Not all that long ago, I watched the late 1960s British television program The Champions. Our heroes are agents for an international agency related to the United Nations. The two recurring types of villains are the PRC and old Nazis (plenty of one-off ones in between). While there was one who just used to be Nazi and has no care for ideology now, there were two that deeply resented the loss of the war and wanted to set off a nuclear weapon now to make up for it.
But when I thought about it, I realized just how many “old Nazi” stories I’d seen in fiction adventure shows from the 1960s and 1970s. Saw some “second gen” with Nazis’s kids inheriting their mission in later eras, too. It’s not the dominant form of villian in most shows, but they’d still occasionally turn up.
Does anyone remember when this trope got popular - I can think of a former Nazi in some very old stories (Green Hornet radio show old), but I guess I’m wondering if there was a particular trend on this in the 1960s, whether it was deliberate or guided or just something audiences responded to, so got more stories. Like I’ve heard about gorillas in comic books of a certain era.
There was an episode of the old Mission: Impossible in which a new generation of Nazis were trying to recover a cache of gold so they could found a Fourth Reich. This was in 1966, I think, and was rebooted in the 1980s iteration of the series.
Also in '67 or '68 (the last two seasons with Martin Landau and Barbara Bain), Wilfrid Hyde-White was an ON industrialist who was backing Hans Gudegast (aka Eric Braeden) in his efforts to found a Fourth Reich.
There was an episode of The Saint in 1965 (the 20th anniversary of Hitler’s death) with ONs trying to recover a bogus relic. I don’t remember how that one turned out.
In one episode of The Time Tunnel (1967), aliens had kidnapped Hitler a moment before he committed suicide and kept him in suspended animation.
In the pilot episode of The New Avengers (1977), ONs were planning to resuscitate Adolf Hitler.
One episode of Wonder Woman (1978) was a takeoff on The Boys from Brazil, with Diana Prince foiling an attempt to clone Hitler.
I think the woman in that episode of The Saint claimed to be Hitler’s daughter (she wasn’t) and tried to con Simon Templar into buying the relic. What she wanted it for, I don’t recall.
Did Nazis ever go away from popular culture after WWI?
Robert Heinlein’s first juvenile novel, Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) featured a Nazi revival on the moon
Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel Moonraker (1955) had ex-Nazis planning to use Britain’s first space missile to drop an atom bomb on London. I recall hearing someone complaining in the 1960s or 1970s about thrillers whose plots revolved around ex-Nazis getting hold of atomic bombs, so the idea wasn’t confined to Fleming.
The 1963 movie Madmen of Mandoras featured Nazis who saved Hitler’s head and kept it alive (a la The Brain that Wouldn’t Die), hoping to use it for a Nazi revival. The film was lengthened by 20 minutes to make the movie They Saved Hitler’s Brain in 1968. It’s not an improvement.
Come to think of it, there were lots of sadistic ex-Nazi experimenters out there long before The Boys from Brazil. She Demons (1958) had a mad Nazi scientist turning women into snaggle-toothed monster for some reason. The Flesh Eaters (1964) had a lone mad German scientist creating a carnivorous life form. The 1960s movie The Yesterday Machine has a Nazi building a time machine to snatch Hitler from the past to lead a revival. It’s a wonderfully awful film ( The Yesterday Machine - Wikipedia )
The A-Team. I believe some were old and some were new. The team are watching men in a kind of uniform then one gives the Nazi salute and Mr. T says something like “They’re Nazis, Hannibal!”
I recall rolling my eyes because there were no more Nazies. Oh, what a simpler time that was.
WWII was the formative experience for the people who lived through it. I think it was just natural that old Nazis were an easy go-to for plots in the sixties, when veterans who went into the entertainment biz were now in their mid-career.
Sometimes it could just be a throw-away line. I remember one Get Smart épisode when Max had « turned » a KAOS agent and was trying to give him a quick cover story:
Max: « So remember, if anyone asks, we served together in WWII. »
I wasn’t around back then, but the Fantastic Four introduced the world to a villain named Hate-Monger in 1963. Spoiler alert: Hate-Monger was actually Adolph Hitler!!! Or his double or something…you know how comic books go. Captain America was still fighting the Red Skull in the 1960s. There’s a nice Twilight Zone episode starring Dennis Hopper called “He’s Alive” where his neo-Nazi character is visited by the ghost of Adolph Hitler.
The Soviet Union wanted to keep the possibility of Hitler being alive for propaganda purposes following the end of WW II. The idea was the west helped him escape for some reason. So this trope got started before the ringing in your ears from all that artillery abated.
I remember a short scene on Soap back in the Seventies that was set in a sidewalk cafe in Ecuador. Inga Svenson and Bernard Fox played two nemesis characters having a discussion, and Inga gets up and leaves. Bernard Fox calls for the waiter, and an elderly man with a square mustache approaches. Bernard pays him, and the man clicks his heels and gives a short-armed Nazi salute. He then shifts his eyes around as if afraid of having been caught out and scuttles back into the cafe.
Weirdly there were Nazis-come-back stories before the war was over in written fiction: Flight into Darkness” from 1943 (by J. Francis McComas) features a post-war where German scientists work on rockets after being reformed - while secretly working on an evil plan under the noses of the naive victors.
Of course It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia had a Nazi episode. Turns out Dennis and Dee’s grandpa was a proud one. He’s in the hospital, dying, and enlists the gang to dig out his uniform so he could be buried in it or something. Charlie was all suited up in the uniform at one point.
Fearless Leader in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons was clearly a Nazi. Which was funny because Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale were obviously Russians. This discrepancy was resolved by having them all come from the fictional land of Potsylvania. (Think about that name for a minute. )
Rocky and Bullwinkle debuted in 1959. I remember watching the first episode as it aired.
One of my favorite episodes of Columbo from the '70s is “Now You See Him…” where Jack Cassidy plays a Nazi war criminal now living as a nightclub magician in Los Angeles.
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