All Germans Are Nazis

"Walter: Fucking Germans. Nothing ever changes. Fucking Nazis. Donnie: They were Nazis, Dude? Walter: Well come on, Donnie! They were threatening castration! Are we gonna split hairs here? Dude: Walter, they weren't Nazis. They kept saying they believed in nothing. They were nihilists."

- The Big Lebowski

What happens when Those Wacky Nazis is too good a stereotype to be confined to period settings. Even though World War II is long past, the ugly shadow of Nazism endures, and inevitably colors perceptions of the German people. So, in many post-1945 settings (and Fantasy Counterpart Cultures), German characters will display gratuitous Nazi traits like goose-stepping or greeting their leader with a Roman salute, sometimes when they otherwise have nothing to do with Nazi Germany. (Note that much of this is actually banned in Real Life modern Germany.)

Can even apply in World War II works - large sections of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, not to mention plenty of civilians, didn't agree with the Nazi Party's ideals, and some actively opposed them. Even if the Just Following Orders excuse might not clear people of complicity, it's a far cry from personally being Nazis.

Also, the more stereotypically German characters are (even around other Germans), the more likely they are to be Nazis. Especially beware if they start speaking Gratuitous German.

It is especially prevalent in Eastern Europe, since the last time German soldiers did pay the place a visit, it wasn't pretty.

Strangely enough, there is no All Italians Are Fascists trope, even though Mussolini's granddaughter is a significant figure in national politics (and hers isn't the only ultra-nationalist party), nor an All Spaniards Are Falangists one even though that regime lasted into the 1970s. There isn't even an All Japanese Are Militarists either even though they were just as cruel as the Nazis and have an even longer history of militarism than the Germans. This is probably due to the fact that following World War Two the population basically revealed that Not All Japanese Are Ultra-Nationalists, instantly embraced Western morality and philosophy and made a 180 degree turn into the hyper-peaceful, cute-loving neophiles we know today. This may have to do with the Nazis being so much more infamous than any other Fascists—mainly because of all the countries they invaded (Spain was neutral in WW 2, and Italy tried a bunch of invasions, but wasn't very good at it). Or perhaps because unlike other Axis nations, where only the leadership were tried for war crimes following the war, the official policy of the Allies was to assign collective guilt to the German people for Nazi atrocities. This has, incidentally worked very well, and the German educational system is seen as an excellent example of how to get a country to recognize and come to terms with the nastier parts of its history. Some (particularly American military theorists, Eastern European leaders, and occasionally the French) say it worked too well, as it's given Germany a war-phobia that has occasionally threatened NATO missions and Western unity in general (the German "No" vote—as opposed to the expected abstention—on the United Nations resolution authorizing intervention in Libya was seen as particularly damaging; Nicolas Sarkozy in particular essentially told Merkel "what the hell were you thinking?" in response ).

See also Nazi Nobleman for a trope caused partly by this one, or Godwin's Law, when someone is deemed a Nazi regardless of being German or not, or Music to Invade Poland To, when music that is from or is influenced by Germany is accused of being Nazist.

Anime & Manga

 * Germany from Axis Powers Hetalia subverts this, as he is shown not liking some of the orders he was given (reacting with shock and disgust) and being a generally sympathetic guy whom fans adore.
 * Still, in some parodies he plays this quite straight.
 * General Blue, one of the high ranking officers of the Red Ribbon Army in Dragon Ball, is not only given the appearance of a SA officer, Blond hair, Blue Eyes, superhuman capabilities, and psychic powers, but he even went as far as to say "Auf Wiedersehen" at one point in the manga, a phrase that is German for "goodbye." Of course, considering how the FUNimation dub apparently gave him a British accent, it seems less obvious.
 * Kinnikuman has the Brocken family. Brockenman played the role straight, but his son Brocken Jr. was a good person despite being dressed up like a Nazi. This paradox was too hard to swallow, causing Brocken Jr. to be banned in America and France. In the Scramble for the Throne anime, they even censored the Nazi imagery for Brocken Jr. and replaced it with eagle motifs.

