The art of the Empire

Back in 2017, I gave a talk at the Sullivan Museum at Norwich University for May 4th called "The Art of Empire: World War 2 Influences in Star Wars," in which I took a look at how the iconography of Nazi Germany helped inspire the look and feel of the Galactic Empire. It was a fun talk to put together, and I had some friends from the 501st Legion come out to serve as living props during the event.

Here's the full talk, with some minor edits:

Introduction

The Star Wars franchise has become a global phenomenon since it was first released in the summer of 1977. Its eight films have collectively grossed over $.75 billion dollars in that time, and it’s inspired generations of artists, writers, filmmakers, and fans. 

There will be spoilers in this talk. 

The series opened with the story of a valiant band of rebels fighting against a technologically advanced Empire in the name of peace and justice in the galaxy. Over the course of the original three films we follow Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, and their friends and allies as they fight against Darth Vader and his evil Empire. Years later, a prequel trilogy of films followed Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi as a looming threat overtakes the Galactic Republic and transforms it into the Empire.

Star Wars has its roots in a number of places. George Lucas drew on foreign films such as The Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress, as well as war films such as Tora! Tora! Tora! and Bridge over the River Kwai, not only for their visuals, but for the stories they told. While Lucas borrowed from films, pulp novels, and comic books to put together his story, he drew other, deeper lessons and imagery to support his story from history.

I want to focus today on one particular element of the franchise: the visual design of the Galactic Empire, inspired in no small part from Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. This is done for a couple of reasons: movie-going audiences in the 1970s were familiar with the visual language that the Nazi represented: you can’t see a German uniform and think “oh, they might be the good guys.” The history of the rise of Germany also plays a role in the films: an evil Empire that came out of the ashes of a democratic parliamentary republic. 

So, let’s talk a little Star Wars history. 

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. 

Chronologically, the film franchise begins with The Phantom Menace, in which there’s a galactic republic. There’s allegations of corruption, a trade blockade, and the rescue of a young boy from a far off planet. The film helps to set the stage for what’s passing as normal in the galaxy: this Republic has stood for thousands of years, and it’s a pretty remarkable structure, with thousands of planets and alien races coming together to rule the galaxy in a representational government. The Phantom Menace is where the dominos begin to fall: one politician, Senator Palpatine, uses the trade dispute as a way to gain power, and he’s elected Supreme Chancellor. (Let’s remember that title for a moment.)

Jump a decade forward to the next film, Attack of the Clones. There’s a new crisis facing the galaxy. Thousands of planetary systems are looking to secede from the Republic — a crisis that’s orchestrated by Palpatine — and he puts together an army to help ensure that those systems stay in line. By the end of the film, war has broken out. Next up, there’s a TV series that details what goes on during the Clone Wars, and then we jump another couple of years to Revenge of the Sith, when the war comes to an end. There’s quite a bit of fighting, and the Jedi generals leading the military soon discover that Palpatine has orchestrated the conflict and is part of an ancient threat to their order. They attempt to assassinate him and when they fail, Palpatine enacts emergency orders in the Senate to seize control of the government. 

Boom. Control is willingly ceded to the guy who manipulated galactic events and we now have an Empire ruling the galaxy. Some people go along with this, others are not. In one of the novels set during this period, Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn, we see one military commander note that the Empire is made up of wealthy individuals who aren’t particularly competent, and there’s quite a bit of corruption. They mismanage their power over their constituents, which leads to a widespread rebellion. 

Cut forward another two decades, and you have the rebellion, seen in Rogue One, and A New Hope. The Empire relies heavily on military force and fear to hold the systems in line, and it creates the Death Star, to further hold onto power. They test it out on two planets before the Rebellion destroys it. 

The next two films follow the Rebellion as it fights against the Empire, and (spoilers), they end up destroying another Death Star, kill Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, and restore the Republic. Success! Only, sort of. The Empire and New Republic eventually work out a peace treaty, only to have a splinter group The First Order — which a former colleague has dubbed the Alt-Empire — rise up using the same rhetoric and taste in design, as seen in The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker. 

So, how does this relate to real life?

George Lucas noted that there’s some real parallels between real-world history and his story. Speaking to The Boston Globe in 2005, he said:

“I love history, so while the psychological basis of Star Wars is mythological, the political and social bases are historical. I like to take things and strip them down, then use the model and build a different story on it."

