0
A quite remarkable post I just read on another forum (yes, there are other forums out there!)
For a long time I've been curious about the teutonic influence that pervades all throughout Breaking Bad. Most Yanks are rather insular and haven't the foggiest what's happening outside of their own state, let alone overseas so a foreign perspective will prolly zoom over your heads but as a Johnny Foreigner myself the German connection is rather hard to ignore. I know America was founded by Europeans and pockets of provincial traditions have settled in certain areas, the French in New Orleans immediately leaps to mind but the prevalence of Kraut surnames is impossible to disregard. Anyway, here's a comment on another board that I just read by a German national. You may disagree, you may think he's clutching at straws but you must admit, he put's a fucking good argument forward and if nothing else, it's a blistering read.
So without further ado here's his theory:
I am German, and my own theory is that Gustavo Fring has a connection with the actual Nazis.
Think about it. Gustavo Fring is from South America, where many Nazis fled after World War II. Despite having the appearance of a Native South American, Gus has a German last name (and a Hispanic form of a German first name). How did he get this German last name?
Logically, his father would have to be a German. I think that Gus is the son of a Nazi war criminal who fled to South America and married a native woman. The actor Giancarlo Esposito is the son of a white man and a black woman, and he was born in 1958- both reasonable matches.
Furthermore, it is obvious that Los Pollos Hermanos was being funded by a German company named Madrigal. It is conceivable that the chief officers of Madrigal may also be the sons of Nazis, and that they have some kind of brotherhood thing going on with Fring. Perhaps we are to believe that to this day, the descendants of the Nazis have a secret organization.
There is another major clue to this early in the series. When they are making the explosive to steal methylamine, Walt teaches Jesse about the World War II Gustav gun. The match between the names Gustav and Gustavo indicates to me that this is a foreshadowing of the Gus Fring character. Walt explains how the Gustav gun was almost unbeatable, except that it could be taken down by one man carrying an explosive. This is exactly how Gus Fring was killed later in the series. And just as the Gustav gun was of the Nazis, so also was Gustavo Fring.
Gustavo also has quirks which show him as having some kind of obsession with cleanliness and order and a sense of superiority. He behaves the way you would expect the son of a Nazi to behave.
I also want to point out that Gus was big on hiring Germans. His chief of security was Mike Ehrmantraut. He initially wanted his chemist to be Gale Boetticher. Both of these men have last names of German ancestry.
Last of all, the issue of meth. Meth was first used extensively by the Nazis during World War II. Gustavo Fring was the one who touted the supposed superiority of this drug to the cartel and started a business to manufacture it secretly. I suggest that Gus' interest in meth came from the Nazi environment he likely grew up in in South America. No doubt many of the Nazis that fled there were still addicted to it and used it.
So my answer to the question is that "I know who you are" is a reference to him being an important man among some kind of secret Nazi elite. The cartel wouldn't want to kill him lest they bring down on themselves this organization.
Vince Gilligan has written similar stuff to this before on the X-Files. He seems to have an obsession with Nazi villians, as this last season bore out.
Again, as a German, all this stuff jumped out at me.
Told yer - blistering stuff innit!