Remove ads

The Hearts of Iron Megathread

Reader mode
PrincessStarbeam said:
Because ultimately fascism only targets certain minority populations because they're convenient scapegoats. Fascists aren't consistent with their beliefs. If it becomes inconvenient to go after an ideological goal (ie. needing to invade an area entirely outside the regions they're interested in), they shift their rhetoric. We see this irl with concepts like "honourary aryanism."

Fascists are antisemitic, but fascism as an ideology and a system makes it incredibly easy to pick and choose when to apply that antisemitism, as with all its other principles. It ultimately boils down to whether or not the fascists in power actually want to do the thing their ideology says they should.

In TNO terms, Germany doesn't want to try to fight Italy just so they can go genocide a population they don't really actually care about. So they don't. They have plenty of scapegoats at home.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Uh no, this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Nazi ideology. They were incredibly anti-semitic, in a very consistent manner. While individual Jews could occasionally escape persecution the race as a whole was fundamentally incompatible with any kind of Nazi state.

Frankly, this argument is a dangerous whitewashing of Nazi ideology, they didn't just choose scapegoats on a case-by-case basis, genocide and racial subjugation are intrinsic to the belief system. It wasn't a tactic to distract attention, it was a fervently held belief that had deadly consequences IRL and in TNO.
 
Nervos Belli said:
Not an excuse, but that wasn't because of ideological sympathies. Mainly he had a rabid hatred for the British and was willing to ally with the devil if it meant getting them out of Israel. I imagine in TNO with Italian control over the Levant he's just as fiercely anti-Italian and German as he was anti-British. That said, I imagine any rule of his over Israel would start with mass purges of the Arab population and only get worse from there.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It wasn't just his hatred for the British that motivated him, he also proposed to Nazi Germany an alliance with the "totalitarian Hebrew republic" he would create. Don't let the fact he's Jewish mislead you: that dude is a literal fascist.
 
Teen Spirit said:
He wanted to ally with Nazi Germany IRL despite knowing about the Holocaust.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Extra Fun Facts:
Am I the only one that's kinda freaked out at the fact that literal Jewish Nazis have memorials in Israel and one of their previous PMs was the leader of a group that wanted an alliance with a genocidal entity fundamentally opposed to the very existence of Jews and a Jewish state?
 
Last edited:
Starblight said:
Extra Fun Facts:
Am I the only one that's kinda freaked out at the fact that literal Jewish Nazis have memorials in Israel and one of their previous PMs was the leader of a group that wanted an alliance with a genocidal entity fundamentally opposed to the very existence of Jews and a Jewish state?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." ― Mark Twain
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
Uh no, this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Nazi ideology. They were incredibly anti-semitic, in a very consistent manner. While individual Jews could occasionally escape persecution the race as a whole was fundamentally incompatible with any kind of Nazi state.

Frankly, this argument is a dangerous whitewashing of Nazi ideology, they didn't just choose scapegoats on a case-by-case basis, genocide and racial subjugation are intrinsic to the belief system. It wasn't a tactic to distract attention, it was a fervently held belief that had deadly consequences IRL and in TNO.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Apologies, I didn't mean to suggest or imply that fascists are secretly just pragmatists who actually aren't racist or anything like that. Fascists actively hold genocidal beliefs and absolutely have and do carry them out. Those beliefs are just also based on fictions, and those fictions can and have been shifted to be more useful to fascists, while the underlying hatred and oppression of minority groups remains.

Will try to be more careful with my language, I hate the trope of the "competent pragmatic fascist that is only coincidentally racist" as much as the next person.
 
I hope I don't get flak for this, but as a Jew I always get uncomfortable about the idea of Nazi Israel or Jewish Nazis.

Fascist Israel or Fascist Jews, sure, that makes sense. Anyone can be fascist.

Nazis, though...They put us in cattle cars. It always feels kind of uncomfortable.
 
In regards to a Lehi-lead Israel, I think this comment from the TNO subreddit truly hit the nail on the head on what makes such a concept truly horrible.

inb4username said:
Stern's Israel, on the other hand, has the potential to do to the Jews what the Reich has done to Germans: almost irreversibly corrupt and stultify an entire ethnicity. Building Israel on the model of the Reich means capitulation to the idea that might makes right, and that any price is worth paying for the triumph of the Chosen People. It means accepting the cruel logic of Nazism, and appropriating it for the purposes of the Jewish homeland.

And that will be the final victory for the Reich over the Jewish people. In spirit, if not in body, they will have been conquered and assimilated by the Nazis.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Last edited:
RiverDelta said:
I hope I don't get flak for this, but as a Jew I always get uncomfortable about the idea of Nazi Israel or Jewish Nazis.

Fascist Israel or Fascist Jews, sure, that makes sense. Anyone can be fascist.

Nazis, though...They put us in cattle cars. It always feels kind of uncomfortable.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Again. The leading Lehi literally tried to ally with Hitler knowing Full well the holocaust was ongoing. TNO basically has him as a Jewish Nazi because that's what he was.
 
I think it's understandable to be uncomfortable with the idea (and it is uncomfortable) but if the guy was literally a Nazi OTL that's enough to make it justified.
 
Teen Spirit said:
Again. The leading Lehi literally tried to ally with Hitler knowing Full well the holocaust was ongoing. TNO basically has him as a Jewish Nazi because that's what he was.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It was the creators' choice to include this historical figure or not, though?
 
