Putting on the Reich

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Gray uniforms with button panels, the fashion of choice for today's Mook on the go.

"I know there are many PEOPLE in Germany WHO FEEL ILL WHEN THEY SEE THIS BLACK UNIFORM. We understand this and we do not expect that we will be loved by all too many."

—Heinrich Himmler, The Schutzstaffel as an Anti-Bolshevist Combat Organization

A quick and easy way to suggest a group of people are evil in fiction is to give them uniforms that resemble those worn by the Third Reich, the Roman Empire, pseudo-Mongols or the Soviet Union. In a broader sense, this can also refer to using other stylistic elements from the Nazi times (like the "Führer" title, goose-stepping "stormtroopers", or swastikas if the creator is more daring) to make sure your villains are visibly evil.

Incidentally, some of the uniforms for the real SS were manufactured by Hugo Boss (father of the famous one) using slave labor. Those Wacky Nazis were actually pretty snappy dressers despite being evil, which just furnishes another reason for authors and costume designers to borrow their motifs. Very common when State Sec is around.

This trope is named after the expression "Putting on the Ritz".

See also A Nazi by Any Other Name. May result in Commie Nazis.

Examples of Putting on the Reich include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Principality of Zeon and its offshoots from Mobile Suit Gundam's Universal Century. Gets more Anvilicious as time goes on, since later series played up the "Zeon = Nazi Germany" metaphor, most prominently Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket giving Zeon battle flags that were one Swastika away from Nazi banners and introducing their fixation on using German words with their mecha (like Gelgoog Jager, Rick Dom Zwei, etc.).
    • In another Gundam example, the uniforms worn by the Mariemaia Army in Endless Waltz were quite intentionally modelled on the Hitler Youth uniforms.
  • Sunako Nakahara from The Wallflower dressed up as a Nazi in Episode 3.
  • The uniforms, weapons and armors of the Kerberos Corps in Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade.
    • Which makes sense, considering it's set in an alternate universe where the Axis won World War Two, the Japanese got its ass kicked by the Germans, and the Corps is a secret police force for the fascist Japanese government.
  • While the uniforms in Fullmetal Alchemist actually resemble the German uniforms from the First World War, the simple fact that they refer to their leader as the Führer is a tipoff that all is not right. It's justified in the 2003 anime version, where we eventually learn that the entire series takes place in an alternate universe equivalent to early-20th-century Germany.
  • The guards of Impel Down in One Piece look like demons and wear uniforms that bear a very strong resemblance to SS officer uniforms, complete with armbands showing the Impel Down symbol (not quite a swastika, but close).
  • The Red Ribbon Army from Dragon Ball has just about the least oppressive dress code out of any army in fiction, but the effeminate, physically formidable, blond-haired, blue-eyed General Blue seems to dress this way strictly out of personal preference.
    • Not to mention the red armbands they wear.
  • The very Prussian-style uniforms of the Galactic Empire in Legend of Galactic Heroes. When you see the uniforms their foes wear, it's clearly World War I IN SPACE!
  • This Azumanga Daioh inspired image. Heil Osaka!
  • The original name of the Zoid Berserk Fury is actually Berserk Fuhrer
  • The villainous Empire in the H-anime Angel Core, with armored battle robots that look like the Kerberos Corps troopers from Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade has SS-style uniforms (including the SS lightning bolt insignia), and experiments relating to the supernatural.
  • Parodied in Ouran High School Host Club where the Zuka club dons SA-like uniforms and begin to preach about the superiority of women. Furthermore, they are once seen with a Nazi flag in the backdrop, except with the Swastika replaced by the kanji for "woman".
  • The uniforms of the RKO in Trinity Blood are based off the Waffen-SS, probably to emphasize their bad guy image.
  • Saber Marionette J is rather obviously playing with this, with one of the nations on the colony world explicitly modeled after Nazi Germany, resulting in three evil Marionettes wearing costumes with various degrees of similarity to Nazi uniforms and Big Bad who calls himself Füher
  • Team Rocket in Pokémon. Not only do they wear uniforms similar to Nazi Germany, as well as implied to experiment on sentient creatures, but in one of Team Rocket's boss fantasies during AG in the Japanese version, they are even doing a pose similar to the Hitler salute, and militaristic footsteps are heard. (This was omitted in the English version presumably due to the implications of the scene.)
  • The crew of the Silvana in Last Exile wear black uniforms with silver trim that look vaguely like those of the SS, but more loosely tailored.
  • Bleach: The Vandenreich seems to be closely associated with this trope. It doesn't help that they're quincies and the quincies have been associated with the militant Christian Knights (Teutonic Knights, in particular, but also the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller) since the very beginning of the manga. Just like the adoption of certain Teutonic Knight themes and symbols in the Nazi pagentry, the Vandenreich also seem to have evolved from these Teutonic Knight roots into something very reminiscent of the Nazis. They even sent a sub-division called the Jagdarmee (Hunting Unit) to occupy Hueco Mundo and engage in activities that oscillate between assimilation and ethnic cleansing. The Jagdarmee's leader also looks enough like Heinrich Himmler for him to have earned a Fan Nickname based on this resemblance.

