Irene Engel

Obergruppenführer Irene Engel was the secondary antagonist of Wolfenstein: The New Order, and the main antagonist of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.
==History==
Irene Engel was born in Prussia, part of the German Empire, in 1905. In 1936, she joined the Nazi Party and secured a leading position in the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the all-female wing for the Hitler Youth. By 1948, she had climbed the ranks from a Gruppenführer to Reichsreferentin, the highest attainable rank for a woman within the organization at the time. Engel was the mother to six children and prominently displayed this fact as part of her public image as a proud and ideal German mother after the Nazi doctrine.
In the decades that followed, the Third Reich's expansion increased dramatically and so did the authority Engel held within the Wehrmacht. She was held in high regards by Adolf Hitler himself, whom she met in person in June 1956, with her then-14-year old daughter Sigrun. For Engel, the meeting was overshadowed by Hitler criticising Sigrun for being overweight, for which her mother, who already harbored a great disdain for her, hit Sigrun in a rage and briefly discussed having her sent to an euthanasia program. By 1960, Engel was an Obergruppenführer in the Schutzstaffel, and was the KZ-Kommandant of her own extermination camp, Camp Belica, in annexed Croatia.
==The New Order==
Frau Engel is first seen on the night train to Berlin accompanied by her lover Hans "Bubi" Winkle. She and Hans, guarded by her lookout Bernhard and a Guard Robot, enter the same compartment as the undercover Blazkowicz as he is fetching coffee for Anya. With her escort blocking the way, Engel pressures B.J. into joining them for a talk, with her complimenting his "Aryan features". Engel tells B.J. that she would like to "test" his racial purity, warning her guest that if he fails or tries to grab her sidearm, she will have him personally executed on the spot. She proceeds to present him with a series of seemingly random pictures and is asked to point out which speak to him the most. After each answer, Engel remarks on each choice with a sneer, and when B.J. goes to make the last choice, she ominously warns him that he should carefully consider his next move. As the last picture is chosen, Engel abruptly draws her gun on Blazkowicz, as do the guards. Engel then confesses that the whole setup was a playful joke, since any "non-Aryan" would have surely gone for the gun rather than play along, further claiming that she, like any respectable Übermensch, would be able to recognize an "impure" by looks alone either way. Engel then allows B.J. to leave, ignorant of the situation's irony.
Frau Engel does not appear again until Blazkowicz enters Camp Belica near Zagreb in northern Croatia. She is seen barking orders at newly arrived prisoners, during which she savagely whips a man when he hands his sickly infant daughter over to her and then provides to throw the baby into the incinerator Inside the entry chamber, she walks on the balcony with Bubi to oversee the passage of prisoners. He is spared from the gas chamber when Engel has Blazkowicz directed to the Über Concrete mixers upon Bubi's insistence on not letting an able-bodied worker go to waste. After Blazkowicz is caught trying to steal the Detronic battery, Engel is present as Blazkowicz, Set Roth, and the other prisoners are about to be executed by Herr Faust. B.J. and Roth manage to seize control of the robot and use it to attack Engel and her soldiers. Engel survives but her face is horrifically disfigured. She threatens Blazkowicz before the robot tosses her aside. Just as Blazkowicz and the prisoners try to escape, Engel reappears with two assault rifles and opens fire on the fugitives, shouting "No one leaves my camp!" in a rather slurred, guttural voice, indicating that as a result of her scars, her vocal chords were heavily compromised.
She later spearheads the assault on the Kreisau Circle's base, leading to the deaths of Klaus Kreutz and several others. She is last seen on a computer screen in Deathshead's compound as Blazkowicz is ambushed by Bubi and injected with a powerful tranquilizer. As Bubi attempts to gut Blazkowicz while Engel watches, B.J. bites Bubi in the neck and stabs him to death. Engel looks on in shock and horror via video feed and then shuffles away whimpering, never seen again afterwards. This is meant to imply that his death has pushed her past her breaking point.
==The New Colossus==
Frau Engel returns as the main antagonist of the game. She is shown to have had her jaw completely fixed (with some scars left, a crooked left eyebrow and an inability to close the left side of her mouth) and has had her vocal chords seemingly repaired, as she is shown to be able to speak perfectly, as opposed to her slurred, guttural voice heard in The New Order.
