Nazi

"I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light."

– J.R.R. Tolkien, being a boss

"YOU UTTER FOOL! GERMAN SCIENCE IS THE FINEST IN ZE WORLD!!!"

– Stroheim, an over the top Nazi and the first Guile

Goddamn it, Nazis! Why are you so fashionable, you evil fucking bastards?!

Nazi is the commonly used shorthand version of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party), a political party which took over Germany for a 1,000 years from 1933 to 1945. It also refers to people who belonged to said party, their ideology, and their regime in Germany during said period of time. Led by Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party emerged from the uncertainty and political upheaval due to the Red Scare, the end of the German Empire after the Great War, myths, promoted by the army, that the military had been on the cusp of victory before being "stabbed in the back" by the civil government, resentment at unfair conditions imposed by Treaty of Versailles, economic uncertainties due to the Stock Market crash of 1929, German ethnic nationalism, a desire to blame things on scapegoats, and a belief in militarism popular among many returning veterans. They were also aided by their invention of modern campaigning and propaganda, wide-spread dissatisfaction with the status quo, the strategic seizure of the political positions that controlled the police force, the intimidation or murder of political opponents and journalists using glorified street thugs, and more dumb luck than anyone has any right to have, let alone a bunch of genocidal loons.

Overview

Historically Accurate (if you consider checzia polish)

The Nazis' initial success can be attributed to the image of glorious economic recovery, part of which they accomplished by keeping Germany's economy running during The Great Depression. They presented this to the rest of the world, making many people believe the little mustachioed guy couldn't be that crazy since he'd made his country recover brilliantly in very little time. And while Germany did indeed recover, the whole thing was helped and held upright by MEFO bills: basically a Ponzi scheme that allowed the government to loan money on the sly through a front company about metallurgy research (the Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft, or MEFO in short). This allowed them to work at a much higher level of debt flotation than allowed by international regulation, and the idea was to pay back the loans with seized gold and valuables from Jews at first, and then directly from conquered nations after the war went on, since even state created debt bonds are exactly that: debt, credit, which is trust. Eventually the creditor will want something in exchange (or at the very least get his investment back) or the debtor's credibility will be shattered, stopping the money flow.

To give you a clearer idea of what happened: You are defeated and poor, but are fuming for revenge. To keep you down, your victorious neighbors don't lend you a dime to produce guns and make sure your already meager income is only spent on debt and basic necessities. So what do you do? You decide to spend money in the form of credit, raise the debt higher and higher (making the rest of the world believe you are rich), and keep the charade until the debt becomes irrelevant(who needs to pay the creditor he will declare war on?). So you make up a credit card called Mefocard ("MEtallurgische FOrschungsgesellschaft" - Metallurgy R&D sounds civilian and peaceful, so the world markets play along), borrow even more wildly to look opulent, and to create weapons on the sly promise that you'll pay the debt back... Then attempt to kill the lenders and subjugate their families to share the debt you have. It was simply a continent wide, all-or-nothing robbery attempt even wilder than WW1's trench-fighting Imperial duel.

The Ponzi schemes weren't limited to national/corporate level shenanigans, but extended to the German people as well. The famous Beetle was developed to be a cheap family car (hence “volkswagen”, or “people’s car”), and a part of selling the German public on the idea of an idyllic, cheap-but-cheerful family life, along with things like state-sponsored vacation villages. An elaborate layaway scheme allowed average German families to give the government a few Reichsmark a day in exchange for the promise of a new Beetle and a seaside vacation package. However, all that money actually went into rebuilding the German military, and war began before any of the promises had to be delivered on. Because the illusion of a better future and hope is always easier than just taxing the population directly. And, lastly, the Holocaust itself was also an important pillar of the German economy, especially when the war started in earnest; Jewish(and other undesirables', particularly Slavic intelligentsia) property and land was being confiscated on a scale never before seen or even thought of in how vast it was, not even their dead bodies were safe. Glasses were taken apart and reused for scopes or similar, hair being used as fabrics for the textile industry, gold teeth molten down by the millions. Massive amounts of gold, hard currency and other valuable things like works of art stolen from Jewish museums, synagogues, households and bank accounts(hence keeping up the Mefo bill's token payments to creditors). They even had to pay for their own transit into the death camps, which would almost be hilarious, if it wasn't so unbelievably evil. This ruthless, industrial way of executing a massive genocide made the Holocaust the standard many people associate the word "Genocide" with today - ironically, the Holocaust was in its methods the exeception, no other Genocide in history built an entire branch of government and industry centered around the mass murder of human beings, not to mention having vital military resources, from manpower, bullets to barbed wire and rations dedicated to it, that the overstretched front lines of Germany desperately needed; in essence, the Nazis sabotaged their own war machine, just to kill Jews.