Comic Books

  • The original designs for the uniforms worn by the X-Corps in X-Men comics had distinct Nazi overtones. This was decided to be a bit tacky and the published version wear vaguely militaristic uniforms, which don't really look that different from the leather outfits the X-Men were wearing at the time, but which, nonetheless, are meant to be a clue that Something's Not Right.
    • When we say "distinct Nazi overtones," we are of course talking about Banshee wearing a barely disguised swastika on his chest.
  • V for Vendetta's Norsefire party is pretty much literally the Third Reich IN THE UK!, though the movie throws in bits of Oceania. Unsurprising, what with Norsefire being an extension of the National Front, British Union of Fascists, British National Party, and similar groups. Even clearer in the original comics where Norsefire shares the National Front's "NF" symbol.
    • The original comic does a better job of localizing its fascist government, and thus making its point that such regimes can emerge anywhere, by extrapolating from traits and tendencies that were supposedly observable in the Thatcherite government of the time of its creation. The movie undermines this by making Norsefire an out-and-out allegory for the Nazis the Bush administration (Adam Susan is renamed Adam Sutler in a move that is, ironically, less subtle).
  • Earth Man in Legion of Super-Heroes is a Terran supremacist and historical revisionist who claims Superman was from Earth. He leads a movement of fellow Earth natives in a campaign of hatred and bigotry towards offworlders of any kind after he and his cronies were all rejected from the Legion; not only is it established that he's basically a 31st century equivalent of a Nazi, it's the costume (and the fact that he's a statuesque blond) that really ties the image together.
    • Don't forget the Nazi-style armbands with Superman logos (replaced with Earth logos after their defeat at Superman's hands).
  • The Dingoes in the Archie Knuckles the Echidna series were this to the point that the artists were forced to remove the symbols on their uniforms.
  • Vril Dox's costume in R.E.B.E.L.S. in The DCU bears more than a faint resemblance to a Nazi uniform, including jodhpurs.
  • One Jack Chick comic-format screed envisions the country run by the secular humanists/atheists/vegetarians/whatever—they dress in a charming mix of Nazi, Communist, and Spanish Inquisition. Oh yes, and their salute is the peace sign. And the swastika stand-in is the "peace" symbol from ca. 1970.
  • They might have been the Third Reich's worst nightmare, but the Blackhawks' uniforms were partly based on the Nazis (specifically, the boots and pants.)
  • Carlos Ezquerra says he made an eagle a prominent symbol of the Judges in Judge Dredd because it was strongly associated with the Nazis and Spanish fascists, the latter of whom he lived under for many years.
  • The Goths in Asterix wear helmets that look like the helmets of WWI German soldiers. The Goths are pre-unification Germans as they are shown as bickering and prone to infighting (what quickly becomes an important plot point). Goscinny and Uderzo used a more general stereotype of militaristic, simple-minded and orderly Germans/Prussians. They later regretted this portrayal and the few Goths appearing later in the series are not putting on the Reich at all.