She has been relentlessly hunting down BJ since the destruction of Deathshead's Compound. Engel quickly rose through the ranks becoming an SS-Obergruppenführer, the third highest rank in the Schutzstaffel, in 1961, after gaining the trust of Adolf Hitler, although this could be reverted at any time due to the actions of her daughter. She oversees technological advancements with the program ideated by late General der Panzertruppe, Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse, and the deportation of designated subhumans and resistance members. Engel was also named the Director of the Orpo and the Gestapo, having ultimate control over the state security apparatus and supervising every operation. It is believed that Irene Engel is the first high ranking female officer inside the paramilitary organization of the NSDAP and the Gestapo. 
Having witnessed Bubi's death at the hands of B.J. Blazkowicz in the previous game, Engel spends the next five months ruthlessly hunting the Kreisau Circle, culminating in an assault on Eva's Hammer in the northern Atlantic Ocean.
Once B.J. surrenders and is brought before her, Engel mocks his new crippled state, seemingly unaware of the fact that some of her troops were slaughtered prior to this, while gloating about her plans to publicly execute him. She then hands her daughter Sigrun a fire axe and browbeats her to decapitate Caroline Becker. After Sigrun refuses to do her dirty work, she mocks her daughter and proceeds to decapitate Caroline herself, just as she dismisses her as an “Untermensch”(id est: a derisive slur used by some to refer to someone considered to be an inferior). When she is about to chop off Fergus/Wyatt's head, Sigrun spontaneously realizes she can no longer tolerate her mother's evil ways and rushes at her, enraged by Caroline’s death, causing Irene to accidentally chop something off her intended target (the right arm for Fergus or a small piece of the right ear for Wyatt). Despite her so-called perfect and healthy able-body based on Nazi ideology, she is helpless against an adrenaline-induced Sigrun as her enraged daughter pins her to the ground. Irene then desperately cries out to the nearby Super Soldier to successfully help her from Sigrun's chokehold and cowardly runs away from the scene. Sigrun feebly attempts to give chase, but suffers from fatigue as a result of her weight.
She later manages to capture B.J. with help from his treacherous father, though the latter is killed during this endeavor. A week later, Engel decapitates him on international television, but B.J. is revived thanks to the efforts of Set Roth in a head transplant operation.
Irene later appears in Los Angeles as a guest on The Jimmy Carver Show, alongside the English band Die Käfer (The Beatles). After BJ and the Resistance take control of the Ausmerzer, BJ and the rest of his team (minus Sigrun due to her pacifist nature, although she gives them permission to kill her mother) infiltrate the talk show studio to finish her. At first, she gloats about B.J.'s execution to Jimmy Carver and bemoans her daughter's defection, remiscing on the high hopes she had in her after "graciously" choosing not to having her euthanized for her weight . At the end of the interview, she warns Carver to conduct his next interview in German, with the implication that there would be severe consequences, should he not do so. However, B.J. reveals himself before any repercussions could take place. Engel, visibly horrified, panics and frantically shoots at B.J. with her outdated Luger pistol (the player can take five shots before dying if they stand idle) before he manages to chop half of her right arm off with a hatchet. She tries to use her remaining hand to draw a knife and stab BJ, but he drives the hatchet's blade into her face, gives her a short but demeaning speech, and finally splits her skull in half, ending her cruel life and avenging Caroline and Super Spesh along with his original body.
In order to make sure her legacy dies completely, Grace Walker asks B.J. to assassinate all Übercommanders who were under Engel to tie up loose ends; that way, no one can be her successor to continue her work in the occupied USA.
== The Freedom Chronicles==
Engel does not directly appear as a character in Curtis Everton's graphic novels. in The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe Volumes 1 and 2, she is seen on propaganda posters around the streets of Springfield, Illinois, in the Secret Police Headquarters in the town, and in Roderick Metze's hideout at the Topeka Space Center. A novel titled "Irene Engel: Victory" bears her name and face on its cover in The Diaries of Agent Silent Death Volume 1; it is unknown if this book exists in the Wolfenstein universe, or only within the in-universe fiction that comprises the Freedom Chronicles.