They were also fantastic proponents of lies and propaganda, ranging from race theory (fake archeology was a particular favorite), to manufactured pretexts for war (the trigger for invading Poland was an obvious false-flag operation- something Japan used 2 years previously), to simply overstating their successes. For example, the old line that goes "say what you want about them, but the Nazis/Hitler did make the trains run on time"? They didn't. Train service was as bad or worse under fascist leadership as it had been immediately before their rise to power. But they realized that they only had to say the trains were running on time, and strongarm anyone inside Germany who dared to publicly disagree. Doubly funny is that it was Mussolini's Italy that had trains running on time, and even then, it was because of pre-fascism era personnel improving it.

Needless to say, this situation was the reason why the scenario of not waging war (like in Hearts of Iron or some alternate reality stories) simply wasn't a realistic option. Despite their multiple annexations of territory, the Nazis couldn't sustain their charade without the influx of riches, heavy machinery (they stripped Poland to the bone, even grabbing civilian factories' machinery, bolts, nuts and even metallic building materials like Dothraki on meth, literally, Nazis loved their amphetamines) and material from other conquered territories to pay the MEFO bills. So they soon mobilized their armies and launched a war of expansion on the rest of the world, starting with Poland. (The question is still open among historians as whether they annexed and plundered enough reserves with Czechoslovakia to keep the charade up "peacefully" long enough to let their Red "ally" make the opening move instead, but that's a discussion for another place and time.)

Their goal (next to getting gold and industrial materials to pay the enormous gambling debt of an empire) was to impose their militaristic Social Darwinist ideology across Europe, outlaw any dissenting school of thought, enslave all the "sub-human" Slavs (after starving to death more than half of them to make room for German settlers in accordance to Generalplan Ost and re-branding the young ones with German names), and exterminate any "undesirables" (Jews, Roma, homosexuals, etc) on which they blamed all their problems because they felt that they were superhumans without any flaws. Any problem which they suffered had to be the fault of some subversive "other" from outside who tried to cause the Master Race misery according to a Nazi philosophy of believing all ethnicities are a hivemind loyal to themselves and they all collectively fight over resources, therefore "weaker" races resort to social corruption(LGBT, Porn, discouraging women from reproducing) of the glorious German master race to get ahead of them. But due to some severe strategic fuck ups from Hitler who often overruled his military leadership and his generals (the situation is nuanced; basically there was mutual mistrust and both sides fucked up, but after the war the generals used Hitler as a scapegoat; the history is written by the living), Germany ended up in a three-way war with the Soviet Union (who provided blood), Great Britain (military intelligence, enough naval force projection to strangle all Axis naval trade and pure fucking grit) & the United States (more armaments than you can possibly dream of with an extra helping on top), while their only nearby allies such as Romania (The dudes keeping the European oil fields), Hungary (some light tanks and cavalry) & Italy (...more of a liability than bonus,so...) surrendered during the middle years of the war, and resource-starved Japan could do little more than be a distraction.

While Germany may have had some areas of technological/industrial advantage (at least initially, and this is often overstated), by the end of the war they struggled with the lack of many strategic resources and dislocation of production lines and reverted to some crude and/or untested/outlandish solutions like using coal liquefaction as an oil substitute, potato alcohol for V-2 rockets and meth-filled chocolate bars for Eastern Front troopers (when they decided to use the logistic volume for ammo rather than thick clothes which they had but decided to workaround with untested drugs-typical Hitlerite solution-). Severely wrong decisions in material designs like "flying wing" aircrafts sans fuselage, multi-charge megacannons and retardedly big tanks that wasted more engineering effort than several divisions of tanks and infantry, along with a chronic shortage of secure oil other than a trickle from Romania, there was no hope of repulsing both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union at the same time; thus the Nazi regime finally met its end when the allies marched into Berlin and Hitler *BLAM*med himself along with his mad-as-a-hatter common-law wife. While their hate-wagon managed to go far and temporarily overrun most of Europe, it simply had too much war to fight on multiple fronts, a lack of effective strategic planning in the form of Hitler and his cronies, and the fact that most powerful nations of the time opposed them either because they cherished their political freedoms, saw their economies fail, or simply were on the Nazi "to-exterminate" list.

So with all that baggage, how the hell did they manage to conquer most of Europe?

Two words: operational flexibility. Or "knockout artistry", whichever you prefer. In early half of the war, the German military operated on a principle they called "mission tactics" (auftragstaktik). The field commanders were given clear end state goals (such as: secure this location by such and such time), and then given free rein in HOW they accomplished the goal. Left to their own devices, the German commanders in the field were creative and flexible, using everything they had at their disposal and making high risk, high reward maneuvers. They also entered the war with radios in every tank and the best close air support in the world (at the time).