Film

  • In the 1987 Hindi film Mr.India, everyone in the Evil Overlord Mogambo's organisation greets each other with 'Hail Mogambo', and his soldiers wear uniforms that look like SS uniforms.
  • In the 2010 Rajnikanth starrer Endhiran, when the robot Rajnikanth becomes evil after being reprogrammed by Dr.Bohra, he starts wearing trenchcoats, like the SS, and has an army of robots who too dress up like Schutzstaffel officers.
  • Final Fantasy the Spirits Within: The soldiers under the leadership of General Hein.
  • Subverted by the uniforms of the Federation Navy in Starship Troopers. These are the "heroes" of our story (though Paul Verhoeven would probably tell you otherwise.) For instance, Neil Patrick Harris' character's uniform looks exactly like a simpler version of a Gestapo officer's, hence his Fan Nickname, "Doogie Howser, SS."
  • The Imperial Navy in Star Wars. The Empire also has "Stormtroopers" (from German "Sturmtruppen", a term originating with the German Army in World War I). And Darth Vader's helmet vaguely resembles a Stahlhelm (It's also based on the samurai kabuto. The concept art made this vastly more obvious). The crew members on the Walkers appear to be wearing Wehrmacht uniforms down to the helmets, only with goggles added.
    • Most blatant of all are the Expanded Universe's description of COMPNOR, a SA-SS hybrid. There's even a "Sub-Adult Group"; real subtle.
    • Several sequences in the movies had a definite Riefenstahl flair:
      • In The Phantom Menace, there is a shot of Trade Federation droids marching through an arch on Naboo that was almost certainly inspired by actual footage of Nazis marching through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
      • The shot of thousands of troops lined up to welcome the Emperor in Return of the Jedi.
      • And it's not just the Imperial navy. The Rebel Alliance awards ceremony at the end of Episode IV is modeled directly from a scene in Triumph of the Will.
  • The police officers in Tim Burton's Batman films wear what appear to be gratuitously militaristic black uniforms, even though most of them are good guys. This could just have been to provide a general sense of the 1940s (the decade when Batman first became popular), or maybe just another example of how much Burton adores black clothing.
  • In the Harry Potter films, Voldemort's Death Eaters are shown dressed in black outfits that look like those of the Ku Klux Klan and their insignia of a skull with a snake in its mouth has an obvious similarity to the SS death's head motif (though the latter is straight out of the books).
    • Truth be told, the symbol looks nothing like SS badge. Furthermore, skull and snake are common occult symbols usually associated with black, evil magic, so this is more likely an "evil sorcerer" stereotype rather than Putting on the Reich.
      • They add to the similarity even more via means of the "Magic is Might" statue present after Voldemort takes over the Ministry, the Mooks are dressed in grey versions of the standard Nazi uniform and those anti-muggle-born leaflets have a very WWII look.
      • When disguised as Ministry official Albert Runcorn, Harry wears a Badass Longcoat that is more than a bit reminiscent of the coats worn by SS officers.
  • The obscure political-parody film Hail features a sub-plot where the power-crazed US President creates a national police-force to serve as his personal Brownshirts. He personally designs the uniforms, staging a private fashion-show which displays various authoritarian samples from history. Upon seeing a Gestapo outfit: "I like those boots!" The disturbing final product is half Nazi, half Captain America (comics).
  • In The Lion King, Scar's musical number "Be Prepared" has the hyenas marching goose-stepping in front of Scar in a sequence actually inspired by the Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will.
  • Equilibrium's totalitarian government features a flag that is a direct copy-paste of the swastika, only with the crossbars centered on each radial. This website has a whole list of fictional flags of Nazi inspiration.
  • In the dieselpunkish 1995 film version of Richard III (starring Ian McKellen), the titular character's outfit is based off of a SS-Oberstgruppenfuhrer's uniform. Additionally, his government's flag is basically the Nazi flag, but with his personal heraldic figure, a boar, in place of the swastika. It's also worth noting that the overall appearance of this Richard is suspiciously similar to Oswald Mosley, the leader of Britain's home grown Fascist movement during the 1930s. Not to mention the many visual ShoutOuts to Nineteen Eighty-Four present in the film.
    • Somewhat stupidly, the movie (which retains the original Shakespearean text, despite taking place in the '30s) continually refers to Richard as "King," even though the Nazis were notoriously anti-monarchist.
  • The Octopus wears an SS uniform, and a samurai costume, and a Russian coat in The Spirit. Why, you ask? Well, why not?
  • In Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, the common soldiers of The Teutonic Knights all wear identical face-masking Stahlhelms. (The Stahlhelm itself was, in turn, probably based on a medieval German style of helmet called a Schallern.) And the archbishop wears a miter with swastikas! Quite possibly the earliest example of the trope (five years after Those Wacky Nazis took power).
  • In the movie adaptation of Quo Vadis?, the scene where the troops march before Nero, who watches from a balcony and salutes them, is directly choreographed from Triumph of the Will.
  • The Chinese warlord guy from The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is wearing a hand-me-down SS uniform. (Considering what some of the Nationalist leaders were like, fairly appropriate.) It's also somewhat accurate, as the Nazis provided the Kuomintang with supplies, arms, training and support. See the Real Life examples below.
  • The Chancellor of the unnamed country in Nine was obviously inspired by the Nazis. The flags, uniforms of the soldiers, hell even their combat robots look like stahlhelms with legs.
  • Damn near everyone in the low-budget movie Warrior of the Lost World. The villains (from the "Omega" political party) dress in snappy black uniforms with an inverted red triangle, with a white disc and a black omega. Prosser, their leader, dresses in a black leather trenchcoat. However, even the good guys, freedom fighters struggling against Omega have people dressed in actual Nazi uniforms. Including a black guy in SS uniform.
  • Andy's torture outfit in The Final is an SS uniform.
  • And of course Monty Python's Life of Brian features a Jewish resistance group, the "suicide squad", with uniforms based on the sarazen ones, and their insignia is a... a... a swastistar. Oh, and their commander has a toothbrush moustache, too.
    • In a cut sequence, "Otto the Nazirene" is seeking "the new leader" (i.e., Brian himself, who does not let on), and suggests that after "expanding into the historically Jewish areas of Samaria" the Samaritans can be dealt with by "putting them in little camps." (Possibly someone realized in time that they were talking about annexing the West Bank.)
  • Clu of Tron: Legacy is basically a Dark Reprise of his creator, Kevin Flynn, with grandiose speeches about entering the human world to rid it of its imperfections, plus his genocide of the ISOs, a Homage Shot to Triumph of the Will, etc. Judging by the Gladiator Games, he leans towards the Ancient Rome-influenced end of the Most Definitely Not Hitler scale.
  • Super Mario Bros provides fascist undertones to Koopa's regime, particularly in regards to the Goombas' "Storm Trooper" inspired uniforms. Additionally, early scripts indicate "lizarddom" and racial superiority as chief motivations for Koopa; he feels that mammals are inferior and need to be kept in check while eating plants (herbivores) is a sign of a race's decline.
  • Just barely averted in Animal House. The Omegas (the "evil" fraternity) are basically styled as "East Coast preppy snobs," but the filmmakers decided to go the extra mile to make them truly despicable by giving them unnecessarily militaristic rituals to practice ("Sergeant" Niedermeyer's drills on horseback come to mind), along with some casual racism and religious intolerance. The head of the costuming department later admitted that she would have dressed the Omega characters in Nazi uniforms if she had thought she could get away with it.

