Popular Culture without the Nazis

there's no doubt that the simple existence of Nazi Germany greatly affected the world, not only in terms of technology, society, and history from then on (case in point: rockets, general abhorrence of discrimination, and the formation of Israel), but also in popular culture. there's plenty of instances in fiction where the Nazis are bad guys, and yet others where Nazi-analogues are put in their place (such as TL-191 with the Freedom Party)

anyway, i thought it would be interesting to discuss what we all think would be the changes to the popular culture of OTL had Nazi Germany never come to be. one, for example, is in Star Wars: if there was no precedent with Nazi stormtroopers, then what would the cannon-fodder bad guys in the Original Trilogy be called? shocktroopers? legionaries? just soldiers? as another example, i know that some people have criticized Turtledove for being a bit lazy near the end of TL-191 by simply making events more directly analogous to OTL, what with Featherston being almost exactly the same as Hitler and whatnot, but (assuming that TL-191 would still be written) what if there was no precedent with a fascist, racial supremacist political party in actual history? and perhaps most importantly, what would everyone overuse when bitching about people they don't agree with? :p:D

discuss away!!
 
Was the aesthetic of the Nazis something that would;n't have happened? The Stahlhelm was not a Nazi invention, and the Hugo Boss-esque uniform does not necessarily have to be Nazi if we are talking about an ATL. Perhaps the Soviets develop a more powerful, fearsome image?
 
The smartass in me says 'one less cliché vilains' to use in 20th century pop stuff. Maybe, MAYBE Soviets would take it's places...

Of course, if a very evil far right regime do something similar other place, like a fascistic France, it could be this the trendy guys to use and hate in very black and white, less subtile ways pop cutulres often goes for.
 
Without a militarily active Germany to keep the European powers occupied, I'm not sure Japan would start invading territories all over Southeast Asia. Up until then, they were regarding in the West as possessing a more martial culture than the norm, but the fascist element wasn't played up for the most part.
 

whitecrow

Banned
Without a militarily active Germany to keep the European powers occupied, I'm not sure Japan would start invading territories all over Southeast Asia. Up until then, they were regarding in the West as possessing a more martial culture than the norm, but the fascist element wasn't played up for the most part.
So what would Japan be seen as without Nazis?
 
A few years ago, I bought this really cool American travelogue from the mid '30s (we're talking pre-2nd Sino Japanese War here) where the author toured most of the Pacific Rim. There's this really longwinded section that talks on length about the Japanese national characteristics from a western point of view.

The Japanese people were viewed as a meticulous and polite in the company of foreigners (no surprises there), copycats in industry and commerce, and possessing a rigid social structure. On a national scale, they were thought to be more nationalistic than their neighbors and definitely more Machiavellian (the author liked to repeat the descriptive phrase "Might makes Right" in his characterization of Japanese geopolitical intrigue). The author made a direct comparison between interwar Japanese enthusiasm for military intervention and that of the pre-WWI Western powers. It wasn't viewed as something excessively barbaric, just a bit out of touch with the rest of the world in a sort of antiquated fashion. And when it did come to warfare, the Japanese were thought to conduct themselves in an honorable fashion (I'm guessing the author was writing before the radicalization of the IJA and IJN and the subsequent adoption of their twisted interpretation of bushido).

While an ugly Second Sino-Japanese War might shake these Western views of Japan up a bit, if there's no great Pacific War and widespread propaganda demonization of Japan, the popular culture conception of kamikaze/banzai charges/seppuku stereotypes may not come to fruition.
 
Well what popular culture looks like without the Nazis depends on how history goes without the Nazis. Communist Germany? Communist Spain? Second Winter War? An actual Soviet-Japanese War? The way I see it, Communism is going to be stronger in the world without Hitler.
 
Internet arguments would go on longer without Godwin's Law.

Of course, there would probably be something similar, but only the Nazis have the massive negative stigma.
 
Yeah, but with not having the Nazi's as a focus of Stigma we'd generally have a worse opinion about the communists wouldn't we?
 
Yeah, but with not having the Nazi's as a focus of Stigma we'd generally have a worse opinion about the communists wouldn't we?

Yeah, we could have Godwin's law, only with Communists instead of Nazis and Stalin instead of Hitler.

But who would Lucas use in Indiana Jones in the first three parts of the movie? Besides all those occult crackpot theories and Nazi conspiracies would not exist at all. Probably there would be a lot more 'Elders of Zyon' type of conspiracies.
 
