How do you make not!zis an interesting/not-one-dimensional organization or faction for the purposes of a campaign world?

You can start by just, you know, reading about Germany leading up to, and in WWII. German history follows a different path than most of Europe, der Sonderweg, and the only thing that will give you a good grasp of history and culture is to go study it. What you absolutely should *not* do is ask on a forum for traditional games where, at best, you're likely to get a bunch of people that are misinformed and, at worst, you'll get a mud-throwing contest of identity politics and Holocaust discussion.

By playing them as good
They were people who wanted a homeland for their people and hated communists
In fact you could go into the difference between them, communists, and liberals in terms of ideology
Like their view of society as body that needed to work together to function
Just read up on actual fascism and the unique German variant that was national socialism

What I'm saying is that it's really not that hard just like it's not hard to paint the south as just in the American civil war

Or you can flip it and make every faction evil (do you really think the commies and allies were good?)

Not really. Nazi ideology and the tenets of fascism basically call for the removal of art and the persecution of artists because any art that does not serve the state and their own ideology is useless at best and subversive at most. There's a reason why artists often ended up amongst those being rounded up, the state cannot tolerate those who might provoke thought and ideas that are contrary to its own agenda, beliefs, and ideology, and so must absolutely be eliminated.

A lot of the German higher-ups tolerated and stole a lot of art because they had class, and even though they knew it wasn't on message, they had enough power to tell people not to throw it in the furnace and instead hang it up in the parlor, because a subversive painting in private is by no means as much of a public threat as a subversive painting in a museum. Plus, since a lot of those in power were the aristocracy as well, opulence is the name of the game, and art is just so much commodity.

Nazis, like slavers, are useful antagonist especially because they are one-dimensional evil faction in fiction.
If you have not!nazis, you aren't using any of the subtleties of real life in your setting, so at that point just make it another faction entirely.

Example:
Your players play young romanian SS whose parents were killed by the bolsheviks; they are not Evil with a big E > that's ok.
Your players play young vashrik tall'kar whose zubbeks were ritually slain by the guhoppats; they are not Evil with a big E > that's also ok, but how are they recognizable as nazis? Nazis didn't have a monopoly on any kind of ideology or atrocity.

You really need to lay the vashrik's evil on thick if you want to easily identify them as nazis. And at that point they cease to be multi-dimentional.

Research what National Socialism actually is, otherwise they can't really be called nazis.

Some various misconceptions to note:
>fascism and national socialism have very little overlap, they are not synonyms, see aryanism.net/politics/national-socialism-and-fascism/
>fascism was never practiced outside of the Roman Empire and Mussolini
>fascists don't believe in race, but national socialists do
>there are no modern fascist or national socialist movements
>neo-nazis and falangists are not national socialists

This is the most authentic site: aryanism.net/

Not going to explain an entire ideology in a Veeky Forums post though

Pretend you're writing about the american empire. Then just replace the names.

base your character on this guy

Read The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton and base your not!zis on it.

>fascism
>base nazis on it

Just hide the fact that they're literally nazis. Most people don't actively oppose (or know about) most tenets of national socialist ideology. They know they were the bad guys in a war and also a couple of things they did that were indeed atrocious. They wouldn't recognize a nazi unless he started shouting heil hitler while gassing minorities.

People will empathize with your nazis as long as you don't call them nazis. They can even be ruthless if it can be justified, everyone loves romans and vikings after all.

Not many people know about the Night of the Long Knives. It's a number of nights from 30 June to 2 July, when the cabal around Hitler decided to kill off the highranking SA (Stormabteilung; basically blue-collar strong-arm boys with links to socialist and communist movements). While the Nazis had been flirting with anti-semitic flavoured communism and socialism while they were trying to get voted into the government, when they actually became the government, the leftist-elements within the Nazi party became a liability. The leaders of the SA and several creators of socialist/communist fascist variants within the Nazi party were getting tired of waiting when they could start redistributing wealth among "Das Volk".
The pre-Nazi government elements like the Wehrmacht were extremely paranoid about letting a bunch of pseudo-communists be the government, so the Nazis decided to kill off EVERY leftist that was a member of the party. Which they then did.

