This is more clear if you watch the extended scenes from the Nation's Pride. When the soldier played by Quentin Tarantino says "Colonel, I implore you; we must destroy that tower!". To which the Colonel, played by Bo Svenson says "Sergeant, that tower is one of the oldest and most treasured of all the most historically important structures still standing in Italy. And I'm not going the be the son of a bitch responsible for turning a thousand years of history in to dust! The tower stands!"

A group of Jewish American soldiers plot the assassination of Nazis while, in another storyline, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a French Jewish cinema owner who narrowly escaped the massacre of her family and who is now being forced to host a propaganda film attended by several high-ranking Nazi officers, including Adolf Hitler (Martin Wuttke), is also plotting their assassination. The two separate storylines come together at the end of the movie.

Inglourious Basterds was developed and produced from a script by director Quentin Tarantino.

No, but the title of the film was inspired by The Inglorious Bastards (The Inglorious Bastards (1978)) (1978). While Tarantino is a huge fan of this macaroni combat classic, his Inglourious Basterds has evolved from being a similar men-on-a-mission war film to something very different.

Tarantino commented on The Late Show that Inglourious Basterds is the "Tarantino way of spelling it," but he hasn't commented on where the idea for the misspelling arose, nor is he likely to. "I'm never going to explain that," Tarantino was quoted at the Cannes Film Festival (as widely reported). Three theories have been offered by viewers. (1) Basterd may be derived from the word Baster, a word derived from Dutch bastaard (bastard). The original Basters were mainly persons of mixed descent between the Cape Colony Dutch and indigenous African women who at one time would have been absorbed in the white community. In the movie, the Basterds are American/Jewish, and their plan was very similar: to be "civilians absorbed" in France, walking among the Nazis. (2) The misspelling may connote that Lt Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), who grew up in a family of backwoods bootleggers and moonshiners, has had little in the way of schooling. The words are briefly shown in their misspelled form on his rifle. (3) Tarantino misspelled the title on the cover of the script, which then leaked onto the internet before production began. Rather than admit his mistake, Tarantino chose to maintain the spelling.

It is in the chapter where the Basterds are in a ditch, interrogating their Nazi prisoners, and one refuses to give up the Nazi position in a nearby forest—basically asking for death at the hands of the "Bear Jew". Aldo Raine walks into the scene and you can see his Karabiner 98k rifle with the words "INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS" carved into the stock.

Technically, yes. Their mission was to create havoc and fear among the ranks of the Nazis, by killing and mutilating them. However, a good portion of the men they killed weren't Nazis but were German soldiers and not necessarily members of the Nazi Party, Gestapo or SS. During the time of war, any German soldier who was fighting for Adolf Hitler was considered a Nazi by the Allies.

It is never explained in the movie, as it was Tarantino's intention to leave it unknown. Several theories have come up about it, one such being that it resulted from his punishment for being a bootlegger in the Southern United States. There is a rumor that Tarantino said in an interview that Raine was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) for defending African Americans in the South. It is also been suggested that someone slit or tried to slit his throat but didn't go as deeply as intended or that Aldo fought them off quickly enough, although the scar does not look like that caused by a knife, and the screenplay refers to it as a "rope burn".

Though not explicitly stated in the movie, it is strongly implied in the film that he is not. He mentions that he is part Apache and that he was born and raised in Maynardville, Tennessee. He tells his troops that he was a direct descendant of Jim Bridger the mountain man, suggesting he is the hillbilly type (there were not many Jewish hillbillies). He was in charge of leading the actual Jewish American soldiers (with the exception of Hugo Stiglitz, who was not Jewish) into enemy territory. In all likelihood, Raine received/asked for command of the Basterds purely so he could have a crack at the Nazis.

Powdered snuff, which is a type of tobacco that you can inhale through your nose. He'd gotten it from one of the dead German soldiers right before Donny kills the officer with his bat. In The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, the character Tuco is also seen sniffing powdered snuff. The case which he takes off Bill Carson.

Because a basement tavern like the one the scene takes place in might only have one entrance/exit and no windows. Such a layout offers very little opportunity, if a gunfight breaks out, for anyone to escape the ensuing melee. A basement bar like this one will likely have no windows, or windows that are too small to see anything happening downstairs which would prevent Aldo and the rest of the Basterds the opportunity to spy on the meeting and maybe see an attack coming. In short, Aldo is bothered that he wouldn't be able to see the meeting's progress. The chances of him actually hearing the conversation between Hicox's small team and Hammersmark would have been increased if the tavern were above ground—they'd be able to spy on the meeting from another room or outside. As things turn out, Aldo was perfectly justified in his assumption. Also, the men are merely meeting Hammersmark in the basement bar—that doesn't mean that they'd intended to stay there & continue their conversation. As commander of the mission, Raine might have instructed Hicox to get Hammersmark & the rest of their team out of there ASAP but in such a way as to appear less suspicious. Wicki even tried to tell her that they needed to leave the place but she insisted they stay because her leaving so soon after she'd arrived would look suspicious. Plus, there's the factor of plain bad luck: Hammersmark never expected that the young Sergeant who'd just become a father and his friends would be celebrating in that very bar.

