The Emperor/Darth Vader: Hitler/Rommel?

Simple question, two ways of perciving the same character. Do you see the Emperor/Vader as Hitler/Rommel?

Hitler/the Emperor is the universal, "Bad Guy". A crazy crackpot who gets his kicks from conquering France/the Galaxy (and who wouldn't? ). A genocidal coocoo bird who mastered mind, totally commited to "evil". Bear with me.

Then we have Darth Vader/Rommel, one the Emperor's cheif executors. Both brilliant, ruthless (militarily), and calculating. Rommel and Vader both served the wrong side, and yet eventually both rejected and rebelled against their masters in the end. Anakin/Vader was mostly a military commander and special agent for the Emperor, hunting down the dangerous rebels known as the Jedi and serving the true galactic government that was once known as the old republic. We see Vader only kill military soldiers and have no evidence of him commiting genocide. Did Darth Vader order the cloud city destroyed when Lando tried to evacuate it? No. Why should we feel bad when Vader snaps a guys neck on the Tantive IV? He is technically a rebel soldier (claiming to be on a "diplomatic mission" which he's not), rebelling against the established galactic athority. Why shouldn't Vader have done it? If Rommel had once been an American officer and defected and fought the same way for the Nazis, wouldn't he still be owed some gruding respect? As most people give Rommel?

What's your view? I used mostly EU sources so tell me what you think.

 

I don't see either as Hitler, nor do I see the Empire as Nazi Germany. These views I save for Nil Spaar and the Yveetha. The Empire was evil and certainly treated alien species as scum. But there was none of the feeling of the "master race" that goes with Hitler and the Nazis. However, that feeling was there with Nil Spaar and the Yveetha.

Note: That use of mostly EU sources, what about Vader's Quest? He killed all those bounty hunters, who were civilians, to keep them from telling others about Luke Skywalker. Then there's Enemy of the Empire where Vader undoubtedly ordered the monks killed. Also Shadows of the Empire shows Vader ordering the deaths of Black Sun members in the climatic battle scene, though that can easily be pointed out as they were fighting against him and Xizor refused to follow Vader's orders. But there is also the fact from earlier in the book that Vader order the deaths of a large population of Xizor's homeworld in order to contain a deadly virus which his own scientists had created. Vader certainly seems possible of killing non-soldiers.l

 

Ah, but in the long run Palpatine did have a veiw of Humans being the "Master Race". He certainly didn't have any qualms about whiping out entire races. That was the "noble" mission of the Azogog (sic) in Boba Fett: Agent of Doom. The cheif commander said that "Palpatine had a vision of a galaxy cleansed of all but humans. His death does not invalidate his views." Or something like that.

I agree, the comparisons are crude on some levels. But in broad strokes I feel they work.

 

"Note: That use of mostly EU sources, what about Vader's Quest? He killed all those bounty hunters, who were civilians, to keep them from telling others about Luke Skywalker."

With the exception of an honorable few, most bounty hunters are really just paid murders (like Bossk and Montross for example). Most hardly take the time to bring in their "prey" alive when dead will do.

"Then there's Enemy of the Empire where Vader undoubtedly ordered the monks killed."

Certainly a questionable action, but still the recovery of the chest was considered a matter of galactic importance.

"Also Shadows of the Empire shows Vader ordering the deaths of Black Sun members in the climatic battle scene, though that can easily be pointed out as they were fighting against him and Xizor refused to follow Vader's orders."

Vader was really doing the people of Coruscant a favor by killing off the black sun, one of the most notorious crime syndacates in the galaxy, which caused untold suffering.

"But there is also the fact from earlier in the book that Vader order the deaths of a large population of Xizor's homeworld in order to contain a deadly virus which his own scientists had created. Vader certainly seems possible of killing non-soldiers."

If an unstoppible plauge was ravaging America and threatined the whole planet, would the annihalation of the infected zone by nuclear strike be considered amoral? It's debatable, but Vader's action may well have saved the rest of the planet from death, including others who may have been infected if the disease got off world.

True, Vader certainly has killed non soldiers. But no more so than other Allied Generals have that ordered the bombing of civilan population to "break the enemy's will", which mostly resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of non combatants. Is it tragic? Of course yes. Was there a better way? Probably. Does it still fall in the guidelines of waging a "just" war? Debatable certainly, but no war was ever fought without civilian causalties.

It's a fascinating debate to be sure.

