does not excuse your breaking them. Torture is never okay. Period. The very notion of "war crimes" presupposes that there exist definitive lines between good and evil and as soon as you cross that line and start torturing the enemy, you lose the right to call yourself the good guy. You might win the war, but you've lost your humanity and you are a criminal.


In my opinion, the most interesting aspect of Inglorious Basterds is that it is an incredibly evil movie. IG challenges the notion that torture is wrong by telling a story where the audience is shown a situation where the ends seems to justifies the means. We root for the Basterds as they brutally murder unarmed prisoners of war. We laugh as they scalp people and carve into German foreheads. The Basterds break the rules, but in doing so, they save millions of lives. Tarintino is justifying torture.

This isn't a black and white WWII story where the good guys are brave young men who nobly answer the call of duty and bravely storm the beaches of Normandy while the bad guys run concentration camps. Those movies are easy to watch. There is nothing challenging about that.

Tarintino is asking us to make our own judgments about protagonists who are save millions of lives by committing war crimes. What do we think? How much of what they do is justified? If you can save a million innocent lives by torturing a few hundred bad guys, is that okay?

If the Basterds only target the worst of the worst like you are suggesting, this is just another WWII movie. The fact that the Basterds decided that "nazi ain't got no humanity" and therefore, war crimes are justified in this case is what makes this movie truly interesting. The Basterds justify torture by painting every German in a uniform with the same brush and that's what makes them such truly horrible heroes.

On Wikipedia, he is identified as Major Hellstrom of the Gestapo.

I know about the Night of the Long Knives and all that. Purge of the SA-man-who-liked-young-boys.

This is where I lost you. Are you saying that it is unfair to stereotype SS officers? That they were unique little flowers and some of them were good? The SS had no redeeming characteristics whatsoever -- it was pure evil, and the men who helped maintain it were evil as well.

remember, wikipedia is edited by anyone with an account, and the gestapo was under the umbrella of the SS. But that's all minutae

This is dumb for us to argue about whether he was estapo or SS then. Point is Gestapo/SS clearly distinguishable from Wehrmacht. ****ing love saying Wehrmacht.

The point really is that the Basterds aren't heros and you aren't supposed to feel comfortable through the whole movie. Whether the regular German conscripts are distinguished with respect to the SS is a very very minor quibble compared to how the Germans are characterized with respect to the Basterds.

Strange that the Germans are often given a lot more backstory, especially sympathetic ones, as opposed to the Basterds, who are fairly indescript, no?

So what are you saying?

This convo is still less stupid than that of BulletproofMonks solid theory that Stiglitz didn't want their plan to succeed and just wanted to kill as many Nazis as possible at the movie premier.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

I think it's very, very dangerous to make broad statements like "all SS officers were evil and they had no redeeming characteristics." I think when you call an entire group of people "evil" like that, you are making the same kind of broad generalization that allowed those SS officers to commit genocide.

To say that Hitler invaded Poland because he was evil, and the SS killed millions because they were evil, and no one questioned those orders because they were evil, you've simplified things too much.

You're attributing all the horrific things that happened to one vague, abstract term and completely overlooked who these men were, the general atmosphere in which they were raised, and what conditions were in place that allowed them to be misled by a charismatic leader and some very poor science.

I'm not attributing the genocidal acts to evil spirits lurking deep inside these people. All I'm saying is that you can't ignore the evil crimes they committed in determining what kind of people they were. If someone commits acts of genocide and heinous maimings, that makes them evil in my book, and that's hardly an unfair conclusion to draw.

dude, you want to discuss the film, and how it was shot. Or the characters themselves and how they interacted? Then this can be a fine place for that.

But to want to pigeon hole an obvious work of fiction into the framework of an actual event from back in the 1940's, pulease. Might as well get into why Springtime for Hitler was a drama and not a musical as Franz Liebkind insisted it was.

Where do you draw the line to where it gets to be offensive and perverting history? I hold Holocaust movies to a high standard and I put that movie in the Holocaust category because of the numerous Jewish references and the time period in which it was set. Obviously Tarantino is free to make his movies, and I'm free to criticize him. Since he did a pretty good job altering the story, would you have had a problem if Tarantino had done a movie about some Jewish guy who came to power in the 1940s and had rounded up all of the blonde-haired blue eyed non-Jews? It would never be made, obviously, but I'm sure it could have been a really interesting movie, just like Inglourious Basterds. Just my opinion.

does your book contain any chapters on psychology and obedience?

no, didn't think so.

this stuff has been explained and proven beyond much debate. do some learnin, then make your misguided conclusions.

I'm sorry my heart doesn't bleed for them like yours apparently does. Making excuses for disgusting behavior like that is pathetic.

lol^^^

ignorant much?

Probably Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, or any of the other 70's naziploitation films.

I have seen many well produced documentaries of the era, if you want more content like that, anywhere but Hollywood is your choice.

Dead:

Read up on the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment. I think you'll be shocked to find just how easy it is to make a person "evil".

There's that great clip of the Milgram in one of Michael Moore's movies. The voice over 50,000 volts, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

Familiar with both - I took intro to psych as one of my social sciences in college. I don't consider administering a shock to a person in a neighboring room to be on the same scale of genocide. I also don't consider those people to be "evil."

you don't seem to be able to consider much so this is not surprising.

Great post, Khaos. I really wish I'd thought to post that earlier on.

So, you've seen the video of the Milgram experiments? The video where learner in the next room is literally screaming in agonizing pain before going completely silent (as if they were unconscious) and then the teacher (a civilian--not a battle hardened soldier) continues to shock them with voltage that is capable of killing a person?