The PC's spend all their time trying to capture an SA member to torture him for state secrets...

...and suddenly over the span of a few days the PC's are hunted by the SS and Gestapo - not for kidnapping a Nazi member, but for harbouring a highly sought dangerous 'criminal' who should be executed immediately with extreme prejudice...

Do this.
youtube.com/watch?v=QU6tQY3eMLM

He's just a fun loving guy who adores his dog.

Am I supposed to be disagreeing with Red Skull here? Because he's got a point.

Just make them like the real nazis. People who understood the problems facing their nation and people and took steps to fix it.

Please tell me this is a "the villain is actually right" story, or a "the villain reforms and is now right" one.

I think on the next page one of his followers commits a suicide bombing.

The real terrorists are nationalists, right guys? It's their fault a hundred or so frenchmen were gunned down, amirite?

Well here in West-Europe most terrorist deaths are still caused by the far-right, animal activists, anarchists and just crazy people. Of course, no one cares about some crazy luddites bombing a genetic modification laboratory and killing and injuring some geneticists so MSM shuts up about it. They'd rather report about a failed terrorist attack by some crack dealer Achmed who decided to see 'the light'.

Two guys with master's degrees were killed by nationalists in the states yesterday.

>wehrmacht finds out about the concentration camps
>declares the nazi party and the SS an enemy of the state
>civil war follows

>The real terrorists are muslims, right guys? It's their fault 90 or so norsemen were gunned down, amirite?

This. You could also have the issue of the Wehrmacht being a bulwark against the Soviets coming into play (since they were also fond of war crimes).

Maybe because the vast majority of people are not biologists or even scientists, but everyone could be Achmed's victim? I know it sucks, but that's how human mind works.

I think there were too many hardliners in positions of command for that to happen.

Guys, let's keep the discussion on nazis in rpgs and don't derail the thread to /pol/ territory, alright?

>DM only really has BBEG's or force of nature antagonists
>players decide to shake things up
>create xenophobic empire hellbent on eradicating (((elves)))

Don't. Nazis have one dimension and that is Bad. All they deserve is a shallow grave and a bullet in the back of the head.

Make them the protagonists.

Not every terrorist is Muslim.

The dual ideas the vast majority of the Third Reich's population was A) unaware of the Holocaust and b) would have immediately revolted if they knew about it is a fucking myth. The only people who believe it are either /pol/ or apologists who think they can't say they like the look of Nazi uniforms without implicitly condoning human rights violations.

Anyone with a brain knew the Jews weren't going anywhere good. It was fucking obvious if you were paying even the slightest bit of attention. Shit, many camps were built down the fucking street from population centers. It's just most people wanted to wash their hands of the whole thing. The only real "surprise" the German people had regarding the Holocaust was they just never actually considered what human suffering on that scale looked like.

Don't get me wrong, there were quite a few "decent" Nazis who had no real beef with Jews and hated the whole racist pogrom mentality, many in the Wehrmacht. But they didn't exist in any real numbers to actually cause a civil war over the Holocaust.

I love bringing up the IRA in response to people thinking all terrorists are Muslim. It's always fun to watch people squirm at that.

>The PCs are tacticool oper8rs in the German army that half-heartedly serve in the SS (after being promoted from the Wehrmacht), may get involved in one or multiple plots to assassinate Hitler and depending on the circumstances may end up having to enforce order in a broken and battered Germany

Mite b cool. After some target practice in Poland and some traumatizing experiences in Russia, they might decide that Dolfie is ruining everything and plan an elaborate assassination with a coup d'état. Who knows, if you really want to they might take over Germany and install a [insert the number of party members here]verate.

