Aldo Raine: Violent Past made Bloodthirsty Nazi Killer

What lead to him becoming the leader of the “Basterds”?

Aldo Raine

Redneck, Lieutenant, Nazi-Scalper, Bootlegger; those are some titles that most accurately describe the main character, Aldo Raine, in Quentin Tarantino’s hit, Inglourious Basterds. All these names that describe Aldo have some violent and bad connotations, but it was his past that eventually gave him the motivation to be the ruthless leader of the rag-tag “Basterds”. Tarantino generously gives hints at Aldo’s past, making sense of his actions throughout the movie, and his character becomes one of the funniest and most loved charcters of all Tarantino movies. Even though we only see a small period of Aldo’s life throughout the movie, small details and great acting by Brad Pitt show us what his life looked like before the movie.

Everything started for Aldo as a little kid growing up in Tennessee. As if his thick southern draw wasn’t enough, the script tells of his origins in many places.

Well I lern't to drive in four
          hours on a Tennessee mountain road.

In describing Aldo in his first scene, the script says:

LIEUTENANT ALDO.RAINE, a hillbilly from the mountains of
          Tennessee, walks down the line.

Aldo as a hillbilly exposes his country past. Hillbilly can mean lots of things, but Tarantino gives us a clue as to the type of hillbilly Aldo was. It is the scar on his neck. In the script it says:

Lt.Aldo has one
          defining physical characteristic, a ROPE BURN around his
          neck. As if once upon a time,. he survived a LYNCHING.
          The scar will never once be mentioned.

The scar is blatantly obvious, but Tarantino says it will never be mentioned. This seems ominous, and is as if Tarantino wants us to ask about his past.

Surprisingly, whites were actually lynched back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. History classes emphasize the Black lynchings by the KKK and other white groups, but white lynchings made up 27.3% of all lynchings. Whites were lynched for aiding Blacks in many ways, or some were even lynched for domestic crimes. There are also few cases of people being lynched for disputes.

Aldo ran with a rough crowd when he back in Tennessee. He says about himself:

And I'm a shit for brains coal miner
          bootlegger.

This bootlegging, or some other risky activity is probably what lead to Aldo’s lynching. This kind of violence clearly had an impact on him and made him even rougher than most.

Another key to Aldo Raine is something he mentions about himself rather quickly.

Now, I'm the direct descendent
of the mountain man Jim Bridger.  
That means I got
a little Indian in me.  
And our battle plan will be
that of an Apache resistance.
We will be cruel
to the Germans.

Jim Bridger was a trapper, outdoorsman, and all around manly-man of the 1800s. He lived a rough life in the west and eventually married three indian women. Whether Aldo is telling the truth or not about being a descendant of Jim Bridger, ths does influence the person Aldo is. He decides to lead his group of Basterds the same way a chief would have lead a group of savages. Surprisingly enough, Jim Bridger’s wives were not even Apache. This ignorance by Aldo points towards the possibility of his relation to Jim Bridger being a lie. Regardless of whether it he was lying or not, it is what made him known as Aldo the Apache, but most importantly it was what influenced his “Apache Resistance”. The Basterds became well known for scalping their Nazi Victims.

When you join my command,
you take on debit.
A debit you owe me,
personally.  
Each and every man under my
command owes me 100 Nazi scalps.  
And I want my scalps.  
And all y'all will get me 100 Nazi scalps
taken from the heads of 100 dead Nazis.
Or you will die trying!

This command the Aldo gives at the beginning of the movie sets up expectations for the rest of the movie. Before this, Aldo has told some of his past, and his scarred neck has been visible the whole scene. He is clear about the violence they will inflict in the Nazis.

His violent past affects his leadership, and makes him an effective military leader. His hatred of Nazis also gives him strong motivation as a leader.

I don't know
about you all,
but I sure as hell didn't come down
from the goddamn Smoky Mountains,
cross 5,000 miles of water,
fight my way through half of Sicily
and jump out of a fucking airplane to
teach the Nazis lessons in humanity.
Nazi ain't got no humanity.  
They're the foot soldiers of a Jew-hating,
mass-murdering maniac
and they need
to be destroyed.

This pep talk at the beginning of the movie, delivered to the basterds, informs the audience about Aldo and more importantly his intentions. Propelled by his violent past and abhorrence of Nazis, Aldo is passionate about killing Nazis, and throughout the rest of the movie, Tarantino uses Aldo’s character to get the audience excited to watch the Nazis get destroyed.

At the end of the day, the subtleties within the script and visual appearance of Aldo Raine explain his violent actions, except for the fact that it does not approach the subject of how or why Aldo came to hate the Nazis. They were the enemy of the United States, but did he hate them because of the way they treated the Jews? Or did Aldo hate the Nazis because of the Thrid Reich’s thirst for power? It doesn’t say, and it is almost represented as a given; he is an American, therefore he hates the Nazis.

Regardless of why he hates the Nazis, Aldo Raine’s past made him Aldo the Apache, the ruthlessly violent, comically redneck character that he was. The details of his life make him, in my own opinion, one of the best characters in any of the Quentin Tarantino movies.

Short, Aaron. “6 Minor Details That Reveal Major Things About Movie Worlds.” Cracked.com. Cracked, 15 June 2015. Web. 06 Apr. 2016.

“Lynching Statistics for 1882–1968.” The Charles Chestnut Digital Archive. N.p., 29 Jan. 1999. Web. 2 Apr. 2016.

Inglourious Basterds. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Brad Pitt. Universal, 2009. Netflix.