This may be part of Tarantino's message: that all people, regardless of labels and categories, are capable of intense cruelty. Indeed, the Basterds are fully aware of this and relatively proud of it. Aldo's opening speech to his unit was essentially saying that they plan to give the Nazis a taste of their own medicine:

Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin', mass murderin' maniac and they need to be dee-stroyed. That's why any and every sumbitch we find wearin' a Nazi uniform, they're gonna die.... We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. And the German won't be able to help themselves but to imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the German will be sickened by us, and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they're tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with. Sound good?

Nazis had a very similar outlook on Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, and anyone else deemed imperfect or untrustworthy. So Aldo and the Basterds took the opportunity to strike a blow at the heart of the German ranks by treating them no different than the Reich treated Jews. Not distinguishing between a Nazi and a German soldier was part of a prejudice necessary to their mission to wreak havoc.

Quentin Tarantino seems to like playing around with his movies. Like he did with the two Kill Bill movies he created a longer German Version of Inglourious Basterds as well. Here, two dialogue scenes were extended during the "Who am I?" game dealing with Winnetou who is a very famous literary character in Germany. These scenes can be found in the bonus material of the international version, though.

Yes. For example...

• We see a victim's attackers from their point of view. There are many point of view shots in Tarantino's work, including Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown.

• Tarantino continues to display his foot fetish when Landa holds Bridget's bare foot.

• During a long conversation, the camera will circle around the table. The same technique is used in Reservoir Dogs and Death Proof.

• Julie Dreyfus portrays a German to French translator in this film. She plays a similar role in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 as a French and English to Japanese translator.

• A character says a line in verse (Landa tells Raine and Utvich "You get all four, you win the war.") An example of this in another Tarantino film is in Pulp Fiction, when Paul tells Vincent, "My name's Paul, and this shit's between y'all."

• Samuel L Jackson participates in his 4th Tarantino film as film's voice-over narrator. Harvey Keitel makes his 3rd as the voice of the commander that Raine and Landa talk to over radio.

• In the bar scene, Michael Fassbender, Til Schweiger, and August Diehl are involved in a Mexican standoff, much like the endings of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

• In the opening scene, Landa drinks his entire glass of milk in one gulp before massacring an entire group of people. This is similar to an early scene in Pulp Fiction where Jules drinks an entire cup of Sprite in one gulp before he commits a massacre.

• The scene between Aldo and Wilhelm after the shootout is similar to one between The Bride and the assassin Karen Kim in Kill Bill: Vol. 2.

• Just after F. Zoller has shot Shoshanna, there is a shot, straight on, of him holding the gun on her, hesitating, moving it up and down. In Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Orange performs the same action, in a similar shot.

• The only black man in this film (a Frenchman) is named "Marcel". Marcellus was the name of the African-American crime boss in Pulp Fiction.

• Sgt. Donny Donowitz shares a last name with Lee Donowitz, who was a film producer character in the Tarantino-written film True Romance, and Tarantino has confirmed that the two are father and son. Also, in True Romance, the character Lee Donowitz produced a war film called Comin' Home in a Body Bag.

• The Basterds always leave one behind to tell the tale, much like Mickey and Mallory in the Tarantino scripted Natural Born Killers and Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. The confessions by the swastika marked Nazi's are also much like Sophie Fatale's confession to Bill in Kill Bill.

• The same excerpt from the song, Crane/White Lightning by RZA is used in both Inglourious Basterds and Kill Bill: Vol. 1

• Shosanna's message to the Nazi's being in English after Marcel says, "Remember, in English," is similar to O-Ren Ishii's message to the Tokyo Yakuza in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, which is delivered in English after she says in Japanese, "So you all will know the seriousness of my warning, I shall say this in English."

Probably the best person to recommend movies that inspired Inglourious Basterds is director Quentin Tarantino himself. In an interview with the Associated Press, Tarantino picks five of his favorite "story-oriented" versions of World War II. The five include (1) The Great Escape (1963) (1963) about a mass escape of Allied POWs from a Nazi prison camp,(2) The Dirty Dozen (1967) (1967) in which 12 convicted murderers lead a mass assassination mission of German officers, (3) Five Graves to Cairo (1943) (1943) in which a British officer seeks to penetrate the secrets of the "Desert Fox" (German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel), (4) Tonight We Raid Calais (1943) (1943) in which a British intelligence officer plots to destroy a Nazi munitions plant in France, and (5) Action in Arabia (1944) (1944) featuring a reporter in the Middle East who becomes caught up in the Allied-Nazi struggle for the sympathies of the Arab world. Tarantino also named Where Eagles Dare (1968) (1968), a Clint Eastwood film set in World War II, as his favorite "men-on-a-mission" movie. If you enjoyed Inglourious Basterds, you may wish to see other films by Quentin Tarantino, e.g., Reservoir Dogs (1992) (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994) (1994), True Romance (1993) (1993) (scripted by Tarantino but directed by Tony Scott), Jackie Brown (1997) (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) (2004), Death Proof (2007) (2007), and Django Unchained (2012) (2012).