==Military Ranks==
*Gruppenführer of the Bund Deutscher Mädel (1936 - 1939)
*Reichsreferentin of the Bund Deutscher Mädel (1939 - 1948)
*Kommandant of Belica Labor Camp (before 1960 - 1960)
*Obersturmbannführer (before 1960 - 1960)
*Chef der Polizei (1961)
*Commander of the Ausmerzer (1961)
*Obergruppenführer (1961)
==Appearance==
In The New Order, Irene is a middle-aged woman with blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin, fitting the Nazis' ideal “Aryan” description. She is always dressed in a black SS field uniform, with the swastika armband worn proudly around her left arm signifying her status as a high-ranking Party member. After the events at Camp Belica, most of her face was able to be reconstructed, with the exception of large visible scars around her mouth. In The New Colossus, the only notable difference in her appearance is her face, with her scars still visible but nearly healed, and her face being somewhat younger-looking, and unable to fully close her mouth, leaving a permanent grimace. In spite of that, her appearance is not idealised in Nazi propaganda - her disfigurement is presented unvarnished in various posters and images so she likely views her injuries as symbols of pride.
==Personality ==
A truly evil woman, Irene Engel is the darkest ideal in a world ruled by the Third Reich; a sadistic, fanatical and ruthless military officer, and like so many of her fellow Nazis, ran high on her own ego and power. She wholeheartedly follows the Party line of maintaining racial and physical purity and considers other races and religions as unworthy of life. Her behaviour around B.J. (before she even knows his identity) and her conduct at Camp Belica shows she delights in holding the power of life and death over people no matter who they are - the 'racial purity' test she performs on B.J. she happily admits is a farce, and both Bubi and her bodyguard Bernhardt disclose she plays sadistic games with strangers as a hobby. She promises salvation and reintegration to society for the inmates at her camp, presenting herself as a figure of reverence and worship - but in reality, like in all such camps created by the Nazis, they are simply there to work until they perish, unworthy to be a part of the New Order.
She is intensely cruel, reveling in the bloody killing, pain and suffering she inflicts on others, as shown with her camp inmates, Caroline, Fergus/Wyatt, Super Spesh and B.J. Engel rarely, if ever, demonstrates compassion or consideration for others, even her own daughter, whom she treats with utter contempt due to her good nature and obesity. The only person Irene seems to have real care and respect for is Bubi; his death apparently moving Engel to spend months hunting for B.J.. However, whether or not Engel truly cared for Bubi is questionable; despite her aghast reaction to his death, she never mentions him again, even to B.J. Similarly, her presumed ex-husband with which she had her six children is never mentioned either, and it is unknown if he is even still alive. The deaths of her allies and soldiers are personal affronts, not likely because she truely cares for them, but because they are extensions of her power and self. Engel almost appears intoxicated whenever she has B.J. or other Resistance characters under her thumb - she is on a perpetual power trip, and is never more at home than when torturing those she is given licence to torture, often with an emphasis on cruel spectacle than any pragmatism. In a way, she embodies the most disturbing aspect of the Nazis real-world legacy - that the ideology she claims to follow is merely an excuse, and she would hurt, control and destroy anybody she could, simply because her professed beliefs justify the impulse, similar to how Deathshead experiments on people he dismisses as subhuman.
In an interview with Jimmy Carver in Hollywood, she admits she considered euthanising Sigrun simply because of her weight - it's implied that this largely motivated by her own image as a general rather than any real concern for her daughter's quality of life, and possibly because Sigrun is her only daughter within the patriarchal Reich. When being interviewed, she puts on the facade of a caring mother who loved her daughter and was devastated by her defection. Despite being domineering towards Sigrun, Irene shows real fear and panic when Sigrun actually stands up to her; she pins her down with a fire axe and Engel is forced to scream for help from a Supersoldier, revealing the cowardly nature of a bully who flees when they can no longer control their prey.
Irene is otherwise sneering and condescending towards all those who aren't the men under her command. If B.J. listens during her interview with the unctuous Jimmy Carver, Engel can be heard berating him for his poor German ("Fauler Amerikaner...") warning him to either do his next interview completely in German, or face the consequences - though in fairness, virtually all German characters throughout the series, Nazi or otherwise, are shown speaking near-perfect English. Her reputation by the middle of The New Colossus is that of a superstar within the German military - guardian angel of the American Territories, hunter of terrorists, and executioner of Terror-Billy. An officer on Venus even has a shrine dedicated to her in his quarters, including some apparently candid photographs of her smoking.
An interesting if disturbing aspect of Engel is her relationship with B.J. Despite her initial hate for him due to her disfigurement and the deaths of Bubi and Deathshead, she appears to develop some twisted physical attraction towards B.J., mockingly simulating kisses with Caroline's bloody and decapitated head (which she does to Sigrun as well) and holding her smoking gun in his mouth a la the 'human ashtray' sex act, singing a popular love song. While it may simply be a form of psychological torture, the ease with which she does this implies that for all her posturing, she might be sexually depraved - her guards can be seen exchanging looks while she flirtatiously tortures B.J. with the smoke of "the bullet that killed your friend.". The depth of her psychopathy is alluded to with the hint that if, hypothetically, Adolf Hitler died, she would neither mourn him nor have any hesitation in attempting to take his place.
Finally, her fatal flaw is revealed in the end: ego. After "executing" Blazkowicz publicly, she believed that nothing could stop her from reigning over America. Upon hearing that Hitler planned to make a film of B.J's execution (and taking all the credit), she decides to promote her own image by setting up an interview on international television. She completely blocked all the communications from her subordinates and attended the Jimmy Carver show to flaunt her accomplishment and fluff her rising-star status. As she was unable to be informed that the Ausmerzer had been taken over and that Blazkowicz returned from the dead, she was unguarded. Consequently, during the middle of the live television show, she was publicly and brutally killed by Blazkowicz.
If Engel has a single redeeming quality, it would be that she is shown to be a charismatic military leader, setting herself apart from other Nazi villains by her competency. She builds up a rapport with her men, who clearly admire her and generally indulge in her depraved behaviour - she, in turn, treats them like comrades, praising them and thanking them as equals as she encourages them to partake in her cruelty reminiscent of the way a school bully might feign magnanimity with their gang while confronting a helpless victim. However, she is also something of a martinet - she makes it clear she is appalled at the sloppiness of the crew of the Ausmerzer, and sends numerous missives to her forces to take the threat of the American Resistance and B.J. seriously. She is cunning enough to use the hateful Rip Blazkowicz as a diversion for his son, and to anticipate that Super Spesh would attempt a reckless rescue by posing as his lawyer. Ultimately, her love of power and attention, arrogance and failure of imagination eclipsed her abilities - her very public and well-earned death demonstrates to the world that the Nazis are not invincible, and ignites an American and later global uprising with catastrophic consequences for the Third Reich.
==Quotes==
==Gallery==
==Trivia== 
*In real life, women were barred from politics and combat-related military positions in Nazi Germany. Some exceptions include those in charge of state organizations with female-only membership and the wives of high-ranking Nazi officals. Starting around 1940, the Nazi Regime did allow some women to serve as auxilliaries in the three branches of the Wehrmacht (Wehrmachtshelferinnen), the Schutzstaffel (SS-Helferinnenkorps) and concentration camps (Aufseherinnen), following a lapse in enlistment due to a disparity of teenage and adult men. Even though female conscripts received little military indoctrination and minimal training, many of them, particularly those who served as camp guards, have developed notorious reputations for their open-ended complicity and cruelty against prisoners (most infamously, Hermine Braunsteiner, “The Stomping Mare”)
*Frau Irene Engel carries a gold Handgun 1946 that can be collected as a treasure during the chapter 8 Camp Belica level.
*Her first name, Irene, is the Greek word for "peace", and her surname translates to "Angel", which is ironic, given her position as commander of a concentration camp, along with her violent tendencies. Another irony is that her surname also translates to "barrier", "obstacle" or "difficulty" in Turkish.
* Because she is not physically present during the final assault on Deathshead's compound, Frau Engel is the only surviving antagonist of The New Order.
*According to the prisoners at Camp Belica, she is known there as the "Angel of Death", both referencing her surname and merciless attitude. This nickname is also shared by the infamous Nazi scientist, Josef Mengele. This connection is strengthened by the fact that Mengele's first wife was also named Irene.
*Frau Irene Engel's cruel and inhumane treatment of her camp's prisoners might have been based on Ilse Koch, the wife of Karl-Otto Koch, warden of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Similar to Engel, Koch was also noted for her lascivious behavior towards prisoners and was known to have exploited them for personal gain, although their motivation differs, since it was purely for power for Engel and financial in Koch's case.
*Engel is likely Catholic, since prisoners at Camp Belica warn that she does not tolerate the practice of any other belief system in her camp. This is notable due to her hailing from the northern part of Germany, which was predominantly Protestant at the time. 
**In real life, the Third Reich's relationship with Christian churches was varied, since there was no universal agreement on the matter, although churches were generally strongly limited, since many high-ranking Nazi officials believed that the Nazi ideology and Christianity were irreconcilible, since most sects found value in all human life, regardless of race, physical ability or mental state. Adolf Hitler strove for a non-Christian Germany, with at most German Paganism or the state approved variants of "neutral" non-denominational Christianity (Gottgläubigkeit) such as Positive Christianity, which remove its Semitic roots and embraces Aryanism, as religions. The Roman Catholic church prominently resisted against many of the regime's policies and were frequent subject to persecution. Of note is that while there was a sizable majority of Nazi members with a Protestant background, core leaders such as Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were raised Catholic, but shirked their religion a few years after coming to power, believing that it hindered progress and. 
**In Wolfenstein: The New Order, there is a letter from 1955 by Father Erdmann Krueger of "The Berlin Church of the Third Reich" in Ayacucho, Peru, who openly objected to a state-sanctioned mass murder of Quechuan people practicing shaman rituals, for which Krueger was treated with disdain by the soldiers in question and even battered for attempting to save his indigenous guide. This implies that although Christian services were, at least for a time, allowed to continue, presumably as officially gottgläubig rather than Catholic or Protestant, and even operate freely in annexed territory, they were still under an unspoken amount of scrutiny by the Nazi Party.
*After extensive surgery, a team of medical experts, led by Deathshead himself managed to recreate most of Frau Engel's face and repair her vocal chords. However, severe scars still remain.
*She is the mother of Sigrun Engel. Her abusive treatment of her daughter backfires, since Sigrun reveals every military secret of the Nazis to B.J. and the Resistance. Her demise is similar to Rip Blazkowicz; they both mistreated their own children and are similarly murdered with a hatchet.
*Frau Engel has 6 children, including Adalwardus and Sigrun.
**In Nazi Germany, ethnic German women who gave birth to at least four children were praised by the government and awarded with an honorary Mutterkreuz. In Engel's case, she would have been eligible for a silver Mutterkreuz, the second highest class. This could indicate that Frau Engel was at least partially motivated to prove her worth to the Nazi cause and advance her career rather than for personal reasons.
*Frau Engel has served in the Nazi Party for 29 years.
* Her rank on the killing board is General, despite her different collar insignia. This may be however just shortening of her full rank.
*In Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, during B.J.'s execution, Frau Engel says to B.J. "We would have been... so good together. Darling... you're breaking my heart." This may imply that Frau Engel may be envious of B.J.'s aptitude and affinity for violence. Frau Engel also refers to B.J. as "Darling" in earlier scenes, and even puts her gold Handgun 1946 in his mouth with obvious BDSM inferences. It can be roughly implied, with this kind of behaviour, that Frau Engel has a hidden sexual attraction to Blazkowicz. It may also simply be her insanity seeping through, however.
*Engel’s attraction towards B.J. is further implied in an image released by Bethesda, which depicts her licking the left side of B.J.’s face while he remains incapacitated.
*Engel's blood type is O- , according to the killing board.
*If the player attempts to draw a firearm in the rafters of the Jimmy Carver Show set, B.J will flippantly remark that Engel's death, from his perspective, absolutely must be up close and personal whilst firmly gripping his hatchet, on account of being enraged at Caroline's death.
*Gloiberbräu Premium Pils / Glakzenbier Premium Pils is her favorite beer, as stated by illuminated advertising signs in Wolfenstein: Youngblood.
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