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Adrienne Chen
Frances McCue
HON 205A
10 November 2014
Inglourious Basterds: A Battle through Dramatic License
It should be commonly acknowledged that a true-to-history film does not often a boxoffice success make. These dry retellings of times gone by are mostly reserved for classrooms of
barely-conscious students settled in as a substitute teacher whiles away the time. Historical
blockbusters, in contrast, are often the subject of some generous, artistic sweeps of the
metaphorical paintbrush, the 2009 war film, Inglourious Basterds being a prime example. While
commercially successful on top of winning and being nominated for numerous accolades across
the board, the film is hardly the most accurate iteration of a historical reimagining of World War
II to grace silver screens across the globe. Inaccuracies and creative liberties aside, Inglourious
Basterds is still grounded in history and it is these connections we will explore further.
We commence with the eponymous group of Basterds. Supposedly the first unit to be
deployed in World War II made up entirely of Jewish people, with the one exception of their
lieutenant, the fictional group itself has no basis in history. However, this kind of ethnic division,
though employed in terms of poetic justice or karmic irony in the film, does reflect the nature of
troops in the United States military at the time. One example of this is the 92nd Infantry Division,
an entirely African-American unit that was deployed to Italy in 1944, coincidentally the same
year that the fictional Basterds were gathered together for their guerilla warfare mission in the
film (Bielakowski). Similarly, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit of Japanese-American

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volunteers were activated in 1943 to be sent off to Italy to contribute to the war effort in June
1944 (Bielakowski). While not a direct connection to Tarantinos all-Jewish cohort, there being
no documentation of the existence of such a specialized force or troop in the United States
(despite the prevalence of Jewish soldiers and medics in US and Allied troops alike), the
difficulties that faced the men of ethnic and racial minorities seeking to serve in the military
remain true of history in the American armed forces.
Another notable element we see perpetrated by the titular Basterds in the film, if not an
entirely groundbreaking practice, is the act of scalping their Nazi victims. Lieutenant Aldo
Raine, the fictional leader of the Basterds, self-described as the direct descendant of a famous
mountain man, participates in this practice, and demands from his men one hundred Nazi
scalps by the conclusion of their mission (Tarantino). Though undoubtedly scalping specifically
was not a common practice throughout the Allied armed forces, it was apparently not so unusual
among the Native American soldiers. According to Al Carroll in his account of Native
involvement with North American armed forces, the act of scalping an enemy by a Native soldier
was innocuous enough at its root, in that the scalp is used in Native purification rituals, where the
spirits of the deceased soldier and the one who killed him in battle are reconciled. However, it
was in recognition of the already-present fear of Natives as savages that most Native soldiers
put the scalping to use as a terror tactic (Carroll). In particular, one unnamed select, ten-man
squad of American snipers in Italy was said to have terrified Nazi troops, leaving German scalps
in their wake. Cherokee Indian from Texas, one Sergeant John Fulcher of the 36th Infantry
Division and head of said select sniper group, described occasions of scalping German soldiers
and leaving them sitting on the road, hands folded, as he and his men followed Nazi troops along
the southern parts of Italy, striking terror into [their] hearts (Sasser and Roberts). This common

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thread between Native American practices and their perpetuation during the war would almost
seem to be one of the most historically accurate elements of Tarantinos film, as the Basterds
also used the scalping as a scare tactic to build upon their infamous reputation amongst enemy
forces, demonstrated in the rumors that captured Nazi soldiers know of in regards to particular
members of their group, even prior to their actual capture.
In terms of plot points, one of the films biggest hinges upon the assassination attempt
that is orchestrated around a premiere for a fictional war propaganda film, Stolz der Nation, or
Nations Pride. While the successful assassination of Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi
officials during this particular premiere is entirely false, the use of the motion picture for
propaganda was not at all. As film rose to prominence in popular entertainment, the governing
powers capitalized on these trends to further their own agenda, transforming the new medium to
their own propaganda-related ends (Fox). In fact, the use of war propaganda films dates back to
World War I, in the early 1900s and has remained a powerful medium through which to
influence the masses. Playing a part in the documentation of the Spanish Civil War, World War
IIthe Vietnam War, [and] the Cold War, there is no doubt that propaganda in moving picture
form has been deemed extremely effective in achieving its purpose (Stern). Capable of creating
and inspiring a range of attitudes and emotions in a spectator, it is no wonder that politics would
ensnare itself in this new visual culture, so capable as it was of swaying the everyman to their
own whims. Thus, the self-congratulatory preoccupation of the Gestapo elite with such a film in
Inglourious Basterds can then be reasonably explained as supporting the party line, with the film
furthering their own interests and presumably assuring their future triumph against the Allied
forces.