Literature

  • An unusual (and rather original) subversion occurs in Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory/TL-191 Alternate History series, where while the Confederates (who are supposed to be Nazi Germany in the series) pretty much copy almost everything the Nazis do and did—from trials, to their own Expy of Hitler, to even their own salute, party cry, and genocide. The one thing the Freedom Party (the CSA version of the Nazi Party) doesn't copy is the uniforms. The description in the books and some of the covers show them to resemble WW 2 US uniforms. The US on the other hand does use German-styled uniforms and helmets because they have had a long-standing alliance with Imperial Germany (to the point of almost hero worship of the German Empire). As for the Germans themselves, Germany is still under the Kaiser. And, ironically, despite TL-191 Confederates eventually becoming an Alternate History Nazi equivalent, they mostly use equipment and uniforms clearly based off of those of their traditional allies, the British and French (tanks suspiciously similar to British ones in WWI and Spitfire-like fighter planes in WWII).
    • What's even funnier about the Confederates in the Second Great War is, in spite of the uniforms and alliances with the traditional Allies, their military hardware ended up resembling German machinery. For examples, their Barrels (Tanks) were based on the Panther and Tiger tanks, their Hound Dog fighters were expies of Bf 109s, their Mule dive bombers were Stukas with Southern Crosses painted on the sides and they also fielded things like Barrel Busters (Tank Destroyers) and Stovepipes (Panzerschrecks). Despite this however, the US would be the one to field the first turbo (jet) fighters, specifically the Boeing-71 "Screaming Eagle", which was pretty much an expy of the Me 262.
  • The 1939 Sinclair Lewis novel It Can't Happen Here chronicles the rise of an American fascist government driven in part by the support of conservative Christians and 'forgotten men'. The supporters of the government form a militia known as the Minute Men or M.M. They have many of the trappings of the Nazi stormtroopers, right down to implied homosexuality in the ranks and at the top (see Ernst Roehm.)
  • The Gale Force (the Wizard's army) in Wicked, though of course in green.
  • The Wheel of Time series depicts ex-False-Dragon Mazrim Taim, now ostensibly working for the good guys, building up an army of magic-users using a variety of titles blatantly stolen from the Germans and translated into the Old Tongue. Possibly lampshaded when General Bashere isn't sure this is the real Taim because he's shaved off his mustache.
  • In David Weber's "Heirs of Empire" series, when the humans from Earth re-establish the empire and incorporate the various national militaries into a new united one, one general, an American, reflects briefly on his discomfort at wearing an Imperial Marine uniform, which is black with silver trim. In the first book of the series it was established that corrupt mutineers from the original Empire had been secretly influencing human society over millennia, including inspiring the SS uniform which was based on the Imperial Marine uniform, as a Take That to the mutineers who had repented and were secretly fighting them.
  • In Honor Harrington the most Nazi-like are the Mesans which don't control a large nation directly but work underground like the Commintern. Despite that they are definitely wrapped up in a goal of improving the race at the expense of those who do not make the cut and are thus supposedly fit for nothing more then slavery.
  • The Fifth Elephant has Wolfgang von Uberwald, a werewolf who believes in "Joy through Strength" (inverted from the name of an organization of the Nazi "German Labor Front") and purity of blood, killing his "impure" sister, and generally holds werewolves in higher regard than anyone else.
    • His werewolf organization also has a logo that involves a wolf biting on two lightning bolts. The lightning bolts' position is not described clearly, but considering the Reich motif they are probably meant to refer to the lightning bolt S's on SS officers' uniforms.
  • The eponymous student movement in The Wave does this deliberately, as it was part of a High School history teacher's experiment to demonstrate how easily the German people had been led astray by Those Wacky Nazis.
  • In Moses, Man of the Mountain the ancient Egyptians are portrayed this way: the nationalist rhetoric of the Pharaoh's speeches, the militaristic foreign policy, the vaguely German-sounding titles, and the all-seeing secret police evoke images of a certain world power of the time.
  • In the Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayaran military uniforms incorporate high collars, peaked caps, capes and jackboots. It makes sense for them to lavish attention on their uniforms, since Barrayarans as a group are all military-mad, and the ruling-class Vor insist they are not an aristocracy but a military caste. In keeping with the spirit of the trope, just before the events of the series, the government employed political officers as military watchdogs.
    • In an interesting subversion there's actually very little Germanic element in the Barrayaran culture, which is mostly a British-Russian fusion, with some Napoleonic French and vaguely Greek bits thrown in. And the political officers weren't organic developments, but are a part of the Evil Plan by the then-current Emperor, who mercilessly used and threw them out the moment they fulfilled their task in his plans.
    • In a more interesting subversion the Cetagandans who are the closest to Nazis with their genetic breeding, goal of setting a master race, and war crimes, don't really come off as cartoonish villains. Though they are extremely odd to say the least.
  • In The Dresden Files novel Ghost Story, the defenses that Evil Bob has set up to protect the Corpsetaker's lair in the Nevernever are deliberately designed around the German defenses at Normandy, complete with wolf-like demons wearing Nazi uniforms and helmets. Evil Bob completes the regalia by wearing a Nazi officer's uniform with black trenchcoat. Of course, seeing as how Evil Bob's last conscious memories were from World War II, it only makes sense that he'd use the most recent and advanced military defenses he knew of.
    • Note that it's never confirmed that the "wolfwaffen" are constructs, in which case Evil Bob might've recruited actual Nazi ghosts for his defense force. If so, there may not have been any "Putting On" about it.

