“Bethesda covers its arse in anticipation of a bunch of terminally online American teenagers who just learnt the word ‘nazi’ and would use it to describe a fuckin nun if it made them feel a bit morally superior for ten seconds”

I’ve heard plenty of people try to say WOLFENSTEIN glorifies nazis

I’ve had one idiot tell me ANY media that paints them as competent or successful is glorifying them. And setting anything in a world where they succeeded and progressed technologically instead of collapsing is basically saying Hitler’s world view is valid.

I still don’t know how to respond to that beyond “if you think the nazis were incompetent you don’t know history, and if you think showing a future where fascism took hold is unrealistic I have some bad news for you”

It’s fantasy, and specifically a fantasy in which you get to go on a massive killing spree against some of the worst people in history, how you can somehow pull “this game is making these guys look good” from that, I’m not sure.

It should be noted that a lot of their blunders later in the war can be traced back to Hitler (or one of his sycophants) getting involved and overruling far more experienced Generals, many of whom were not party members. It could also be argued that the economy they set up, while impressive given the state of Germany post-WWI, was an entirely unsustainable war economy that relied very heavily on slave labor. That’s not to say they were completely incompetent, but they did vastly overestimate their own abilities and made many mistakes as a result.

Indeed, they made plenty of mistakes, otherwise they would have won the war.

But it’s less about whether they could have sustained their empire afterward and more people trying to say that portraying them as such is “glorifying” them or propping them up in some sort of idealistic way.

Indeed, they made plenty of mistakes, otherwise they would have won the war.

Therein lies the problem, because even if they somehow executed an absolutely perfect strategy they would not have won the war, not in the long run at least. I agree that Wolfenstein doesn’t glorify them since its reasoning for them winning is outlandish sci-fi technology, but a lot of media that assumes they could have won is glorifying, even if indirectly.

“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.” - Jean-Luc Picard

You make valid points. I know I’ve heard enough people who start off with “the nazis sure were bad, BUT…” and proceed to fangirl over every technological achievement made by Germany, even those that came after the allies.

There’s certainly a line where it goes from “fantasy parody of real life” to “someone wrote a fan fiction about the fourth Reich and clearly has a crush on Hitler whether they want to admit it or not”

Literally the only way they would have conquered the world is through the wonders of “Sci Fi Magic Bullshit” ™️