Board Games

 * Subverted in the board game Tannhäuser. Even though "The Reich" is obviously based on the Nazis stylistically (tons of leather, a blond-haired/blue-eyed, whip-toting Femme Fatale as one of the playable characters, and an obsession with the occult), the game actually takes place in an alternate history where WWI has been going strong for 35 years, WWII never took place and the Nazis never existed.
 * Its title is actually pretty accurate, since "Deutsches Reich" was the official name of of all German nation states between 1871 and 1945, which derived from the "Heiliges Römisches Reich" (the Holy Roman Empire).

Comedy

 * One of Harry Enfield's sketch characters was a German student visiting Britain. Every time someone mentioned anything to do with WWII (and he would always cause it to be brought up by doing things such as asking why there are modern buildings next to pre-WWII buildings on a tour of London) he would start off by apologising for his country's past actions, but would always end up betraying his Nazi sympathies.

Comic Books

 * Played straight in Hellboy, where pretty much every German character who appears turns out to have something to do with the Nazis, but averted in the spin-off BPRD series, where one of the main characters is the heroic (though occasionally absent-minded) ghost-in-a-bag Johann Krauss. Kate Corrigan has also recently started a relationship with a German policeman.
 * A Zig Zagged trope in Preacher (Comic Book): Jesse Custer, the protagonist, befriends an old German WWII veteran. Initially it looks like But then we find out  However, the old man
 * Johann Schmidt, AKA Red Skull, served as a former member of the Nazi Party during World War II in the Captain America comics and also pretty much every single medium (except the 1990 movie, where he was an Italian facist whose only involvement with the German Nazis is his partaking in the Ubermensch project.)

Fan Fiction

 * The blonde haired woman on the Council in Naruto Veangance Revelaitons is also German and a Nazi.

Film
"The Dude: They were Nihilists man. They kept saying they believed in nothing. Walter: Nihilists... fuck me. I mean say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism dude, at least it's an ethos."
 * Top Secret: Played for Laughs, with Nazis in East Germany fighting the French resistance during the Cold War.
 * The Billy Wilder comedy One, Two, Three features a Coca Cola executive in West Germany during 1961 who has a former S.S. member as his assistant; one scene shows his employees acting like complete robots when issued orders.
 * Eurotrip. Scottie meets the hot German girl's family. Her kid brother goose-steps and does Nazi salutes while his dad isn't looking.
 * Inglourious Basterds: Subverted. The Basterds insist that all German soldiers are Nazis and carve Swastikas in the foreheads of the survivors. In spite of this, many of the Germans they encounter are just regular soldiers with families and loyalty to their comrades. The Basterds do, however, recognize the capacity for some Germans to be allies. They have recruited at least one former German soldier and work with a collaborator.
 * Spoofed in The Big Lebowski, where the evil German Nihilists have many aspects of Those Wacky Nazis, but as the Dude points out, aren't Nazis.

"[W]e explored it, subjected it to trial by daylight, and condemned it to shame ... We all condemned our parents to shame, even if the only charge we could bring was that after 1945 they had tolerated the perpetrators in their midst."
 * Doctor Hans Reinhard in The Black Hole. German name. German accent. And a Nazi attitude to people in the way of his plans.
 * Averted in Casablanca and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp}}, two movies made during World War II, which have characters who are German refugees opposed to Nazism.
 * Averted in Watchmen- German-born Adrian Veidt actually uses "practically a Nazi" as an insult toward another character.
 * Yahoo Movies makes this generalization about the boarding school in the film version of The Confusions of Young Törless. Despite the novel being set in the 19th century. Beineberg and Reiting are vicious bullies in Prussian-looking school uniforms who spout some Fascist-sounding rhetoric, and they are Austrian, but the First World War hasn't even happened yet. The director makes some obvious choices to play up the Nazi parallels in the story's conflict, but the school is not a Nazi boarding school.
 * Subverted in The Pianist, where Wilm Hosenfeld, despite being a captain of the German army, helped main character Szpilman escape from death and regularly gave him food. The Real Life Wilm Hosenfeld also fits into the subversion, having helped hide and rescued many Jews.
 * Averted in Beerfest where every conceivable German stereotype except Nazism is represented by the opposing team.
 * Notably averted in Sam Peckinpah's 1977 movie Cross Of Iron. Unlike most English-language WWII movies, this one actually depicts the war from the point of view of the German army, featuring German soldiers who are not particularly fond of either the war or the Nazi Party. Even though it's directed by Peckinpah and stars the American actor James Coburn (as a Wehrmacht corporal), Cross of Iron was an Anglo-German production based on a German novel, which might explain why its depiction of Wehrmacht soldiers goes far beyond two-dimensional Nazi stereotypes.
 * Averted in Captain America: The First Avenger. Nazis/Hitler are only mentioned a few times and the main conflict is between the Red Skull and Hydra, who broke off from the Nazis early on in the movie. Also, Dr Erskine tells Steve that Germany was the first country to be invaded and fall victim to the Nazis. A lot of this was probably intended to appeal to the German audience and comply with the No Swastikas trope.
 * Averted in The Reader, where most of the characters are Germans born after the war and thus couldn't have been Nazis; in fact, as Schlink has Michael point out in the novel, the younger generation's willingness to come to terms with the past became a major cause of the generation gap in 1960s West Germany:


 * The Monster Squad attempts to subvert this, but it actually comes across fairly straight. The neighborgood kids are all afraid of the "Scary German Guy" and suspect that he's a Nazi. It turns out that he's a kindly Jewish Holocaust survivor. So... all Germans are Nazis except the Jewish ones.

Literature

 * The Roi-Tanners in Bored of the Rings are tall and blond, speak a German version of Poirot Speak, and wear horned helmets, lederhosen and toothbrush mustaches. They are said by Stomper to make a habit of waging territorial war on neighboring lands and to have "summer camps for their neighbors handsomely fitted out with the most modern oven and shower facilities."
 * Ter Borcht from Maximum Ride is this. He's a mad doctor, with a suspiciously German accent, who works for a woman who believes that the world's population must be reduced by one half.
 * It's a lot worse then this. The antagonists are all but stated to actually be Nazis. In fact, the aforementioned woman is old enough to have lived through World War II.
 * A plot point in the James Bond novel Moonraker: A German technician's last actions before he commits suicide are to salute and yell "Heil!" It turns out that.
 * Toyed with in The Kite Runner. The half-German Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up is blatantly crazy about Hitler; his German mother isn't happy about it.
 * Julie Hecht's short story "Perfect Vision" is about a woman who is convinced her German optician is a Nazi.
 * Robert Conroy's 1901 might very well be called All Germans Are Nazis: The Book. Because every German in it is and acts as such. Despite the book being an Alternate History book depicting a war between the United States and the Kaiserreich in 1901. It even ends with.
 * The Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures feature a character called Fitz Kreiner, who, being half-German on his Extreme Doormat father's side, had an especially shitty childhood even by the standards of the era he grew up in. In what may be an example which tries to disprove the rule, he's forced to impersonate a Nazi at one point and it's an especially bad day for him in a lifetime of mostly bad days. There's also one book, The Year of Intelligent Tigers, which takes place on a future Earth colony whose dominant culture is a mixture of German and Middle Eastern. It's a nice place...
 * Matthew Reilly's books largely avert this. Plenty of German characters, few Nazis. Temple has Neo-Nazis, but it also has members of German's intelligence agency opposing the Nazis.
 * Played partly straight in Harry Turtledove Worldwar series. Many non-German characters refer to Germans as Nazis or "Nazi bastards". Despite some Germans clearly having issues with the official policy of the Reich, they never try to explain that they're not Nazis. The Race, who don't care one way or another, just call all Germans "Deutsche".

