loCAliZAtion As AdAptAtion in the WOLFENSTEIN frAnChise
217
historical agency combined with many fantastic, occult, and counterfactual
elements furthermore leads to a mythologization of Nazi Germany and the
Holocaust detached from factual history.
This mythologization enables the player to fight for transcendent good
against a fantastic, nearly almighty evil. The game thus casts the Second
World War as “a romantic throwback to the days when good triumphed
over evil,” 62 an evil that does not lie in the cultural “We,” but rather in the
fantastic “Other.” Nazism is thus understood as something transcendent
and external that cannot be rooted in a Western society, but instead takes
a sort of demonic possession of it. 63
The depictions of Nazi Germany in the Wolfenstein games are meaningful,
since they result from a constructive selection process regarding the knowledge of Nazi Germany and the Second World War available to developers.
In this construction process, the ontological status of historical facts and
conspiracy theories is not relevant in itself. It is the resulting construction of
the past that the Wolfenstein games as media carriers offer that is relevant. 64
These constructions are a part of popular culture which constitutes “a site
of mass schooling.” 65 This “mass schooling” probably reaches further than
the official construction of the past usually analyzed in cultural memory
studies.
But what is this past that the Wolfenstein games construct? In Wolfenstein 3D, only allusions to Nazi Germany’s war crimes and crimes against
humanity can be found. 66 Most levels feature skeletons hanging from the
ceilings in some of the game rooms, which might allude to the starvation
or general fate of concentration camp prisoners. In episode 2 of the game,
the player has to eliminate Dr. Schabbs, who creates undead Nazi warriors
wearing guns in their chests. This mission might refer to the pseudoscientific medical experiments performed on humans in Nazi Germany’s
concentration camps with Dr. Schabbs perhaps alluding to Dr. Mengele.
Further examples of occultism and counterfactual history abound in the
Wolfenstein games.
While the SS stands as representative of the Nazis’ evil works in Return to
Castle Wolfenstein, it is the first Wolfenstein game to make a clear distinction
between “Nazis” and “Germans” by introducing the historical resistance
62 cf. Hayton, “Digital Nazis,” 208: “The defining aspect of FPS gameplay (history) is the narration
of war as Manichean confrontation between a moral order of good threatened by evil.”
63 Kingsepp, “Hitler as Our Devil?” 37; cf. Hayton, “Digital Nazis,” 208.
64 cf. Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 40.
65 Hayton, “Digital Nazis,” 200.
66 Inc. id Software, Wolfenstein 3D (Apogee Software, Limited, 1992).
217
historical agency combined with many fantastic, occult, and counterfactual
elements furthermore leads to a mythologization of Nazi Germany and the
Holocaust detached from factual history.
This mythologization enables the player to fight for transcendent good
against a fantastic, nearly almighty evil. The game thus casts the Second
World War as “a romantic throwback to the days when good triumphed
over evil,” 62 an evil that does not lie in the cultural “We,” but rather in the
fantastic “Other.” Nazism is thus understood as something transcendent
and external that cannot be rooted in a Western society, but instead takes
a sort of demonic possession of it. 63
The depictions of Nazi Germany in the Wolfenstein games are meaningful,
since they result from a constructive selection process regarding the knowledge of Nazi Germany and the Second World War available to developers.
In this construction process, the ontological status of historical facts and
conspiracy theories is not relevant in itself. It is the resulting construction of
the past that the Wolfenstein games as media carriers offer that is relevant. 64
These constructions are a part of popular culture which constitutes “a site
of mass schooling.” 65 This “mass schooling” probably reaches further than
the official construction of the past usually analyzed in cultural memory
studies.
But what is this past that the Wolfenstein games construct? In Wolfenstein 3D, only allusions to Nazi Germany’s war crimes and crimes against
humanity can be found. 66 Most levels feature skeletons hanging from the
ceilings in some of the game rooms, which might allude to the starvation
or general fate of concentration camp prisoners. In episode 2 of the game,
the player has to eliminate Dr. Schabbs, who creates undead Nazi warriors
wearing guns in their chests. This mission might refer to the pseudoscientific medical experiments performed on humans in Nazi Germany’s
concentration camps with Dr. Schabbs perhaps alluding to Dr. Mengele.
Further examples of occultism and counterfactual history abound in the
Wolfenstein games.
While the SS stands as representative of the Nazis’ evil works in Return to
Castle Wolfenstein, it is the first Wolfenstein game to make a clear distinction
between “Nazis” and “Germans” by introducing the historical resistance
62 cf. Hayton, “Digital Nazis,” 208: “The defining aspect of FPS gameplay (history) is the narration
of war as Manichean confrontation between a moral order of good threatened by evil.”
63 Kingsepp, “Hitler as Our Devil?” 37; cf. Hayton, “Digital Nazis,” 208.
64 cf. Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 40.
65 Hayton, “Digital Nazis,” 200.
66 Inc. id Software, Wolfenstein 3D (Apogee Software, Limited, 1992).