Call of Duty Black Ops 7 has a Nazi problem

When Call of Duty Black Ops 7 releases on November 14, it returns with its longstanding, wildly offbeat Zombies mode intact. The new map is the largest Zombie map yet, and includes all manner of references to the series’ past. This nostalgia trip comes with returning characters, but one of them has raised more than a few eyebrows. 

Edward Richtofen is the most important character in the Call of Duty Zombies timeline. As one of the first introduced characters in the series, he plays a central pillar in a slew of major series-spanning story beats, playing the chameleon in three incarnations with different motivations and objectives. A fourth version of Richtofen is set to appear in Black Ops 7, but, in a bizarrely tone-deaf move, he will be returning as a reflection of the first Richtofen. You see, Doctor Edward Richtofen is a Nazi.

✓ VideoGamer Summary

• As part of the new Black Ops 7 Zombies map, Doctor Edward Richtofen will return as a playable character.
• This version of Edward Richtofen will be a playable Nazi from an alternative timeline.
• The other characters returning have also had their origins and timelines moved, so this was a deliberate choice by Treyarch.
• If you don’t intend on bringing up Nazis with purposeful political intent, you’re better off making them easy cannon fodder.

Bad blood

Richtofen’s first incarnation from Call of Duty World at War was as a Nazi scientist and former member of the Wehrmacht. He was a schlocky example of the archetype: a member of the Illuminati, sacrificing soldiers en masse to a magical pyramid, and eventually becoming a half-zombie. In the sometimes serious but usually overblown world of Call of Duty Zombies, Richtofen felt like a campy Indiana Jones villain. 

Due to multiversal timeline shenanigans, there would be two more versions of him, but they were simply German and fully divorced from the Third Reich. The first Richtofen was even killed at the conclusion of the ‘Aether’ storyline in Black Ops 4, removing his character altogether. However, his fourth incarnation is coming back not just as a full-blown Nazi but in an alternate reality where the Axis won World War Two. 

Even if he is just as ham-fisted as his original counterpart, the fact that Richtofen’s latest incarnation is a playable character feels jarring and uncomfortable. Even when veiled in schlocky tropes, it’s a hell of a thing to ask your players to step into the shoes of a literal, actual fascist. 

Change places!

Richtofen’s recurrence is not necessarily a problem, as the last two versions of him managed to carry a grimey anti-villain edge without needing to flirt with the troubled context of being a horrible little fascist. Bringing him back is par for the course, but it feels unnecessary to have Richtofen rock up in full Nazi regalia as though it’s nothing more than an aesthetic choice for the character. 

With Black Ops 7’s new map, Ashes of the Damned, we’re changing the history of these returning characters. Takeo Masaki is no longer a disturbed Imperial Japanese soldier, but rather a time-lost samurai. 

In fact, Richtofen is the only returning character to keep his origins in World War Two. The American “Tank” Dempsey now served in the Vietnam War, and Nikolai Belinski in the Soviet-Afghan War. Despite this playfulness, Treyarch has been adamant in its desire to keep the Nazi playable, opening a can of worms that would be better closed.

The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi

Making Nazis into playable characters with no context feels lazy at best and dangerous at worst. In light of both the historic atrocities of the Nazi party as well as the emergence of modern-day fascism, video games must step up to the plate artistically and skewer these dangerous, destructive, and dehumanizing ideologies.  

Fortunately, this is easier than my spiel above might suggest. For easy, anti-fascist catharsis, you simply have to give your player a gun and let them shoot some Nazis. 

Wolfenstein understands this; the series has had the idea that the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi at its core from the very beginning. So abhorrent is the Nazi creed that the original Wolfenstein could allow players to slaughter them en masse back in 1992 with joyful abandon.

By the time of Wolfenstein 2 The New Colossus in 2017, things had become more sophisticated. The series was comfortable enough to closely portray a struggle to liberate a world overrun by Nazis.

In Wolfenstein 2, the horrors and absurdities of the regime are laid bare. Members of the Ku Klux Klan walk the streets in a US where “underirables” are left to perish in ghettos. Hitler himself is ridiculed in a particularly powerful set of cutscenes where the mania and self-obsession of his cult of personality are laid bare.  

The high road

It’s rare for games, especially big-budget titles like Call of Duty, to even attempt to tackle a topic as politically and emotionally charged as the Nazi regime. Storytellers have an artistic duty not to excise the context of Nazi Germany and the horrors committed by its hand. Too often do designers take the easy road. 

Hearts of Iron 4 has this issue, as while you can take control of Germany to duke it out in World War Two, the game is fully concerned with military objectives and none of the Third Reich’s social objectives. The game is never going to give you a button labeled ‘The Final Solution’, nor should it, but without this context to the regime’s actions, it whitewashes the campaign’s horrors. 

Battlefield 5’s last story chapter, The Final Tiger, might be the closest we get to an acceptable depiction of playable Nazis. It follows a German tank crew in the closing days of World War Two, and is a chilling tale of a group reckoning with how fascist ideology has poisoned them as they fight a losing battle against the Allies. 

It still struggles at times to marry its gameplay and narrative elements; however, the chapter does a great deal to underscore that, under fascism, even those in the jackboots are victims, in a sense. While undoubtedly complicit in war crimes and atrocities, these individuals are puppets too, manipulated by the empty promises of their leaders.  We cannot trust or expect that Black Ops 7 Zombies will do anything as thoughtful with Richtofen’s return.

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