Last edited:
Well, Burgundy is a bloody pain to play...but not for thematically appropriate reasons.

Rather, the devs simply neglect to signal to the player what you need to do to stay afloat, which was not the case for other "evil" playthroughs such as Omsk and the Holy Russian Empire.

Also, I tried to activate a Globalplay (specifically the one targeting Italy) and it did literally nothing. What?


I will say that I haven't really gotten the impression that Burgundy and Himmler's SS have been "competency-washed." Beyond the self-aggrandizing focus tree descriptions, the Ordenstaat is clearly a mess. AI Burgundy probably only manages to keep its head above water because it's expending all its efforts on staying afloat instead of the grand Globalplans.
 
Last edited:
RiverDelta said:
I hope I don't get flak for this, but as a Jew I always get uncomfortable about the idea of Nazi Israel or Jewish Nazis.

Fascist Israel or Fascist Jews, sure, that makes sense. Anyone can be fascist.

Nazis, though...They put us in cattle cars. It always feels kind of uncomfortable.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There's nothing inherently German about Nazism. The ideology can and has been appropriated by other groups, with all the references to Germany and German nationalism scratched out and replaced by... wherever. That's part of what makes it so insidious. There's nothing particular about Israel and Jewishness that makes it any more resistant to that than any other nationality - not even cultural memory.
 
SwiftRosenthal said:
There's nothing inherently German about Nazism. The ideology can and has been appropriated by other groups, with all the references to Germany and German nationalism scratched out and replaced by... wherever. That's part of what makes it so insidious. There's nothing particular about Israel and Jewishness that makes it any more resistant to that than any other nationality - not even cultural memory.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm just saying it makes me, personally, uncomfortable. I don't like the idea of equating Jews to Nazis.
 
Thankfully, it feels like the "Kingdom of Israel" is the rarest path for the Levant. At least in my playthroughs
 
ElMariachi said:
Maybe it's the term Jewish that gives you the feeling of an amalgamation. Perhaps a more precise term such as Zionist-Nazi (Lehi was a Zionist organization) of Israeli-Nazi would be better?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, I heard they were changing him to ultranationalist anyway, which I'm fine with.
 
So following my Netherlands game I'm trying for a France game. Anyone got any advice on how to hold back the German attack through the Benelux? I could try building forts along the border with Belgium, but that just seems like meta abuse when the entire reason the Germans attacked that way was to outflank the Maginot line (granted the new forts would probably be a lot weaker then the Maginot line).

I tried defending with a mobile force of tanks (including mediums) and motorized and got my ass kicked.
 
Darthtabby said:
So following my Netherlands game I'm trying for a France game. Anyone got any advice on how to hold back the German attack through the Benelux? I could try building forts along the border with Belgium, but that just seems like meta abuse when the entire reason the Germans attacked that way was to outflank the Maginot line (granted the new forts would probably be a lot weaker then the Maginot line).

I tried defending with a mobile force of tanks (including mediums) and motorized and got my ass kicked.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The go to strat in MP is to basically force the Germans to have to grind itself against a maginot with a north flank of the Channel and a south flank of the Swiss border.

When it comes down to it, France doesnt really have the manpower or industry to try much of anything else. Ideally, you be able to slap down level 10 forts on basically the entire border of the Netherlands and Belguim with Germany...but in practice you need to just extend the maginot.

In this case it isnt metagaming as the actually RL plan was to try and force Germany to be bogged down in Belgium in a retry of WW1. And had they managed to react to the Ardennes push in time and stop that...it basically would have.
 
Daedwartin said:
The go to strat in MP is to basically force the Germans to have to grind itself against a maginot with a north flank of the Channel and a south flank of the Swiss border.

When it comes down to it, France doesnt really have the manpower or industry to try much of anything else. Ideally, you be able to slap down level 10 forts on basically the entire border of the Netherlands and Belguim with Germany...but in practice you need to just extend the maginot.

In this case it isnt metagaming as the actually RL plan was to try and force Germany to be bogged down in Belgium in a retry of WW1. And had they managed to react to the Ardennes push in time and stop that...it basically would have.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm doing SP so I can't really rely on the Benelux to build forts.

I don't really see trying to fight the Germans in the Benelux as being overly meta. It's more building a line of forts along the French/Belgian border that I see as overly meta because why would Germany invade through the Benelux as dictated by historical focuses if it just meant coming up against a different line of fortifications?

I didn't have as much of a problem building fortifications to stop Italy from invading over the mountains (as seen in some of my Netherlands games) because my understanding is that the French actually did have fortifications in the mountains and the Italians suffered massive casualties pushing through.

Maybe I need to review my focuses and build up plan. I focused a lot on fixing France's political and industrial problems and building up my factories and R&D capacity slot but not the army reform focuses. So I had medium tanks but not much land doctrine since the massive research penalties to land doctrines that France starts the game with made me avoid researching it.
 
Darthtabby said:
I don't really see trying to fight the Germans in the Benelux as being overly meta. It's more building a line of forts along the French/Belgian border that I see as overly meta because why would Germany invade through the Benelux as dictated by historical focuses if it just meant coming up against a different line of fortifications?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's historical too. France originally intended to fight in Belgium, honoring their 1920 alliance, but Belgium abrogated that treaty when they declared neutrality in 1936. That prompted France to extend the line to the sea. It was just too late to fortify to the same extent as the direct land border - plus, the local water table was too high for sufficient underground works.

The only difference in-game is that the player isn't limited by domestic politics.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top