Nazi

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"I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light."

-J.R.R. Tolkien

Important note - Although the armed forces of Germany during World War II are commonly referred to as Nazi's, Nazi only refers to the political party. The regular German armed forces were the Wehrmacht, who were not necessarily Nazi's. The Waffen-Shutzstaffel or Waffen-SS were the military arm of the Nazi party.

Historical

Nazis: Evil, but stylish

Nazi is the commonly used shorthand version of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party), a political party which took over in Germany for 1,000 years from 1933 to 1945. It also refers to people who belong to said party, their ideology and to their regime in Germany during said period of time. Emerging from uncertainty and political upheaval due to the red scare, the end of the German Empire after the Great War, resentment at unfair conditions imposed by Treaty of Versailles, economic uncertainties due to the Stock Market crash of 1929, German Ethnic Nationalism, a desire to blame things on scapegoats, and a belief in militarism popular among many returning veterans, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler took control of Germany, aided by their invention of modern campaigning and propaganda, wide-spread dissatisfaction with the status quo producing protest votes, the strategic seizure of the political positions that controlled the police force, and more dumb luck than anyone has any right to have, let alone a bunch of evil, racist loons.

What the Nazis wanted

They soon mobilized their armies and launched a war of expansion. Their goal was to impose their militaristic Social Darwinistic ideology across Europe, outlaw any dissenting school of thought, enslave all the "sub-human" slavs (after starving to death more than half of them in accordance to Generalplan Ost) and exterminate any "undesirables" (Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, etc) which they blamed all their problems on because they felt that they were superhumans without any flaws any problem which they suffered happened had to be the fault of some subversive other from outside who tried to cause the master race misery for no other reason than "the Evulz". But in doing so, they got into war with the British, the Soviets and the United States which, using their superior industrial might drove them back to Germany and then crushed the Nazi Regime completely.

To modern western civilization, the Nazis has the role of the Great Foe. The great evil which wrought death and misery on Europe which needed to be stopped by all means possible. They rejected Democracy in favor of Dictatorship, individual freedoms to subservience to the state and brutal repression of any dissenting idea or anything precised to be dissenting (as an example they banned the use of the Fraktur font in 1941 as someone came to believe that it might have been of Jewish origin), equality in favor of a rigid hierarchy with Germans on the top, non German "Aryans" (Scandinavians, French, Italians, English) underneath them, while some Asian races were seem as equal to the Aryans, the Tibetans for example, were believed by the Nazi higher-ups that they and the Aryans had a common root, while their Japanese and Chinese allies (Chinese were very close trading friends back in 1929, Dont'Cha'Know?before you know the mass rape and murder which the German, or at least one of them, did actually try to stop) were hailed as the "Aryans of the East" , Black People and Slavs underneath to be used as slaves with the Jews underneath them in literal "subhumanity," which they viewed as being universally from cradle to grave involved in some convoluted conspiracy to inflict misery on the Germans. They held 'weakness' and 'softness' in contempt, their ideal of an Ayran "Übermensch" would be forged in war and made hard, merciless and ruthless. They used vile actions towards a vile end. But rather than just being an alien other, they represented the worst qualities of industrial western civilization inflated and turned inward against bits of western civilization. Despite this, they were good at public image, with spiffy uniforms (Design by Hugo Boss no less), distinctive architecture (largely based off that of the Roman Empire but stripped down in terms of fine details and blow up in scale), cinema and omnipresent iconography (a rip off Asian, namely the Swastika). They also had (for the time) some fairly advanced technology, including developments in rocketry (Panzerfausts and Nebelwerfers), jet engines and computers (see Konrad Zuse).

What the Nazis got

As such, they have become one of the master templates from which modern writers in some way or another base their villains and evil civilizations on. In Star Wars, the forces of the Galactic Empire employ some Naziesque uniforms. The Daleks are defined for their fanatical hatred of anything that is not a Dalek. In Warhammer the Imperium of Man will often draw from Nazi Germany either indirectly (hatred, bigotry, willingness to use torture, repression and terror to their ends) to overt (The Armageddon Steel Legion). In anime there is the Principality of Zeon, which also has elements borrowed from the WWII Empire of Japan. The most extensive take on the theme of Space Nazis would be the Helghast from Killzone. If you have a fantasy/sci-fi world, it will almost certainly have some sort of Nazi analogue floating around. At the same time, Nazis also figure into a lot of Alternate History fiction. Nazis invading England, Nazis invading America, Nazis successfully conquering the USSR, Nazis getting the Bomb first, Nazis creating an army of mutant uber-troopers, Nazis on the Moon, Nazis using occult powers to summon Demons to aid them, all of these have been done.

