Understanding the Real History Behind ‘Wolfenstein’ Video Game Series

Almost anybody who has played video games, with some regularity, over the past two decades has gone through at least one release in the long-running ‘Wolfenstein‘ game series. My personal favorites in that series are Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein: The New Order. Perhaps some of you might be aware that the overall plot and environment of most games in that series is based in a somewhat fanciful extrapolation of reality. While nobody is claiming that reanimated mummies, the raised undead or fire zombies are real, a lot of what is found in the most popular releases of that series (specifically Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus) are based in real events, facts, persons and possibilities.

For example, one of the central elements of ‘Return to Castle Wolfenstein’ involves the player trying to stop attempts by Nazis (especially Heinrich Himmler) from resurrecting ‘Heinrich the Fowler‘- who also happens to be final boss of that game. It just so happens that Himmler was deeply into a lot of mystical BS and had a peculiar obsession with that particular Saxon king from 10th century AD. Similarly one of the mini-bosses in that game, Marianna Blavatsky, is a sendup of Helena Blavatsky– a real life “psychic” medium from late 19th century whose teachings had a major (if unintentional) influence of development of the belief system behind certain parts of Nazi ideology. In fact, here is a post which talks about some of this from 2006.

Himmler, when he was not planning mass murder, was into a lot of mystical stuff. For example, he was a big supporter of pre-ww2 expeditions into Tibet and other “archaeological” projects to establish the veracity of his beliefs. He was also a big supporter of what is now called ‘Nazi archaeology‘. It is also true that many senior scientists and engineers in that regime found Himmler’s forays into mysticism amusing, to put if mildly, but never confronted him publicly because of his position. Did I mention that Castle Wolfenstein is based on Castle Wewelsburg, though its location is influenced by that of Kehlsteinhaus. Furthermore, many of the advanced weapon systems depicted in the 2001 game are based in reality.

Similarly, later releases of that game such as ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’ (2014) are based on pretty decent extrapolations of what might have happened if funny-mustache guy and his flunkies had been more competent. While we are unlikely to have seen giant robots driven by brains or super laser guns- the game does a pretty good job of capturing the type of society and world which would have resulted from Nazi Germany wining WW2 or achieving a stalemate that was equivalent to victory. In that respect they do a much better job at writing believable alternate history than ‘The Man in the High Castle‘ series by Amazon.

Now let me ask you a question.. Have you ever wondered about the convergence of personalities, zeitgeist and events which ultimately led to the Nazi Ideology? As it turns out the answer is not straightforward and it all starts about 50 years before they came to power. To make a very long story short, the original impetus for popularity of mystical beliefs which would one day become Nazism started out as a reaction to socio-economic displacement caused by Industrial revolution in Germany. The initial popularizers of those ideas, such as the Helena Blavatsky, were probably into it to become famous and make a few bucks. In fact, this moment should be seen as German equivalent of the spiritualism craze that swept Britain between the 1870s-1930s.

Racism and belief in Eugenics were also not unique to Germany, during that era. Some of you might know that Nazi Germany got a lot of its ideas about Race and Eugenics from USA. Social Darwinism, too, had its roots in Britain and USA. Which brings us to the next question- Why did Nazism develop in 1920-145 era Germany and not.. say.. in USA or Britain? The answer to that question requires us to understand something important and relevant, even today.The precursor to Nazi regime, aka the Wiemar republic, was fine with then contemporary levels of racism, anti-semitism, eugenics etc. But they slowly lost, over a period of over ten years, all of their credibility with most people in that country. Also the rich in Germany preferred fascists over socialists.

And that is how funny-mustache guy and his flunkies got in power. It certainly helped that were able to combine all those new-ish currents of belief and ideology into a somewhat coherent ideology. While a lot of videos on YT suffer from YouTube face, overenthusiastic presenters and poorly researched bits by idiots with a British accent, some are better. So here are two long clips (unfortunately containing poor quality footage) which do a very good and objective job of explaining how various streams of Nazi ideology combined into their final form. They are a bit on the longish side, but totally worth the time.

Clip 1 (about 51 minutes long)

Clip 2 (about 54 minutes long)

What do you think? Comments?