Dieter Kotlar
Sobriquet: Der Krieger (The Warrior)
Appearance: Dieter is a powerfully built blond giant with cold, blue eyes. He is quick with a smile for friends or strangers and is twice as fast with a snarl for those who cross him. He normally wears tight black leathers, and depending upon his mood, may even sport swastika armbands.
Behavior: Despite his violent exterior, Dieter has learned a great deal about the art of politics. How could he not, he was there in the beginning of Hitler's rise to power and spent many hours talking directly with one of history's greatest demagogues. He smiles and waves to anyone who looks his way, and he always manages to slide in a few lines of propaganda in the process. Dieter firmly believes that the Final Reich holds the keys to life as it should and could be, and he is quickly angered by those who mock his dream of a greater Germany for Germans. In a war of words he is capable, but should the disagreement escalate to fisticuffs, then this is where Dieter is truly deadly. This isn't a man who just walks, he swaggers.
History: Dieter was born a few years before the start of World War I, initially his parents were happy residents of the Kaiser's great city of Berlin. But when the war broke out, Dieter's father volunteered, thinking like all the young men of his generation that the war would be over in a matter of weeks and he would return a triumphant hero. Dieter's father never returned from the Western Front and as the war became protracted his mother had to find ways to feed Dieter and her other children. As the economy tanked and Germany lost the war, she was forced to turn to the oldest profession just keep the children fed and clothed. Dieter grew up in those harsh years, seeing the ugly side of life, and he tried to look after his younger siblings while their mother was out, which was more often than not. The widow Kotlar resented having to be a prostitute just to feed her children and she turned cold and unloving, leaving her children to fend for themselves most of the time. And after a while, neither Dieter, nor his brother and sister really cared what happened to their mother and one day she just never came home.
It would have been bad enough if Dieter's family had needed to suffer through this alone, but all of Germany struggled under the impossible burden of the war reparations imposed upon the nation at the Treaty of Versailles. To get by, Dieter started running errands for a man down the street and ended up working for the black-market in Berlin dealing in illegal rations and unregistered weapons. Working at such an early age and in such a disreputable business taught young Dieter self-reliance. Ten years later, at the advanced age of fifteen, Dieter was larger and stronger than anyone else in the neighborhood and acted as "protection" for those who could afford his price. More often than not, his price was the pleasures of the flesh, a good meal and something worth drinking, the one thing he never accepted was the worthless paper script issued by the incompetent politicians of the Weimar Republic.
But things began to change for Dieter in 1932, after watching a rousing speech a local beer hall, it was clear that a new order was rising in Germany and Dieter was quick to join it -- the nazi party. The leader of the party, Adolf Hitler revealed to his followers including Dieter, how to return Germany to greatness and that he had a plan for elevating the beloved fatherland far beyond its previous status. After seeing Hitler in person and speaking with him only briefly, Dieter devoted himself, heart and soul, to the Sturmabteilung, the paramilitary wing of the original Nazi party.
Dieter's timing could not have been more perfect, for the SA (Sturmabteilung) were starting to be seen as an embarrassment to the party as it took on a more conservative face with the German public. As his charisma and passion attracted new members daily, Dieter was recruited into a new paramilitary order the Schutzstaffel (S.S.), and he participated in the "Night of the Long Knives", eliminating his former comrades for the good of Germany at the orders of Adolf Hitler. At the time Dieter had few reservations about the removal of the Storm Detachment, and the execution of Ernst Röhm, but over the years his regrets have grown and he eventually came to understand that Ernst Röhm, not Adolf Hitler had been the aborted savior of Germany.
Regardless, Dieter's passion and devotion to the party and his willingness to do "whatever" was needed to accomplish its goals, attracted the attention of a woman named Isabella Correlli. Isabella was a dark haired Italian beauty who was attracted to Dieter's impassioned speeches before numerous Berliner crowds and found herself by contrast enraptured by his energy and enthusiasm. Later, in an intimate moment, she told Dieter that it had taken only an instant in making the decision to grant him immortality. Not that Isabella was gentle with the young Dieter, quite the contrary, after luring him into a darkened ally, she ripped out his throat -- all the while mocking his weakness as he fought desperately against her. His own helplessness and the rage he felt at his own mortality kept the spark of life bright inside Dieter and ensured that his sire would give him the necessary drought of her blood to prolong his life indefinitely.
Sire and childe would remain together for eight more years, but in 1939 Germany invaded Poland and Dieter decided that he had stood by for too long, and rejoined the Schutzstaffel as a member of its infamous Death's Head Order. Isabella for her part decided to return to a warmer climate and her native Italy. Over the next six years, Dieter's power and influence grew and countless mortals died in terror of the vampire in a Nazi black uniform. For his part, Dieter saw himself as the undying servant of his fatherland, while Adolf Hitler grew older and more paranoid, Dieter and others like him only grew stronger ensuring the survival of the Nazi dream after the calamitous end of W.W.II.
After the war, Dieter returned to Berlin vowing to keep the ideals of the Third Reich alive by creating the immortal Fourth Reich. After the division of Germany and Berlin, Dieter found a mentor and kindred soul in Prince Gustav who had supported the rise of the Nazi party from behind the scenes. Years later, another member of the Final Reich would discuss with Dieter his relationship with the Prince of the East, and suggested that Gustav provided the affection and loyalty that had been missing from his mortal life and Dieter had laughed saying that all he had ever needed was the Embraced and that he had learned how to feed for himself...
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