The Wolfenstein SS (also referred to as the SS Nazi in DeHackEd) is a Nazi Schutzstaffel trooper in blue uniform. Originally from Wolfenstein 3D, the SS Nazis appear as an easter egg in the secret levels of Doom II, which are re-creations of levels from Wolfenstein 3D. The SS Trooper appears as a blonde, blue-eyed, square-jawed man wearing coveralls and a sidecap, while carrying a submachine gun. When wounded, the Wolfenstein SS sounds like the former humans when they take damage.

The SS Nazi inhabits only two of the Doom II maps released by id Software, the secret levels MAP31 and MAP32. Furthermore, SS Nazi soldiers are absent from MAP32: Grosse before the "Hurt me plenty" skill setting.

The Wolfenstein SS is also present in the Final Doom IWADs, but isn't used in any stock maps.

Combat characteristics

The SS Nazi will immediately call out "Schutzstaffel!" ("protection squad" in German) whenever they spot the player. When in pain, they make the same groaning sounds emitted from former humans and Imp.

They primarily attack by firing two bullets at a time in rapid succession, which are slightly less powerful than the player's bullet. Like the Heavy Weapon Dude, they fire repeatedly as long as his target is in sight. On death, the Nazi drops a clip containing five bullets (or ten on the "I'm too young to die" and "Nightmare!" skill settings).

Wolfenstein 3D didn't feature multiplayer or monster infighting, hence, all their bad guys always faced the player when attacking. (Bosses were even more extreme; they always faced the player period, and so could not, for example, be attacked from behind.) Id Software's artists did not bother to make new attacking graphics for the other angles when they converted the SS Nazi's graphics to that of Doom. Therefore, the SS Nazis always appear to be facing and pointing their guns at the player when firing, no matter where their actual targets are, which can be confusing because the Nazis are just as likely to engage in infighting and killing each other as the former humans are.

An Arch-vile can resurrect SS Nazis. This can only be seen in custom maps, as they don't appear together in any official levels.

The SS Nazi has about a third of the firing rate of the Chaingunner, but does so in two-round bursts, since unlike Doom's former humans, it has two aiming sprites (depicting the Nazi stopping and leveling his gun, instead of directly snapping to aiming).

When killed, the SS Nazi will painfully scream "Mein Leben!" ("My life!" in German) before simply falling on their back as blood pours out from their chest, staining their blue clothing.

Tactical analysis

In Wolfenstein 3D, the SS Nazi was a feared marksman whose high rate of fire, accuracy, and large hit point total forced the player to take care when fighting them especially at close range. In Doom II, the SS Nazi is not as dangerous, becoming a somewhat weaker counterpart of the Heavy Weapon Dude, with less hit points and a slower rate of fire. However, he's still harmful when attacking at close range (reflecting how standing closer to your bullet-shooting attacker hurts you more in Wolfenstein 3D).

Although a single SS Nazi at close range can inflict significant damage (his rate of fire is about a third of that of a Heavy Weapon Dude), his main distinguishing feature is now his inaccurate aim, which sometimes allows a skilled player to clear a good part of a large room without even pulling the trigger, due to infighting, especially considering the way the enemy is grouped in the secret levels of Doom II.

If the chaingun is used against a group of SS Nazis on the "Hey, not too rough", "Hurt me plenty", or "Ultra-Violence" skill levels, the player should watch their character's bullet stock carefully, since one is usually expending at least five bullets for every five-bullet clip recovered. The plasma gun dispatches Nazis fairly rapidly, while a single shotgun blast is often fatal. However, a chainsaw can be reasonably useful against the enemy, but only at corners or narrow rooms and dead ends, because of its hitscan attack.

Inspiration and development

Although the Doom engine considers SS Nazis to be the same height as former humans and the player, they appear shorter on the screen because their sprites are unchanged in size from the originals from Wolfenstein 3D.

The Schutzstaffel (abbreviated SS) was a notorious paramilitary organization active during Hitler's tenure in Germany, responsible for a large part of the war crimes committed by the regime.