The French and British had stronger tanks, excellent defensive positions, and equivalent numbers, but it didn't matter. The allies were expecting a war where both sides show up and shoot at each other, while the Germans decided that moving fast and causing lines to simply collapse was much easier than actually engaging forces and destroying them. One French general famously spent several days celebrating his promotion to the role of leading the defense, only to finally arrive at his command center and find the Germans one river away from Paris.

The German army did its best work when their commanders were allowed to make the most out of their situation and assets, and only started to suffer when they were micromanaged and squandered in operations that didn't play to their advantages in mobility (even Sun Tzu 2,500 years ago advised against armchair micromanagement and to let field commanders make decisions for themselves). Ironically, their primary enemy, the Soviets, experienced the opposite, from a crippled military hampered by commissars being suspicious of the officers and meddling with everything by undeserved authority bestowed by Stalin, to Stalin learning to take a back seat and being content with focusing on allocating resources for the better military minds make use of it as fit, while he collects the lion's share of the credit like a master politician.

So who are those Neo-Nazis I keep hearing about? Are they Nazis all over again?

Most people gloss over the label "Neo-Nazi" and assume they are actually Nazis like they claim.

The tl;dr version: No, they are different. They may have a few similarities about purifying their nations, but their reasons for that are quite different. And even then, Neo-Nazis are not interested in unifying Europe like Nazis were.

Little known fact: Neo-Nazis are unwittingly co-opting Nazism itself. Whatever their politics may be, they have misappropriated the Swastika and the NSDAP ideology for shock value and attention, simply because Nazis have become the Boogeyman in modern Western Society. People online and offline have been accusing each other as Nazis in arguments for decades, even culminating in a meme called Godwin's Law. This painting the other side as Nazis act has not died down in the 21st century either, the most recent example that made world news is the rhetorics behind the war in Ukraine. The word "Nazi" has become cheapened whenever it is misused, either by organizations claiming they are, or others accusing another of being Nazi.

What is the difference?

Both are born of Ethnic Tensions, but...

Although both Nazis and Neo-Nazis both are born of tensions between different ethnicities, the key difference is that for Neo-Nazis, ending the ethnic tensions is their end goal, while for Nazis this was part of a larger scheme, a mere stepping stone. The background reason for ethnic clashes is different as well.

Consider way way before Nazism, why anti-Semitism was widespread all over Europe for over 1,000 years. Nazis didn't invent this. An outsider group moving into a land (for whatever reason) very often causes problems (there are rare exceptions, of course). This could be due to a chaotic diaspora, an invasion, land grabs, imported labor, or even planned ethnic displacement. In the case of anti-Semitism, the Jewish Diaspora throughout Europe was largely due to the Roman Empire destroying Judea, but nobody in France, Russia, or Germany etc. "imported" the Jewish people over. Nor were they the cause of the Jewish people leaving their homelands. Just like the native tribes of Japan did not ask to have the Japanese samurai to come over to take their lands and wipe them off entirely (no native reservations exist for them). Conversely, the Palestinian anti-Semitism has nothing to do with Nazism, because it stems from Britain backstabbing them with treaties about how it will help them become free from the Ottoman Empire, yet also signing secret pacts to divvy them up and rule them as Britain's colonies right after. And amidst all that, after WW2, planted the Jews in the land they've been living on.

What makes the Final Solution of the Nazis stand out is the solution they came up with. The Final Solution cost millions of lives and took place harmed millions of "Jews" who largely didn't even identify as Jewish (if anything in their stringent anti-Semitism, the Nazis compelled many to flock to their largely forgotten Jewish ancestry. When their national identity and government protection was pulled from them, they had to flock together to look for another refuge for times of strife). What's even weirder is what the Final Solution even entailed wasn't even decided on until 10 years into Nazism in either 1939 or 1940, the original idea was to just ship them away to make a new country for themselves in Madagascar, like Liberia or Israel today, so the killings happened largely as a cost-saving measure.

On the other side, British and French colonial empires have lasted for centuries, and while their colonies successfully eventually fought off their oppressors for independence (like America and Ireland once did) once Germany weakened them, the fruits of exploitation have been kept in those ex-empires to this day. Many descendants of ex-colonials who were brought on from the colonies as cheap labor remaining there is also a direct result of that past. There's a reason you don't see a lot of Indians in France but you do in England, and not a lot of Algerians in England but lots in France.

The truth is that Neo-Nazis are not born from some Nazi proselytizer spreading and reviving some ideological religion that is Nazism, but they are born among those ex-colonial empires still with a lot of baggage to account for, or from nations who were forced to mingle due to population shifts caused by an old empire that used to rule them. Such backgrounds cause ethnic clashes within the country's demography, and the concerned parties have picked up a small tiny overlapping portion of the "purity" ideologues from Nazism to justify taking on the "oooh scary Swastika" imagery to cause controversy and draw attention. Frankly, the effects of colonialism are far from over and those effects reach all over the globe, where everything is at now are all caused by this. This mixed demography is just one of them.