Well, I'm guessing the Indie Jones stories would be a bit more pulp, with Temple of Doom being the standard rather than Raiders of the Lost Arc.
 
Probably a mash up of Imperial Japan, North Korea, and Communist China would take their place. They'd lack all the style points the Nazis provided, but they might make up for it with slanty eyes, banzai armor and mass charges, brutality to POWs, and a Flash Gordonesque mesh of both the ancient (swords, samurai and bushido) and advanced (fighter planes, nuclear bombs and brainwashing).

The Nazis made it not only acceptable (but even preferable) to present blond and blue eyed aryans as evil beyond imagining. No Nazis might extend the use of non-white, and particularly Asian, stereotypes as the face of ultimate evil. This occured anyway in the 1930's, but nobody could top the Nazis, after all. Also, and I hate to mention this, but the predominance of emigre' Jewish writers, directors, and producers in the film industry almost ensured the Nazi's prime billing as ulimate bad guys whenever the chance presented itself. Replace them by just average brutal Germans in the Kaiser Bill mold and they don't hold a candle to the Japanese or Red Chinese.

Assuming butterflies don't raise their heads too much, it's possible that Arabs and other middle easterners might take on some of that role, especially (as in our own TL) after the riase of Palestinian terrorism and the Iran hostage situation.

I'm not convinced the Soviets could consistently be the model for ultimate film evil. First, they have no style sense. Second, there is nothing really wierd about them from the middle american perspective, Third, except for Stalin, they are pretty boring. Plus, with no Nazis to wake them up to their inner Imperial Russian-ness, they might have just stayed happply in the former Russian empire watching their poorly constructed buildings crumble away..
 
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Eurofed

Banned
I'm not convinced the Soviets could consistently be the model for ultimate film evil. First, they have no style sense.

I strongly disagree. They did share a definite taste with the Nazis for a lot of "evil empire" cool stuff: snappy uniforms, military parades, megalomanic infrastructure/rearmament projects, dabbling in pseudoscience (Lysenkoism, paranormal research)...

Second, there is nothing really wierd about them from the middle american perspective,

What ? Sir, the Red Scares and sixty years of Cold War US paranoia about "godless" Communists have called and want to have some words with you. :rolleyes::eek:

Third, except for Stalin, they are pretty boring.

Till Breznev, Soviet leaders were not: Trotzki, Stalin, Beria, Krushev...

Plus, with no Nazis to wake them up to their inner Imperial Russian-ness, they might have just stayed happply in the former Russian empire watching their poorly constructed buildings crumble away..

Obvious and easy solution to this is the absence of Nazism butterflying the USSR down the "Red Alert" path, or at least a very aggressive and confrontational Cold War stance.
 
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There's a pretty good chance that the emblem for the new age hippy types would be the Swastica, it is after all an ancient eastern good luck symbol that the Nazis ruined.
 
there would probably also be more uses of S shaped like a lightning bolt since there wouldnt be any Waffen-SS to associate that with
 
Soviets do have a style - a different style than the 'classy efficient masters' evil. A vague eastern, yet european evil...

I means, look at things like the Rambo movies, Strider games, etc... I could see them becoming a trendy evil.
 
The Soviets seemed to me to be more stylish in the sense that they kind of conveyed a crass sort of industrial militarism - hordes of conscripts with standard olive uniforms and simple, bowl-like helmets and boring but functional rifles, fleets of fast, beetle-like tanks, and tons and tons of bigass artillery with simplistic, undecorated barrels and later on, massive numbers of missiles. And yes, everything painted in the same olive green color.

Compare that to the Germans, who had a rather "decoratively badass" style to their stuff. The whole aesthetic reminds me of something rather knightly, with each tank being a mighty warrior with precisely-crafted armor and weapons. Even the lone infantryman has a menacing edge with his stahlhelm and deadly-looking mp40. Speaking of lone badasses, when we (at least I) think of aces in WW2 some German guy always pops into my mind, be it Michael Wittmann or Werner Moelders or the sub captain in "Das Boot" (I know that was fictional but it's all about the feel).

So could the Soviets replace the Germans as "the big bad" in everyone's eyes? Maybe, it depends on how well the media receives the idea of big, dark hordes of Communism as opposed to the sinister knights of the Reich. At least with the Soviets we have a precedent for something like Star Wars' stormtroopers.
 
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