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So I was watching Dr. Strangelove today, and I couldn't help but be fascinated by the character, Dr. Strangelove. I have
often wondered just who it was that Stanley Kubrik was parodying with the character. The four most logical candidates would
be Henry Kissinger, Werner von Braun, Edward Teller, and Herman Kahn. Each had reasons that Kubrik might have chosen to parody
them, but I still cannot find evidence that any one of them was actually a direct target of a Dr. Strangelove parody.
Kissinger seems like he could be a likely choice due to the fact that he was German. His accent was close to that of
Dr. Strangelove in the movie. However, it seems to me that Kissinger was not really popular enough at the time of the film
for Stanley Kubrik to have spent that much time trying to parody him.
Werner Von Braun was a former rocket scientist for the Nazi. As soon as WWII ended, he turned to help the United States.
His mastery of rocket science was of a high importance to the US, so they never really thought about putting him on trial
with the rest of the Nazis. Like Kissinger, he was German. Unlike Kissinger, Von Braun was famous. The only reason not to
consider him as the person Strangelove was parodying is the fact that he was a rocket scientist; he was not involved in the
nuclear aspects of things.
Edward Teller was a Hungarian physicist who became known as the "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb." He was also
the man who would go on to convince President Ronald Reagan that the Strategic Defense Initiative (AKA Star Wars) was a good
idea. Teller could have been the blueprint for Dr. Strangelove in that he was foreign and he had a heavy accent. However,
he was Hungarian and actually ran away from the Nazis when they invaded his country.
Herman Kahn is the most probably of these four to have been parodied in Dr. Strangelove. He worked at the RAND Corporation,
which was constructed to study nuclear war and its effects. In the movie, Strangelove talks about the "Bland Corporation."
Also, Kahn's pronouncements of the future match Strangelove's ideas such as the 10:1 ration of women and men. Although Dr.
Strangelove blatantly shows pieces of Kahn, Kahn was an American and did not have an accent of any kind.
So who was Dr. Strangelove? I believe that he was actually a montage of all four of these individuals, borrowing characteristics
of each of them, and creating a new character. At the same time, by building one character out of all of them, Kubrik is
able to show them as interchangeable, or even as being the same person.
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