Trademarks

TSR had the ™ and © symbols next to the word 'Nazi' where it appeared in their Indiana Jones RPG. This was probably for the sake of the artwork reproduced from the movie, but it's been a source of teasing and flames about TSR trying to claim exclusive ownership of the term 'Nazi.' Same shit happened with Marvel and their WW2 villains, and probably with Fawcett Comics since 'Captain Nazi' was a villain fighting Captain "Shazam" Marvel.

Nazis and /tg/

/tg/ long ago realized something most competent people have: Nazis represent a great liberating force for any GM, for they represent a force that any player need not feel any remorse over resorting to violence against, because they're fucking Nazis. Nazis are a modern setting variants of using Slavers as your enemy in a Fantasy game because once you establish them as Nazi's you don't need to provide any information for them to become instantly hateable, the real world context we bring into the game as humans does all the work for the GM in giving the players a reason to be motivated and to understand that these people are Evil and that they are in the Right allowing the GM to focus on other aspects of the story. Indeed one can get similar results by simply providing details that lead us to conclude that any group you are facing off against are this universes version of Nazi's. That said: that same context makes using Nazis a double edge sword and a lazy GM(or author, or script writer or what ever, this is hardly unique to roleplaying) can royally screw up if one uses them incorrectly. Used incorrectly Nazi's become kitten eating one dimensional caricature of villains who descended into self parody, Nazi's have the additional problem of not even needing to be exaggerated that much to make the worst of them into something like this. So care must be taken when one plays the Nazi card or it will come off as trite.

Entire stretches of d20 Past are shown various ways to implement, Indiana Jones style, Nazis into any campaign during the early 1900s, and Savage Worlds has an entire supplement devoted to thwarting Nazi super-soldier plans during WWII. More clever GMs can do even more interesting things with it, such as backing up the savagery of the Nazis with a humanizing element to make them more understandable, even if antagonists, whilst another interesting setting, proposed for GURPS, starts the players off as Nazis and has them turn against their former comrades as the movement becomes harder and harder to justify. It's also worth remembering that Nazi's can be used for comedy as well, any one here heard of Hogan's Heroes? All of these lead to some pretty great storytelling, just so long as the GM is aware of the real world baggage Nazi's bring to his game and is able to use that to deepen the experience, other wise he'll have just created Orks in fancy uniforms.

...And then you have bullshit like this nonsense, which misses the point entirely and renders us all stupider for the knowledge of its existence.

Nazis Gear

For reasons above you decide want to use Nazis as your bad guys at tonight's game. Here is a brief run down of basic information on Nazi equipment.

Small Arms

• Kar 98: Standard German rifle during WWII from the old Mauser family, 7.92x57mm caliber. Fairly cheap, accurate and reliable, but it had a slow rate of fire. Saw use up until the fall of Nazi Germany.
• MP 40: The most common German Sub Machine Gun through the war used mainly for urban fighting. Chambered to 9mm parabellum. Had a collapsible stock. In general pretty good, though there was never enough of them to go around.
• Luger Pistol:
• StG-44 Sturmgewher: The first assault rifle to be widely issued and the namesake of that class of weapon introduced in 1943. Chambered to a new 7.92x33mm cartridge and which made possible to put an automatic and semi automatic weapon with something close enough to full rifle power and accuracy in the hands of the regular soldier, it was very effective and well received by the troops that got it. Even so the concept had some teething problems, was expensive to make and entered the war rather late, so they were fairly rare. Attempts to simplify the design for ease of production were somewhat successful but were never implemented before the war ended. It looks a bit like an AK-47, though the two designs are not related.
• MG 42: German military doctrine during WWII was built around the machine gun and as such the Germans developed an exceptional machine gun in the MG 42. It was lightweight at 11.7 kg, was belt fed unlike the magazine fed LMGs it usually went against and it could fire 1200 rounds per minute while most other machine guns could get off 600 rpm. It's only problem was that it's barrel would overheat and would need to be swapped out periodically during fire, though this was an easy thing to do even under combat situations thanks to some clever engineering. The MG 42 was soon replicated either in general principle or directly by other weapons.
• Panzerfaust: A disposable rocket launcher for use against tanks. Really cheap to produce, easy to use and able to do a lot of damage to tanks at low range (at most 150 meters), even though the guy armed with these weapons would generally have one shot.
• Panzershreck: A reusable anti-tank rocket launcher based off captured american bazookas. It was larger than the panzerfaust, but could be reloaded. Has a steel shield in front.

