[CaptainCrunch]

Its the shades of grey thing with the Empire for me. Yeah, you had space nazi's, but think about how easy it was to create them.

The Galaxy for years leading up to the switch to the Empire was corrupt, chaotic, the outer rims were enslaved to the core worlds. On top of it, the Republic talked anti-slavery, yet there were slaves all over the galaxy. I'm sure that the view of the senate was pretty low. As well the Jedi these mystical elites living in their palace and jamming their noses into planetary business with light sabre diplomacy.

The Count Dooku comes along and makes a speech that's basically, I was a jedi, but couldn't be anymore because they support a corrupt decaying Republic that is all about the core worlds living on the backs of the rim worlds. We offer a better way.

This leads to the Clone wars. We see mass genocides on worlds caused by both sides. We see the military industrial complex massively profiting. Probably a bunch of war taxes come in. We see a lot of aliens and droids on one side, against a largely human military on the other side. Chaos reigns, its pretty much the history of democracy in a huge galaxy.

Then you see the Jedi betraying the supreme chancellor in the republic in a move that looks like they want to seize power for themselves.

So Palpatine, the kindly looking senator is scared in an attack and he brings in a new order, he promises order and peace and one galaxy under one rule of law. Of course that's seductive. It was probably really easy to recruit people into the Imperial Military and government, because when give then choice of a full belly, or a vote, its pretty easy to decide.

Then we see the collapse of the Empire, overthrown by a rebellion that then fails to win the peace, and the galaxy devolves back into slavery and poverty, and crime lords taking over.

Yeah, you can see how zealots would be willing to do anything to establish order and believe that people will see the good old days under Stalin errr Palpatine. I mean it happened here with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and longing for the return of a strong leader like Stalin who could feed them and give them marching orders.

Its all shades of grey, Nazi's aren't born, they're made. Imperials weren't born they were made.

The average Stormtrooper or Imperial Pilot probably believes in the concepts of order, peace and security, because they see what the galaxy is like without them. Officers like the one last night are probably more of the extreme minority then the majority.