Editing Krieg (section)

==On [[/tg/]]==
[[Skub|Krieg is Skub.]] On one hand, lots of people love to portray Kriegers as fanatical autists, completely loyal to the Imperium and to warfare to the point that non-Kriegers doubt their humanity; the joke is that the Kriegers, like real Germans, feel so much [[Nazis|guilt for the crimes of their ancestors]], they'll serve in the most dangerous theaters without a care for their own lives or the survival of their Regiment, because they believe their lives will regain Krieg's honor.

Fa/tg/uys are enamored of the Death Korps of Krieg; there is a minor [[meme]] in which urgent shipments are found to have been replaced with Kriegers, who are ready to take orders and, absent any pressing duties, spend their spare time building earthwork fortifications (even in places where earth is nowhere to be found, like starships), based on an actual stereotype about Germans during their vacation in other countries ([http://i.imgur.com/ybsIci1.png no seriously]).
Also it needs to be said that in current non-jokey 40k canon there is an in-universe romance novel about Kriegers titled "My Wish to Produce Children with you is Exceeded Only by my Love for Him."

On the other, Krieg has also always been popular with /pol/edgelords whose idea of the canon is that the Imperium's totalitarianism is justified in the midst of external threats and heretics (read:[[SJW|people who disagree with them]] and "[[Eldar|foreign]] [[Tau|aliens]]"); this interpretation ignores that the Imperium's entire bureaucracy is incompetent, because it is riddled with [[Slaanesh|self-serving]] corruption and divided by [[Tzeentch|internal politics]], and based on [[Nurgle|rigid, stagnant ideas]] that are so entirely removed from the Emperor's vision that the [[Roboute Guilliman|Bureaucrat who designed]] the thing cries himself to sleep everynight just thinking about it; the only thing that unifies the Imperium as a whole is [[Khorne|war]], and this is, after all, a tabletop war game. But remember, this is all just a setting for [[Your dudes]], the 40k universe is a setting of eternal war, and the Imperium is just as much the enemy of Humanity as it is its dictator . Whether or not this is true depends on how ''you'' see 40k, so your mileage may vary.

What ''is'' canon, though, is that Krieg's corrupt autocrats took over Krieg and announced themselves separate from the Imperium, and it was the populace that fought for the Imperium. Contrary to what the people who love Krieg for the above take believe, canon Krieg isn't an example of a dictatorial Imperium crushing the population at all. Instead it's an example of the Imperium coldly writing Krieg off as a lost cause, but the loyalist population still fought against the corrupt anti-imperium rich assholes and somehow managed to win anyways, after which the Imperium noticed and said "Hey, we could really use these super loyal and tough guys!", to the point of bending the rules and allowing them the borderline sacrilege of cloning fully sentient humans (as opposed to custom engineering by AdMech of their children or Skitarii and no-memory Servitors).

Canon-wise, after Krieg became an eternal nuclear winter, the rebels continued fighting for the Imperium against the corrupt usurpers for centuries afterwards out of loyalty to the Imperium, and the Imperium only took notice of them after they won (and didn't intervene at all before then, because why waste resources on a dead world?). In essence, what actually canonically happened is the complete opposite of the above take.

Regardless of which interpretation one takes, Krieg's modus operandi can be summarized as ''grit'', mental and physical endurance and loyalty, and going above and beyond the call of duty to prove one's willpower against impossible odds; which can sound vague regarding the Imperial Guard. The Krieger just adds ''more'' grit with an aroma of WW1 Somme.