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Can anyone tell me what "Krutzitürken!" means?
As with "Basta!", I doubt it's actually swearing but I can't find an answer via a search engine.

"Basta!" shouted by Alcazar in Picaros means "That's enough!" in Spanish.

"Krutzitürken" is a little more tricky. I suppose it literally means "Turkish cross" or crucifix, but it isn't really a word in German, or at least one that would be used today. For a start the spelling is old; Kreuzitürken would make more sense today.

The word was put into the English translation of Land of Black Gold and spoken by Müller. I believe it was probably picked up from old war comics, where Nazis always said things like "Ach, Himmel! ('oh, heaven!') and "Donner und Blitzen!" (itself another malapropism, made up by English non-German speakers, but supposed to mean "thunder and lightning!").

It's worth mentioning that Müller's German accent doesn't appear in the original French editions of The Black Island or Land of Black Gold, it was added by the English translators.

Edit
I just came an alternate spelling - kruzitürken, which leads to an alternate account. According to the German wiktionary entry:

Here's a question that immediately springs to my mind: Does the word "Kruziturken" appear in the French editions?


Of course, most people now (in the US at least) think of those words as the names of two of ol' St. Nick's reindeer! ;-)

No, at least not in the French copies I have, which are from the 1950s. In The Black Island Müller says "Malédiction!" ("Curses!"), whilst in Land Of Black Gold it's "Tonerre!" ("Thunder!" - one of the Captain's favourites, but often used by anyone in the French editions).
Incidentally, I only just noticed two different spellings in the books; it's "Kruzitürcken" in Black Island and "Krutzitürken" in Black Gold, so there's some slight inconsistency.


That might be true of the UK too, although I don't think people know the "T'was the Night before Christmas" poem in the UK as well as they do in the US.

I'm thinking back to a bygone age of old British war comics, when Germans were fair game for mickey-taking. Perhaps the misuse as a swear word might even have originated from the old christmas poem? I don't know. Perhaps any fluent German speakers could verify these claims?

I've been told by German friends of mine that you would use "Donner und Blitz" to mean "thunder and lightning" (blitzen is a verb not a noun, meaning to flash, to lighten), but you wouldn't use it as a curse.
When I also mentioned to my German friends that in comics nazis often said "Donner und Blitzen" they thought it was hilarious!