Live-Action TV

  • The uniforms of the Alliance Navy in Firefly. It doesn't help that many Alliance uniforms were left over from the Starship Troopers movie, which definitely did have slight fascistic overtones.
  • The black uniforms of the Psi Cops in Babylon 5. And the brown shirts of the Nightwatch.
  • In Tin Man, the Wicked Witch has as a Secret Police the black-leather-wearing "Long Coats".
  • The Genii in Stargate Atlantis have uniforms that bear a fair resemblance to some German uniforms from World War I. A downplayed version occurs in a season two episode that features a society which deports its prisoners to the vicinity of the planet's Stargate so the Wraith will feed only on them, where the Magistrate's uniform bears some fascistic overtones.
  • A weird inversion: The Ninth Doctor's leather jacket was patterned after a German submariner's jacket (source). Commented on by Captain Jack in "The Empty Child", set in 1941 London:

Jack: The way you guys are blending in with the local color- I mean Flag Girl is bad enough, but U-Boat captain?

    • Played straight with the Republic Security Forces in "Inferno", the organisation being an SS-like doppelganger of UNIT in a parallel world.
    • Done very straight with the Kaleds (the humanoid culture from whom the Daleks mutated) in "Genesis of the Daleks". To the point that the actor playing the Himmler-clone Nyder can be seen wearing a genuine Iron Cross in certain scenes.
    • A more subtle example can be seen in The Idiot Lantern, in which the TV antennae are shaped like swastikas.
  • Voyager episode "The Killing Game" featured hunter-race the Hirogen capturing the Voyager crew and forcing them to re-enact a WW 2 holoprogram, with the Hirogen taking the part of the Nazis in occupied France. They wore their Nazi uniforms when outside the holodeck too. Somewhat averted, in that only one of them actually believes in the Nazi philosophy - the leader is ready to strike a deal with Janeway in exchange for the holodeck technology.
  • The sci-fi television miniseries V, which is hardly surprising as it was adapted from a script about the rise of a fascist movement in the United States. Notably such aspects as the swastika-like Visitor's flag, the Friends of the Visitors (Hitler Youth), the persecution of scientists (Jews), collaborators, the creation of fake 'incidents' to justify Visitor policies, the Great Leader (Fuhrer) and Diana's Mengele-like experiments.
    • Averted by the remake, which takes a different tack. The enigmatic but charismatic Vs suddenly arrive with messages of hope, change, and universal health care.
  • Mirror-Odo's uniform in the Deep Space Nine episode "Crossover" evokes this. Though still recognizably Bajoran, it is all-black and fitted with a high collar and a belt.
    • And of course, there's Gul Hitler Dukat.
  • In the television version of The Stand, Flagg's mass rally in Las Vegas features vexilloids resembling the Third Reich's flag: red, with a stylized black crow (?) fimibriated in white.
  • Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. In "The Apes of Wrath" Garth wakes up from a month-long coma to be told that monkeys have taken over the hospital. Disbelieving, he opens the door to see two monkeys in German steel helmets and carrying MP-40 submachine guns marching down the corridor.
  • Angel: The Scourge, a group of genocidal pure race demon supremacists were basically demon Nazis, and they definitely dressed the part.
    • Spike literally Put on the Reich in a World War II flashback; he ate an SS officer and put on his uniform because he liked the coat. He still didn't care bollocks for the ideology, though.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise goes all the way in the episode "Storm Front", which has aliens with a Nazi-like ideology going back in time, allying with the actual Nazis, and wearing actual Nazi uniforms.
    • And then there's the Imperial Starfleet uniforms from "In A Mirror, Darkly", which are generally like their "Our Universe" counterparts, but now include Sam Browne belts and black and silver rank epaulettes. As well, the MACO insignia is now a Totenkopf-like skull rather than the Mako Shark.
  • The two Munich police officers in The Cube, who seem to be wearing altered SS uniforms.
  • Not so much the uniforms, but the flags of the Phoenix Group in Terra Nova resemble Nazi battle standards.
  • The Peacekeepers from Farscape are pretty much Space Nazis. Fascism, racial purity, the uniforms, color scheme, everything.
  • Zig-zagged at the end of The Winds of War/War and Remembrance, maybe even inverted: Navy captain Byron Henry is looking for his son who was saved from a concentration camp and is missing somewhere in Europe. When he goes to one orphanage, the children cringe at the sight of his Navy Whites. Finally he is advised to wear civvies. In this case it is not only not putting on the Reich it is taking off the States.

Music

Tabletop Games

  • In Rifts, the Coalition soldiers are called Dead Boys because of their skull motif, ripped from the SS. Their dress uniforms are SS-based as well.
    • For that matter, Emperor Prosek is (in addition to the above dress stylings) consciously modeling much of his empire's political organization, propaganda tactics, and social engineering on the Third Reich itself—he's a historical scholar with a specialty in Nazi Germany, and has explicitly taken Hitler as his role model.
  • In Warhammer 40,000, the ruthless commissars of the "Imperial Guard" go for the twofer by taking the name "Commissar" from the Soviet Union and the trench-coat and high-peaked cap from the Third Reich. Furthermore, some planets' regiments, like the Armageddon Steel Legion, Attilan Rough Riders and Death Korps of Krieg, wear outfits resembling those of the aforementioned villains of history. The Armageddon Steel Legion's use of gas masks is at least justified by their home planet's chokingly polluted atmosphere, and the Death Korps of Krieg by their homeworld being subjected to atomic bombardment, the radiation of which has yet to clear. Though the Death Korps of Krieg have a German-sounding name, their uniforms take inspiration from German, French and Belgium WWI uniforms.
    • The Death Korps of Krieg are also known for using spiked helmets that the basic design were infamously used by German troops in World War I, along with the coal-scuttle helmets usually associated with the Wehrmacht but actually first used by German troops in the First World War. They go even further - Krieger horses wear gasmasks and black/silver spiked barding while having one of the aforementioned Death Korps riding them. Gas masks for horses were indeed made and issued in WWI and WWII (as cavalry was still kept around for tank-repellent terrains, and purpose-built artillery tractors were not common yet), but not integrated with barding.
    • Older (metal) Cadian units, on the other hand, wear obvious Wehrmacht-inspired uniforms, right down to the bread-bags, Y-straps, jack boots, and cylindrical ribbed gas mask cans.
  • Centrum from GURPS: Infinite Worlds is neither Facist nor Communist (they're much closer to an ancient Chinese meritocracy), but they're drawn wearing snazzy Nazi-esque uniforms.

