Inglourious Basterds True Story: Real Life Inspirations For Fredrick Zoller
Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds explores an alternate version of World War II, and while its main characters are fictional, many of them are based on real-life people, among those Daniel Brühl’s Fredrick Zoller. Throughout his career as a filmmaker, Tarantino has explored a variety of genres, all of them with his signature narrative style and generous doses of violence and blood, and he has also given the audience a look at alternate versions of history with Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, two of his most critically acclaimed (yet controversial) works.
Set during World War II, Inglourious Basterds tells two stories with a common goal: kill as many nazis as possible, including Hitler. One story follows a group of soldiers known as the “Basterds”, led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), and the other is the story of Shosanna Dreyfus/Emmanuelle Mimieux’s (Mélanie Laurent), a Jewish cinema owner whose family was killed by SS officer Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and is now ready for revenge. However, Landa wasn’t the only obstacle in Shosanna’s path, as she also met Fredrick Zoller.
Related: Inglourious Basterds: Why Hans Landa Let Shosanna Escape At The Beginning
Zoller was a German army sniper who met Shosanna in Paris and became infatuated with her, but she always rejected his advances. Zoller was overly-confident as his story was turned into a propaganda film by Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth), and he wanted the movie to premiere at Shosanna's theater. Although Zoller, his story with Shosanna, and the movie Stolz der Nation (Nation's Pride) are fictional, Zoller was based on two real-life men: Austrian sniper Matthäus Hetzenauer and actor Audie Murphy.
Matthäus Hetzenauer served in the 3rd
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