Have you ever asked the question, why places like Switzerland or Poland does not have as big a problem with clashes between ethnic groups? It's because according to demographics from 2020, 98% of Polish population is ethnically Polish. And why is that? Because Poland did not sail overseas to subjugate other people. Although they were forced to suffer injustices for keeping a clearer conscience: becoming relatively poorer than other brutal empires around them who would gladly take over and exploit them. (And even under the Soviet Union's iron fist, at least, did not get a lot of diaspora and/or deliberate infusion of foreign groups as much as some other places within the USSR).

Sometimes there are other nations with Neo-Nazis who aren't born of the background mentioned above per se, but are rather formed because they feel their ethnic group is being threatened by outside forces. So another misappropriation.

Where Nazism differs from Neo-Nazism

What is Nazism's goal beyond anti-Semitism?

Power from Order. Contrary to popular belief, anti-Semitism isn't even the end goal of Nazism. Nazism can persist fine even if every Jew was gone, or could have started without the perceived need to get rid of Jews, too. Historically, Nazis do not have monopoly over massacres, genocide, and war of conquest, after all. In Nazism, Jews were just one of many impurities the nation must cleanse itself of, including: criminals, homosexuals, Jews, communists, (and eventually, handicapped people).

The Nazis just believed, removing all antisocial undermining elements from the nation is crucial for a nation to get anywhere. That much is pretty much common sense in any nation. The difference is WHO is labeled a criminal and HOW they're dealt with. Henry Ford's book, "The International Jew," was Hitler's spiritual guide, and thanks to this book he saw the Jewish conspiracy everywhere, so he included the Jews as one of the various undermining elements of Germany (But Erhard Milch or Fritz Haber, bona fide high-ranking Jews in the Nazi regime, showed that ultimately, not everyone was aboard Hitler's fanatical hunt for Jews).

A primary adversary of concern was communism, and Hitler envisioned a huge empire that spanned Europe, some places resettled with Germans, other nations just subjugated as second-class citizens, all working to muster Europe against the looming threat of Stalin. This is why it's not just the Jews who hate Nazis, because the Nazis didn't just go to neighboring European countries and offer them to "cleanse the Jewish pest problem" for them and quietly leave, they caused much destruction and destabilization and installed shaky pro-German puppet governments (largely in Eastern Europe). The Aryan supermen were going to justify their rule by whipping the rowdy Europeans who don't know what they are doing into shape and save them from darkness and the threat of Communism. Ironically, in their vision to unite the squabbling inferior Europeans under the superior Aryan guidance, to build a united front to destroy Stalin's communists, the Nazis have laid the foundation for the communists to easily install their own puppets in Eastern Europe after WW2, due to years of deposing established governments and causing political unrest, hyperinflation, and devastation.

• Note, the same thing happened with Japan's hand in the spread of communism in Asia, except unlike Germany, Japan shied away from attacking the USSR. Hitler's entire reason for declaring war on America was to hopefully get Japan to open a 2nd front against the Soviets from the East, as gratitude for opening up a 2nd front against America. This didn't work for two reasons: one American had so much production capacity that it could and did fight a two front war no problem. It may have been articulated as a doctrion in the 60's but America was even then a nation that could fight Two-and-a-half wars. And secondly the Japanese "We're running into machine guns everyday at the same hour expecting different results, the samurai spirit will protect us from bullets" losses of the undeclared skirmishes of Khalkin-Gol in 1939) against the Soviets taught Japan the hard way that Russia was a bear they did not want to mess with it. Throughout WW2 they did not and focused their efforts on China, and when that bogged down, they figured it was a good idea to A.) Start a War with the largest contemporary Empire on Earth and B.) Pick a fight with the Freeaboos. All so they could get more resources to win the war they couldn't win.

Ultimately, Nazis had little interest in leaving Europe, even if some of Hitler's Allied enemies have been very invested in keeping vast oppressive colonial empires overseas for centuries. The idea of subjugating one's home continent wasn't even the first or unique: the Romans tried did it and left a lasting mark of its civilization all over Europe, and Napoleon tried to do it but fell short, and this was just Germany's turn at the chopping block. But Neo-nazis you would be hard pressed to find a Neo-Nazi organization that advocates militaristic push to subjugate its home continent like Nazis-nazis. If anything most seem to want to live just within their own ethnic group, be allowed to freely talk smack about other groups, and have regulated relations with others only at a healthy distance. It tends to be other kinds of fascists who are more bite then talk nowadays.

What about Racism?

