From Bollywood A-listers, such as Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan, to every other social media user on platforms like Instagram, as the world stands in solidarity with Palestinians in their ongoing plight amid the Israel-Gaza war, we cannot help but wonder-was Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning war film circling around the wrongdoers during Holocaust, comprising the stellar cast of Christoph Waltz, Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Daniel Brühl, among others, even real? A detailed report.
No matter which side of history you are on, the graphic images and videos emerging from the ongoing bombings in and around Rafah Crossing has surely had an impact on you. As we go back in history and try to comprehend the purpose of war-more like the futility of it-we cannot help but dissect Quentin Tarantino’s finest war film till date, Inglourious Basterds (2009). Was it even real? Let’s dive deep…
Glamorised violence and Quentin Tarantino are an explosive combination (yes, pun very much intended! And, his 2009 Oscar-winning directorial Inglourious Basterds for better or for worse-is not an exception to that phenomenon. Having said that, is there any truth to Tarantino’s narrative around the Nazis and World War II? Well, for one, Inglourious Basterds is a war movie that is less about the war anc more about the conundrum that is humanity.
As for how real the story is (or not), we have presented further in the copy some ABSOLUTELY MIND- BOGGLING FACTS that you need to know.
Who Are The ‘Basterds’?
The setting is rural German-occupied France, and the year is 1944. Breaking the monotony of a lazy afternoon is the conniving Colonel Hans Landa (played by the marvellous Christoph Waltz). He barges into a local farmer’s property along with Schutzstaffel (SS) guards suspecting (read: knowing) that a bunch of “unaccounted for” Jews are hiding at his house. When the inevitable befalls, only a young Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) flees. Later, she encounters Landa at a-of all places-movie theatre! Her movie theatre!
In a parallel world, a bunch of rough-looking Jewish-American soldiers are conjuring up a secret mission to kill Nazis. They are backed by the American Secret Service and led by a Southern-accented lad, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt).
“… y’all will get me one hundred Nazi scalps,” Raine demands of his Jewish brothers.
Meanwhile, Shosanna finds an opportunity to exact her revenge from the Nazis when a smitten German war hero, Captain Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), pursues her to host the premiere of the biographical drama on his life, Nation’s Pride.
The basterds learn of this event, and more: Adolf Hitler was attending!
On one hand, Shosanna’s ready to blow up her own movie theatre for that sweet taste of vengeance, and on the other, Raine & Co. come all guns blazing-quite literally!-to shred Hitler to pieces.
Who emerges victorious and who remains a faceless rebel? Tread with caution as spoilers await you.
Is Inglourious Basterds Based On A True Story?
The answer is yes, and no.
This satire, which has been called one of Tarantino’s finest, has won Christoph Waltz an Oscar. But, not everything you see in the movie is real.
While Michael Fassbender’s British Intelligence act was downsized to one now-iconic scene at a bar, in reality Winston Churchill (also shown in the movie) did in fact have a team of all-Jewish British refugees who had joined his secret commando unit. These men were trained in combat and counterintelligence against the Nazis. Churchill’s army of men were called X-Troop, and they were Holocaust survivors from Austria and Germany. Unlike the movie, these men were responsible for gathering intel on the Nazis and the unit had played a major role on D-Day Landings in France on June 6, 1944.
Interestingly, the aforementioned war hero Zoller was a blend of two men: Austrian sniper Matthäus Hetzenauer, and actor Audie Murphy.
Tarantino’s other set of basterds were loosely based on X-Troop’s American counterpart, Mission Greenup, and it only comprised three men. Two Jewish refugees enlisted in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and volunteered to go to Austria and get intel on the German rail traffic over the Brenner Pass between Italy and Austria. They recruited a third member, Franz Weber, who was a lieutenant with the German forces but had disowned his leader after seeing the atrocities that Jewish people were being subjected to, especially the bloodbath against Marshal Tito’s partisans in occupied Yugoslavia. However, some reports suggest that the trio just wanted to “kill Nazis.”
As opposed to what was shown in the movie, Hitler did not die in the hands of Jews and his end, most definitely, was not in a film theatre.
On April 29, 1945, Hitler wrote his will and tied the knot with long-time lover Eva Braun. On April 30, as news of Soviet soldiers looking for him began to spread, Hitler had lunch and shook hands with his staff before dying by suicide along with Braun in their private sitting room, on a couch.
Winston Churchill described Hitler’s death as:
“The bodies were burnt in the courtyard, and Hitler’s funeral pyre, with the din of the Russian guns growing ever louder, made a lurid end of the Third Reich.”
While Quentin Tarantino had aptly captured the atrocities that Jews had to endure during WWII-and unabashedly shone light on the human depravity that was the Nazi rule, and beyond-as shown above, most of it was, thankfully, made up.
