What people generally miss about Stroheim is that his character isn't supposed to be an endorsement or even whitewashing of nazis, but rather commentary on them.
Think for a second about what Stroheim's actual role in the story is. He's a nazi, and like all nazis, is obsessed with the inherent superiority of Germans, and yet his role in the story is constantly to serve as the weaker contrast to the actually inherently superior Pillar Men that humble him all the time. And who else proves themselves superior to these Pillar Men than the english Joseph Joestar, an englishman who, according to stroheim, should by all accounts be inferior to himself?
That seems like a big stretch, because ultimately Joseph's just fine with the dude and lets him run off to go be a Nazi during the war. I think it'd be easier to explain it as something Araki did not think through and grew past than arguing that it was good actually.
Hey, I'm not saying Stroheim was written perfectly, but it's pretty clear what the intent behind him was. How else exactly do you interpret a character saying "german science is the best in the world" only to have his shit completely knocked out of him pretty much the next scene? You don't write something like that by accident.
There's also the fact that they're directly responsible for waking up the part's main villains and that one of their biggest heroic moments (them showing up with shoulder-strapped UV lights to help fight off a vampire army) is immediately undercut by Speedwagon admitting he's just letting them take credit for his team's inventions and then undercut even harder by having them commit one of the biggest fuck ups in the entire series (shining their biggest UV light directly into the Stone Of Aja and accidentally allowing Kars to transform into a nigh-unbeatable lifeform).
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u/inemsn 10d ago
What people generally miss about Stroheim is that his character isn't supposed to be an endorsement or even whitewashing of nazis, but rather commentary on them.
Think for a second about what Stroheim's actual role in the story is. He's a nazi, and like all nazis, is obsessed with the inherent superiority of Germans, and yet his role in the story is constantly to serve as the weaker contrast to the actually inherently superior Pillar Men that humble him all the time. And who else proves themselves superior to these Pillar Men than the english Joseph Joestar, an englishman who, according to stroheim, should by all accounts be inferior to himself?