Comics love (to hate) Adolf Hitler. It’s not just Superman and Captain America – pretty much all the main superheroes have come across the Führer in one way or another. Hell, you don’t even have to be in the top-tier… Midnighter travelled back in time to assassinate a young corporal Hitler in the trenches of World War I (Midnighter: Killing Machine). The Punisher bumped into Hitler’s mummified corpse in a South American jungle (Wolverine/Punisher). My personal favorite: the Taskmaster once found himself in a TOWN WHERE EVERYONE IS HITLER (Taskmaster: Unthinkable).
Naturally, the Austrian Asshole has also appeared in a number of Batman comics – he even has strong views about the upcoming movie! And while the Caped Crusader has had plenty of anti-Nazi adventures, the ones where he faces Hitler tend to have two things in common: a) they are all team-up stories, and b) they are absolutely bonkers.
The first that comes to mind is ‘The Untold Origin of the Justice Society’ (DC Special #29), written by Paul Levitz and illustrated by Joe Staton and Bob Layton. According to this comic, set in Earth-2, Batman was a founding member of the Justice Society of America, a super-team formed way back in 1940. Their first mission was to prevent the Germans from invading Britain during World War II. Here are the original Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern attacking a fifth column based in McMurdie Castle, Glasgow:
DC Special #29
Despite the Dark Knight’s peppy confidence, the three heroes are knocked out by a Nazi robot. They wake up in Berlin, where Adolf Hitler is ranting about Aryan supremacy and all that crap about a thousand-year Reich. The Führer then tries to unmask Batman while announcing that he will kill him with the Spear of Destiny – the same spear that an ancient Roman soldier used on Jesus Christ!
This is when things really go off the rails: Hourman and Dr. Fate show up to rescue the heroes, but Hitler counter-attacks by using the Spear of Destiny to somehow unleash mystic forces from above:
DC Special #29
These events were later revised into an even stranger tale in the mini-series America vs. The Justice Society – that’s the one where Batman dies and leaves behind an incriminating diary accusing his teammates of national treason (a plot which was apparently inspired by the Hitler diaries).
One of the writers of America vs. The Justice Society, Roy Thomas, specialized in reimagining the Society’s WWII adventures. For example, in the pulpy ‘Thunder over London!’ (All-Star Squadron #36), the team goes up against Captain Marvel, who is in thrall to Adolf Hitler. The Caped Crusader does his part in the fight while flying Wonder Woman’s invisible jet plane:
All-Star Squadron #36
The story continues with ‘Lightning in Berlin!’ where Batman breaks into Hitler’s headquarters and addresses the Führer in German, which he seems to appreciate:
All-Star Squadron #37
Yes, the Dark Knight and his team are once again at the mercy of German soldiers, but they ultimately manage to kick Nazi butt and escape as Plastic Man turns into a giant zeppelin. You know, comics.
Meanwhile, in Earth-1, a different version of Batman is a member of another super-team: the Justice League of America. In ‘Crisis on Earth X!” and “Thirteen Against the Earth!’ (by Len Wein, Dick Dillin, and Dick Giordano) the Caped Crusader and other members of the Justice League travel to a parallel universe where FDR died of a heart attack in 1944. This apparently caused the governmental balance of power to ‘go the wrong way’ and by the time the USA developed the atom bomb, Germany had one too, leading to a stalemate that lasted until 1968, when the Third Reich finally took over the world with the help of a powerful mind-control ray.
One of the mind-control stations is at the top of the Eiffel Tower, because of course it is. And that’s how the Dark Knight ends up fighting Nazi soldiers while climbing the tallest building in Paris:
Justice League of America #107
Batman and his buddies soon find themselves under National-Socialist mind control, but Red Tornado totally saves the day by flying to a huge Nazi space satellite and beheading Adolf Hitler with a punch. To top it all off, Hitler is revealed to be an android – it turns out that, in these past years, one of the mind-control mechanisms became sentient and took control from the Third Reich, replacing human leaders with android-replicas. Thank you, Len Wein.
Not only is this not the weirdest Adolf Hitler comic (that would be Grant Morrison’s and Steve Yeowell’s The New Adventures of Hitler), it’s not even the weirdest Batman comic to depict the Führer. That honor goes to the Caped Crusader’s team-up with Sgt. Rock in ‘The Night Batman Sold His Soul!’
In the opening pages of this mind-boggling tale by Bob Haney and Jim Aparo (dated August-September 1973), Batman gets shot and thrown down a well while trying to rescue a kidnapped boy afflicted by a rare blood disease. In a fit of despair, the Dark Knight yells that he’d give his soul to get out of that well and, sure enough, he is helped out by a mysterious old man with a foreign accent. The stranger later returns to claim back Batman’s soul, forcing the Caped Crusader to unwillingly do ‘the work of evil’ – which is to say he tricks Batman into causing innocent people’s deaths.
Batman calls the old man ‘the spirit of evil’ and the last panel suggests he is the Devil himself, but at one point Sgt. Rock explains his own theory:
The Brave and the Bold #108
When Bob Haney returned to this cast five years later, in another issue of The Brave and the Bold, the results were just as nutty. ‘Hell is For Heroes’ pits Batman and Sgt. Rock against what is now unambiguously Satan (and, for some reason, against Scottish nationalism), although you can bet your ass Adolf’s ghost has a small cameo, helping out Lucifer!
Clearly not as anti-social as some would have you believe, in the eighties the Dark Knight founded one more superhero team: The Outsiders. They had the best Hitler story in the bunch (courtesy of Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis), albeit shortly after Batman left the team. In Adventures of the Outsiders #33-35, set in the European kingdom of Markovia in 1986, the villainous Baron Bedlam uses cell samples to clone Adolf Hitler. It takes time, however, for Hitler’s memories to resurface (of course it’s a wonder they can resurface at all, given that he’s a clone, but play along). In order to speed up the process, the Baron arranges for Hitler to be attended by a Jewish servant girl, hoping this will trigger his anti-Semitic impulses:
Adventures of the Outsiders #35
It actually takes quite a while, but Baron Bedlam’s mind games eventually pay off and the Führer does regain his memory:
Adventures of the Outsiders #35
The issue finishes with this bittersweet moment in which the Outsiders come across the results of the Baron’s experiment:
