The First Jewish Superman: James Gunn’s Man of Steel and His World War II Legacy

This summer’s upcoming Superman: Legacy film will make history with the casting of David Corenswet – the first Jewish actor ever to portray Superman on the big screen. The importance of this milestone cannot be overstated. Superman may be an icon of “truth, justice, and the American way,” but his origin is profoundly Jewish: the character was created in 1938 by two young Jewish cartoonists, at a time when Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler was rising in power and spewing hatred. In fact, Hitler’s regime once condemned Superman as unfit for German consumption, decrying him as a subversive Jewish influence. To fully appreciate why a Jewish Superman is so significant, we need to explore the character’s Jewish roots, his role in World War II propaganda, and the philosophical idea of the “Übermensch” that connects Nietzsche, Nazi ideology, and the Man of Steel himself.

Jewish Origins of the Man of Steel

The creators of Superman – writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster – were the sons of Jewish immigrants in Cleveland. As teenagers in the 1930s, they poured aspects of their cultural background into the hero they imagined. Comic historians note that “Superman very much has the DNA of Moses and Samson and the Golem in him.” Like the biblical Moses, baby Kal-El is sent away in a vessel by his parents to save him from destruction, only to be found and raised in a foreign culture. Like the mighty Samson, Superman possesses extraordinary strength. And like the Golem of Jewish legend – a mythical clay protector created to defend the Jewish people – Superman was conceived as a champion of the oppressed. Even Superman’s secret identity as mild-mannered Clark Kent can be seen as an “assimilationist fantasy”, reflecting the immigrant experience of many Jews: the ability to appear as a regular American on the surface while retaining a more powerful true identity in private.

It’s also no coincidence that Superman first appeared in June 1938, as the world was darkening under the shadow of Nazism. In fact, Siegel’s very first use of the name “Superman” in 1933 was directly inspired by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch, or “overman.” In that early short story (titled The Reign of Superman), Siegel actually envisioned a villain – an evil mastermind with psychic powers – bearing the name, reflecting Nietzsche’s idea of a being beyond conventional morality. However, when Hitler and the Nazis began grotesquely distorting Nietzsche’s concept of a “Superman” into their own racist vision of a master race, Siegel and Shuster dramatically reimagined Superman as a hero devoted to justice and good. In other words, the character we know – the noble, altruistic Man of Steel – was shaped in direct opposition to the Nazi ideal of the Übermensch.

Fighting Hitler on the Comic Page

Long before America entered World War II, Superman was taking on Hitler in the fictional realm. In February 1940 – nearly two years before Pearl Harbor – Siegel and Shuster published a daring two-page comic in Look Magazine titled “How Superman Would End the War.” In this satirical fantasy, Superman literally flies to Europe, snatches up Adolf Hitler in Berlin and Josef Stalin in Moscow, and hauls them both before an emergency session of the League of Nations to be tried for war crimes. The comic even has Superman quip to Hitler, “I’d like to land a strictly non-Aryan sock on your jaw, but there’s no time for that – you’re coming with me!” It was a provocative scene – a fictional Kryptonian superhero manhandling real-life dictators – and it resonated especially because in early 1940 the U.S. was still officially neutral, even as many American Jews were clamoring for action against the Nazi threat.

Hitler’s regime was not amused. The Nazi SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps caught wind of the Superman strip and published a furious rebuttal in April 1940 – essentially Nazi propaganda attacking Superman’s creators for their Judaism. The article (titled Jerry Siegel Attacks!) smeared Siegel as “an intellectually and physically circumcised chap who has his headquarters in New York,” mockingly calling him “the inventive Israelite” behind Superman. It went on to say that instead of promoting virtue, Superman’s sense of justice supposedly “sows hate, suspicion, evil, laziness, and criminality” in young Americans. In other words, Nazi authorities explicitly framed Superman as a tool of Jewish corruption – a poisonous influence on Aryan youth. One report even claims that Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels ranted in his diary, “This Superman is a Jew!” Whether or not Goebbels truly wrote those exact words, it is clear the character rankled the Nazis.

Meanwhile, Superman continued to fight the Axis on the comic pages throughout the war. Once the U.S. entered WWII, Superman was depicted routing Nazi tanks, warplanes, and U-boats to boost morale. Perhaps the most striking image came on the cover of Superman #17 (July 1942): an iconic illustration of the Man of Steel standing astride the globe, holding Adolf Hitler in one hand and Japanese leader General Tojo in the other, as if they were unruly puppies, to deliver a good spanking. Another cover in 1944 similarly showed Superman throttling Hitler and Japan’s Prime Minister by the collar. These colorful wartime covers and stories served as wish-fulfillment propaganda – they let readers imagine a hero with the power to do what ordinary Americans could not: personally take down the Führer and end the war.

The “Übermensch”: Nietzsche vs. the Nazi Superman

Underlying this history is a rich irony involving the concept of the “Übermensch” – a German word meaning “over-man” or “super-man” – which was coined by the 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s Übermensch, introduced in his 1883 work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, described an individual who rises above traditional morality to create new values – a visionary ideal of human potential. However, after Nietzsche’s death, his nationalist, anti-Semitic sister twisted his writings to align with German ultranationalism. By the 1930s, Nazi ideologues (mis)appropriated the term Übermensch to justify their notion of a “master race” of Aryan supermen – blond-haired, blue-eyed, and pitilessly dominant.

This is a gross distortion of Nietzsche’s actual views. Nietzsche despised the core tenets of Nazism. Far from being an anti-Semite, he was an outspoken opponent of anti-Jewish bigotry and German nationalism. He famously declared, “I will have all anti‐Semites shot!”, and refused to attend his own sister’s wedding because she was marrying an anti-Semitic agitator. (That brother-in-law went on to found an Aryan colony in Paraguay – a scheme Nietzsche openly mocked.) Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s posthumous reputation was tarnished by the “criminal manipulation” of his sister, who curated and altered his manuscripts to appeal to the far right. The result was that the philosopher’s nuanced idea of the Übermensch was warped into something he would have abhorred – the Nazi Übermensch, a supposed biologically superior Aryan uber-being.

Superman, the comic-book hero, stands as an unintended rebuttal to the Nazi Übermensch. On the surface, the character does embody a kind of super-human ideal: he’s a powerful, square-jawed white man who (especially in early depictions) could be seen as the picture of Aryan athleticism. But crucially, Siegel and Shuster’s Superman uses his power in service of the oppressed and the innocent, not to exalt any supposed master race. This reflected the authors’ own ethics as Jews. In contrast to Hitler’s blond Übermensch fantasy, Superman has never been characterized by the traits the Nazis prized – he isn’t a Germanic warrior or an avatar of ethnic supremacy. Quite the opposite: he’s a Kansas farmboy raised with humility, an immigrant from a destroyed homeland who fights for the underdog.

In a sense, Superman took the terminology of the Übermensch back from the Nazis and turned it on its head. The “Man of Steel” championed the very values – justice, selflessness, protecting the vulnerable – that fascism trampled. Rather than Nietzsche’s Übermensch or Hitler’s Übermensch, Superman became a kind of moral Übermensch – not an overlord above mankind, but a mensch (a person of integrity) with superpowers, using them to uphold universal moral law.

It is also richly ironic that two American Jews created Superman during Hitler’s reign, effectively crafting their own Übermensch in defiance of Nazi claims. They gave their hero a Kryptonian birth name, Kal-El, that resonates with Hebrew (interpreted by some as “voice of God” or “all that God is”). They deprived him of the physical markers prized by Nazi eugenicists – Superman is dark-haired, with a look inspired more by swashbuckling film stars than Aryan poster boys. And they instilled in him a conscience that would never tolerate the Nazis’ cruel ethos. In 1940, Jerry Siegel even stated through a Superman story that the Man of Steel was “strictly non-Aryan” – a bold declaration at a time when “Aryan” meant “white supremacist” in Hitler’s vocabulary. It was as if the creators were thumbing their noses at Hitler: their Superman would be everything Hitler’s Übermensch was not.

Full Circle: Superman’s Legacy and a Jewish Superman

Given this background, seeing a Jewish actor don the iconic red cape in James Gunn’s new film feels like a triumphant full circle. It reconnects the character to his heritage in a very visible way. For decades, audiences may not have realized that Superman’s mythology was shaped by young Jews grappling with the evils of their time. Now the casting of David Corenswet – a performer proud of his Jewish roots – adds a layer of meaning to the role. It comes at a time when representation matters, and when acknowledging the Jewish contribution to American superhero lore is especially poignant.

Superman has always been a metaphor for the Jewish immigrant experience and the fight against oppression. He’s the ultimate outsider-turned-American-hero, an alien who assimilated and then stood up to bullies. In the 1940s he was literally depicted fighting Nazis and safeguarding the world from tyranny. That legacy lives on in the character’s moral compass. As cultural critic Roy Schwartz observes, “Superman is a Jewish character, he’s a Jewish creation. He is made up of Jewish influences and he is a metaphor for the Jewish experience. So, after 85 years of existence, [he’s] being played by somebody of a Jewish background – in a way it’s coming back full circle.”

Indeed, the first Jewish Superman on screen is not just a casting choice – it’s a salute to the very origins and ideals that birthed the Man of Steel.