I've always wanted to play an Infinite Worlds Reich-5 game of nazis looking for the purest Hitler possible so he can bring the Nazis on their world back to greatness. (IIRC he dies of old age in 1951 (current year 2010) after having conquered Eurasia with the help of Japan and having turned the US into a puppet state)

>there were quite a few "decent" Nazis who had no real beef with Jews and hated the whole racist pogrom mentality, many in the Wehrmacht
Nazi refers to the National-Socialist party (including its armed branch in the SS), which the Wehrmacht wasn't a part of. That was simply the German army, mostly consisting of conscripts. Which might explain why most of the decent "Nazi's" can be found there: the SS were the hyper-fanatical elites who fought for Hitler to the death while the Wehrmacht was full of conscripts trying to get by.

"Nazi" has a lot of meanings, both explicit and implicit. While it literally refers to the party itself, it's more than appropriate for the rest of the German government including the German military. Especially since having a strong nationlist and pro-Party atittude was almost a prerequisite for officer positions.

The Wehrmacht was a good cross-section of the overall German population, which did certainly include decent people who didn't want the Holocaust. But remember that population did put Hitler and the Nazis in power in the first place and had no real interest in changing that at basically any point before the war ended. Most Germans and by extension most of the Wehrmacht were at the very least complacent with the Nazi agenda even if they weren't all that involved in it.

This is much better discussion on Nazism than I expected from Veeky Forums

Can't argue with that.

I think it's also always good to remember that Hitler wasn't a mind-controlling monster forcing everyone into obeying, and that there was a long chain of people between him and the guy pressing the button to gas the jews.

Or the weather underground for burgerland

No need for the SS friend, toss them into a light infantry battalion, fallschirmjäger would fit better SS being more of political wing who got first dibs on equipment. make them traumatized heroes of Crete or the Belgium campaign.

SS had entirely separate requisition organisation. Lot of SS weapons came from conquered nations factories. Mechanized divisions had first dips on equipment like STG 44

Just like in real life, Socialists are already interesting villains, you don't have to change anything really.

humanize the soldiers, demonize the politicians

stolen

How did they find out about something that isn't real

By introducing them into a setting that is unstable and unsafe for majority. Then it is easy to justify or at least make morally gray: Think of Caesar's Legion from Fallout NV. Safety and stability are much more important than freedom.

Sorry to get political but that is a bold lie. The right barely does anything. The biggest terrorist groups in Europe are the far-left and separatists.

cont.

Have them be a necessary bulwark against something worse. Yes, they are fanatically racist militaristic aggressors who would conquer everywhere given the chance, but they are mostly busy fighting with some far worse force which the rest of the factions are more afraid of.

This gives the notzis reasoning behind their ideology and keeps the world nice and threatening.

while the most deaths are caused by separatists* and islamists (separatists* and to an extend right wing are only notable because of a single strike, while islamic has been fairly consistent in the last few years)

A person has a strong belief that a particular group of people, a course of action, or another element in D&D is an unrecognized issue that needs to be addressed. Hilarity ensues.

>they are mostly busy fighting with some far worse force which the rest of the factions are more afraid of

*cough cough* Demonic Stalingrad *cough cough*

How do you make Cosa Not!stra an interesting/not-one-dimensional organization or faction for the purposes of a campaign world?

research WWII past an 8th grade level (i.e.-Western Standard) and make what you think is a fair assessment.

>aryanism.net/

Hoo boy I bet this website is an unbiased source on what constitutes National Socialism.

It is .net therefore non profit. You can always trust non profit sites.

IRA and Weather Underground did nothing wrong.

>I get all my information from sources I know for sure are unbiased
>I don't care about perspectives other than what unbiased sites tell me like wikipedia

Or weather or BLA or basically anybody mentioned in this book

There's nothing wrong with studying an ideology when painted at its most rosy. You just have to acknowledge the inherent bias for what it is.

>norsemen

If you recognize propaganda for what it is it's value is diffused unless you are really weak minded.