 

Vader is nothing at all like Rommel.
Erwin Rommel was the youngest field commander ever in Germany and was given a Panzar unit, with which, he took France over with.
Rommel however wasnot a Nazi. He disliked the party and avoided them when he could. He was also well liked by his men, and worked along side them. There is a famous picture with him helping his aides push a stuck car out of a mud pit.
He also took many risks upon himself and conducted several scouting missions over enemy territory, almost getting captured when he nearly landing in the wrong spot.
In France, Hitler ordered him killed after he was mentioned in a plot to kill the German leader. He died in order to save his family from humiliation.
In short:
Rommel: Cares for men, excellent tactition, well liked by men, has a strong honor.
Vader: Poor tactics (Blunt force) has men fear him, wastes soldiers and killed his own master.

In my Opinion, Rommel was not an evil man. He was honorable and while he inflicted many casualties among the British and American forces, he was seen by almost everyone as a great military leader.

These are some parallels, but they are not very similier save for they were both pilots and leaders.

 

Rommel: Cares for men, excellent tactition, well liked by men, has a strong honor.

"Vader: Poor tactics (Blunt force)"

Darth Vader was in reality an excellent tactiction who fought beside his own men on several occasion. I refer you to the second battle against the Traitor Zarrin in which Vader flew with a small group of TIE defenders through a rediculously defended section of space. Vader also lead the final assault on Yavin IV personally (GBG).


"has men fear him,"

I'll give you that he used fear as a motivator to not fail him. But he didn't ALWAAYS snap people's necks for failing him.

"wastes soldiers"

I've never seen Vader in the EU waste troops except for clone stormtroopers.

"killed his own master."

That's a negative? That's exactly what you said Rommel tried to do!!!

 

Rommel was a smart man, but please don't exaggerate so heavily. He did not take over France. He was not even in charge of it. He simply commanded a armored division in the assault. His orders regarding the Maginot Line were impressive, but not nearly enough to award credit for conquering France....

 

Erwin Rommel was a soldier, plain and simple. He had no interest in the Nazi ideal nor the racial purification which it is doubtful he was aware of. Most citizens in Nazi Germany were unaware at the time.

Vader was fully aware of the Emperors ideals and joined him in his quest to destroy the Republic, regardless of his redemption he was a willing participant in the Jedi purge.

While Rommel was a briliant tactician, Vader was not. Vader was a briliant pilot and warrior, not a commander. He threw away the lives of his troops with a complete disregard for their well being. Knight1192 is right in his conclusions.

If Rommel can be associated with anyone in the GFFA it would most likely be General Veers. Thrawn can be ruled out because of his willingness to participate in the Emperors conquests, whereas Veers was a soldier like Rommel.

However, the Hitler/Palpatine comparison is quite apt and i agree.

 

Another thing to consider is subterfuge. Emperor Palps loved this game and was a master of it. Vader hated it. What about Hitler and Rommel?

Vader is a warrior. Plain and simple. And his tactics are crap. In, I think, TTT, Pellaeon wonders whether the Battle of Endor would have gone differently had Thrawn and not Vader been in charge of the fleet. I think Thrawn would have annihilated the Rebel fleet had he been there. Utterly. Full stop.

 

Cetainly the Empire had fascist elements to it. The Emperor, much like Caesar or his adopted son, Octavian, were abolsute monarchs, or as the Romans called them, Dictators. All power flowed from a single individual, in this case, the Emperor or Hitler. Don't confuse personality vs. policy.

Both Nazi Germany and the Empire had regulations on pretty much everything, limiting freedom of speech, destroying subversive material and people, and in Germany's case, had strict criteria on who could be admitted into the Waffen SS- height, weight, eye color, number of teeth, etc. while the in the waning days of the Old Republic, Dooku selected a man who had ideal physical traits in Jango Fett- Strong, smart, athletic, and an all around good soldier. Such a thing is a more refined and/or advanced method of screening for who you want to be in you army.

Both the Nazis and the Empire elimated officers who failed. Let's not forget that Hitler ordered Rommel to commit suicide when the commies were knocking on Berlin's door. Vader executed numerous officers who failed him.

Both the Empire and Nazi had favored corporations- Hugo Boss made Nazi uniforms, Porsche made tanks, etc. while KDY and Santhe-Seinar made ships and weapons. Corporations in these conditions tend to flourish because they can use low paid or non-paid slave labor to build whatever they wanted. The only difference here is no one would trade with the companies in Germany once things got rolling. Though there is a story of a German submarine that surfaced in New York harbor and traided some dyes they were carrying.