Video Games

  • It can't get more overt than the Helghast from Killzone. Their basic Mook comes with a helmet, gas mask and trench coat, and they're all about the militarism and xenophobia. And that's just scratching the surface.
    • Even their origin strongly resembles the birth of the Third Reich.
  • Nintendo Wars: The Green Earth, in some part a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of WWII Germany. And they're good guys. This is the same series that had "Hatler" as a playable character, by the way.
    • Battalion Wars has the Xylvanians, who are a cross between WWI Germans, Nazis, and, of course, vampires.
  • The uniforms worn by United Earth Directorate officers in StarCraft resemble Nazi uniforms, right down to the grey overcoats and hats. Oddly, their bosses are a Frenchman and a Russian. The UED were basically Space Nazis.
    • The UED gets bonus points for using the same interior decorators as Nazi Germany. Both have red flags with similar symbolism; the UED shows an eagle atop the Earth, echoing the Third Reich's eagle atop the swastika.
    • Inverted with Matt Horner in StarCraft II, who has a uniform inspired by fascists, but serves as the idealistic second-in-command of Jim Raynor. Possibly played straight in that he may have kept it from his confederate days.
  • Concept art for officers of the United Earth Federation in Supreme Commander has a Nazi-like appearance, though none of the UEF officers in the game have any particular nationality associated with them.
  • Enclave Officers from Fallout 3 wear a uniform that makes them look like a Nazi mixed in with a Confederate soldier (with maybe even some Star Wars thrown in). Colonel Autumns uniform is especially Reich-ish. In both Fallout 2 and 3, they are trying to kill all mutants, and thusly, all life (all non-Enclave or Vault humans are mutated in some manner), so somehow their Putting on the Reich act becomes fitting. It ain't just the clothes, either: on Enclave Radio, President John Henry Eden uses some rather overt Fascist imagery and rhetoric. Malcolm McDowell's voice helps.
    • Strangely though, the U.S. Military seemed to have used those kinds of uniforms even before the nuclear apocalypse, as evidenced by General Chase's overcoat.
    • In Fallout: New Vegas, Caesar tried to make Caesar's Legion as much like the real Roman Empire as possible. He succeeded spectacularly.
      • Partly subverted by the Great Khans, who engage mostly in drug-dealing and banditry; the Courier can point out how much like their namesake they're not. In one ending, they may decide to rectify this and start up a proper empire.
  • The Imperial army foot soldiers in Valkyria Chronicles wear more medieval looking armor, but the officers such as Gregor have the Reich look going on.
    • And on the good-guy side, Welkin with his garrison cap and headphones is the very picture of a Wehrmacht Panzer Ace. His Ace Custom tank also uses the same tread and roadwheel system as the Mark III and IV tanks.
  • Artwork of the two pilots you play as from the danmaku shmup Under Defeat for the Dreamcast have them wearing Nazi-like uniforms. Also, PA announcements from your enemies is in perfect English and dialogue between your pilot and her CO is in perfect German. Subbed for your convenience.
  • The enemy officers in Shadow Complex have a combination of "armored super-soldier" and "Nazi" that includes armbands with their logo on it.
  • Street Fighter's M. Bison.
  • The Imperial Troopers in Final Fantasy VI, who wear stahlhelms and give what appears to be a Nazi salute to the Emperor during a cutscene.
  • Good guy example: the Furoia Army forces in Madou Souhei Kleinhasa" wear SS-style uniforms, reinforced by the fact that all of the named Furoian soldiers have vaguely German-sounding names.
  • An interesting version of this occurs in Metro 2033, combined with No Swastikas. The Nazis use a flag with the same red foreground and the white circle in the middle, but instead of a swastika, there is a big Gothic capital letter C.
  • The soldiers of the Rahmos empire from Iron Grip : The Oppression wear a mashup of a German WorldWarOne uniform and a Napoleonic era musketeer's jerkin, plus a very Stahlhelm-esque helmet. Hardly surprising, since Rahmos is a Culture Chop Suey of All the Little Germanies, Imperial Germany, and Glorious Mother Russia. And they're also very militaristic and expansionist and prefer an atheist ideology over any forms of religion.
  • Akatsuki Blitzkampf's main hero pus Akatsuki, Kanae, Adler, Elektrosoldat and Murakumo.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, the Galbadian army has elements of this. While the enlisted men and noncommissioned officers primarily consist of soldiers in red and blue uniforms with fairly high-tech looking helmets and gear, General Caraway wears a black uniform with long coat. Ironically, he's one of the good guys.
    • SeeD gets in on the action too, as the men's formal uniform is essentially a Nazi SS uniform with shoulderpads.
  • The Thalmor in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has elements of this in their uniforms, sans their elven armor.
  • Kirkwall's Templar order under Knight-Commander Meredith shows signs of this in the third act of Dragon Age II.
  • Skullgirls has the Black Egrets fit the bill... Except they're good guys, since their boss, Parasoul, actively seeks the destruction of the Skull Heart. By proxy, this ALSO includes Panzerfaust, who's a Black Egret himself.
  • In World of Warcraft, the goblin "furrier" Commander Schnotz is a direct parody of Hitler, portrayed as woefully incompetent. Of course, The fact that he works for Deathwing makes him someone the player can't ignore.
  • Professor Ludwig von Tökkentäkker, the Big Bad of Carn Evil fits the description of your atypical Nazi fop, although given the backstory (such as it is) he and the eponymous Amusement Park of Doom predate the Nazis by about 30 years.