Live-Action TV
"Niles: Oh, it's just temperamental. My Gaggenau is German-engineered. It probably needs more power than my building's old wiring can give it. Martin: Leave it to the Germans. Even their appliances crave power."
 * CollegeHumor.com's Gunter Granz Steeter Theater sketch
 * Subverted in Hogan's Heroes, which actually takes place in Nazi Germany. Many members of the Underground are Germans, or at least more sympathetic to Hogan's crew than they are to the Nazis and the Gestapo. Schultz doesn't particularly care who wins the war, as long as he doesn't get shot or sent to the Eastern Front, and several of the actual officers are portrayed as sympathetic characters stuck in bad positions.
 * Frasier ("A Man, a Plan, and a Gal: Julia" episode):


 * In Fawlty Towers, some Germans are visiting Basil Fawlty's hotel. He tells everyone "Don't mention the war". However Basil (who, for a change, is actually concussed rather than simply rude) manages to make reference to the war in almost every sentence he subsequently speaks to them. It's subverted here: the Germans are never cast as Nazis (and find the constant references upsetting to the point Basil's actions reduce one of them to tears), but are just trying to enjoy their holidays in peace.
 * This is discussed in Band of Brothers. The soldiers are frustrated that, as they close in on Germany, every German claims they're not a Nazi. This feeling comes to a head in episode 9 when they find a concentration camp just outside a German town and the residents say they didn't know about it. As Webb puts it, "Are you going to tell me that you never smelled the fucking stench?!" In the final episode Easy Company occupies Berchtesgaden, where they say they can finally call everyone in the town a Nazi.
 * On Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Sabrina calls Die Fledermaus a "Nazi opera".
 * The episode of Fox show Fringe that premiered on January 28, 2010, named "The Bishop Revival," featured a stereotypical German guy that (you would never guess!) was a Nazi.
 * Granted, the end of the episode implied that he.
 * Brazilian group Casseta & Planeta once did a sketch on the history of Germany, showcasing great personalities such as "Ludwig Van Beethoven Hitler" and "Michael Schumacher Hitler".
 * On Get Smart KAOS high-up Siegfried went very heavy on the movie-Nazi shtick, especially when running a WWII-era prison camp for captured CONTROL agents (named "Camp Gitchee-Goomee-Noonee-Wawa".) Inexplicably, he's revealed to have grown up in Florida.
 * Siegfried's left-hand stooge Shtarker (sic) claims to have been the track champion of the Third Reich (although he seems terribly young for that), and the second man out of El Alamein (right behind Siegfried.)
 * In the Law and Order episode "Evil Breeds", Briscoe and Green suspect an elderly German of murdering the victim of the week, who had survived a concentration camp, because she identified him as a guard and he was now threatened with deportation. As they investigate his apartment, the man's son accuses them of assuming this trope -- "Not every German was a Nazi!" ("Yeah, they were Just Following Orders," Briscoe replies.)
 * Bit of Reality Subtext here: Briscoe, like Jerry Orbach, is German Jewish on his father's side (Polish Catholic on his mother's), and is of a generation where this kind of bitterness would be realistic.
 * On Mystery Science Theater 3000, both Joel and Mike seemed to make Nazi jokes every single time a German actor appeared.