Both the Empire and fascist Germany regulated what people could see and here. Book burnings aren't just a myth. The Empire had COMNOR, the SAGs, Art and the ISB. All of these organizations existed to preserve the 'New Order', which both groups espoused.

 

Kier_Nimmion:Let's not forget that Hitler ordered Rommel to commit suicide when the commies were knocking on Berlin's door.

Rommel was actually given the option of committing suicide by drug overdose or having his family murdered for his part in an attempt on Hitler's life. Wilhelm Canaris was incarcerated in a concentration camp for the same plot, and executed shortly before the Allies freed the camp.

 

"Vader is a warrior. Plain and simple. And his tactics are crap. In, I think, TTT, Pellaeon wonders whether the Battle of Endor would have gone differently had Thrawn and not Vader been in charge of the fleet."

But Vader WASN'T the commander at Endor. He was rather busy at the time you know.

I have no idea where this idea comes from that Vader is an idiot tactically. He is a very able commander. Since the first two examples weren't enough to convince you, here are a few more.

Vader's tactic to destroy the (from the bridge of an SD) rebel ship in "Empire" was fairly complex, and it worked like a charm.

Anakin Skywalker was also a great commander during the Clone Wars and frequently had zero casualties among his wingmates during the war (SW the Clone War).

 

Rommel is in no way a parallel for Darth Vader. As others have mentioned, Rommel parallels General Veers. There isn't really a good parallel for Darth Vader with-in the Nazi high command - all those who were openly loyal to Hitler did not have the personal self-discipline Vader shows right to the last moment. Those who wavered in their loyalty were either swept out of harm's way, or framed for treason and disposed of in rather unpleasant methods.

 

As someone said above, Vader wasn't really in command at Endor. Although Vader was supposedly in charge of the Imperial Navy, all of the Star Destroyers were ordered to not attack and wait for the Death Star to end things. This was the order of the Emporer.

If someone can answer this question: In ESB Vader chokes Ozzel because he alerted the Rebels too early and a clean bombardment was no longer possible. What tactic did Vader have in mind? If they mean to have a Star Destroyer appear over Hoth and conduct a bombardment (as in Rebel Dream (or Rebel Stand)) I have to wonder how that would be accomplished. If they wanted to send wings of TIE Bombers to do it, wouldn't they be detected anyway?

I feel that Vader's fault as a commander is that he doesn't give the person another chance. I thought Captain Needa was a cool guy and shouldn't have been killed. Ozzel didn't strike the same cord with me but he didn't really get a chance to show what he could do.

 

Rommel never tried to kill Hitler. I just said that his name came up after Hitler was attacked and as a result, he was a suspect and killed.

 

Basically Vader turned a disaster at Hoth into a victory, here's why.

Ozzel scewed up the whole plan by jumping the fleet much too deep into the Hoth system. This gave the rebels FAR to much time to prepare a defense and evacuate, rather than being totally suprized and cut off from the begining. The energy feild was suppost to be destroyed first, now it's the biggest threat to the Imperials.

Vader then orders a risky move, he tells the army to mount a surface attack against the sheilds to open up the planet to further attack. The plan works, the sheild is destroyed and the invasion of Hoth is a sucess.

Dispite a large evacuation, Hoth was a defeat that nearly cripped the Rebel Alliance. They were forced to abandon most of their equipment and lost many lives.

 

Interesting points; the fact of the matter is that the U.S. was in a massive, ugly depression in the 1930s, and living hugely beyond its means, and Germany was kept in a state of perpetual penury the whole while.

Consider, for example, that the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI had created such economic hardship in middle Europe that the German people were ripe for the rise of a demagogue mountebank who could point out an evil to combat; if we hadn't purposely kept Germany in a state of total starvation and used it as an economic whipping boy in the 1920s and 1930s, there'd have been little room for the rise of a fascistic Nazi Party, and their economy could well have made a rolling adjustment, and conquered a fair share of the world in a civil fashion, by exporting technology and manufacturing.

(Think about it; Germany was the fount of organic and manufacturing chemistry, and created mechanical and design technology we're still using...everyone laughed at the idea of mass-produced aluminum/magnesium engine blocks, but Herr Porsche found ways to do it. If we'd let them deal on the international market like grownups, instead of shooting them down into starvation, they could have made us pay through the nose for Volkswagens, and not felt a need to invade their neighbors for "lebensraum." Herr Shicklgruber would never have become "Hitler," and would have eked out a tawdry existence as a minor landscape painter and interior decorator...people in the U.S. would have been driving VWs instead of Fords, and six million Jewish folks would have stayed alive, to contribute to the economic renaissance of middle Europe.)