Web Original

Western Animation

  • In the Veggie Tales video Josh and the Big Wall, the people of Jericho are all shown wearing Roman Centurion helmets. This is especially humorous given their French accents.
  • The Future Warden from the first season finale of Superjail. Future-Warden mixes it up a little, going for the Otto von Bismarck look.
  • Alfred Jonathan Quack/Alfred Judocus Kwak had the Crow party, led by a crow named Dolf, whose logo was a red flag with a white circle in it, with a crow's foot (most likely a reference to the Germanic "Algiz" rune). Subtle it was not.
    • It was nonetheless chilling to watch Dolf grow from a naughty schoolboy into a fascist dictator. Also notable for the little details it threw in: Dolf was actually not a crow, but the half-breed of a crow and a blackbird, who disguised his origin by darkening his yellow beak - a sly allusion to Hitler failing to live up to the Aryan virtues he espoused.
  • Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?: Principal Madman has a mustache that is similar to Adolf Hitler's own.
  • Ralph Bakshi's movie Wizards: Black Wolf's troops are explicitly in Nazi uniforms, as his military is a direct copy of the Nazis.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender seems to play with this trope in the first season, where the Fire Nation wear mongol-derived armor and designs that even include skulls for face plates. And yet, then, at numerous points after that, we're shown that other cultures can be just as bad, and that the people behind the armor are sympathetic. Bonus points for actually using the (somewhat silly) skull-face masks to further the plot.
  • The nation of Thembria in Tale Spin is based off of the Soviet Union. There's also a race of cruel, Germanic-accented dogs who wore SS-looking uniforms and menaced the skies above Cape Suzette in a zeppelin.
  • Even though Standards and Practices forbade the writers of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes from showing any Nazis onscreen in Captain America (comics)'s introductory episode, the Red Skull wears an SS uniform and an Iron Cross, albeit with the Swastika replaced with a HYDRA emblem.
  • Captain Shiner from the original ThunderCats; while he was a self-proclaimed mercenary and free-agent who would work for anyone, his accent, monocle, and uniform suggested wartime Germany. Still, he was the mercenary he claimed, and as such, he had principles most Nazi villains did not, showing respect for his crew (and receiving it from them) and aiding the heroes at least once.
  • Virman Vundabar from Justice League Unlimited is one of Darkseid's cronies and head of one competing faction in the Evil Power Vacuum left after his lord's disappearance. His eyepatch, uniform, and German accent clearly make him resemble a Nazi officer.

