The Best Fictional Nazi Hunters

Amazon Prime has always trailed the prestige streaming pack behind Netflix and Hulu when it comes to original programming, despite having more than a few really solid shows. It looks like they’re putting all of Jeff Bezos’s considerable power behind Hunters, which debuts on February 21. The series follows a group of people in mid-70s New York City who find out that hundreds of escaped Nazis are hiding in plain sight under fake identities and come together to take them out. Nazi hunting is a proud occupation that is enjoying a resurgence, so we thought we’d celebrate by spotlighting some of our favorite fictional Reich wreckers.

BJ Blazkowicz

The hero of the Wolfenstein series is one of the most decorated Nazi hunters of all time. BJ first debuted in 1992’s Wolfenstein 3D and has returned numerous times, getting his backstory fleshed out in recent games. The former Army Ranger was brought into the Office of Secret Actions to investigate the Third Reich’s occult shenanigans, only to discover that they’re planning all sorts of stuff. In his very first appearance he killed Hitler. In recent games, BJ gets put into a coma only to wake in an alternate reality in which the Nazis won WWII, which just gives him more of the buggers to slaughter.

Magneto

As created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Magneto was just a one-note mutant villain with dreams of world conquest. It took Chris Claremont to turn him into a three-dimensional character by fleshing out his backstory, revealing that he was a Jewish child born in Germany before World War II who watched his parents die in a concentration camp before his powers developed. As an adult, Erik Lensherr spends a significant amount of his time getting revenge on the Nazis, most notably in the first act of X-Men: First Class. One of his best moments came during an ostensible team-up with the Red Skull, where he ended up locking the Nazi sociopath in a lightless bunker deep below the Earth.

Ezra Lieberman

As played by acting legend Laurence Olivier in The Boys From Brazil, Ezra Lieberman illustrates the sad truth of Nazi hunting – as the targets get older, so too do the pursuers. After receiving a phone call that tips him off to the location of the notorious German doctor Josef Mengele, Ezra heads to Paraguay to discover that the mad scientist had implanted cloned embryos of Adolf Hitler in women all over the world, in the hope that one of them will grow to lead the Fourth Reich. The flick is one of the best and weirdest takes on the Nazis in hiding gimmick we’ve ever seen.

The Inglorious Basterds

Assembled by Lt. Aldo Raine, the Basterds are a motley crew of Jewish-American fighting men who form a guerilla unit that exists for one reason only: to put the fear of God into the Third Reich by gruesomely killing them and scalping them afterwards, using their greasy pelts as trophies. When they do let the rare Nazi go, they carve a swastika into their forehead so they can never hide what they did during the war. It’s hard to pick a member of the squad that goes the hardest, but we have to give props to Donny Donowitz, aka the Bear Jew, who totes a Louisville Slugger to cave in the domes of German commanders.

Mr. Wilson

Edward G. Robinson takes a rare heroic role in Orson Welles’ first film noir, The Stranger, which premiered in 1946. As Mr. Wilson of the U.N. War Crimes Commission, he’s tasked with running to ground German fugitive Franz Kindler, who has erased all traces of his identity. The only lead Wilson has is that Kindler is obsessed with clocks. He releases another Nazi and trails him, and is led to a small Connecticut town where Kindler is hiding and about to marry the daughter of a Supreme Court justice. With no evidence, Wilson can’t prove his hunch and needs to force Kindler into exposing himself in this tense thriller.

The Avenger

1970s drive-in mainstay Nightmare In Blood is probably best known for being directed by John Stanley, the host of San Francisco’s “Creature Features” TV show. The plot concerns a vampire who shows up to a horror convention in search of fresh blood, only to be opposed by a trio of unlikely allies – a Sherlock Holmes devotee, a horror novel writer, and “The Avenger,” a Jewish Nazi hunter. As The Avenger, actor Mark Anger is hunting our vampire because in a previous life he was the overseer of a concentration camp. He’s been tracking him for 25 years and is finally ready to bring him to ground.

Hellboy

It was Nazi mad science that drew Hellboy into our world, so it’s not surprising that the big red half-demon has a mad on for the Reich. Although many of his adventures have him facing off with supernatural entities unconnected to any Earthly leaders, he has faced off with the Nazis on more than a few occasions. Hellboy’s first mission with the B.P.R.D. saw him go up against scientist Herman von Klempt, who had escaped prosecution after the war and was preparing to invade the United States with an undead army. Reduced to just a head in a nutrient-filled jar, von Klempt was assisted by an army of trained apes that toted him around. He managed to escape death several times before finally getting his just deserts.

Doctor Nemesis

Marvel Comics has plenty of Nazi hunters in their ranks, but our personal fave is the mutant with the “self-evolved intellect,” Doctor Nemesis. After helping invent the first Human Torch during World War II, James Bradley discovered a method to slow his aging process and enhance his immune system. After the war ended, he decided to go freelance and use his unique skillset to hunt down the hundreds of cloned Nazis that escaped the end of the Third Reich. He was recruited in Argentina by the X-Men who wanted to use his skills to reverse the effects of M-Day, but wouldn’t join up until they helped him kill a few more Nazis just on principle.

Karl Fairburne

The protagonist of the Sniper Elite series of games doesn’t like to get in close with the Nazis he hunts down, instead picking them off from a distance with the aid of his rifle. A stoic, patient soldier, Karl was responsible for myriad Axis deaths during the war. He started his career in North Africa, where he investigated a rogue German officer’s project to construct a supertank that would give the Nazis an unbeatable advantage, then moved on to Italy and finally Germany, where he systematically hunted down the scientists responsible for the German V-2 rocket program.

Weresquito

You could possibly accuse us of not taking this whole enterprise as seriously as we should, but there’s no way in Hell we’re letting this article go by without talking a little bit about Weresquito: Nazi Hunter. This 2016 cheapie stars Michael Kaiser as an American soldier who was subjected to hideous experiments during the war and now transforms into a mammoth man-sized insect whenever he sees fresh blood. Back in the States, he hunts down the doctor who made him that way in a small Wisconsin town. But will he be able to find love with a diner waitress while consumed with a thirst for revenge?