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
- The July 14, 1950 episode of Dimension X, "The Man in the Moon" by George Lefferts, concerns a German colony on the moon.
- The antagonist nation Principality of Zeon in the anime Mobile Suit Gundam is aesthetically based on the Third Reich with similar salute "Sieg Zeon" (also translated as the more grammatically correct "Hail Zeon") and a flag design and remnant movements are called "Neo Zeon". However their actions appear to be based on the Third Reich's ally, Japan, which claimed to be liberating the Asian neighbors they invaded and sought to create a Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Zeon similarly gassed other space colonies while proclaiming to be liberating their fellow space colonists from cruel Earth rule and in the Unicorn OVA, Neo Zeon seek to create a "Co-Prosperity Sphere."
- Attack from Space (1964): Benevolent aliens from the planet Emerald send superhero Starman to protect Earth from invasion by an evil alien race called the Spherions, warlike creatures of the Sapphire Galaxy. When Starman arrives on Earth, he discovers a conspiracy involving Earth's top scientists, and he must stop the impending alien invasion.
- "Patterns of Force", an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series: The Ekosian civilization copied the Nazi Regime to the point of having similar ideologies, clothing, symbols, etc., in an attempt to emulate Germany's rapid economic recovery during the 1930s; their "Führer", a human named John Gill, is in fact a Federation historian and observer who believed that, while Nazi leaders were evil, the system itself was not, and under benevolent leadership could be a highly effective form of government.
- The Eastern Alliance, featured in the "Greetings from Earth", "Baltar's Escape", and "Experiment in Terra" episodes of the original Battlestar Galactica television series, is a Nazi/Soviet-like police state government at war with a rival society on an Earth-like planet called "Terra", as well as on many of Terra's "satellite" colony planets elsewhere in space.
- The film, Starship Troopers, unlike the original book, evokes fascist imagery.
- In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Killing Game", a species called the Hirogen emulate the Nazis using Holodeck technology in order to play war games and better understand Earth's history and culture.
- In the Star Trek: Enterprise episodes "Storm Front", parts I and II, a species called the Na'kuhl time-travels to World War II (in a previous temporal journey, they had killed Lenin in 1916, preventing Communism from taking root) and helps the Nazis conquer America.
- Iron Sky (2012): Nazis escaped the fall of Germany in 1945, traveled to the Moon's dark side and established a base. In 2018 they return to Earth to establish the Fourth Reich.
- In the anime AKB0048 Idols fight the space Nazis who terrorize the galaxy with an entertainment ban.
Music
- The Vandals – "Master Race (In Outer Space)", on their debut album When in Rome Do as The Vandals (1984)
See also
References
- ↑ Heinlein, Robert (1947). Rocket Ship Galileo. Scribner's.
- Ilsa J. Bick. 1999: The Trauma is Out There: Historical Disjunctions and the Posttraumatic Narrative as Process in The X-Files, in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Ed. Christopher Sharrett. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999.
- H. T. Hakl. 1997: Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus. (German) In: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Die okkulten Wurzeln des Nationalsozialismus. Graz, Austria: Stocker (German edition of The Occult Roots of Nazism)
- Florian Evers. 2011. Vexierbilder des Holocaust. LIT Verlag Münster. ISBN 3643111908, 9783643111906.
