Hi.
Well, I ´ve been reading all this posts about the connection between W40k Empire and the WWII Nazis and I wanna add my toughts:
I think that the true parallelism is not between W40k Empire and Nazis but between W40k Empire and the Spanish Empire of the XIV, XV, XVI centuries.
The Spanish Empire (SE) was ruled by an Emperor (one on them Carlos I, ruled the Empire while suffering several diseases (somehow like the w40k Emperor)).
The SE grew very quickly and the SE armies had to fight a defensive war to protect the borders of the Empire against the foreign enemies:England (¿Eldars or TAU?), Dutch pirates (¿Dark Eldars?), Turkey and other muslims countries (¿Orks?), France... and inner enemies (religion wars against German rebels (¿heretics and Chaos?), civil uprisings in Spain (traitors), etc...The same situation of the W40k Empire, a big empire very hard to defend and surrounded by enemies.
All this wars were fighted by the SE with a very particular combination of armies: The core of the armies were Spanish professional soldiers, veterans of the Italian wars who formed the Spanish Tercios.The Tercio was an administrative as well as a tactic unit, almost independent, formed usually by 10 companies of 300 men. Every Tercio was established in a province of the Empire ( Napoly, Lombard, Holland,etc), usually near conflictive areas.One interesting thing about ther Tercios, most of the times (almost always) troops used to go to Mass before every battle, then during the Mass, a catholic priest blessed everybody, while talked them about their sacred duty, etc (Anybody else sees the parallelism between this priest and the Space Marine Chaplains and their rites?). To help the tercios, or to fight a “low intensity” war, the SE used to recruit temporary armies for every campaign, this troops used to be recruited near the war zone and you could find soldiers from many nationalities in the army. Somehow like the Space Marines and the I.Guard combination, a \"professional\" army, 100% loyal (most of the time),devoted to the Empire, with soldiers who follow the orders without asking many questions and a “recruited” army, less efficient, less reliable, who is usually used as cannon foder.
The SE leaders were convinced of their sacred mission of spreading the catholic religion all over the world (Spanish rulers used to call Spain \"The Sword of Rome\"), consecuently all the people who weren´t catholics were in an error and had to be converted or eliminated cause they were potential enemies (the “With me or against me” politic of the W40k Empire.
Together with the Spanish Catholic Church, the SE leaders organized the Inquisition. The ways of the W40k and the Spanish Inquisitions are just the same (everybody is guilty, innocence proves nothing, repentance and confesion of your `crimes`wont save you only will give you a less painful death , etc...). Everybody could be accused and arrested, and this turned part of the spanish catholic population into a elitist-neurotic group ready to “point the finger” into anyone who wasn´t as catholic as they were.I think that this enviroment of “religious oppresion” who also appear in the W40k background, can´t be found in the WWII nazi germans (I.E.:Nazi elite troops (the Waffen SS) recruited muslim bosniacs, ultra-catholic Croatians, ex.-communist Russians, Ucranians, Dutchs….).
And IMO, the latinesque flavour of many of the W40k empire names, organizations, places, etc..and the W40k iconography (full of saints, martyrs, angels, apocalyptic visions, etc) have many connections with the roman-ultracatholic background of the SE,and is less connected with the (supposed) mystical-magical-satanic background of the nazi regime.
And finally (not connected with the Spanish Empire Idea) the figure of the Commisars. Commisars are very important in the IG background, and have no counterpart in the Nazi regime (I think). The gestapo was a socio-political police whose members used to “work” with the civil population, but was never seen in the war zone.
The W40k Commisars are “clones” of the NKVD russian Commisars, guys who used to be in the front line of the battles giccing political speeches to the troops, and using their weapons to “increase morale”, killing everyone they think was acting “cowardly”.
Thanks for your time.
Rob.
!