This one is seriously misunderstood. Contempt for other races on other continents was not a Nazi ideology at all. The contempt any Nazi or Hitler himself had was merely something shared by the Western World entirely. It can even be argued those colonial empires that actually had constant contact with other races had more active prejudice. For example, Hitler had good relations with Persians, whom the British and Soviets invaded in 1941(the narrative for years was that Iran was gonna join the axis, but the reality is bad intel, paranoia in the Anglo-Soviet commands, and a wanton to have a new route of lend-lease aid without having to do annoying things like "write diplomatic agreements") Germany itself lost what little overseas colonies it had at the end of WW1, after all. But of note is that in the 2010s, openly apologized for its colonization of Namibia, and in 2020, after much criticism that Germans only cared about reparations to their attempt at colonizing of Europe, finally even agreed to pay reparations for pre-Nazi crimes. Although costly, it was affordable due to the manageably smaller scale of colonialism.

The Dark Truth

Rudyard Kipling's rhetoric of the White Man's Burden was the common justification at the time for what the British Empire did to colonies across 5 continents for 300 years, that their superior excellence was simply "good" for the inferior colored races who should be thankful for uplifting them out of darkness, and should pay with their resources in kind. And let them start selling drugs in your country. And Kipling merely pointed out the obvious: a similar reasoning of 'enslave Nubian tribes to uplift them' was already held by the Ancient Egyptians about 2.000 years before the coming of Jesus H. Christ. It's absolutely nothing new. All the Nazis did was seemingly replace "White Man" with "Aryan," and "colored races" with "other Whites." For just 6 years in Europe.

It's no coincidence colonial empires all broke apart shortly after WW2, after German attacks on the empires' central countries weakened them to the point of being unable to maintain their iron grip onto their colonies, just like how the French hounded the British enough to make them lose America as their colony.

• Not that they didn't try. Millions died in massacres in the quelling of colonial rebellions. The French killed 2 million in the Algerian war, AFTER Algerians traveled to France to fight and free them from the Vichy puppet government governed by Phillipe Petain. The British killed 1 million Kenyans in their war for independence... in British Concentration Camps. They used it way way back in 1899 during the 2nd Anglo-Boer War too, after all, way before the Nazis.

There's also a reason 5,000 Indians traveled all the way to Europe to fight a dangerous war for Germany as the Free Indian Legion, fighting to weaken Britain to free their nation from their English oppressors. Churchill has been accused of killing 7 million in the Bengal famine when he kept taking grain from India to supply the British wartime stockpiles. 50,000 Ukrainians too fought in the Eastern Legions under Germany, because their primary concern was freeing Ukraine from that Georgian tyrant Stalin's rule, which already killed 3 million Ukrainians during the famine of the Holodomor, and it looked like anyone who cared about killing the Soviets and do anything about Stalin were the Nazis.

Those outside the Western bubble point out, it seems Germans have been disproportionately demonized for the heinous crime of daring to turn the "good old Western European pastime" of colonialism right around onto the Europeans themselves, giving them a small taste of their own medicine. This demonization is also perceived as an attempt to paint their own sins onto the Germans and divert attention from profiting from their own crimes against a far greater portion of humanity, such as erroneously portraying that the Allies "stopped German dreams of global domination" when they were not the ones with an "Empire on which the Sun Never Sets." They find it frankly hard to sympathize with the West about Nazi this, Nazi that. To be frank, they are not wrong.

Nazi Portrayals in Fiction

Nazis are portrayed as an over the top wacky military who like leading extermination wars against the Jews (and other people) and build secret bases on the moon, under water, or some other silly place. Their technology is frequently exaggerated with laser weapons, armored suits, giant robots, walking tanks, and/or Robo-Hitler. Some vidya portrayals even goes so far as to put it all together in a big ball of LOLWUT and add a touch of magical Lovecraftian shit because Nazi propaganda had a weird love for the occult.

Varying opinions on the perceived Nazi character allows them to be looked at from varying points of view, developing their character all the more. Take the Imperium of Man, for example, which tends to blend German-fascist iconography with Soviet politics and a Roman-Catholic aesthetic sense. Some will say that the Imperium's a nuthouse since they're willing to allow an Inquisitor to turn an entire hive spire into a towering inferno if he so happens to find a single heretic in*BLAM* SPEAKING ILL OF THE IMPERIUM IS EXTRA HERESY.

Others will say that the Imperium's just being pragmatic, and such an action is justifiable as the Imperium is constantly beset by merciless foes who will not think twice to bring them down, making their methods for survival cruel but necessary. Which, given the fact that daemons really do exist and can corrupt entire planets in a short amount of time and rape every corrupted soul forever and ever, is pretty justifiable. Even the Imperium's xenophobia is justifiable given how nearly all the major races pretty much want to wipe everyone else out or enslave them to be tortured to death as sustenance.

