Nazi Party

The regime whose agents hunt the Ark, the Grail and the Dial across the Indiana Jones stories.

Nazi forces are the antagonists of Raiders of the Lost Ark, set in 1936, in which Indiana Jones vies with Nazi German forces to recover the long-lost Ark of the Covenant, which Adolf Hitler believes will render their army invincible. The rival archaeologist René Belloq guides the Nazis to the Ark. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, set in 1938, Indy's father is kidnapped and held hostage by the Nazis while searching for the Holy Grail.

Quick Facts

Primary antagonist affiliation: Nazi Germany
First major appearance: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Lore & Background

In Raiders, the Nazis excavate at Tanis, Egypt, but dig in the wrong place, because the medallion they copied from the image burned into Toht's hand lacks its reverse side. They seize the Ark and take it to an island in the Aegean Sea, where its spirits kill Belloq, Toht and the assembled Nazis. In The Last Crusade, Brunwald Castle in Austria is under Nazi control commanded by Standartenführer Ernst Vogel, and Indy retrieves his father's diary in Berlin during a book burning rally hosted by Adolf Hitler. The Dial of Destiny opens in 1944 with the Nazi astrophysicist Jürgen Voller, who later becomes a NASA scientist.

Reader's Guide

In the video game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the Nazi archaeologist and occultist Emmerich Voss works with Mussolini's Blackshirts, and Jones is captured by the Nazi colonel Viktor Gantz. The Lego Indiana Jones games removed every mention of Nazism and replaced the Nazi figures with characters that resemble them.