 

JediTrilobite: Trust me, yes he was. His name, along with Canaris, came up for a very good reason. I have a personal insight into this.

Generally, Vader did have a parallel in Nazi Germany: Admiral Doenitz. Became Axis CinC after Hitler's suicide and surrendered after the Allies took Berlin. Known for being viscious and executing his men on a whim.

 

I've always been of the opinion that Lucas seemed to base Moff Tarkin in no small part upon the real-life Reinhard Heydrich, SS Obergruppenführer, military governor of Czechoslovakia, and one of the primary architects of the Holocaust. (Known as "The Blond Beast" and "Hangman Heydrich" by many.)

Just take a look at Kenneth Branagh's performance as Heydrich in the HBO film Conspiracy...it's eerily similar to Peter Cushing's ruthlessness, and even has him outclassed, in certain areas. Real life, as they say, is always more chilling than fiction.

 

Masterskywalker,

your explanation is that they should have jumped into the system at the far edge so the Rebels wouldn't know they were there? How were they to get from the edge to Hoth? My recollection is that the Rebels were alerted by the probe droid so when the ships showed up they raised the shields. But I still have to ask how the Imperials were going to acheive surprise unless they did an intersystem jump and I don't think they generally do that with capital ships.

Vader has no parallels in Nazi Germany because after a certain point, Hitler ran the show which is why they lost everything. Up through the end of Empire, the Emporer really wasn't portrayed as anything but an old man. In the novelization of ANH, the prologue makes it seem as if Palpatine is merely a figurehead (Journal of the Whills). In ESB, he still seems like a normal guy who says, "Hey Darth, what are we gonna do about this Skywalker kid?" Vader says "He'll join us or die" and Palpatine says (basically) "Sounds good. Carry on." It is not till Jedi that he is absolute ruler. And it is not until the Zahn trilogy that we hear he was force controlling the entire fleet so that they didn't know what to do when he died.

Anyway, I feel the big difference is that we can respect the Emporer and Vader whereas the Nazis ultimately had deluded themselves to the point of insanity. In the movie with Kenneth Brannagh they debate all these things they are going to do and we know that ultimately they have no hope. The forces of the Empire could indeed have put down the Rebellion.

 

Obviously jumping right on top of the rebels was a bad idea. From Vader's comment in the movie, "Admiral Ozzel came out of lightspeed too close to the system", "He is as clumsy as he is stupid". It sounds like they were probably going to atempt either an insystem jump, or giving their fleet more time to deploy and manuver to blockade the system so that NOTHING could get out (Like the seige of Yavin IV). Ozzel blew all that in a vain atempt to impress Vader.

 

The difficulty I have with the Vader/Rommel linkage is that I don't see Vader as a purely military figure.

He's more quasi-military or para-military, Vader seems to be all over the place as Palp's second, wielding power that in a military sense he perhaps should not have. This reminds more of Himmler than Rommel. Himmler was Hitler's second in command. He had his own troops in the Waffen SS, Vader was known to have Dark Adepts, as was Palpatine, though both ensured their students became a threat. Although was Vader plotting just such on Bespin?

Certainly Vader wholeheartedly believes in the ideals of the Empire and the Sith, the former being a belief held long before his fall, consider TAS and AOTC. I'm not sure Rommel was ever such a 'believer', but Himmler most certainly was and was the man who created the Final Solution at Hitler's behest.

As for Palp/Hitler, that works but isn't necessarily new. The idea of linking Vader to Rommel, not sure it works but no one else seems to have done it as far as I can recall.

Jedi Ben

 

The main reason I say the two are more similar than anyone else is that they were both THE most feared commanders in the Empire/Germany, and they both "betrayed" their masters (for different reasons).

There weren't many other high ranking German officers who openly rebelled against Hitler the way Vader did.

 

Well, in that case, my alternative of Himmler still works as it has become known Himmler attempted to make a deal with the Allies, thus betraying his Master as it were.

Jedi Ben

 

I don't know where Adm_voss_parck got his information on Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz. The Grand Admiral was greatly admired and respected by the men who served under him. I have never once heard of U-bootwaffe sailors and Kriegsmarine personnel being executed "on a whim". At his funeral in 1980, thousands of his former comrades (including serving members of the Bundesmarine) attended to pay their respects (source).

Overall, Doenitz is a worse match for a parallel to Vader than Rommel. The only name offered as a good parallel to anyone in the SW universe is Reinhard Heydrich to Grand Moff Tarkin.