A 'Spaghetti Western' is a subgenre in film that consists of themes emerging from classic "western" movies and were very popular in the 60's and 70's.
Tarantino used this specific genre for a film taking place during World War II as a way to use the actions and events that occurred during the war era and transform them into themes that would be considered more predominant in traditional western-styled movies.
The three ways Tarantino subverts the audience's initial expectations are:
1. The amount of violence between different characters (Nazis vs. Jewish people, Nazis vs. American soldiers, etc.); Violence is a well-known aspect in many different film genres, but is inherently subverted into this type of movie in order to make reference to older western movies. Tarantino uses violence to hold the audience's attention and to progress through the story.
2. The dialogue; The languages of German and French are used proactively throughout Inglorious Basterds, intended to truly subvert the audience into the world of this movie (while also including English to remind the audience of the "good guys"). Intense dialogue that moves the story forward is something that a lot of western-styled movies (and many movie genres in general) consist of; So of course Tarantino included that type of dialogue into his movie as another tribute to western films and to keep the audience entertained.
3. The history behind the story; As many people know, Hitler's reign came to an end when he decided to take his own life in a small bunker somewhere in Germany. Contradicting what happened, Tarantino chose to eliminate Hitler in a way that would hopefully the Jewish people some sort of closure. Tarantino then writes for one of the American soldiers to straight up kill Hitler in the theatre, the dictator's face ending up being covered in his own blood as he lies there motionless yet still untouched.
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