Genre Tropes

Dieselpunk Games’ Obsession with Nazi Supersoldiers

Nick Ottens

During World War II, German scientists synthesized anabolic steriods and experimented on concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war in an attempt to treat chronic wasting. Experiments were allegedly conducted on German soldiers to increase their aggression and agility, however, there is no evidence whatsoever that something like an Übersoldier (a play on the Nazis’ idealized Übermensch) was ever in the making — let alone created.

Yet “supersoldiers” keep appearing in video games.

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Nazis in Antarctica

Nick Ottens

Soon after the war in Europe ended, rumors began to circulate that part of Germany’s military and scientific establishment had fled the fatherland before Soviet troops could conquer Berlin. Stories of missing U-boats and forbidden aviation technologies fueled wild theories of Nazi redoubts and the imminent resurrection of the Third Reich. A huge United States Navy operation in the Antarctic in 1946 seemed only to confirm the worst of fears — that the Nazis’ reign of terror had been able to survive underground near the South Pole.

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Dieselpunk and the Shadow of Nazi Aesthetics

Marcus Rauchfuß

If you hang around the dieselpunk crowd long enough, sooner or later you will hear someone retelling an experience about them being called a fascist or Nazi sympathizer because of the way they dress.

Granted, it seems if you are into dieselpunk, you can only go one of two ways: Either you use the Jazz-era American style (civilian and military) or you play with German Interbellum designs, in which case there seems to be no nonuniform option whatsoever (which does not make sense in itself, mind you).

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Introduction to Victorientalism

Nick Ottens

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With the increasing contact with the East and its ensuing colonization, people in the West became fascinated by this strange new world. For centuries, adventurers, novelists and romantics had been interested in the lands beyond the horizon. Europe had all been explored and people became more and more familiar with the world they lived in. The Orient was still a realm of mystery, inhabited by alien people, exotic and sometimes cruel, with customs that Enlightened Europeans thought of as barbaric; a place where time had stood still.

An age-long Orientalist tradition of those who studied the East has in our times been criticized for its presumed bias and even racism. In the realm of steampunk, however, we can safely recreate the Orient as it was described and depicted by nineteenth-century authors and artists who might never have seen it. All the myths and miracles of the East that enchanted the Victorians can come true.

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