Music

 * Any metal band that sings in German will be accused of being Nazis at some point. A particularly stupid example of this tendency is Laibach; despite the fact that they're actually Slovenian, they still get called this. They summed it up pretty well: "We are Fascists as much as Hitler was a painter."
 * Given that Laibach's entire image and career is built around a Deconstructive Parody of Nazism and other totalitarian regimes (and their propaganda and symbols)... Did Not Do the Research, big time...
 * and considering Hitler actually was a painter before the whole "Jews killed my mother" thing...
 * A terrible painter...that was the joke.
 * I don't get it I've seen some of his paintings and they aren't bad at all.
 * Not a very good joke though, since Hitler was still a painter regardless of how bad he was. The quote implies that they actually are fascists, they're just not that great at it.
 * The German band Rammstein has been criticized as being fascist sympathizers for their dark and sometimes militaristic imagery. The cover for the album "Herzeleid" depicted the band members shirtless. Critics accused the band of selling themselves as "poster boys for the master race" and an alternate cover is used in North America. Apparently, being German and bare-chested automatically makes you a supremacist. The irony of course is, they're on the left side of the spectrum. Their song "Links-2-3-4" specifically was written to counter Nazi accusations.
 * There were also accusations over the video for "Stripped" using clips from Olympia, the notoriously Nazi Leni Riefenstahl's documentary on the 1936 Olympics.
 * A review of their album "Mutter" is the Trope Namer of the subtrope Music to Invade Poland To.
 * And because there's no 'All Russians East Germans Are Commies' trope, when they haven't been accused of being Nazis they've been accused of being communists, since they hail from the east side of the Berlin Wall.
 * A lot of Scandinavian and German metal bands that have Viking influences are also accused of this. The Nazis can be blamed for this, due to their fetishization of Germanic/Norse imagery.
 * The classic German group Kraftwerk have been accused of being either Nazis or communists at one point or another.
 * Commie Nazis?
 * The cover of The Man-Machine album didn't help this one. They're wearing red shirts with black ties, standing rigidly on a staircase looking to the right and surrounded by Constructivist fonts and graphics.
 * The industrial metal band Hanzel Und Gretyl actually plays this trope up for shock value, especially on their album Uber Alles with tracks such as Third Reich From The Sun, though their music actually is a parody of Nazism, and they are actually Americans.
 * Sascha in KMFDM parodies fascist image at times, but the body of political commentary in his lyrics show that he certainly isn't one.
 * "The I Was Not A Nazi Polka" by The Chad Mitchell Trio, recorded less than 20 years after the end of World War II, neatly skewered what was at the time perceived as German Politically-Correct History barely acknowledging that the Nazi Party even existed, let alone had so many members at its height. It ends by broadly implying that Nazi behavior is endemic to the German mindset, regardless of how they try to paint themselves otherwise.

Videogames

 * A strange subversion in the Ace Attorney series, caused by dubbing; while it's sorely tempting to list the German, perfection-obsessed, and corrupt von Karma family as this trope, in the original Japanese script the von Karma's are American. Which is an entirely different stereotype, but whatever.
 * Averted in Wolfenstein. You do kill tons of Nazis in the game, but most of your allies are German resistance fighters.
 * Averted in Team Fortress 2. Though the Medic is a bloodthirsty, sadistic German doctor from just the right time period, he has been confirmed to not be a nazi.
 * Freaky Flyers has Traci Torpedoes, as well as her supporters back in her home country.
 * Agent Navarre and Gunther Hermann in Deus Ex, because obviously German accents are the best indicator for an uptight Ax Crazy character.
 * Navarre's accent is similar to Russian, if anything. Her nationality's actually Israeli though.
 * In The Saboteur, one of the missions Sean does is rescue a spy for the people fighting against the Nazi's. It later turns out said spy is a full blooded German who is using his skills to help take down the Nazis. Sean invokes this trope by asking why he is fighting against his people, which the man replies that they are not his people, finding their actions despicable, and is tired of everyone stereotyping every German as so.

Webcomics
"German and Germania simultaneously: You think I am a Nazi? Germania: Well, with this Germany-costume?"
 * Scandinavia and The World averts this trope in an interesting way. Nazi Germany and Modern Germany seem to be two separate entities (as opposed to the latter being simply the former after a very thorough makeover), evidenced by the fact that they both can appear in the same comic. (Wherein Modern Germany is outright terrified of his fascist counterpart.)
 * The German comic German Superhero #1: Der Anfang explores how a German Captain Geographic would likely provoke this trope even for fellow German citizens. Here the superheroes German and Germania (while both separately being on the hunt for actual neo-Nazis) meet for the first time, and a Let's You and Him Fight situation immediately ensues. Then, on the next page:

"Even if the Hitler clone would choose to become a dictator, the German people wouldn't tolerate it for a minute. They know their history."
 * Subverted in Spinnerette with Greta Gravity. She is a villain, and she is German, but she is not a Nazi, which becomes evident when she and Dr. Universe have to interact with the Nazi Grandpa Kugelblitz and his Maus, who plan to clone Hitler in order to establish the Fourth Reich. Dr. Universe even points out this trope's fallacy in the end:

Western Animation
"Tour Guide: Besides its beautiful historic architecture, Munich was the home of many great writers, such as Thomas Mann. You will find more on Germany's contribution to the arts in the pamphlets we have provided. Brian: Yeah, uh, about the pamphlets, I'm not seeing anything about German history between 1939 and 1945. There's just a big gap. Tour Guide: "EVERYONE WAS ON VACATION! On your left is Munich's first city hall, erected in 15--"
 * Used as a joke on Family Guy. At an international food festival, the German booth takes over the Polish booth and starts eying the Czech one (of course, it should've been the other way around). Also, when Stewie and Brian tour Munich:

"German1: What did we Germans ever do to deserve this? German2: [glares at German1] German1: Oh, right."
 * And of course a later episode had the old man who befriended Chris turn out to be a Nazi. It counts as an example because Herbert the Pervert accused "Franz Gutentag" of being a Nazi, seemingly just to get Chris to stay away from him-- and of course, he turns out to be right.
 * Heinrich von Marzipan from Codename: Kids Next Door is an obvious Nazi allegory, counterpart to Number 5's Indiana Jones. Then things got weird. There's also the principal and vice principal of the school.
 * The Simpsons assumes this at times, too. In a Halloween episode, Homer is turned into a giant insatiable blob and starts eating people. He eats some (clearly 40-something, American) Germans at a German festival (Oktoberfest):

"Abe (to Walter Hottenhoffer, who is German): What did you do during the war? Hottenhoffer: World War Two? I wasn't born yet. Abe (still suspicious) Funny how many Germans say that nowadays..."
 * In another episode, Homer and Marge go to an Oktoberfest celebration together, and Homer remarks after drinking some good beer, "Ah, the Germans...you just can't stay mad at 'em."
 * Yet another episode cleverly plays with this trope via Abe Simpson's usual hilariously outdated word view.

"Klaus: No, no, no! He ran the kiddy train at the zoo! (sighs) You know, it's a big town. There's other stuff there."
 * Klaus from American Dad invokes this trope somewhat, claiming to be incredibly sadistic due to being German.
 * Subverted in "The Most Adequate Christmas Ever" when he gets horrified looks after mentioning that his grandfather was a conductor at Auschwitz.


 * Futurama invokes this in the episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before," where Trekkies completely associate Germany with the "Nazi planet episode".
 * Dolfs parents in Alfred J Kwak are rather obviously German expies, and incredibly racist. Also, thier son pretty much becomes freaking Hitler later on.
 * In the Justice League Time Travel episode "The Savage Time", Wonder Woman (who has been sent back to 1942 with most of the remaining league) helps an American secret agent rescue an undercover spy and crypto agent from a nazi prison. The spy turns out to be a native German working against the nazi regime.
 * Subverted in the episode "Skytanic" of Archer. The German executive officer, complete with an eyepatch and a scar on his cheek is automatically assumed to be a Nazi and the bomber when an actual bomb is discovered. This all turns out to be wrong. Also, he lost his eye while rescuing a Jewish girl from a gang of skinheads, and is the only one on board who knows how to disarm the bomb.

Other

 * In 1941, Theodore N. Kaufman published a screed called Germany Must Perish! The book is about exactly what it sounds like. His rationale was that the entire German people, not just the Nazis in power at the time, were so inherently militaristic, that if they were allowed to continue as a nation after World War II, they would just find another fascist dictatorship to replace the Nazis, because the German people as a whole were incapable of not behaving like Nazis. Of course, he turned out to be wrong.
 * So far
 * This article shows some elements of the trope.

Troping Wikis

 * People will do this pretty much without thinking. Notably, this very page has in the past claimed that a character using a German battle cry is an example of this trope, whereas in fact that is an example by implying that any German fighting man in history must have been a Nazi.