Notes

• Upon being alerted, the SS exclaims his rank in the German language, "Schutzstaffel!", and upon death exclaims "Mein leben!", which translates into English as "My life!". These sounds, however, have a rather bad accent, and are not from the original DOS release, not even the later Mac Family ports.
  • In the PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC versions accessible through Bethesda.net, the SS's alert sound was changed to "schutzkämpfer" (security officer) in the 2020 update for the 2019 re-release of Doom II.
    • The "kämpfer" part was voiced by Mike Rubits, while the first half, "schutz," remained unchanged.
• One of the aiming graphics of the Wolfenstein SS's sprite (SSWVF0) has magenta pixels between the legs, due to a palette conversion error. In Wolfenstein 3-D, magenta (#FF00FF) is not used on any in-game objects and serves as a color code for transparency. So id's artists must have missed the section between the legs when they converted the image to the Doom picture format, which doesn't have a transparent color.
• The SS Nazi does not appear in the German release of Doom II, due to the absence of the two secret levels. These levels were removed due to Germany's long-standing ban on Nazi symbolism, which extends to computer games and other entertainment media. German laws ban usage of Nazi symbols in all forms of media unless the usage is justified (for example, educational materials relating to the Nazis, and even these are very tightly controlled). Wolfenstein 3D itself was never offered for sale in Germany at all due to these laws.
  • In the versions of Doom II included in Doom 3: BFG Edition and Doom Classic Complete, the SS have been replaced by zombiemen.
• The SS Nazi uses what appears to be the Maschinenpistole 40 with a standard 32-round magazine. However, in Doom II, it's fired semi-automatically, has infinite ammunition, and drops only a 5-round pistol clip, acting identically to a Zombieman's rifle but fired rapidly.
• The original SS Nazi from Wolfenstein 3D was extremely accurate and able to cut the player down in a matter of seconds. The rate of fire for the Doom II version has been greatly decreased, rendering them less lethal than the game's own Heavy Weapon Dudes. While this makes them less threatening by themselves, their main threat comes from their large numbers and phalanx-style positions.
• The SS Nazi's low rate of fire was probably an unintentional design decision, related to the fact that their attack script and codepointers are borrowed from the Heavy Weapon Dude. Whereas the other humanoid enemies in Doom/Doom II only have one frame of animation for "aiming" their weapon prior to attacking, the SS Nazi has two frames, like all other enemies from Wolfenstein 3D. Instead of simply playing both of the "aiming" frames once before the first attack loop sequence, a second aiming frame was included at the start of every loop of the attack sequence, slowing the SS's rate of fire considerably.
• Additionally, since the SS uses the same attack function codepointer as the Heavy Weapon Dude, his machinegun produces the attack sound used by the shotgun, rather than producing the sound effect used by the pistol/chaingun or MP 40. This was probably not an intentional design for either enemy type.
• The SS's original sprite set from Wolfenstein 3D only includes animation frames for firing his weapon in the direction of the player. Since Wolfenstein 3D did not feature monster infighting or multiplayer, and didn't require artwork depicting the enemy firing in any direction other than directly at the player, no new frames were created in Doom II for this purpose. Therefore, when the SS Nazi engages in monster infighting, he always appears to be facing (and firing at) the player, no matter where his actual target is.
• Like all other Doom II monsters with hitscan attacks, an SS Nazi will not hesitate to infight with other SS Nazi. This can be easily abused given their closely-packed formations.
• Although the SS Nazi in Doom II didn't receive any new frames of animation for his attack, he was given a gib animation like the Zombiemen and Imps.
• In Wolfenstein 3D, the SS Nazi originally had a standing-still frame for his idle state, like most other humanoid enemies. However, these frames were not carried over to Doom II. Now, when the SS is idle, he "walks in place" like most of the other Doom monsters.
• In ZDoom-based source ports, if a player dies from an SS Nazi (monster is credited with delivering the blow that reduces their health to 0%), an obituary message is displayed at the top of the screen: "[player name] met a Nazi".
• In Brutal Doom, SS Nazis have undergone the most radical changes of all enemies: their old Wolfenstein blue-clad elite soldiers animations were changed into Shotgun Guy-based customized sprites wearing black Nazi garbs and gray steel helmets, their voice samples (notably alert, pain, and death states) are German sentences yelled in fanatical military screams (borrowed from Call of Duty 2) and their completely reworked AI combines incredible moderate strength, agility, unpredictable dodges, and accurately deadly usage of their favored weapon - a powerful MP 40 submachine gun, which the player can pick up and use (weapon slot 8; slot 0 in v18; slot 2 in v20) after killing them. Interestingly enough, SS Nazis in Brutal Doom no longer fire continuously upon engaging targets, preferring instead to fire short bursts of bullets and move evasively a few steps in a random direction before firing again. Due to their human nature, as opposed to Zombiemen, they are quickly-moving, deadly accurate, and can strafe or evade your fire while shooting, instead of simply walking around and firing off bursts.

