Are there any real Nazis in Hunters season 2? We explore the Nazi characters portrayed in the Prime Video series Hunters to see if they are based on any real-life people from history. This article contains spoilers.
The Prime Video conspiracy drama series Hunters has returned for a second and final season. The show focuses on a ragtag team of assassins who hunt down and kill Nazis in seventies America. This fight for justice means coming face to face with the Nazi criminals that evaded death or escaped any retribution after the war. This series may be an alt-history fantasy of sorts, but it does rely on historical facts and historical figures to tell its outlandish story. So, are there any real Nazis in Hunters season 2, and what does the series tell us about these despicable individuals?
Are there any real Nazis in Hunters season 2?
Adolf Hitler
Season two centers on the hunt for the most hated man of all time, the Fuhrer of the Nazi Party himself. He is reluctantly remembered as the dictator that initiated World War II and orchestrated the Holocaust, the genocide of millions of Jewish people, and many millions of other victims too. In Hunters, Hitler is played by Udo Kier and is very much still alive. Although it is believed that in real life he died on April 30th, 1945. After learning of Germany’s imminent defeat and the execution of Mussolini, Hitler shot himself in the head.
Hitler’s remains were then burned and only his dental bridges were found afterward. Surprisingly, there is very little else in regard to evidence to support Hitler’s death, other than some eyewitness reports, so a conspiracy theory was quickly formed. There were rumors that he had escaped to Argentina with his wife. Hunters runs wholeheartedly with this conspiracy theory, using it as the main focus of the second season.
Eva Braun-Hitler
Lena Olin plays Adolf Hitler’s wife Eva Braun, who is also known as The Colonel. She acts as the leader of the Fourth Reich, an attempted resurgence of the Nazi party in modern times. Eva wants to continue Adolf’s legacy, whilst learning from his past mistakes. In the series, Eva clashes with her husband and they have an ongoing, bitter rivalry. Eva was a real-life person though, who married Adolf only days before her own death. It is thought that she committed suicide alongside Adolf Hitler in the bunker. Eva is believed to have bitten on a cyanide capsule, and her body was burned along with Adolf’s. Just like the Fuhrer, Hunters continues the conspiracy theory that she did not commit suicide and escaped Berlin to South America with her husband.
Klaus Rhinehart
In season two, the hunters capture a Nazi financier called Klaus Rhinehart, who is believed to have helped Adolf and Eva Hitler escape Berlin and travel to Argentina. They hope Klaus will lead them straight to the Hitlers, but when questioned, he denies knowing their actual location. In real life, there was no Klaus Rhinehart, but there was a German called Klaus Reinhardt, who was the son of Fritz Reinhardt, an official in the Nazi Party. Fritz was also the State Secretary in the German Finance Ministry during Hitler’s reign. He survived the war and although he did spend a few years in jail, he lived the remainder of his life as a free man in West Germany.
Josef Mengele
In episode four, “The Fare”, the hunters track down two Nazi sympathizers to a small village in Argentina. Georges, Lonny, and Roxy interrogate these criminals at their antique shop, but they don’t find any Nazis hiding inside the store. The sympathizers admit that they were harboring Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, but he has since died. Josef Mengele was a real-life Nazi, who also happened to survive the war. He lived a long life afterward without any retribution. The SS officer and physician is infamous for performing horrifying experiments on the prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He escaped to Buenos Aires after the war and later died in Brazil aged 67.
Wilhelm Zuchs
Al Pacino’s character of Meyer Offerman is reduced to flashback scenes only in the second season, as he was killed off in the first season finale. The big twist being that Meyer was in fact the Nazi doctor Wilhelm ‘The Wolf’ Zuchs. In real life, there was a Nazi Einsatzkommando (a killing squad) leader called Wilhelm Fuchs that may have inspired the character in Hunters. Both Nazis share a similar-sounding name and not a lot else really. Although Wilhelm Zuchs’ backstory in Hunters is more than likely inspired by a real-life incident.
There are a few other Nazis that are introduced in season two of Hunters, but they don’t seem to be based on or inspired by any real-life people. These include: Rolf von Klaussen, The Crow and Viktor Frondheim. In conclusion, it would seem that the majority of characters in the series are based on or inspired by real-life Nazis. The creators may skew and distort the history books, but they do try to keep some authenticity, even within the fantastical exploitation genre, which adds some realism to an otherwise rather far-fetched storyline.