This is part of the key to the success of the franchise: it’s very relatable to a number of situations. While he was making the publicity rounds for Revenge of the Sith, he noted that 

“The Russian correspondents all thought the film was about Russian politics, and the Americans all thought it was about [George W.] Bush. And I said, "Well, it's really based on Rome. And on the French Revolution and Bonaparte." It's shocking that these things get repeated through history. The same mistakes get made and the tension between democracy and tyranny is always the same. And we haven't figured out any way around it.” 

Part of the story that Lucas put together falls into this category. When he set out to tell the story of Star Wars, he didn’t set out to retell WWII in space, although there’s elements of that: he was more inspired by the ongoing Vietnam War. In a recent biography, George Lucas: A Life, author Brian Jay Jones recounted that Lucas was inspired by “large technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters,” and even left notes in his drafts that drew on North Vietnam’s experiences fighting the United States, extrapolated out and turned into science fiction. 

These aren’t the only things that define Star Wars, but it was a starting point. In the prequel trilogy, Lucas draws heavily on the experience of Germany during the 1930s as an example of how a republic falls. Senator / Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s rise to power mirrors that of Adolf Hitler’s. Hitler was charismatic, and gained power through a variety of methods, including political rhetoric, attacking foreigners, and convinced people that the country needed a strong leader to guide it through uncertain times. Palpatine and Hitler each positioned themselves to be the leader that people want, and later, the person that the people need. 

So, those are some of the historical parallels.

Visual design of the Empire

Because film is a visual medium, filmmakers use tropes to signal things for the audience to pick up on without having to directly call it out. If you want to show off bad guys, Nazi soldiers are the best examples. This is what the Empire is: a fanatical, militant, and fascist government that uses harsh military tactics to achieve their goals. In a commentary track for The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas refers to them as Nazis. This is deliberate: over the course of the prequel trilogy, you see an ever-increasing militarized Republic.

We see this supported throughout the design language of the Empire itself. Whenever we see the Empire, they’re dressed in blacks, grays and whites, while the good guys are dressed in a broader array of colors. Costume designer John Mollo notes on a piece on StarWars.com that they looked extensively at history books to guide them for the costumes of those early films: 

"First of all, he wanted the Imperial people to look efficient, totalitarian, fascist; and the Rebels, the goodies, to look like something out of a Western or the US Marines."

He notes in that same article that they didn't rely directly on the uniforms of World War II; they also drew inspiration came from uniforms from the Prussian military and from German during World War I.

Another example of this is the use of the Imperial Stormtrooper, which gets its name from the fast-moving German units deployed during the First World War, and later the armed wing of the Nazi Party. These foot soldiers, seen in newsreel footage and Nazi party images, became the iconography of fascism. 

We see images of this throughout the Star Wars franchise. There’s the rows and rows of armored soldiers in Attack of the Clones, Return of the Jedi, and in The Force Awakens, and it’s pretty clear that the filmmakers for each of these films are drawing on this type of imagery to invoke the type of response from the audience.

Even in the latest film, Rogue One, filmmakers drew on specific World War II imagery to achieve this sort of connection. On the moon Jedha, director Gareth Edwards drew on images of a Paris occupied by Nazi German, while designers used the specific color scheme from a German warplane called the Messerschmitt for the shoretroopers.

Lucasfilm’s VP and Executive Creative Director Doug Chiang noted that “it makes that reinforcement of connecting it with something that we know from history, it makes that connection to Episode IV, which was World War II technology, vehicles, and colorations. So the shoretrooper, I think, is a wonderful blend of all those requirements into something new.”

These are things that we’ve seen outside of Star Wars as well. Just look at films such as The Hunger Games, Starship Troopers, the G.I. Joe cartoons, Indiana Jones (which explicitly includes Nazis!), and others. 

Star Wars is a story about standing up to those who abuse power, and overthrowing fascist dictators, and throughout the breadth of the franchise that followed, we've seen filmmakers and creators drawing on historical imagery and iconography to support that message. It's a useful tool to recall as our first-hand knowledge of the Second World War slides away.

A note about the 501st Legion, of whom I’m a member, and who’s here today as my visual aids. There’s a running joke that the Empire are the real good guys, and that we’re bad guys doing good, but I don’t believe that there’s any member in the group that actually sympathizes with what the Empire represents.

We do this work as a hobby, mainly because like the look of the armor, we enjoy putting it together, and like the opportunities that it affords us to do good in the community. The local 501st group here is the Green Mountain Squad, and we’ve done events ranging from Heart Walks to visits to the Vermont Children’s Hospital. As much as we should place stock in the visual iconography of this franchise, it's also valuable to distinguish between real and fictional ideologies.