Data

Attributes
ID #	84 (decimal), 54 (hex)
Hit points	50
Speed	8 map units per frame (93.3 map units per second)
Width	40
Height	56
Reaction time	8
Pain chance	170 (66.41%)
Pain time	6 tics
Mass	100
Bits	4194310

Bits list
1: Obstacle 2: Shootable 22: Affects Kill %

Sprites & sounds
Sprite name	SSWV
Alert sound	DSSSSIT
Action sound	DSPOSACT
Pain sound	DSPOPAIN
Death sound	DSSSDTH (normal) DSSLOP (gibs)

Ranged attack
Type	Hitscan
Damage	3-15
Sprite name	PUFF (impact, miss) BLUD (impact, hit)
Shots per minute	175
Sound	DSSHOTGN

Shots needed to kill1,2	Mean	Standard deviation	Min	Max
Player (100% health, no armor)	12.29	2.16	9	19
Player (100% health, security armor)	17.86	2.79	13	26
Player (200% health, combat armor)	44.18	6.03	37	59
Barrel	2.93	0.83	2	6
Zombieman	2.93	0.83	2	6
Shotgun Guy	3.91	1.04	2	7
Wolfenstein SS	6.37	1.39	4	11
Imp	7.43	1.53	5	13
Heavy Weapon Dude	8.80	1.74	5	15
Lost Soul	12.29	2.16	9	19
Commander Keen	12.29	2.16	9	19
Demon	17.86	2.79	13	26
Spectre	17.86	2.79	13	26
Boss Brain3	29.78	4.39	25	42
Revenant	35.44	5.22	30	50
Cacodemon	47.41	6.88	40	64
Pain Elemental	47.41	6.88	40	64
Hell Knight	58.95	8.61	50	82
Arachnotron	58.95	8.61	50	82
Mancubus	70.57	10.22	60	96
Arch-vile	82.52	12.01	70	114
Baron of Hell	117.61	17.02	100	159
Spiderdemon	351.57	51.06	303	473
Cyberdemon	468.91	68.19	405	631

1. This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, blood splats, and bullet dispersal are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
2. The target must be close enough to compensate for the monster's inaccurate aim.
3. Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.

Appearance statistics

The IWADs contain the following numbers of Wolfenstein SS enemies:

Game	ITYTD and HNTR	HMP	UV and NM
Doom II	32	74	156

See also

Wolfenstein Wiki article on SS

Sources

• Doom II FAQ/Walkthrough by Tim Brastow at IGN.com

Classic Doom Monsters Doom introduction Baron of Hell Cacodemon Cyberdemon Imp Lost Soul Pinky Shotgun Guy Spectre Spider Mastermind Zombieman Doom II introduction Arachnotron Arch-vile* Commander Keen* Heavy Weapon Dude Hell Knight Icon of Sin* Mancubus Pain Elemental Revenant Wolfenstein SS* Legacy of Rust introduction Banshee Ghoul Mindweaver Shocktrooper Tyrant Vassago PSN only Caco-Spectre Nightmare Spectre WAD only Alpha Soul* Demon Witch*