Lemme just say

rufeepeach:

The Germans in Wonder Woman are not Nazis.

I just saw a troubling comment on a gifset of Antiope and her badass three-arrow stunt shot at the three german soldiers on the beach. I love that moment as much as anyone. However, this comment referred to her ‘killing Nazis’. And those men were not Nazis. 

Wonder Woman is set in WW1. Hitler would not come to power for over a decade after WW1 ended. Fascism had not yet become a political force in Europe. In fact, Germany’s treatment as a defeated aggressor instead of as an equal party in the armistice negotiations - and later the Treaty of Versailles - despite the Allies’ equal culpability for the war, directly contributed to the rise of fascism and nationalism in Germany.

Stop calling the German soldiers in Wonder Woman Nazis. One of the greatest tragedies of WW1 is that the soldiers on both sides of the trenches were hungry, young, sick, poor men, who had no stake in the war. This article talks about the experiences (at least early in the war) of both sides on the Western front meeting on no man’s land and finding little difference between one another. 

There’s a lot to love about Wonder Woman, and I very much enjoyed it. I also loved the points in the movie when the violence done by Americans and British - such as when Diana speaks to Chief about the death of his people - were addressed as well, but they were brief. The presentation of Germans As The Bad Guys - especially since Aries’ influence was inconsistent as a plot point - has led to people mistakenly reading it as a movie about Nazis, when the Nazis did not exist in 1918. A WW1 setting does not sustain a narrative of one side being ‘heroic’ and the other ‘villainous’, especially if one takes into account the atrocities both sides had committed during the quarter century leading up to the armistice. It troubles me that this movie allows WW1 German soldiers to be read as Nazis. 

Please stop referring to Nazis in the context of Wonder Woman.

THANK YOU

The American media has grabbed onto this image of all German bad guys, so 99% of all german characters, are Nazis. In the, it worked in Indiana Jones so why not here, type of way.  

This is basic knowledge, and two seconds of googling would have given you the correction. Hollywood has this tendency of promoting very basic us v. them movies. It’s the all awesome Captain America vs. the all bad Hydra, which does the same white washing of history. War doesn’t work like that. It’s more complicated. WW2 included. See here for a whole post on that. 

You get this warped sense of what it means to be German. You want to know how I know? I had seniors in HIGH SCHOOL asking me if everyone in my family were Nazis. 

Hollywood insists that one side, usually America, is always good and the other side is always bad. This erases the complexity of war. It allows us to put it in a neat little box and just stow it away. 

Lets also stay away from calling the German army in WW2 Nazis. People like promoting this image that all Germans in WW2 were Nazis when that wasn’t the case. The German army in WW2 or die Wehrmacht was just that, an army for a state. Separate from the party that had overtaken that state. People seem to confuse the Wehrmacht with the SS. 

While America was living in the Gatsby era (roaring 20s), Germany was going through a great depression. Having to battle hyperinflation and the Allies continuously humiliating them. People felt belittled and left behind. So they looked to a strong man. A man that would restore the integrity of Germany and return it to its former glory. Sound familiar? Hitler was democratically elected because he played on people’s fears and pain. 

If you want to watch a show with a good representation of WW2, watch Band Of Brothers. For a taste watch this final speech by a German general to his troops at the end of the war. If you want more there is a fantastic documentary series called World At War, most of which should be on Youtube.  

TL;DR: History, like the present, is a lot more complicated and fascinating than Hollywood would like you to believe.