Real Life

  • The uniforms of the East Germany Volksarmee and Volkspolizei for a while. That could just be due to uniform shortages, but yeah.
  • Check out the flag of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging. Not surprising considering they're a Germanic (the Afrikaners are a Germanic people, yes) white-supremacist group.
  • The Nazis themselves, surprisingly, used this trope, adapting many of their motifs and insignias from the Roman Empire. (They also copied from the very short lived Free State of Fiume, a kind of early fascist regime set up by Italians in Croatia.)
    • Many of the minor Axis nations had fascist militias or police units who wore uniforms inspired by either the Nazis or the Italian blackshirts (e.g. Croatian Black Legion, Romanian Iron Guard...)
    • It also was nice for this purpose that they had dark colored uniforms, torchlight parades, insane speeches, and secret occult rites. It is almost as if they were trying to deliberately act like pulp villains.
  • The Iraqi Ba'athist Party, to some extent, though given Saddam's predilections and mustache, that was more "Putting On The Stalin." The party structure of the Ba'ath Party was more communist than Nazi, and the Iraqi uniforms more Soviet than German [of course, the insignia is still British inspired]. And of course, Saddam's mustache resembles Stalin's more than it resembles Hitler's. The reason for this is that while the early Ba'athists were (small-d) democrats and more or less left-wing, Saddam eventually subverted the Ba'ath to his own ends, doing deals with the USSR (Iran, Iraq's natural enemy, was a firm US ally until 1979) even as he slaughtered thousands of Communists. For their part, the USSR was vaguely cool with them because the other Arab governments were conservative US-backed monarchies. So the Kremlin didn't really care whether Saddam (or Nasser or Sadat or Hafez al-Asad) was killing all the Communists in their country as long as they were buying Soviet-made arms and were generally Soviet allies.
  • Flagspot.net has an entire section listing fictional flags that mimic the Nazis' swastika one, including the Klingon Empire from Star Trek, the Galactic Empire from Star Wars, and the Visitors from V.
  • Marilyn Manson's late 2000s style is/was described by Manson as "Oscar Wilde at the Nuremberg Trials".
  • The New Jersey State Police uniforms. Funny because parts of the American gun community call New Jersey The People's Republic of New Jersey.
  • Subversion in Doctor Steel's "Toy Soldiers", who mimic fascist uniforms, flags and propaganda to satirize armies that seek to crush free will and freedom of expression... all in the name of fun.
  • Many modern militaries, from France to the United States, have a standard-issue helmet that shares the basic shape of the distinctive German Stahlhelm of World War I & II. The reason for this is simple: the WW 2 German helmets were very well designed for their job. It was such a good design that many other countries bought and or copied the design. In essence, this was Putting on the Reich because of functional practicality rather than ideology. As design marches on, however, more recent updates to the US helmet (and several stahlhelm-based designs) have moved away from this look slightly. The British Armed Forces, on the other hand, use a helmet design that doesn't look like the Stahlhelm. (Note: this entry does not suggest the United Kingdom is morally superior.)
  • The National Revolutionary Army - officially, the Army of the factious Republic of China - from 1928 to c.1950. In the 30s and 40s, the Nationalist-Party-led Republic of China fought with German Rifles - the Karabiner 98k was the standard-issue weapon for the Nationalists' 'core army' of loyal, good-quality, German-trained troops - German Machine guns - the MG 34 - German pistols - the Mauser C96, which had been China's most popular weapon for going on three decades - German grenades - the 'Potato Masher' was China's no.1 grenade - and the M1935 version of the German stahlhelm.
    • On the other hand the Nationalists' Burma-based Chinese Expeditionary Force, which fought alongside the Anglo-Indian Army, received American training equipment and weaponry such that they looked and acted the part of a U.S. Army formation. The Nationalists' main forces also received large quantities of American uniforms, helmets, and weapons such as the Thompson submachine gun - which was sorely needed, given their lack of automatic weaponry. For the most part, the NRA's various factions were outfitted with various locally-made copies of all of these, some of them (such as the Thompsons) being produced legally and under foreign supervision. What made things even more complicated was when the Japanese surrendered and their million-strong army and occupation force destroyed or left behind all of their equipment and weaponry. As if that wasn't bad enough, when the People's Liberation Army (the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party) defeated the NRA in the Civil War, they then received Soviet-made weapons, equipment, and uniforms - again a mixture of imports and local products - as part of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, but continued to use their existing stuff too. Consequently, most Chinese forces in the early-to-mid '40s looked German with American bits, which came closer to Nazi-American hybrids as the war dragged on until, by the mid-to-late '40s, they became weird Nazi-American-Japanese-Soviet hodgepodges. Only in 1953 were the PLA's uniforms and equipment finally standardized along Soviet lines.
  • The Ethnocacerists in Peru are nationalist, ally themselves with communists, and their banner/standard is the nazi black eagle replaced by a condor. Essentially, Commie Nazis.
  • Pretty much the point of Nazi chic.
    • Especially bizarre when Asian cosplayers dress up in Nazi regalia, such as for a wedding. The bride in these pictures even had blonde hair for the occasion!
  • The German Empire itself did this with ancient Rome, as did the Russian Empire. The titles of "kaiser" and "czar" are, respectively, German and Russian translations of "caesar", with the former being how it's actually pronounced in Latin.
  • The black uniforms the Royal Irish Constabulary used during the Irish struggle for independence resemble Nazi uniforms, making them an example of Putting on the Reich before the Reich was doing it.
    • Black uniforms have long been standard in traditionally working-class occupations, or in occupations in which a worker was liable to get something disgusting (mud, blood, etc.) splattered on him.
  • Rich Iott, a Tea Party candidate for Congress in Ohio during the 2010 elections, made national news when it was discovered he does (did?) Nazi Cosplay as part of a World War II reenactment group that specialized in taking on the roles of a Waffen SS division. Apparently, he got into it "as part of a father-son bonding experience."
    • Military history buffs are famously non-judgmental in their attitudes toward different countries and factions, measuring an army's greatness by how ingeniously and bravely it fought rather than by its moral motives. This may be a holdover from World War I, where the participants mostly had national rather than ideological motives and soldiers from enemy nations were known to fraternize off the battlefield.
      • If you are going to do a reenactment someone has to play the other team whether you like them or not.
  • The Chilean army was restructured according to Prussian military tradition in the 1890's, right down to the spiked pickelhauben helmets. Now their parade uniforms are the same as those of the Wehrmacht...They even goosestep!
  • The real-life incidents behind The Wave (fictionalized) were dramatic cases of this trope in their own right.
  • Jane Elliott, about the "social experiment" of racism she first performed with third-graders and continues to perform with college students, stated in the documentary The Angry Eye, "I didn't invent this exercise. I learned this from Adolf Hitler."
  • The Swiss army wore field-gray during World War II. And despite recent controversy there was a fair chance Switzerland could have ended up at war with Germany and indeed they had several air skirmishes. If the Germans had invaded(as indeed they spent much of the time preparing for, including preparing to blow their railway tunnels and thus make invasion not worth the bother)It would be a choice whether one is putting on the Reich or putting on the Helvetica.
  • One of the funniest ironies is that in 1948 the newly founded IAF went to battle in Messerschmitts. For the obvious reason that Israel had to get arms where they could get them and worrying over the fact that they don't like Germans was not important.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Putting_on_the_Reich?oldid=2012297"