But that doesn't change the fact that these reasons are often just used as an excuse to torture and kill anyone who's even s*BLAM*

Funnily enough the idea of Nazi Germany being an advanced, sophisticated war machine has been re-evaluated in recent years to be considered a fictional version of the German army spoken as truth. Closer examination of the war has shown that while advanced tactics and technology were used the actual moment by moment commanding (WITH exceptions of course) wasn't especially fantastic, but relied on one-trick, all or nothing ponies like demoralizing the target country into surrender; it's one thing to knock out France on the brink of communist civil war or roughshod into Poland, taking over Russia another. Plus the same logistic issue that ended up as the Wehrmacht's undoing during the Russian campaign had been happening since day one, the Third Reich thinking that once the Russians were beaten back to Arkangelsk-Astrakhan line they'd roll over and collapse, emphasis on THINKING, PRESUMING which should spell "Doom" by day one. It just wasn't readily apparent previously because campaigns were often over fast enough that it didn't really matter. We're talking about a Army that refused to upgrade their paratroopers with steerable parachutes (which is WAY more important for a paratrooper then you would think)! Plus one can't ignore the fact most countries successfully invaded were either very minor powers or horribly horribly mismanaged or technologically stunted as far as the military was concerned. The view of the Wehrmacht as a mechanized force has also been reevaluated in recent years. We think of the German military as a mechanized juggernaut, but a lot of that was those same biographies mentioned above and below. About 20% of the German army was mechanized. The majority of the army that invaded the USSR during operation Barbarossa walked in, and their supplies were pulled by horses. They didn't have anything like the insane levels of mechanization found in some of their enemies. Even the USSR, with American aid at first, and panic-driven manufacturing later, outproduced the Wehrmacht around 43 in supply trucks.

This view of German as this massive intimidating force was mostly put in place by German general biographies (Maybe you've heard of this before. "If Hitler just listened to his generals...") and the fact perpetuating the myths benefited both Germany and America. Germany gets to feel like the war was a fair fight and all failings can be blamed on that funny Austrian guy (not in small part due to Nazi officials wanting to clear their names after the war, most of which continued to work in the West German government way into the 60s and 70s, with one of them, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, even rising to the office of Chancellor in 1966. And that's just the civilian side. The first generation of Generals of the Bundeswehr were exclusively recruited from Wehrmacht and SS officiers, many of them War Criminals, where the allies just looked the other way because they thought they were assets), while America convinces the public that Germany could be a impressive threat. Even against a certain group of communists over the border...

Impact on Fantasy

In terms of military personnel, the Germans had hands down one of the best armies of the time, well disciplined and well trained with experienced mid-level officers; this combined with borderline insane levels of morale at the start of the war due to years of giving the middle finger to the war-weary western nations which capitulated to their demands combined with revanchism of WW1, and turned Germany into an unholy Juggernaut. The Germans were known to have some of the best armored tanks in the war, the best darn LMG of the war, and somewhat pioneered several advanced technologies during their time, and the inheritance of the Prussian military traditions. Tactics-wise, their eagerness to experiment with encirclement and mobile warfare whereas the Allies initially stagnated in Great War formations of firing lines gave them an incredible headstart and utterly broke the back of French armies and shocking the whole world; even Hitler expected a million Germans to die in the French war, yet France capitulated in weeks.

This, combined with their infamous cruelty have spawned the Nazi-esque villain template where the villains are both powerful and gigantic dicks to everyone else, making them completely despicable. This is because if the villain is significantly weaker than the protagonist of the setting, most people will still feel a few grains of sympathy towards the former or make them a laughing stock. But, when you make the villain both an enormous asshole and just as or more powerful than the protagonist, all bets are off and he's fair game.

Of course, the weaknesses of Nazism also need to be taken into account, in that a lot of their supposedly superior technology turned out to be highly unstable or otherwise impractical (such as behemoth tank designs that would have wasted immense resources better spent on dozens of more reasonable tanks), and would frequently be outclassed and definitely outnumbered by Allied designs once the latter got their shit together. This was even true at the start of the war: British Matilda II's were all but immune to German tank fire (from the early Panzers, before the later Tigers), and a column of them almost stopped Rommel at the Battle of Arras. Add poorly managed industry and the fact that supplies at times were delivered by horse (which was not actually that atypical, since only America and early war Britain were that ridiculously mechanized), and you have a faction that is the epitome of style over substance. This really bit them in the ass later when the Allies, focusing on production and strategy over science fiction and "tactics", managed to get a leg up the Third Reich, and battle-hardened Allied soldiers became the top dogs without question. To illustrate, by 1945 the typical American INFANTRY division could expect to have as many tanks as a Nazi armored division, and an American armored division could simply zerg-rush their Nazi counterpart (and hell, the Panzer divisions frequently operated at less than half strength, even since the beginning of Barbarossa, let alone after having the country incinerated by firebombing and supply lines fucked by pissed off partisans who understandably did not want to leave the mass murder unanswered).