I hate Nazis and hope that they all watch their own mothers burn to death before their eyes, but you have to know the ideology of your enemy. That's why I've watched a lot of old propaganda films and read their literature. Understand your enemy

>I hate Nazis and hope that they all watch their own mothers burn to death before their eyes
Wow, you're a massive bigot. Replace Nazi with democrat and you'd be flipping your shit right now.

>A bloo bloo bloo the poor misunderstood nazis

I'm checking your dubs and thanking you for your analysis. Good times. Glad to hear not everyone on this site has gone full revisionist

You don't get promoted to the SS they were a separate organization from the Heer.

Browse /pol/ and become sympathetic.

p-please respect my ideology that entails the murder and genocide of everyone that isn't an autistic faggot

>Force of Nature antagonists
Why don't my DMs ever use these? It's only just occurred to me that all of my problems in games come from """some asshole"""

What is this that I'm feeling? I love my group but is this... emptiness?

We live in a society where abhorrent ideologies such as national socialism are fought by ridicule and defeating their arguments, not by burning them at the stake.

Obviously. Normalization of political violence will only make America look like Northern Ireland, but still, the fuckers piss me off. They want America to look like the fucking Republic of Gilead

Hey, shooting the bastards was good enough for my grandfather.

You could make them right, say the not!jews genuinely are an evil race.

Or make it a snowball type affect, where as the war ramps up plans of mass deportation turn to mass ""temporary"" imprisonment, and then into genocide as they lack to means to carry out previous plans.

Make it a grand comedic fuck up of poorly communicated orders where somehow "deport the jews" becomes "decimate the jews" and all people at all levels are really confused by whats happening. Soldiers are confused why they're getting orders that don't match campaign promises. Officers are confused why soldiers aren't doing what they told them. not!hitler is starting to think hes a figure head whos words don't actually mean anything.

Accept the 1 dimension and make them actually just full on fucking evil, like make them actual boogey men, smash children against walls to tenderize them for cooking, just off the wall insane.

Make it all a ruse, they are genuinely doing nothing wrong, the worldly powers saw them militarizing and threw propaganda machine into full drive to create reasons to crush them utterly before they could be strong enough to challenge them.

Something something internal power struggle between "ve must remove the untermensch" and "ve must gas the untermensch"

I dunno faggot isn't coming up with ideas your job and not mine?

>I dislike these people and wish them violence
>thats wrong and bad.
>yeah but (poorly conceived reason why its okay)

>You're not supposed to do that, Daryl! You know you're not supposed to do that!

That was when they were actively trying to kill people. Now, they shitpost on the internet and manage to get people unaffiliated punched in the face by the very same guys the Nazis oppose.

The first guy agreed but stated he still didn't like them. The second guy was joking.

>That was when they were actively trying to kill people. Now, they shitpost on the internet and manage to get people unaffiliated punched in the face by the very same guys the Nazis oppose.

Yeah, they're clowns, now, but you still have to remember that they're also dangerous clowns. These guys would gladly murder good friends of mine if they thought they could get away with it. Laugh at 'em, but never forget what they are.

>I hate Nazis and hope that they all watch their own mothers burn to death before their eyes
I don't believe you can genuinely hate something this much when you have never even encountered it yourself.
Maybe if you lived through it this could make sense to me. but you didn't, you're just signalling.

>Signalling

>On an anonymous image board

>unaffiliated punched in the face by the very same guys the Nazis oppose.
Who?

>Not many people know about the Night of the Long Knives
What the fuck do they teach in schools then?

Crystal Night, of course.

I mean it's not unprovoked wars of conquest, it's revanchism with the added caveat of being willing to trample underfoot anyone who stands in the way of it.

You're right about them being greatly unsympathethic due to how fucked up the ideology is though, that's an aspect that shouldn't really be undersold.
The sheer abhorrent nature of nazis means that you don't have to do a lot to make them the villains, you can do basically anything against them and they're still the bad guys.

That's literally factually untrue, and it's a weird thing to lie about..

Seconding this recommendation, excellent book.
Hid article
The Five Stages of Fascism' offers a highly compressed outline of the books content for those unsure about committing to reading it.