Real Life

 * Completely inverted in modern-day Germany, where the No Swastikas rule is strongly in effect, and Holocaust denial is illegal. Germany actively defies this trope, as the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei is outright banned from elected office. The No Swastikas ban is so stringent that even crossed-out swastikas as part of a 'No Nazis' campaign were illegal for a time.
 * Interest in Norse/Germanic Myth can get people accused of being a Nazi.
 * Modern practitioners of Asatru, a modern religion based on Norse Mythology, always include a disclaimer on any documents or websites used emphatically stating the group is not racist and has no connections with Nazis whatsoever because of this trope. There are, however, splinter groups such as the Asatru Free Assembly and other "racialist" Asatruar who really are pro-Nazi and fiercely anti-Semitic and -Christian. besides pagans.
 * JRR Tolkien was accused of this by certain people because of Norse themes in Lord of the Rings. He was even approached by Nazi groups as a possible supporter, only to be decisively rebuffed. Apart from their politics, Tolkien also loathed the Nazis for the Unfortunate Implications with which they single-handedly brushed Germanic mythology.
 * The current (German) Pope, Benedict XVI, was a member of the Hitler Youth as a child. He had a bit of a PR problem for a while due to this, although it seems to have died down since. He didn't have much of a choice, as every child during the Third Reich had to be a member of the Hitler Youth whether they wanted to be or not.
 * Some claim that Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger must be a Nazi (or at least a sympathizer), because his father was a Nazi Party member. Aside from the former Governator not having been born until 1947, after the fall of the Third Reich, there is no reliable evidence that political views are hereditary. Also, if you wanted to get any position in public life, you pretty much had to be a registered party member. At 8.5 million party members it included almost 10% of the German population and was about 20 times larger than any party in post-war Germany.
 * Arnold's father, Gustav Schwarzenegger, wasn't just a party member, he was a Stormtrooper. Arnold himself was accused of being a supporter of the Austrian far-right at one time.
 * Similarly, Pope Emeritus Benedict had numerous accusations flung at him due to his membership in the Hitler Youth as a child. (Most accusers conveniently forgot or overlooked that it was mandatory to be a member of the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany if you were the right age.)  That he reminded everyone and his dog of Emperor Palpatine didn't help.
 * Conspiracy Theories continue to abound since his resignation from the Papacy, suggesting that the Church discovered something about his past which resulted in him quietly being forced to resign, and then kept under what is effectively house arrest in the Vatican ever since.
 * This was assiduously averted in post-war propaganda films produced for American GIs stationed there, even while heavily leaning on other Unfortunate Implications. It emphasized that Germans were not to be trusted ("They are not your friends!") due to warmongering drive for conquest, it avoided labeling occupied Germany 'Nazi'. By that time, Socialism was the bigger concern.
 * Danish film-maker Lars von Trier evidently believes this, with the corollary that his family being German makes him a Nazi, which he is rather proud of. His comments about that did not go over well at the Cannes film festival at all.
 * Anybody who took German as a foreign language in an average American high school has probably gotten this at least once.
 * Boxer Max Schmeling was considered to be a Nazi puppet during his heyday. His bouts with American boxers had strong "Nazism versus Freedom" overtones. This was particular noticeable in his fight with Max Baer, who chose to wear a Star of David on his trunks in defiance of Nazi anti-semitism even though he did not personally practice the faith. Schmelings's fight with the African-American Joe Louis had a similar tone. Hitler was interested in using Schmeling as a propoganda piece, but his losses quickly got him dumped on the front lines. In reality, Schmeling was not a Nazi and even helped smuggle two Jews out of the country. He later befriended Joe Louis and was one of his pallbearers.
 * Considering Germany refusing to let the EU bail Greece out of their economic collapse, this trope has seen a massive boost in Greece.
 * Inversion. Saxons, who founded England and whose decendants founded the United States were from Saxony which is of course in Germany. Large numbers of Russians have ancestors who were German technicians and traders in the Czarist days. Guess, which, three, Great Powers were the major nations who were at war with the Nazis?
 * In fact if you go simply by the Nazis own rather vague ancestral criteria, there were far more Germans fighting against the Nazis then for and that does not count the ones just trying to get out of their way.
 * And what do you do about German-Jews? Are they supposed to fight themselves?
 * One comment that sort of plays with this is the concept of institutional corruption. If in fact the boss strongly wants to do something his underlings will compete to please him. In an ordinary corrupt institution(I.E. a graft ridden town political party) the results are comparatively harmless-Boss Tweed wanted no worse then to rule his little empire comfortably. In a totalitarian state ruled by a dictator that made a cult of his personal demons the results can be a lot worse and have a cascade effect.