A strongly worded defense of TF2 Medic: why not every German in games is a nazi
This post is my exploration of the reasons I don't believe Medic from TF2 is or was once a nazi. In my personal opinion, the idea of such past for our lovable doctor doesn't make any sense from everything presented in the games and in the comics. To start, I'll go through all of the evidence of Dr Ludwig being a nazi, at least from the limited research I did. Then I'll provide my reasoning for the contrary and some proof. At the end, I'll give my personal thoughts on the subject and the nuance.
Let me preface by saying that I do understand that most of the people saying that Medic is a nazi are probably joking. I just enjoy thought exercises like this and decided to give it a go. And this post isn't targeted at anyone, I hope it doesn't come across as rude or harsh since it was never my goal.
(psssst @adzbunnyb0nkers I remember you wanted to be tagged, so here you go)
So without further adieux, let's get into this.
Now, when I first got interested in tf2 (literally like few weeks ago), I was interested in the question of Medic's political views. It is pretty hard to stay out of the political climate in sixties, considering that Ludwig is probably old enough to participate in the WW2 itself.
That's what I've seen people say in favor of Medic being a nazi:
He's from Germany and is (probably) old enough to participate in the war.
He's a crazy scientists with no consideration for human life
The mountain cap, the hat that appears in the game itself and has an incriminating description "the men in his unit called him 'The Bavarian Butcher'"
Now despite the title of the post there are things I can't deny. Medic might have had a military past as seen in his class select screen and the cap (tho idk how canonical is this info). And from what it appears, he could have been old enough to participate in ww2 in some capacity. Tho the details are pretty murky, as all we get from his bio is this:
This is pretty vague, but I believe it entails that Herbert was at most a teenager at least when Hitler came to power/the war started.
But even despite this snippet of the info, I've seen people say that he might've been a part of Hitler youth or believe in this ideals without participating in the political clubs himself. Now, the question I want to ask and immediately answer is: would it make sense? Would it make sense for a character of Medic, that we all came to love, to be a nazi? And the answer, at least for me, is an obvious and firm no.
This section is gonna be terribly structured, but I need to get this out of my system.
To start with a bang, let's briefly discuss the basics of nazism. This ideology is based on a simple-ish concept of racial, national and "historical" superiority. In the simplest terms "I am better than you, because I'm of the certain nationality that was super historically cool and important and thus I am also cool and important and superior than you. " This is a dumb attempt to seem important, but that's beyond the point. Now the question I want to pose: does it sound like our Medic?
Heck no! Not only does he treat his collegues of various ethnical background equally, that's not even close to the reason Herbert sees himself above everyone else. He thinks he's superior is because he sees himself a God. Because he can do almost everything to a human body. Sew organs of various exotic animals into people and make it somehow perfectly functional, create a chemical concoction that can repair any tissue (in meet the medic it not only heal living tissue and organs, but also Heavy's clothes), operate on fully conscious patients without them dying of shock, somehow steal a person's skeleton and keep them alive, and, most importantly, CREATE LIFE. LIKE HE SOMEHOW MADE A HUMAN MAN CARRY AND GIVE BIRTH TO A PRESUMABLY HEALTHY BABOON ON HIS DEATHBED (tho what I can't comprehend is how long did he work for tfc team? Like, if it's a few months, then how is baboon able to quickly form itself and its organs fast enough to live in Cheavy's body? Did Medic somehow speed up the embryo growth??? I dread to imagine how this process went....) He can take and create life and he tricked the devil in his own game. So yeah, no racial, ethnical or historical superiority, just a God complex. Medic believes his better than everyone else because he's a God in his own eyes.
On another note, nacism implies the destruction of every race/nation that isn't Aryan or the ppl Hitler vibes with for a reason or another. Now would an opportunistic scientist such as Medic enjoy having a genotype pool being decreased by like 90%? Different people react differently to the same medicine, so for his research and experiments he should have great diversity in his patients. So, nope, another reason he would've never been a nazi.
While we still at the topic of animal organs used as transplants and male baboon pregnancy (no, I refuse to think about the logistics of it still. It was probably a c section... No I should stop...) The other important concept in nazism is purity of blood ect. Like, the perfect Aryan should not have mixed blood, especially of "lesser" nations/races and animals. Now this man has put numerous animal organs into different people and it's not a reach to assume he put some in his own body. Let me pose another question: would a nazi government want to keep a person who goes against all of their ideals around?
For the best evidence for the last is his relationship with authority:
Herbert HATES being restricted in his experiments. He HATES being put on the sidelines with no way to participate in all of the action. He HATES being told what to do when he has so many interesting projects on his mind (also, I think red team should appreciate him more. I believe I've heard somewhere that he had the baboon pregnancy project in mind for a long time but didn't do it on his friends. Like, there's no other logical reason for him not to do it if not out of deep love and care for his team). Third Reich was a totalitarian country and it would most certainly continue to be such, if it continued to exist. Medic would be fully limited in every way imaginable, forced to do either stuff he doesn't want to do or he finds too boring for his mind. Medic would live under a constant surveillance and threat to his life, for a totalitarian government doesn't enjoy the insubordination.
So to conclude, there is no logical reason for Medic to ever be a nazi. Being in a military doesn't automatically make him a nazi, as a lot of men were drafted in the war, and an attempt of dodging the draft could be punishable by prison. Every able bodied man would be taken by Wehrmacht (military) from the start of the war in 1939. And if people still want to say that Medic could've dodged and participated out of his own volition, it was very hard to dodge at the start of the war, but it became fully impossible in 1944 , as the nazis began to lose the war.
As I was thinking this question through, I finally found the best evidence for my point, Robin Atkins Downs' own words:
And I couldn't agree more. What I noticed about myself and some other fans of any media is that we don't approach characters with nuance. We judge the book by the cover only because we see character's nationalities, without thinking about the nuances and their personalities. And this actually destroys all the fun tbh. We strip characters to just the historical circumstances they were born into/some one characteristic and try to fit these multifaceted people into just one word. Heavy? A communist, even if we have no proof other than "well his from Soviet Union" , despite a lot, and I mean A LOT of Russian (I'll mention them, since we are mostly considered to be communists) poets and writers being very against it. Demo? A dumb drunk, despite him being a really kind person, who cares deeply for his friends (easy to see in the game voicelines) and his dear mama. Soldier? Dumb as a rock, which he is, but he's also a kind individual, who managed to become friends with the opposite team's Demo and kind to his collegues. Medic? À nazi, even though there's no proof.
All of this to say, no. Not every German person is a nazi. Not every Russian is a communist. We shouldn't just water down characters to stupid stereotypes, when the game does it's darnest to show you the opposite.
Idk who needed this post, but here it is. Thank you for coming to my Tedtalk.
Yes, this is inspired by the viltrumite empire trend. Shoutout to Lolripk for the words of encouragement and feedback! Would have never finished this if it weren't for him.
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