Space Nazis

Space Nazis is a recurring trope in many science fiction works dealing with World War II or World War III like situations.

Novels

Even before World War II, Edgar Rice Burroughs satirized the Nazis by placing a fascist political faction called "Zanis" on the planet Venus in Carson of Venus, published in serialized form in 1938.

The theme of Nazis escaping into space was already evident in Robert A. Heinlein's Rocket Ship Galileo, published two years after the end of World War II, wherein Nazis colonized the Moon after escape from their defeat on Earth.[1] Later books with a similar premise often involve an alternate history featuring the Nazis winning World War II or extraterrestrials traveling back in time to supply advanced technology to one side (usually Germany). Most of Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream consists of novel written by alternate-history Adolf Hitler who became a science fiction writer, which ends with cloned SS supermen initiating a galactic empire.

In the future solar system of Jack Williamson's "Seetee Ship", the planet Mars is colonized by Nazi Germans and Fascist Italians, and its main public holiday is "Hitler Day" which is often the occasion of bloody riots; the Nazi Mars is one of the malevolent space powers seeking to oppress the book's Liberty-minded Asteroid Belt miners.

Other premises include a splinter group of Nazis (or their ideology) being introduced to a previously benign planet. In some cases, such as the 2012 film Iron Sky, the Nazis have merely adapted their already advanced technology to reach the Moon.

Games

The term "Space Nazis" is also a Killzone fan-coined term referring to the game series' spacefaring enemy faction, the Helghast. The emblem of the Helghast resembles the symbols of far-right nationalist groups like the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging and the German Nazi Party, there are notable similarities in helmet shape and officer uniform design between the Helghast and Nazi Germany, and many Helghast weapons bear the German-sounding "StA" acronym in their names. Furthermore, all games in the series have cutscenes of Helghast leaders giving speeches at large rallies, with strong visual and thematic allusions to Nazi rallies.

The 1988 computer game Rocket Ranger, from Cinemaware, featured a storyline where the Nazis attempted to dominate the world from a lunar base. The gameplay involved using a rocket pack to capture enough equipment to build a rocket, fly to the moon and thwart their plans.

The Black Lance faction in the 1995 game Wing Commander 4 features Nazi-like aesthetic and goals (purification of humanity through constant war and genetic selection via bioweapons).

The 2012 video game Iron Sky: Invasion is a space combat simulator and an expansion of the 2012 movie Iron Sky, with interactive and flyable recreations of numerous alleged prototypes and models of Nazi UFO spacecraft.

The Imperium of Man in the tabletop game Warhammer 40,000 has been dubbed "Catholic Space Nazis" by many fans, due to sharing similar socio-political policies (including an official policy of absolute xenophobia) and militarism of the latter, and the aesthetic of the former.

The now-defunct Stargate SG-1 Roleplaying Game depicted Nazis seizing control of the original Stargate and using it to establish an off-world colony that survived to present day. This was later contradicted by the direct-to-DVD movie Stargate: Continuum, which reinforced the continuity presented in the original Stargate film, depicting the Gate having been shipped to the United States prior to World War II.

The first-person shooter game Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014) said that the Nazis were successfully landed on the moon after their victory in World War II, and they built a base on it. The protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz infiltrates the Nazi lunar base in order to steal a nuclear weapon activation code for the resistance.

Radio, television and movies

Music

See also

References

  1. Heinlein, Robert (1947). Rocket Ship Galileo. Scribner's.
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