"Mein Führer, I can walk!" - Dr. Strangelove's most famous line.
Dr. Strangelove is the title character of the film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. He is a wheelchair bound-former Nazi turned weapons strategist who suffers from Alien Hand Syndrome.
He was portrayed by the late Peter Sellers, who also plays Merkin Muffley and Lionel Mandrake in the same film (along with playing Clare Quilty in Lolita).
Biography[]
Merkwürdigliebe was born in Germany and became a Nazi during World War II. He suffered unexplained injuries during the war, which gave him Alien Hand Syndrome and paralyzed him from the waist down, binding him to a wheelchair. Trying to put his Nazi past behind him, he had moved to America hoping to live a normal life, and changed his name to "Strangelove", a loose translation of his German name.
During, one point, he had met with President Muffley and impressed him with his scientific expertise and knowledge of the German missile systems. Muffley hired Strangelove to be his scientific adviser and a U.S. weapons strategist.
When the deranged Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper unleashes bomber planes form reaching Russia, which would set off a Doomsday Machine the Russians built that would destroy all life on Earth, Muffley asks Strangelove to explain the Doomsday machine's functions and purpose for being built. Strangelove states that the machine is easy to trigger but couldn't be untriggered, then he asks why the Russians had kept the machine a secret, since it would only work as a deterrent if its existence were known. The Russian envoy answers that it was about to be announced to the world shortly and was delayed because the Premier loves surprises.
Ripper's subordinate Captain Mandrake manages to obtain the recall code and sends it to the bomber planes, telling them to turn back. While Muffley and his advisors cheer, Strangelove is seen mysteriously in the shadows. However, the team had missed one of the planes that was didn't get the code because its CRM-114 mechanism was destroyed by a missile. The crew in the bomber plane didn't know they were to turn back and managed to reach their target.
Back in the War Room, Strangelove makes an abrupt turn - signaling the major turn of events for the world. He swings around in his wheelchair from the Big Board, explaining that not all was lost. After making calculations with a circular slide rule, he proposes an idea for a 100-year plan for survival. Life can continue underground until the radioactivity diminishes. But he couldn't stop himself when he accidentally calls the President "Mein Fuehrer" while dreaming of an underground bunker world populated by "top government and military men" after the impending apocalypse.
His thoughts of personal survival underground after the end of the world energize Strangelove. His left fist slams down and his black-gloved right arm reflexes into an unintentional Nazi salute right before he pulls his right arm back into his lap, fighting off his own, spring-loaded gloved hand with his good arm. With an absurd grin on his face, his own sexual pleasure is kindled as he excitedly talks about selective sexual breeding at a ratio of 10 females to each male. Society's male elite would be surrounded by a contingent of beautiful women in underground hideouts, and their couplings would eventually repopulate the planet.
Muffley is concerned about the depression of the grief-stricken survivors, but Strangelove is still calm, though he had to beat up his right hand with his left before answering. He proposes that everyone would survive inside the mine and his right arm again reflexes into a Nazi salute, then tries to strangle him after he pulled it back. Strangelove's future vision of "strange love" imagines love-less, assembly-line, mechanical sex, in a world in which everyone could "Stop worrying and love the bomb".
Ecstatic over the total annihilation of the Earth, Strangelove "resurrects" himself as he accidently stands up, and realizes he can walk again.