Must-watchWorld War II · Film · 2009
Inglourious Basterds
In occupied France a squad of Jewish-American soldiers spreads terror among the Nazis, while a young Jewish woman running a Paris cinema plots her own revenge on the night the Reich's leaders come to a film premiere.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 2 places.
Stop 1: London, Whitehall
Lieutenant Hicox, a film critic turned commando, is briefed in front of Churchill on Operation Kino, a plan to blow up the premiere.
Stop 2: Occupied Paris
Key location
Shosanna, hiding under a false name, runs a cinema that is chosen for the premiere of a Nazi propaganda film, and prepares a reel of her own.
What really happened
Tarantino's film is deliberate alternate history. Its backdrop is real: from 1940 the German occupiers and the Vichy regime hunted Jews across France, and about 76,000 were deported to the death camps, most of them to Auschwitz. Some Jewish refugees did fight back in uniform, such as the German-speaking volunteers of the British No. 10 Commando's X Troop and the US Army's Ritchie Boys.
There was no Operation Kino, and no Nazi leader died in a Paris cinema. Goebbels did run a propaganda film industry that glorified war heroes, but Hitler and Goebbels both took their own lives in Berlin in the spring of 1945, as the Red Army closed in on the Führerbunker.
Where to watch
Checking streaming services…
Full details
- Original title
- Inglourious Basterds
- Directed by
- Quentin Tarantino
- Countries
- United States, Germany
- Languages
- English, German, French, Italian
- Released
- 2009
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Combat
- Espionage