Vehicles

• Panzer I: Designed and produced in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, the Panzerkampfwagen I was the first Nazi tank. It was small, weighing only 5.4 tonnes and was armed only with a couple of machine guns. Some 1,493 were made and were most notable in that they allowed tank crews to be trained and (after being sent to Spain) let tank doctrine be developed that allowed the nazis to take over poland and germany. They saw some use at the beginning of WWII, but were pretty soon deemed to be out of date even on scouting missions.
• Panzer II: The Panzerkampfwagen II was designed with the experience of the Spanish Civil War. Heavier than the Panzer I at 8.9 tonnes, it was designed as a stopgap as the Panzer III and IV were experiencing delays in production. It was armed with a dinky little 20mm cannon little better than an anti-tank rifle. Common during the early war, it was obsoleted by the arrival of the Panzer II and IV and relegated to reconnaissance duties and training.
• Panzer III: One of the two main German tanks of the war, the Panzer-III was when Germany was really getting the hang of this whole tank design thing. Introduced in 1939 it weighed 23 tonnes and at first carried a 37mm anti tank gun and notably had a turret big enough for three guys. The Panzer III was intended to engage enemy tanks. In Poland, France and North Africa it did well, even though some french vehicles outgunned them. Against soviet T-34s it was completely insufficient, even when upgraded to a 50mm gun. Production stopped in 1942, but since they had built 5,774 of them they stayed in service until the end of the war.
• Panzer IV: The most common German made tank with nearly 9,000 units being made and the Panzer III's big brother. The Panzer IV was originally intended to be used against infantry and was armed with a low velocity 75mm gun. After the invasion of Russia they switched to a 50mm anti tank gun and latter a 75mm cannon. In general on par with the T-34 and the M4 Sherman in most regards, they had a less powerful engine, but better optics and unlike soviet tanks every Panzer IV had at least a radio receiver. It's chassis became the foundation of a lot of German vehicles.
• Tiger: Soon after invading Russia the generals in charge of the eastern front sent requests for a tank that could match the T-34. The nazi top brass took this as a challenge to create the ultimate tank they could. The result of which was "the big cats", the first of which was the Tiger heavy tank which entered service in 1942. It weighed 54 tonnes, had a 690 hp engine, had up to 120mm of armor and was armed with a massive 88mm cannon that could take out enemy tanks two kilometers away. Despite this, the Tiger was over engineered. It was expensive and labor intensive to build, had reliability issued and was difficult to support, on top of being slow. Only 1,347 Tigers were built.
• Panther:
• Tiger II:
• Anything they could steal: From French B1 heavy tanks to Soviet T-34's to American Shermans, the Nazi used every thing they could get there hands on like Orks in clean uniforms.

Airplanes

• Messershmitt Bf 109: This plane is credited with more kills than any other fighter in history and the most common german made fighter. The variants of the 109 and the spitfire competed with each other for the title of worlds best fighter as they were both continually upgraded throughout the war. The 109 was small, very fast, a good turner, an excellent climber, and was inexpensive to produce and maintain.
• Focke-Wulf Fw 190:
• Messerhshmitt ME-262:

Ships

• U-boats:

Wunderwaffen

These are the "super weapons" that Hitler in his desperation with the British American jugernaught on one side, and the tidal wave of the Soviet Union on the other authorized to be produced and made. These are things like the V-2 or any of there jet planes.

As you can imagine with two hands, one smelling of vodka and the other apple pie, strangling Germany these weapons were made with a shortage of parts and on time crunch, however these were next generation prototypes, which most of the scientists of other nations had been toying with but had yet reached prototype much less combat stage with because they were, unlike the Germans never that desperate enough to use untested machinery with teething issues in battle. Take the Infamed Tiger 1 and 2 tanks for example, both are some times considered the best tanks of world war two, but both were over built and overly complex compared the T-34 or Sherman tank, which while inferore were able to be made in vastly higher numbers due to being simpler. (while were talking about the Tiger, it's important to also note that the Tiger was also the most primitive tank of the war since unlike the T-34 which had advanced for it's time sloped armor, it was just a metal box with big gun on it)

This why Nazi "Wonder weapons" caught the imagination of the world because they were on the bleeding edge of technology and while in the real world they were rather dismissively called "voo-vah" by allied troops.

This is the place any of the "Nazi Super science" stuff goes, you want lighting guns? Wunderwaffen, super tanks? wunderwaffen? moon rockets? Wunderwaffen? Hitler in a giant robot spider powered by the souls of the damned? Wunderwaffen.

Misc

• Stalhlem: The iconic German helmet derived from the medieval sallet. Several variants were used.