On Nazis

[Crazy_Bird]

Well. my grandfather was a German soldier in WW2. He was forcefully drafted as was my grandmother. She was a nurse and both my grandparents were stationed in Paris and met each other there for the first time; it is quite a romantic story.

Although both of them were old-fashioned and conservative they did not believe in the system's
ideology. Everytime someone greeted my grandfather with "Heil Hitler" (Hail Hitler)" he responded if Hitler became sick at last only to be reminded by my grandmother that such a
sentence could get him deported to one of the camps.

The point of this anecdote: Not all soldiers or German´s during WW2 were inherently evil (no human being is) and many people did not believe in the ideology the way it is often portrayed.
Being silent is not the same as approval but yet punishment was feared and hence the silence.

Therefore I hate the portrayal of the evil Krauts in most games (and a bunch of movies) because back in the day human characters were not less complex than nowaday and the media could design more appropriate and compelling stories with that set of mind.

 

[ZeroDotZero]

Time travelling super nazis would be nice for once!

Hey, what about a game where a German soldier who tries to assassinate Hitler at a top-secret research lab gets thrown into an alternate dimension where the Americans are Nazis and the Germans are fighting for the freedom of the world?

Have you ever considered going into Game Development?

 

[vehystrix]

well, the bulk of the nazi army were just conscripts following orders. So basically all you're doing in them games is killing the loung men and women that go to fight because otherwhise their families will be harrased(in all gradations of the word) by the members of the nazi party. Did anyone ever think about that? In fact, during the actual war, most of the germans were either neutral or opposed to their countries ideals.

Oh, and don't get me started on the large(and socially accepted) nazi movements in the US in the 1930ies.

 

[Abedeus]

I personally believe that Nazis believed that what they did would earn them the title of "hero" or "freedom fighter" in their respective culture, much like a religious extremist may believe when they attempt some manner of suicide mission.

Heroes? No. Freedom fighters? No.

But patriots... war heroes (not the same thing)... brave men and women fighting for their country and their beloved dictator. Sure it was a blind love, sometimes out of fear, but it was some kind of love.

Still, it's not like every Nazi is/was a bad person. Wait, cross that. Not every German soldier was a bad person. Nazis, those that believed that other races are inferior and should be killed (like Hitler thought and said) were bad people.

But let's not forget that sometimes people would rather go to the army and kill some strangers than risk getting themselves or their families killed if they refused to enlist.

Time travelling super nazis would be nice for once!

Hey, what about a game where a German soldier who tries to assassinate Hitler at a top-secret research lab gets thrown into an alternate dimension where the Americans are Nazis and the Germans are fighting for the freedom of the world?

Kind of hard to take you seriously when you imply that Americans fought for the freedom of the world. If by world you mean France and UK, then sure, freedom all around.

 

[Sylias]

The thing I find the most interesting is that somehow almost no one person on earth ever seems to consider that Nazi soldiers were just that... soldiers. Doing what they where told to do, either believing it to be right or not thinking at all.
It's like blaming an US Soldier, stationed in Iraq, for all the bad things the Bush administration has done to civil rights or economy or whatever...
These people had nothing to do with all the stuff the higher ups decided. Hell, I'm convinced that not even all the higher ups had their minds set on eradicating all those other, lesser races. They probably had the same thing in mind that every form of military has in mind to this day. Win...
But 70 years past all that, the whole world has pretty much accepted that every single soldier who has ever fought for the Germans between 1939 and 1945 ate babies for breakfast and praised Satan in between daily sessions of genocide.

Ever played any first person shooter that had Nazis in it and thought to yourself : "I wonder if this guy has a family. Maybe he's doing this to feed his kids. Maybe it's his last day because tomorrow he'll have enough of this mindless fighting and BOOOOM there goes his head..."

 

[Shanecooper]

I don't think that exposing tits in the saboteur was a good idea because I have a girlfriend and I won't get any if I think otherwise.

 

[Angerwing]

I think Nazis are the go-to-guys for baddies, because it's socially acceptable to murder them by the bucketload. Same thing with zombies. You know they are bad, you know there's no justification for them, you know you have to kill them.

So you're given cannon fodder enemies without them being outlandish aliens, or uncomfortable to kill (a lot of people got upset over black zombie murder).

 

[AdamG3691]

Best. CookingMamaGame. Ever.

I would LOVE to see the AVP: hugs edition ^_^

(give it to Darth Atkinson as a gift, then purchase the DLC, then reveal it to the media, heh heh heh )

EDIT: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HitlerAteSugar

 

[Witty-Name]

It's very true that not all Nazi soldiers were bad people.
Most probably weren't - even the ones involved in the most heinous acts of the war probably started out as perfectly decent chaps. However, it's easier to make them into villains because the alternative is to admit that the potential is there in all of us.

It's also true that Hitler didn't start out as an evil dictator. When he started out Germany was in a pretty bad state economically and he seemed like the man to make things better. His transition from German saviour to the Most Evil Man in History wasn't instant.

I was actually thinking the other day about the "play as a terrorist" level of MW2, I can't help but wonder if a level in one of the WW2 CoD games where you play as a young Nazi soldier would have been a more interesting prospect.

 

[era81]

Doesn't it make you think the most notable people in history where just batshit crazy? Other people talking in their heads weird leather fetishes I just think that maybe if we ever do learn to time travel maybe we should send back a lot of psychiatrists.