In fiction, expect the Nazi villains to eventually have their technology and logistics outclassed (FPS and RTS games like Call of Duty, Warfront: Turning Point or Company of Heroes), made irrelevant via gimmicks (Sniper Elite, Commandos, Velvet Assassin) or at least stolen and turned against them (Wolfenstein), and the hardened heroes to turn Nazi soldiers into cannon fodder.

Nazis are the progenitors of all acceptable targets where human bad guys are concerned. Be it in vidya games or movies, nobody has a problem with Nazis getting gunned down by the hundreds by the heroes, and they don't even have to resort to the dehumanizing full helmets that most other villain goons have to wear to make slaughtering them okay.

A more comedic take on Nazis in fiction owes to wartime cartoons, where the soldiers and Nazi command are all bumbling idiots, with comedy brought to you by Walt Disney and Warner Bros. Hitler today has essentially been turned into a punchline with all the gags centered around him, which is kinda awesome when you think about it, as dictators that wish to be feared would never want to be remembered as a joke, just watch any Downfall movie parody (Bruno Ganz's excellent performance in particular has become memetic for having Hitler rant about random things or meta rants about how he was reduced to a joke). The one exception would be Göring, who was on drugs since the Beer Hall Putsch and was so narcissistic that people making jokes about him sitting on his belly for dinner and taking baths in admirals uniforms were considered signs of popularity by him. Every other high level Nazi, especially Himmler (A failed chicken farmer who spent his last resort field command in 1944 sleeping until noon, eating, drinking jacking off and getting massages from a man) a secluded wagon and Goebbels (who basically created all the modern populist tactics of dictators and was born crippled on account of a deformed leg, making him the most obviously hypocritical big name Nazi), took jokes at their expense only slightly better than Hitler did. So joke away and spit in the memory of fools who bled the world dry.

Examples

• The Skaven from Warhammer Fantasy and later Age of Sigmar borrow many Nazi-esque elements, which in turn makes them the most vile and evil race in the World That Was... Only it's taken to its logical extreme, as with many things Warhammer. Nazis had a hatred for what they believed was untermenschen and believed the "Aryan" race was most pure, while the Skaven hate all other living things, including their own race, with each individual believing only themselves to be worth anything. Pack in some advanced Wunderwaffen, magical nuclear power in the form of Warpstone and chemical weapons as well and you have a solid, if over-the-top, Nazi fantasy faction.

• The Imperium, to the point where they're commonly described as "Catholic Space-Nazis". Complete with gratuitous use of Nazi imagery, a doctine of racial purity and absolute hatred for the "untermenschen" (mutants, psykers, and xenos), rising to power as part of a miraculous socio-economic recovery in the wake of a catastrophe (Age of Strife/Great Crusade), a "glorious rebirth" myth harkening back to a lost golden age Dark Age of Technology, numerous military structures with parallel chains of command that are all at each other's throat due to a culture-wide policy of social Darwinism, an army run by absolute fanatics with horrendously inefficient war machines they barely understand, an SS analogue in the form of the Adepta Sororitas (who coincidentally tend to be depicted as fair-haired, though skin color varies and not all orders dye their hair white). Not to mention the Imperium's justification for xenocide is almost word-for-word the [stab-in-the-back-myth] the Nazis used to try and justify their treatment of Jews and the Holocaust, only replace "Aryan" with "human" and "Jew" with "xenos".

That being said, Imperium is extremely decentralized and diverse, which runs contrary to two of the three key pillars of Fascism: order and unity. The third one is the supremacy of state power over person, and in this one Imperium is fully on board with Nazi ideas. The fact those differences are by design and imperials see culturally homogenized and hyper-organized Tau society as an abomination tells that Imperium is not in fact Fascist, and just have a Nazi paint job over pretty much Feudalism in space. Sure, Imperium ends up repeating the same atrocities Nazis did, but it mostly does them for different reasons. That being said, certain parts of the Imperium are much closer to Fascist ides than Imperium as a whole: Ultramar of all places does follow the fanatical worship of "order and discipline" Mussolini could not shut up about, and Ecclesiarchy does try its best to indoctrinate and unify everyone into an imperial mono-culture, at least at their shrine-worlds where Administratum and local governments could not stop them.

• Thalmor from the Elder Scrolls: Skyrim is a fantasy equivalent of NSDAP, with robes completely ripping off SS uniforms, racism, genocide of "impure elves" and religious persecution of an enemy people in a conquered realm.

• The most extensive take on the theme of Space Nazis would be the Helghast from Killzone, where the people of Helgan see the ISA as Imperialist gits who forced them out of their planet for refusing their rule. Although by Shadow Fall, they become akin to Communist East Germans, being filled with political radicals and separated by a wall and all.

