So, Space Nazis.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I was thinking more like commandos that work for the "Great Empire" wield badass knives, and scare the holy shit out of the space nazis and others....

[Lord of the Abyss]

I was thinking more like commandos that work for the "Great Empire" wield badass knives, and scare the holy shit out of the space nazis and others....

Well, they do most of that too; although amusingly given this thread, the Sten series actually does have a "Imperial Japan In Space" bunch of villains for several books instead of Space Nazis. But they do work for the Empire, and they do scare the hell out of people with their kukris, when they don't skip the "scare" part and go straight to "decapitate".

[jollyreaper]

Is that a serious post? 'Relatively few failures of tactics and organisation'?
Saying ignorant fiction consumers have a bunch of wrong ideas about TEH NAZZIES (from the nazi recycling industry itself, usually) is one thing, but then stating these things as fact is something altogether more amusing.

Well, less failures of tactics and organization than Italy or Japan, both of which had second-rate armies.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Yes. The key-word there is "relatively" (which you even quoted, Stark). Of course the Nazis had failures of tactics and organization, every damned nation involved in WW2 had god-only-knows how many. The point is that their track record is notably better than the other examples the OP was wondering about.

Strategic failure really. I don't have the numbers handy but the Germans on the ground had a superior kill ratio against the Allies all the way back to Berlin. That they were doing so and still forced into retreat is instructive. Tactically, superior. Strategically, shafted. This is why you don't pick a fight against the goddamn rest of the world.

The Pacific was also the low priority theater. First Europe, then the Pacific. So I think that the press coverage the Nazis got helped to make them more terrorific.

I also agree with the earlier comments about the Nazis having more going for them with equipment and ideas. The Nazis winning WWII seems remotely possible. Not so for Japan. Even with hindsight it becomes impossible to wargame a way for them to win.

Also, the Holocaust stands out more as inexplicable evil. The Japanese attrocities never got as much billing. I doubt most Americans would know about the Rape of Nanking. Most yobs could outline the Holocaust in broad strokes. Carpet bombing of major cities by all parties might have killed more than the Holocaust but we excuse it because we are guilty of it ourselves. But the Holocaust? We ran concentration camps but weren't deliberately trying to exterminate them.

I'd like to think that the era of rationalizing the destruction of urban centers with 100k casualties is over but I suspect it's just a hiatus. Given the opportunity any American president will be happy to explain why it's necessary and how killing people from the sky isn't as mean as torture-raping them to death over days is worse. Business, wasn't personal? Total war is a scary thought.

[someone_else]

why it's always Space Nazis and Hitler? Why not Space Franco? Mussolini? Or Japanese Empire?

Nazi were a step above everyone else on both tech and organization, at their peak.
Franco and Mussolini were both made of cardboard. (tech was barely above WW1 at WW2 times, organization was crappy and very unstable for Mussolini, don't know about Franco's organization, but its only chance to survive was to remain neutral in WW2)

Japanese were very stubborn, but their tech sucked (their fighters lighted up like matches when hit, their aircraft carriers were converted cargo ships, their kamikaze fighters were totally worthless, and so on).

The only one that could have won (kinda, let's say forced the US to give up the Pacific fight, outright US INVASION is ludicrous) if handled a bit better were the Japanese, but again their crappy tech does not make them look good while doing it.

Having superior tech is important for a villain. As is being totally evil.
And nazis were inexplicably evil (as a whole anyway).
Japan didn't do much worse than other parties did in the war (like for example soviets mass raping german 'wimmins while steamrolling the german army back to Berlin).

Anything else compared to Nazi looks like the fictional "North African Republic of Wadiya" from The Dictator movie.

Just from that poster alone I would want to see a clip

Most of the fun from it will be hard to translate (the narration of the adventure parodies the narration of fascist propaganda), and its FX is barely indie-grade. Besides, youtube does have the full movie available in case you want to have a look.

[lord Martiya]

Just from that poster alone I would want to see a clip

I have to agree with someone_else: as it started as a series of tv sketches the effects aren't exactly well-done, and the humor was made by Italians for Italians, who have at least a passing familiarity with Mussolini's propaganda and colonial history (to anyone else they'd lose at least half of the fun).

[Lord of the Abyss]

Another things just occurred to me. A complaint I hear fairly often is that the "bad guys" of a setting are too over the top evil and are hard to take seriously. Basing the bad guys on the Nazis helps defuse that criticism, since it can be answered with "but the Nazis were real and they really did act that way!"

[someone_else]

well, Nazi didn't exist in a vacuum, so to speak. They existed because well, germans are efficient by nature albeit somewhat rigid, after WW1 there was a fuckton of resentment aginst more or less everyone else and a great need to prove their worth, and of course the need to blame someone for the WW1 failure and the subsequent economic meltdown.
Nazi existed because Germany lost WW1, no WW1, no Nazi (other than skinhead-like movements).

But of course, just saying "Look at Nazi!" will be enough for the bulk of consumers, even if the fictional nazi don't make any sense when you look at the background story.

Japanese for example would be much better (they can exist "in a vacuum" with ease and in fact did for a long while on Earth) if their tech in WW2 wasn't so horribly second-rate.

[Sarevok]

We need some space communists. The game Starlancer is the only I can think of and it was glorious fighting the red navy in space.

[Lord of the Abyss]

We need some space communists. The game Starlancer is the only I can think of and it was glorious fighting the red navy in space.

Hmmmm. There's the Com from the Well World series. And one of the two alien species from the old H. Beam Piper novel First Cycle was pretty much communist as I recall.