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Meanwhile, the Basterds are designated as operating in Nazi-occupied France in the
year 1944. The implication of the Basterds operation behind enemy lines hearkens to the
guerilla efforts deployed by the Allied forces around the same time. With British spies in France
being found out far too quickly by the Gestapo, Operation Jedburgh was born. Thus, a group of
three hundred Allied agents were trained and dropped into France in teams of three in order to
facilitate the resistance (Beavan). The covert nature of these Jeds in their efforts to link up
with, and provide supplies to, the French Resistance are echoed in the fictional Basterds own
shadowy operations, blatant violence and the vast difference in unit size aside. And although the
Basterds are not connected in the film with any resistance that would serve as a counterpart to
the real French Resistance, they do join forces with a turncoat German sergeant, as well as
attempting to pull off an operation in conjunction with a German film star and a British film
critic recruited by British military authorities that echoes that spirit of cooperation.
Moving on to a singular character, we can look at another fictional individual, one SS
colonel Hans Landa. Aptly, if somewhat bluntly nicknamed Jew Hunter, we first see him
searching for victims in the French countryside. This Nazi officer shows himself to be a
particularly shrewd and calculating man throughout the film. While not based on any real life
counterpart, SS Captain Alois Brunner shares a similar job description with our fictional Landa,
having been responsible for the pursuance of Jewish people in France, and children in particular
(Felstiner). Landas relentless chasing of teenaged Jewish girl Shosanna in the film,
unintentionally or not, can be linked to Brunners targeting of Jewish children, speaking to a
shared ruthlessness that is exemplified by Landa in the film, especially in the instance where he
abruptly strangles von Hammersmark, the German double agent who was working with the
Basterds.

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Altogether, Quentin Tarantinos work has never claimed to be a truthful representation of
historical affairs, instead substituting an alternate history with plotlines bordering on the
ridiculous when compared to the real events that occurred. However, despite these obvious
departures taken in the name of entertainment, there still remain small kernels of history, as
unintentional or otherwise as they may be. Whether they manifest themselves in meaningful
aspects of the film or instead in the nitty-gritty details that are often overlooked, Inglourious
Basterds, almost in spite of itself, manages to squeeze in historical elements between shootouts
for the discerning eye to enjoy.

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Works Cited
Beavan, Colin. Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America's first shadow war. Penguin, 2007.
Bielakowski, Alexander M. Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the US Military: An Encyclopaedia
[2 volumes]. ABC-CLIO, 2013.
Carroll, Al. Medicine Bags and Dog Tags: American Indian Veterans from Colonial Times to the
Second Iraq War. U of Nebraska Press, 2008.
Felstiner, Mary. "COMMANDANT OF DRANCY: ALOIS BRUNNER AND THE JEWS OF
FRANCE." 1987. Oxford Journals. 1 November 2014.
<http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/1/21.short>.
Fox, J.C. Film propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany: World War II cinema. Berg, 2007.
Inglourious Basterds. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. 2009.
Pika, Simone, Elena Nicoladis and Paula Marentette. ""How to Order a Beer Cultural
Differences in the Use of Conventional Gestures for Numbers." Journal of CrossCultural Psychology 40.1 (2009): 70-80.
Sasser, Charles W and Craig Roberts. One Shot One Kill: One Shot One Kill. Simon and
Schuster, 1990.
Stern, Frank. "Screening Politics: Cinema and Intervention." Georgetown Journal of
International Affairs (2000).