The opening sequence of Inglorious Basterds is a masterclass on how to write a lede. There is much to rave about its aesthetic treatment, but Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa really locks you into the chair, rendering your phone, partner, and the tub of popcorn on your lap irrelevant for the next few minutes. As he’s probing Perrier LaPadite, a French dairy farmer, on the whereabouts of a Jewish family from the neighbourhood, Landa begins explaining his work.
“If one were to determine what attribute the Jews share with the beast, it would be that of the rat…”
In Nazi Germany, Jews were known as Untermenschen. Sub-human. The Germans were convinced that while Jews looked every bit like other human beings, their skin concealed a dangerous, parasitic, and filthy creature.
The genius of Quentin Tarantino’s screenplay is such that Landa addresses the psyche behind that thought in the same conversation. He mentions how squirrels and rats are similar in most characteristics; yet, rats are disliked significantly more.
Around the same time that the Schutzstaffel was rounding up Jews in Occupied France, a few thousand miles to the north-east, a Russian-Jewish poet, Ilya Ehrenburg, was spreading propaganda amongst Stalin’s army. She called the Germans “two-legged animals who have mastered the art of killing”. Further to the east, the Japanese called the Chinese “chancarro”, translating to animals or vermin.