 

[Rodger]

Nazis? Yeah, by our math, all nazis are evil. Problem is, you're rarely actually killing nazis in video games, or on the WWII battlefield. You're killing the soldiers out fighting for their country, which happens to be controlled by nazis. On a related note, if I've got my history right here, then if you happened to ask one of said soldiers what their opinion of the Allies were, the term 'baby boiling bastards' would have likely come up. Pretty sure that's what the German propaganda going around at the time was. Or maybe that was North American propaganda...

The worst nazi soldiers were likely the ones raised from children to fight for Hitler. They had a specific name but I can't remember what it was. They were his elite troops though and pretty sure they're the ones that ran the concentration camps and what not.

 

[Pirate Brahm]

The ideas of DLC for gore and nudity harkens back to the old "blood code" from the console version of Mortal Kombat. In order to see blood and fatalities, you had to hit a sequence of buttons on the Genesis controller. Very clever.

 

[Break]

Jojo's Bizzare Adventure, the second arc of the manga. Nazis were researching an ancient race of vampiric supermen, ended up reviving one, and had to rely on the protagonist's group to defeat him. One of the Nazis gained the respect of the protagonist, and became a recurring ally character, never turning out to be an evil enemy insurgent. Nor do the Nazis continue trying to use the supermen for their own means - they appreciate the threat, and immediately begin trying to figure out how to destroy them. At several points in the story, the Nazis actually end up rescuing the protagonist, and are instrumental in defeating the antagonist.

While relations between the rest of the cast and the Nazies are suitably tense throughout, and there's a strong current of distrust and reluctance to be helped by them, the Nazi character was never shown to be a conventional moralist, or a man "forced to do unspeakable things against his better judgement, out of love for his country", as is usually the case. He is a Nazi because he believes in his leader - and yet, he's as well-rounded and likeable a character as any other in the series. It's the only instance of a Nazi character I can think of who's portrayed as neither an inhuman monster, or a saint who works behind enemy lines for the greater good.

Quite uncommon indeed - a portrayal of Nazis who aren't insane with lust for power, or meaninglessly evil. I thought it was interesting.

 

[Corporal Yakob]

Nazis? Yeah, by our math, all nazis are evil. Problem is, you're rarely actually killing nazis in video games, or on the WWII battlefield. You're killing the soldiers out fighting for their country, which happens to be controlled by nazis. On a related note, if I've got my history right here, then if you happened to ask one of said soldiers what their opinion of the Allies were, the term 'baby boiling bastards' would have likely come up. Pretty sure that's what the German propaganda going around at the time was. Or maybe that was North American propaganda...

The worst nazi soldiers were likely the ones raised from children to fight for Hitler. They had a specific name but I can't remember what it was. They were his elite troops though and pretty sure they're the ones that ran the concentration camps and what not.

You're thinking of the SS (Shutzstaffel/protection force), they were the ones who ran the concentration camps and committed the worst atrocities. Not to be mistaken with the Waffen SS (Weapon protection/ force) which were Germany's military elite indoctrinated with SS views.

 

[Hirvox]

The ideas of DLC for gore and nudity harkens back to the old "blood code" from the console version of Mortal Kombat. In order to see blood and fatalities, you had to hit a sequence of buttons on the Genesis controller. Very clever.

But as Hot Coffee showed, having disabled content on the installation media is not enough to avoid the censors' ire. And then there's Sims' official Barbie-doll physique and the third-party nude patches..

 

[AssButt]

Most German soldiers weren't members of the Nazi Party. Even then, the Japanese committed similar atrocities (read up on Unit 731) and Stalin killed much more people than Hitler did.

Most WW2 vets don't hold a grudge against the Germans, a lot of them do against the Japanese.

 

[DTWolfwood]

ok second page made my day! good suggestion. Cooking Mama comment instant gold XD

But as Hot Coffee showed, having disabled content on the installation media is not enough to avoid the censors' ire.

They got in trouble because they didn't tell the censor this was built into the game. DLC patching means that you can tell the censor what you have done to keep the content locked from children

I would so love the day a game can come out M rated and with a optional DLC be turned into AO rated >

 

[Corporal Yakob]

The thing I find the most interesting is that somehow almost no one person on earth ever seems to consider that Nazi soldiers were just that... soldiers. Doing what they where told to do, either believing it to be right or not thinking at all.
It's like blaming an US Soldier, stationed in Iraq, for all the bad things the Bush administration has done to civil rights or economy or whatever...
These people had nothing to do with all the stuff the higher ups decided. Hell, I'm convinced that not even all the higher ups had their minds set on eradicating all those other, lesser races. They probably had the same thing in mind that every form of military has in mind to this day. Win...
But 70 years past all that, the whole world has pretty much accepted that every single soldier who has ever fought for the Germans between 1939 and 1945 ate babies for breakfast and praised Satan in between daily sessions of genocide.

Ever played any first person shooter that had Nazis in it and thought to yourself : "I wonder if this guy has a family. Maybe he's doing this to feed his kids. Maybe it's his last day because tomorrow he'll have enough of this mindless fighting and BOOOOM there goes his head..."

I couldn't agree more. "And maybe this guy is doing this for the exact same reason I'm doing mine: patriotism and belief in a cause."

Screw shooting Russian civilians in airports, if games want to be more mature and intelligent then just "Call of America: Kill America's enemies) we should have a WW2 game set from the German point of view.