• If you have a fantasy/sci-fi world, it will almost certainly have some sort of Nazi analogue floating around. At the same time, Nazis also figure into a lot of alternate history fiction: Nazis invading England, Nazis invading America, Nazis successfully conquering the USSR, Nazis getting the Bomb first, Nazis creating an army of mutant uber-troopers, Nazis on the Moon, Nazis using occult powers to summon demons to aid them, Nazi zombies, all of these have been done. The Nazi obsession in alternate history is largely due to the fact that we consider them evil (for the right reasons), and our modern world is the result of an Allied victory. A Nazi victory would have been an mitigated disaster. That said, most people know the history of Nazi Germany in the broad strokes and can work out some of what that would mean. You might make an interesting story about a world where (for example) Toyotomi Hideyoshi conquered Korea, but most people in North America don't know a whole lot about the Imjin War or late 16th century East-Asia.

Nazis and /tg/

Long ago, /tg/ realized something that most competent GMs have: Nazis represent a great liberating force for any GM, for they represent a force that any player need not feel any remorse over resorting to violence against, because Nazis are the textbook template for villains in most settings. They desire world domination, see themselves as the apex species and view most others with utter contempt, wanton disregard for common life, have an industry primarily geared towards war, are the most powerful warmongers, and they have that evil-yet-sublime aesthetic to their armies. Nazis are a modern setting variant of using slavers as your enemy in a fantasy game: they have little to no redeeming values, so they're great enemy fodder.

The association gives the players a motivation and creates the understanding that these people are Completely Evil™, allowing the GM to focus on other aspects of the story. Indeed, one can get similar results by simply providing details that lead us to conclude that any group you are facing off against are this universe's version of Nazis. That said, that same context makes using Nazis a double-edged sword, and a lazy GM (or author, script writer, or whatever; this is hardly unique to roleplaying) can royally screw up if one uses them incorrectly. Used incorrectly, Nazis become a kitten-eating one-dimensional caricature of villains descended into self-parody, which can work if the world is built for it. Kitten-eating Nazis work best in "goofy" settings where it's fully possible, and indeed expected for the final boss to be Hitler himself riding a cyborg dinosaur, but in a setting trying to take itself seriously, such flat villains do just that - fall flat and fail to incite the proper emotional reaction. Remember that the key to successful Nazi use is that emotional reaction. That exportation of real world baggage is the point, perhaps the sole point to use Nazis over some other villain. Nazis have the additional problem of not even needing to be exaggerated that much to make the worst of them into something like this. So care must be taken when one plays the Nazi card, or it will come off as trite.

Entire stretches of d20 Past are shown various ways to implement Indiana Jones-style Nazis into any campaign during the early 1900s, and Savage Worlds has an entire supplement devoted to thwarting Nazi super-soldier plans during WWII. More clever GMs can do even more interesting things with it, such as backing up the savagery of the Nazis with a humanizing element to make them more understandable, even if antagonists, whilst another interesting setting, proposed for GURPS, starts the players off as Nazis and has them turn against their former comrades as the movement becomes harder and harder to justify. It's also worth remembering that Nazis can be used for comedy as well; they ARE Germans after all, and when they're not conquering the world they're prancing around in lederhosen, drinking beer from steins and boots, and churning out hardcore bdsm pornography. All of these lead to some pretty great storytelling, just so long as the GM knows how to play them correctly and prevent them from becoming a wackier version of an Ork.

...And then you have this bullshit, which misses the point entirely and renders us all stupider for the knowledge of its existence.

Nazi Gear, Weapons, and Vehicles

If you decide to use Nazis as your bad guys at tonight's game, the link below is a brief run down of basic information on Nazi equipment. If you're planning to play them as protagonists, either make sure it's either just a historically neutral such as a combat oriented Axis and Allies game, or well written with an enemy that rivals or surpasses their evil, or you're likely playing Racial Holy War and should thoroughly reconsider your life choices.

Main Article: Nazi Equipment

See Also

• /pol/: Having fanatical adherents who would ironically be the first to be exterminated for being physically frail weebs or obese neckbeards.
  • SJW: /pol/s almost exact opposite in theory, some SJWs frequently accuse their opponents of being secret Nazis. We couldn't possibly comment.
• Communism, which Nazism so heavily opposed that some of the features of the Nazi regime cannot be explained except by its complete opposition to, or imitation of, the Soviet Union or Marxism-Leninism.
• Fascist Italy, Diet Nazi Germany.
• The Skaven, who play straight some of the Nazi tropes like the concept of the Master Race and seeing all the other races as inferior "things".
• The Imperium of Man, which despite what most people think is not Fascist, barring planets ruled by shitheads. This does not stop Neo-Nazis from fawning over it, which just shows how little they know of their own ideology, Imperium, or the fact Imperium is supposed to be evil (if the lesser one) and not something to aspire for. Neo-Nazis will try to co-opt anything which could, out of context, be spun as pro-nazi.