Should Kids Toons Be Allowed use Nazis When Appropriate?

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Giggidy!!

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If you?ve been following the new Avengers: Earth?s Mightiest Heroes toon, you?ll know that they?ve made some very significant changes to Captain America?s backstory. Namely, they?ve edited out any and all references to the Axis in his origin. Apparently Steve Rogers spent the 1940s battling the vile yet inoffensive and politically correct forces of HYDRA.

You can check out this short on Marvel?s youtube channel for the whole story.

Anyway this lead to a lot of heated debate over the issue. With one side arguing that S&P would never allow depictions of Nazi?s in a kids cartoon and that such portrayals would offend German and European audiences. Others argued that simply ignoring the real world history was just as insensitive and that other kids shows like Gargoyles, Justice League and the 90s X-Men toon had all managed to show relatively realistic depictions of the Axis powers.

I thought this might be a good spring board for discussing animated depictions of Nazis in general. So what do you think? Should superhero shows and other animated properties aimed at children be allowed to use Nazis when the story calls for it?
 
I'll have to watch the short later to get the context, but I absolutely believe that toons should be allowed to. Shoot, Spider-Man TAS and X-Men TAS got to reference them without a problem. If anything, they could have portrayed them even more frankly.
 
I remember watching a superman movie where they cursed and had Nazi aliens so, I don't see the big deal course' that was for the 15-year-old audience but, it got awesome ratings.
 
Im fine with it come on its history and they're going to find out about it eventually. Its not like if they see Nazis they're going to start hating Jews or something.
 
I don't see the problem with showing kids something in a cartoon that they're supposed to be learning about in school anyway. If you're lucky it might get them interested in history.

A friend of mine just reminded me that the 90s Spider-Man show was able to use a Nazi Red Skull and considering the crazy levels of S&P on that show, that's saying something.
 
I think they should have Nazis when appropriate, but not use any Nazi imagery (the swastika, the SS "double-lightning bolt" and death's head insignias, stuff like that.)
 
That sounds to me like an incredibly ridiculous change in Captain America's origin. Just about every other portrayal of him makes it clear he was created to help out American forces during the second World War, so why is it suddenly a problem now?

Not to mention the Nazi party is at this point, simply a page in history. This is nothing like say, that controversy with Medal of Honor allowing players to take control of the Taliban. There is no reason to pretend they don't exist within that universe when they clearly have some cheap stand-in for them.
 
Okay, I saw the short. Oh my God. You really weren't kidding, the Nazis were COMPLETELY replaced by this organization. Consider me soundly ticked off. That's outright whitewashing of history and completely unacceptable. Children don't have to be protected from this, they should be learning what was at stake in the damn war. Superheroes being rooted in our real world in some way is a huge part of what makes them relevant. This had better not become a trend. If this was mandated by Disney, then shame on it. Disney XD runs episodes of 1990s Spidey, which as I said had a Captain America arc and Nazis to go along with it. So this isn't even consistent for the network.
 
I think kids can handle a lot more than BS&P given them credit for. Kids get taught about WWII and Nazi's in schools so obviously the education system thinks they can handle it.

Plus it's not like they're going to go into the war crimes and concentration camps in the cartoons, they're just going to just the Nazi symbols, uniforms, and the word Nazi. That's hardly going to hurt children in any way.
 
I'm fine with them implementing Nazis tastefully (as in, no gratuitous blood or violence). They definitely shouldn't go in-depth (more-than-generalized war crimes, actual imagery, etc.), but an explanation isn't bad at all. Heck, by the end of elementary school, every kid knows something about Nazis.

It's not like they're having kids watch Schindler's List...
 
There are kids shows and then there are shows for iddy bitty wittle kiddies. And this is in no way a show for the latter. It?s not like kids will see this sandwiched between Teletubbies and Busytown Mysteries.

The show already has gun play, people getting blown-up, thrown from heights and squished flat, but somehow mentioning Nazis is a S&P problem? Seriously?
Despite that they are Nazis in every way.

If this was G.I. Joe, or if they put in the modern era it would be one thing, but this is 1940?s Europe at war.
You can't do WW2 without the major players.
If kids are old enough to watch this, they damn well better have an idea about what Nazis are.

This is outrageous.
 
Oh, lookie... a swastika in a Disney cartoon! From the "Gargoyles" episode: "M.I.A."

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And not even "blink and you'll miss it."

They even said the word "Nazis" in this episode... a lot. No one was scarred.

The Nazis are a sad part of our history, but they should not be shied away from. Especially if you're going to set something in World War II
 
GWOtaku, I just want you point out something out to you and a few other people in this thread. You say that HYDRA completely replaced the Nazis in A:EMH, but that's untrue. Take look at this quote from Yellowjacket (who's a producer on the show) posted in the A:EMH thread, particularly the last part.



So no, HYDRA has not replaced the Nazis in the cartoon. They just weren't mentioned, as Yellowjacket said.
 
I find nothing wrong with Nazis being portrayed in children's animation when it's appropriate for the story, but at the same time I'm going to wait for the behind the scenes word on this choice and err on the side of "I dislike that Nazis have to be avoided, but at least they wanted to use HYDRA to try and evoke the same image."

Better that than ignoring it all outright. And we're in a fictional universe where Thor is a fact of modern day life: it's REALLY not that much of a stretch to consider an organization like HYDRA was significantly involved in World War 2.
 
Somewhat True, but they did make a few changes to make it more low key... for instance the nazi symbol was replaced, and i don't think they ever made a direct reference to the Nazi's... if they did not call them the axis, i think they allowed the nazi forces to just go unnammed. Hitler himself made an appearance but was also never named. it was obvious they were the nazis but avoided saying as such

Granted, i will say i prefer they avoid naming the nazi's rather than acting like they never existed... I only skimmed through the short, but i could see they renamed them, changed the symbol and only referenced Red skull as a leader in the enemy forces; i don't even think they mentioned germany as far as saw. all in all HYDRA has more in common with COBRA than it does the nazi's...
 
i don't see a problem with using nazis. we cant ignore history and pretend that nazis never existed. also, nazis make for great villains. what else truly epitomizes pure evil?
 
Uh... no. Once again quoting Yellowjacket, who's a producer on the show...





They may have SHOWN HYDRA engulfing Europe, but it's clear that they're working with the Nazis.
 
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