Tropers / The Pseudo

Real Life

• The uniforms of the East German Volksarmee and Volkspolizei for a while. That could just be due to uniform shortages, but yeah.
  • In a similar fashion, the East German railway system had to keep its name Deutsche Reichsbahn, as to not risk losing the West Berlin railway operating rights to the Allies.
• Check out the flag of the ''Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging''. Not surprising considering they're a Germanic (the Afrikaners are a Germanic people, yes) white-supremacist group.
• The Nazis themselves, surprisingly, used this trope, adapting many of their motifs and insignias from the Roman Empire. (They also copied from the very short lived Free State of Fiume, a kind of early fascist regime set up by Italians in Croatia.)
  • Many of the minor Axis nations had fascist militias or police units who wore uniforms inspired by either the Nazis or the Italian blackshirts (e.g. Croatian Black Legion, Romanian Iron Guard...)
    • Interesting fact about Black Legion is that, while their nickname does come from their black uniforms, initial choice was not made due to ideology, but the simple fact that black cloth was only thing they had avaliable at the moment; it was noted as being impractical in winter, and extremely uncomfortable during summer. It did make for a good pscyhological weapon, due to Black Legion's renowned brutality.
• Revolutionary and Napoleonic France was hit by an intense wave of Putting on the Reich in Roman Terms. During the Revolutionary Period, the new government of France was modeled to the Roman Senate (complete with wearing togas over their formal clothing). By the Napoleonic Era, Napoleon's armies carried Eagle Standards and his heavy cavalry wore Roman-looking crested helmets. Architecture was also affected, specially with the commissioning of Triumphal Arches and Columns whenever there is a decisive victory. Casual fashion also borrowed from Greco-Roman depictions, featuring the Empire silhouette.
• The Iraqi Ba'athist Party, to some extent, though given Saddam's predilections and mustache, that was more "Putting On The Stalin." The party structure of the Ba'ath Party was more communist than Nazi, and the Iraqi uniforms more Soviet than German [of course, the insignia is still British inspired]. And of course, Saddam's mustache resembles Stalin's more than it resembles Hitler's. The reason for this is that while the early Ba'athists were (small-d) democrats and more or less left-wing, Saddam eventually subverted the Ba'ath to his own ends, doing deals with the USSR (Iran, Iraq's natural enemy, was a firm US ally until 1979) even as he slaughtered thousands of Communists. For their part, the USSR was vaguely cool with them because the other Arab governments were conservative US-backed monarchies. So the Kremlin didn't really care whether Saddam (or Nasser or Sadat or Hafez al-Asad) was killing all the Communists in their country as long as they were buying Soviet-made arms and were generally Soviet allies.
• Flagspot.net has an entire section listing fictional flags that mimic the Nazis' swastika one, including the Klingon Empire from Star Trek, the Galactic Empire from Star Wars, and the Visitors from V.
• Marilyn Manson's late 2000s style is/was described by Manson as "Oscar Wilde at the Nuremberg Trials'.
• The New Jersey State Police uniforms◊. Funny because parts of the American gun community call New Jersey The People's Republic of New Jersey.
  • As with Massachusetts, which is lampshaded hilariously in The Departed. "You got any suits at home or do you like coming to work dressed like you're gonna invade Poland?"
  • The uniforms of several state police forces were explicitly based on the uniforms of Tsarist or Prussian officials. This was a policy adopted in the Gilded Age, in the hope that this would make the recent immigrants from Eastern Europe have more respect for the police. Prussia and Tsarist Russia were militarist and authoritarian regimes, so...
    • A bizarre sort of inversion: In the late 1990s, mullet hairstyles briefly became popular in Germany, so much so that some German police departments permitted officers to let their hair grow long. This led Saturday Night Live cast member Colin Quinn (who was fond of taking potshots at New Jersey) to joke that these precincts would probably be recruiting in the bars of New Jersey next.
• Subversion in Doctor Steel's "Army of Toy Soldiers", who mimic fascist uniforms, flags and propaganda to satirize armies that seek to crush free will and freedom of expression... all in the name of fun.
• Many modern militaries, from France to the United States, have a standard-issue helmet that shares the basic shape of the distinctive German Stahlhelm of World War I & II. The reason for this is simple: the WW 2 German helmets were very well designed for their job. It was such a good design that many other countries bought and or copied the design. In essence, this was Putting on the Reich because of functional practicality rather than ideology. As design marches on, however, more recent updates to the US helmet (and several stahlhelm-based designs) have moved away from this look slightly - although the Lightweight Helmet, which replaced the PASGT helmets still has a noticeably "Stahlhelm"-y profile. Of the "first-rank" powers, only Britain and Russia have not adopted Stahlhelm derivatives - The British adopted a design similar to the Stahlhelm in 2005, but replaced it with a less-Nazi design in 2009, because the 2005 model tipped the rim of the helmet over the soldier's eyes when lying prone. The Russians still use their own old World War Two designs, slightly updated.
