Basic Information
Sonderkommando Thule1 was a legendary paramilitary unit serving the German Nazi government under the auspices of the Thule Society and specialising in occult related activities.
Exact years of embodiment are unclear - obviously they lie in the 1933-1945 range but when the unit was created and whether it persisted in any form after the end of WW2 remains in dispute. Certainly the Thule society preceeded the Nazis and was - officially at least - closed down by their anti-secret society legislation in 1935 … it would seem appropriate for this to be the point at which the Nazi state subsumed all of those Thule elements they thought desirable.
Both by title and theme the Sonderkommando was almost certainly a Waffen SS unit - before its ironic use in the Concentration Camps and Extermination Camps Sonderkommando was widely applied to SS special task units and given Heinrich Himmler's obsession with the occult and pseudo-aryan mythology the thematic fit is almost perfect. The Sonderkommando may have been a branch of the Ahnenerbe2 Nonetheless, other, non-SS personnel are occasionally mentioned - even those who would not be acceptable for SS-membership, even as auxilaries, due to their "impure" blood. This is not necessarily an obstacle given that the Nazis in general could be pragmatic to far past the point of hypocrisy when it suited them.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- These guys are ideal villains for an adventure set during the 1930s or WW2 - and are also a good source of 'holdout Nazi' material.
- For inspiration see the source about the Ahnenerbe and then turn it up to eleven.
- Seriously, these people were batshit crazy - if you want anyone to charter U-boat expeditions to remote places, meddle with sealed evil in a can, open gateways to places best left unvisited, stoke up the activity levels of a bad place, annoy The Fair Folk, fail to observe the Charles Dexter Ward Principle or do anything else occult and stupid, these are your guys.
- You can also team them up with almost any historical villain you like - Dracula3, Rasputin4, sundry mummies5, not to mention werewolves6 and other horrors. Replicas of Frankenstein's Monster and hordes of zombies are also popular.
- Obvious allies for the Black Dragon or Black Ocean Society.
- Be aware that, given the sort of things the Nazis got up to, injecting black magic into it can turn the squick factor up quite high - the Shoah was bad enough without it being a literal as well as a figurative holocaust.