The Green Leaves Of Summer, composed by Dimitri Tiomkin & Paul Francis Webster and arranged & performed by Nick Perito, from The Alamo (1960): The opening credits.

La Condanna (The Verdict), by Ennio Morricone, from The Big Gundown (1967): The arrival of the Nazis at the LaPadite farm.

L'incontro Con La Figlia, by Ennio Morricone, from The Return of Ringo (1965): The assassination of Shosanna's family and her subsequent escape.

White Lightning (Main Theme), by Charles Bernstein, from White Lightning (1973): Pvt. Butz's introduction and Basterds aftermath / Lt. Aldo carving a swastika into Butz / Introduction of Shosanna and the theater in 1944.

Il Mercenario (Ripresa), by Ennio Morricone, from The Mercenary (1968): Aftermath of the Basterds attack / Sgt. Rachtman approaches and salutes Lt. Aldo.

Slaughter (Main Theme), by Billy Preston, from Slaughter (1972): Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz's theme.

Algeri: 1 November 1954, by Ennio Morricone & Gillo Pontecorvo, from The Battle of Algiers (1966): The Basterds springing Stiglitz from jail.

La Resa (The Surrender), by Ennio Morricone, from The Big Gundown (1967): Sgt. Donowitz's introduction.

Un Dollaro Bucato (Main Theme) (One Silver Dollar), by Gianni Ferrio, from Blood for a Silver Dollar (1965): Bistro music during Shosanna's and Zoller's conversation.

Hound Chase (Intro), by Charles Bernstein, from White Lightning (1973): Major Hellstrom informs Shosanna that she must come with him.

The Saloon, by Riz Ortolani, from Beyond the Law (1968): Piano music at Maxim's during Shosanna's lunch with Goebbels, Francesca, Zoller and Hellstrom.

Bath Attack, by Charles Bernstein, from The Entity (1982): Shosanna sees Col. Landa again for the first time since he killed her family.

Claire's First Appearance, by Jacques Loussier, from Dark of the Sun (1968): Shosanna decides to burn the theatre down on the night of the premiere of Stolz der Nation.

The Fight, by Jacques Loussier, from Dark of the Sun (1968): Stiglitz sharpens his knife in front of Lt. Hicox.

Davon Geht Die Welt Nicht Unter, composed by Bruno Balz & Michael Jary and performed by Zarah Leander, from Die große Liebe (1942): The first song playing in La Louisiane (while the first card game is going on).

The Man with the Big Sombrero, composed by Phil Boutelje & Foster Carling and performed by The Michael Andrew Orchestra, from Hi Diddle Diddle (1943): The second song playing in La Louisiane (while Bridget is attempting to inform the Basterds of the recent changes in Operation Kino).

Ich Wollt Ich Wär Ein Huhn, composed by Hans Fritz Beckmann & Peter Kreuder and performed by Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch & Paul Kemp, from Glückskinder (1936): The third song playing in La Louisiane (while Sgt. Wilhelm interrupts the conversation to talk to Bridget).

Dark of the Sun (Main Theme), by Jacques Loussier, from Dark of the Sun (1968): Lt. Aldo and Bridget start coming up with Plan B for Operation Kino.

Cat People (Putting Out The Fire), composed by David Bowie & Giorgio Moroder and performed by David Bowie, from Cat People (1982): Shosanna's preparation montage for her revenge.

Mistico e Severo (Mystic and Severe), by Ennio Morricone, from Death Rides a Horse (1967): Col. Landa studies the lobby and finds Bridget and the Basterds.

The Devil's Rumble, composed by Davie Allan & Mike Curb and performed by Davie Allan & Davie Allan and The Arrows, from Devil's Angels (1967): Sgt. Donowitz and PFC Ulmer study the opera boxes and take their seats among the Nazi officers.

What'd I Say, composed by Ray Charles and performed by Rare Earth: Sgt. Donowitz and PFC Ulmer study the area outside Hitler's opera box.

Zulus, composed by Elmer Bernstein and performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, from Zulu Dawn (1979): Marcel bars the doors and takes his place behind the screen with the nitrate film prints.

Tiger Tank, by Lalo Schifrin, from Kelly's Heroes (1970): Zoller leaves the opera box to see Shosanna / Shosanna switches reels.

Un Amico, by Ennio Morricone, from Revolver (1973): Shosanna ruefully watches Stolz der Nation.

Eastern Condors (Main Theme), by Danny Chung, from Eastern Condors (1987): Sgt. Donowitz and PFC Omar kill Hitler's guards.

Rabbia e Tarantella, by Ennio Morricone, from Allonsanfan (1974): Lt. Aldo carves his masterpiece / The closing credits.