• The National Revolutionary Army - officially, the Army of the factious Republic of China - from 1928 to c.1950. From the '30s onward, when the Guomindang under Chiang Kai-Shek signed several deals with Weimar and Nazi Germany which basically traded Chinese raw materials for German armaments factories, the Guomindang's troops soon looked exactly like those of Germany's -sans boots, as the Guomindang had to resort to cheaper puttees. And so, when fighting Japan the Republic of China used German Rifles (the Karabiner 98k), German machine-guns (the MG 34), German pistols (the Mauser C96, China's most popular side-arm for nearly three decades), and German grenades (the 'Potato Masher' was China's no.1 grenade). The Guomindang also issued their troops German-inspired combat webbing and the M1935 version of the Stahlhelm.
  • By late 1930s, Soviets became the main supplier of arms to the KMT government (after the latter made nice with Mao Zedong's communists, which the Soviets themselves helped arrange) and Chinese fielded a large quantity of Russian arms (Polikarpov I-15 and I-16 fighters, T-26 tanks, SB-2 light bombers), many of which remained in service throughout World War II, along with the German arms they received earlier and the American ones they received later. Of course, some of these older Russian arms used by NRA wound up in the hands of their enemies, PLA, after the Chinese Civil War, adding to the already complex hodgepodge of wares and wears that the latter would field (see below).
  • On the other hand the Guomindang's Burma-based Chinese Expeditionary Force, which fought alongside the Anglo-Indian Army, received American training equipment and weaponry during their time under the command of General Stilwell, such that they looked and acted the part of a U.S. Army formation. The Nationalists' main forces also received small quantities of American uniforms, helmets, and weapons such as the Thompson submachine gun - the latter being sorely needed, given their near-complete lack of automatic weaponry after four years of total war. For the most part, most warlord troops were outfitted with various locally-made copies of all of these German and American weapons (as well as various others), some of them (such as the Thompsons) being produced legally and under foreign supervision. What made things even more complicated was when the Japanese surrendered and their million-strong army and occupation force destroyed or left behind all of their equipment and weaponry - chiefly to the Soviets, who handed it over to Chinese Communist rebels when they withdrew from Manchuria in 1946. As if that wasn't bad enough, when the People's Liberation Army (the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party) defeated the NRA in the Civil War, they then received Soviet-made weapons, equipment, and uniforms - again a mixture of imports and local products - as part of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, but continued to use their existing stuff too. Consequently, most Chinese forces in the early-to-mid '40s looked German with American bits, which came closer to Nazi-American hybrids as the war dragged on until, by the mid-to-late '40s, they became weird Nazi-American-Japanese-Soviet hodgepodges. Only in 1953 were the PLA's uniforms and equipment finally standardized along Soviet lines.
• The Ethnocacerists in Peru are nationalist, ally themselves with communists, and their banner/standard is the nazi black eagle replaced by a condor. Essentially, Commie Nazis.
• Pretty much the point of Nazi chic.
  • Especially bizarre when Asian cosplayers dress up in Nazi regalia, such as for a wedding. Even more bizarre since the bride decided to cosplay as...Chii?
• The German Empire itself did this with ancient Rome, as did the Russian Empire. The titles of "kaiser" and "czar" are, respectively, German and Russian translations of "caesar", with the former being how it's actually pronounced in Latin.
  • The Holy Roman Empire, both the one founded by Charlemagne's Franks and the one founded by Otto I, considered themselves as the continuation of the Western Roman Empire.
  • While the Russians claimed Moscow to be the Third Rome, even inheriting the City on Seven Hills trope.
• The black uniforms the Royal Irish Constabulary used during the Irish struggle for independence resemble Nazi uniforms, making them an example of Putting on the Reich before the Reich was doing it.
  • Black uniforms have long been standard in traditionally working-class occupations, or in occupations in which a worker was liable to get something disgusting (mud, blood, etc.) splattered on him.
• Rich Iott, a Tea Party candidate for Congress in Ohio during the 2010 elections, made national news when it was discovered he does (did?) Nazi cosplay as part of a World War II reenactment group that specialized in taking on the roles of a Waffen SS division. Apparently, he got into it "as part of a father-son bonding experience." Note that many reenactors do this without necessarily approving of the side they're playing since someone has to play the bad guy, but it can be hard to explain out of context.
• The Chilean army was restructured according to Prussian military tradition in the 1890's, right down to the spiked pickelhauben helmets. Now their parade uniforms are the same as those of the Wehrmacht...They even goosestep!
• Jane Elliott, about the "social experiment" of racism she first performed with third-graders and continues to perform with college students, stated in the documentary The Angry Eye, "I didn't invent this exercise. I learned this from Adolf Hitler."
• Almost all early 20th century officer's uniforms, especially in Eastern Europe, from World War One until the 1930s tend to have this vibe to them. The Germans were far from the only people who wore tunics, Sam Browne belts, and jackboots. Even the Polish◊ were dressed to invade Poland. Take away the festive colors and tan campaign hats, and replace the brown leather with black and even Mounties◊ share many similarities.
• Inverted by George Lincoln Rockwell, former leader of the American Nazi Party. Rockwell sought to turn the ANP into a legitimate political party by toning down Nazi imagery. He phased out Nazi-esque uniforms, limited the public use of the swastika, changed their slogan from "Seig Heil" to "White Power," and changed the ANP's name to the National Socialist White People's Party.
• These Mongolians have appropriated Nazi imagery to express anti-Chinese sentiments.