Auf Wiedersehen: The 10 Best Movies About Killing Nazis

When it comes to depicting Nazis in movies, are you on Team Mel or Team Woody?

Mel Brooks, who gave us “Springtime for Hitler,” is a proponent of ridicule: Making fun of Nazis is the best way to “rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myths,” he told Spiegel in 2006. Woody Allen, on the other hand, expressed a different point of view in Manhattan. “A satirical piece in the Times is one thing,” his character says, referencing an upcoming Nazi march, “but bricks and baseball bats really get right to the point…. Physical force is better with Nazis.”

The Finnish film Sisu, opening April 28, agrees. Throughout its 91-minute run time, a prospector (Jorma Tommila) resourcefully knocks off Nazi after Nazi in the most punishing and spectacular ways, from a knife through the skull to sending one plummeting to his death atop a bomb, like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. According to one Nazi, he’s a one-man death squad: “one mean motherfucker that you do not want to mess with.”

Sisu is a welcome addition to one of our greatest cinematic subgenres: death-to-Nazi movies, films that consign some of history’s most hissable villains to terrifically violent and terrible fates. As Robert Redford says at the end of The Sting, “It’s not enough. But it’s close!” And if you want more after Sisu, there are plenty of gems to choose from—starting with our favorite 10.

The Blues Brothers (1980)

The “Illinois Nazis” in relentless pursuit of Jake and Elwood Blues don’t get a lot of screen time, but it’s just enough for them to receive humiliations galore. In one of the movie’s best set pieces, Dan Aykroyd’s Elwood guns the motor of the Bluesmobile, circumvents a Nazi demonstration traffic jam, and sends the entire Nazi contingent off a bridge, to the cheers of the crowd of protesters. As John Belushi’s Jake succinctly states, “I hate Illinois Nazis.” 

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

The Nazis in Steven Spielberg’s classic adventure are movie Nazis from the “Ve haff vays of making you talk” school. From an airplane-propellor decapitation to supernatural face-melting, they meet their makers in crowd-pleasing fashion. But having seen the film several times upon its release in packed theaters, I remember the one bit that never failed to get applause was during the truck chase, when Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones takes the wheel and repeatedly slams a Nazi driver’s head into the dashboard. Simple pleasures are the best.