[Jedi Commisar]

Just from that poster alone I would want to see a clip

I have to agree with someone_else: as it started as a series of tv sketches the effects aren't exactly well-done, and the humor was made by Italians for Italians, who have at least a passing familiarity with Mussolini's propaganda and colonial history (to anyone else they'd lose at least half of the fun).

Drat! so my stufy British attitude will means that the humor will be lost on me oh well carry on pip-pip jolly good spot of tea

[aussiemuscle308]

The fact that the Japanese never seemed to have any chance at actual victory, ... "short non-white person gotta suck at fightmaking" racism ...just cheap fighters who couldn't learn their place--and then they go and ram planes into us or do idiotic and pointless suicide charges, or use swords, and get their asses handed to them.

Where do you fit in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the Yanks didn't think they'd ever surrender into that rant?

i guess it also helps that NAZI does not (necessarily) equal German, helps them to be less of a nation than just a group of people. (ie germany reformed itself and renouncing nazi ethos. in fact germany has very strict laws re displaying of nazi symbols)

[someone_else]

We need some space communists. The game Starlancer is the only I can think of and it was glorious fighting the red navy in space.

I liked that game.

There is AT 43 (a currently dead miniature game supposed to compete with Warhammer 40k) that had pretty cool backstory and races, never played it though.

The humans are divided into a (spacefaring) nation called Red Block and a (spacefaring) nation called UNA, it's easy to understand who is what.

The books were available for free on their site, since it's down you'll have to find them otherwise.

Drat! so my stufy British attitude will means that the humor will be lost on me oh well carry on pip-pip jolly good spot of tea

Hm, since you're from UK, in the movie they say (to say english are inferior to Fascist Italy) "English! Guys that were still hunting marmots while we were already stabbing a Julius Cesar" with the usual pompous fascist propaganda voice.

[Covenant]

The fact that the Japanese never seemed to have any chance at actual victory, ... "short non-white person gotta suck at fightmaking" racism ...just cheap fighters who couldn't learn their place--and then they go and ram planes into us or do idiotic and pointless suicide charges, or use swords, and get their asses handed to them.

Where do you fit in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the Yanks didn't think they'd ever surrender into that rant?

i guess it also helps that NAZI does not (necessarily) equal German, helps them to be less of a nation than just a group of people. (ie germany reformed itself and renouncing nazi ethos. in fact germany has very strict laws re displaying of nazi symbols)

You'd probably need to wedge the "nuked em gud!" tripe in there between honor and suicide. Basically nothing the Japanese did in the war made them come off as jolly good villains to American sensibilities, and their lack of adequate surrender was always a strange cultural weirdness along with their mistreatment of prisoners, which also made them look cowardly. Cowboy culture had pretty regimented fair play rules, and the Japanese managed to fit into the backstabbing bushwacker theme instead of the black hat villain theme.

Nowadays, yeah, I think a modern reticence to use Imperial Japan in Space is that the Japanese have a much more complicated relationship to their war deeds than the Germans. It makes it hard to fit them in without trying to make them more nuanced, since a moustache-twirling depiction either looks racist or potentially offensive. It's messy.

And to be blunt, the Japanese as an aggressive nation of people looking to expand and doing some evil shit are not really unique. There could be "Space Japanese" but how would we know? There's a ton of examples of aggressive asshole expansionists. I wouldn't know if they were meant to be Space Japanese or Space Conquistadors or Space Mongols except by their sword shape.

[Vendetta]

I think the reason it's Space Nazis rather than anyone else is that they were more aggressively expansionistic than other fascist nations like Spain and more successfully so than Italy.

Space Franco wouldn't be terribly interesting for a large scale story because although he stayed in power for a very long time he didn't seek to expand that power beyond Spain, so unless you're actually doing a Spanish Civil War in SPACE story, he's not a useful antagonist.

[evilsoup]

Spanish Civil War in space could be pretty good though.

[Guardsman Bass]

We need some space communists. The game Starlancer is the only I can think of and it was glorious fighting the red navy in space.

Stand-ins for Space Communists used to be much more common in SF. They've inspired a bunch of hive aliens, including the "Bugs" from Starship Troopers (which was an interesting hybrid in that it had Pacific Campaign-style "island hopping" versus the Space Communist Bugs). The problem is that the Cold War ended, and now Space Communists don't seem that dangerous or threatening anymore now that they're not an allegory for anything.

[someone_else]

And to be blunt, the Japanese as an aggressive nation of people looking to expand and doing some evil shit are not really unique. There could be "Space Japanese" but how would we know? There's a ton of examples of aggressive asshole expansionists. I wouldn't know if they were meant to be Space Japanese or Space Conquistadors or Space Mongols except by their sword shape.

"Asshole expansionist" is what they do, it's how they do it, the style, that makes the difference from Assohole 1 to Asshole 2.

Space Japanese are an empire and love to send space samurai in power armor that fight with their cut-thrugh-anything-light-katanas (also: Space Battleship Yamato!), Space Mongols are a bunch of unwashed fighter jocks/vehicle drivers that rarely if ever leave their cockpit (the real ones had a very strong bond with horses if I'm not mistaken), Space Conquistadores are literally a bunch of greedy thieves on a rag-tag craft, armed with blasters, STD, and really, fucktons of blind obvious good luck.

If you can't distinguish, it's only your fault.

Besides, Japan didn't wanted to do evil shit (not EXTERMINATE-ALL-JEWS-AND-COMMUNISTS-grade of evil shit anyway). Just wanted to expand its own empire a bit.

[lord Martiya]

And perfect their biological weapons.

[PeZook]

And slaughter all those pesky Chinese who insisted on living where they shouldn't