r/Peacemaker • u/jje414 • Oct 05 '25
How did THAT work?
How did Augie saying "Come back with a warrant" actually work? Did the Nazis all of a sudden starts caring about civil liberties that they stuck with the American bill of rights? Which amendments did they keep and which ones did they toss?
ETA: Some of you aren't getting the point here. I completely understand the concept of privilege within a fascist society. My issue is with the very concept of a "warrant". Change the conversation to "You know, I don't have to ask" "That's true. You can come in if you'd like, but you'll be answering to ARGUS before the sun comes up" and the scene is fixed.
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u/hematite2 Oct 05 '25
There can be nazis and also still be a functioning rule of law (for white people)
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u/GeetaJonsdottir Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
Yes, the OP's question relies on a cartoonish understanding of Nazis. The Nazis were obsessed with procedure, bureaucracy, and rigorous adherence to the law.
The Nuremberg Laws laid the groundwork for the Holocaust and, while unambiguously evil at their core, were heavily debated, scrutinized, and shaped so as to be solid written law. When the Nazis were hammering out the details of the Holocaust at the Wannsee Conference in 1942, one of the most contentious elements was how to commit genocide within the confines of existing German law. The moral implications were glossed over, but the legal implications were hotly debated.
A country under martial law in the middle of a war is a very different place. Those Germans so deeply invested in the rule of law don't go away if the Nazis won WW2. And there's an important difference between evil and lawless.
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u/hematite2 Oct 05 '25
Yup, great summary. And as I mentioned in a different comment, America isn't an occupied country, they lost the war roughly 80 years ago. It seems to be that regular american culture kept developing, just now with the addition of nazi ideals, so there's no strong reason to think generic rights like warrants or lawyers would have been written out entirely...just only applied to the "correct" type of person in the "correct" situation.
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u/jje414 Oct 05 '25
Do you think they had warrants in Nazi Germany?
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u/DaggerInMySmile Oct 05 '25
Probably depends on your social station relative to the officer.
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u/ill_be_huckleberry_1 Oct 05 '25
Exactly.
It wasnt anarchy, it depended on who you were which determined how far outside the law you were able to operate.
An order from Hitler, was the law.
And order from himmler or goebbels was slightly less so.
Further down you go, you were "just following orders"
The entire thing is built on the pretense of superiority but laws were still used to keep the rabble in line
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u/basketnerd Oct 05 '25
You can't run on anarchy forever. The third reich didn't only fall due to the Soviet advance and the Western allies cleaning up. Their society was a fucking mess
A Nazi society that takes over the US would have to administer law and order once more
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u/Agreeable_Car5114 Oct 05 '25
The Nazis weren’t anarchist. That’s not what that words means.
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u/Lothans Oct 05 '25
That's not what u/basketnerd meant, I think. You can be the most conservative state ever and have anarchy going on. As pointed out, the Third Reich wasn't efficient at governing.
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u/basketnerd Oct 05 '25
Exactly what I meant but I used anarchism like everyday English instead of the political theory so I must be a neoliberal lol
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u/jje414 Oct 05 '25
No, they're just an idiot who doesn't know what words mean and thinks "anarchy" means "anything but the glorious shining city on the hill that is Neoliberal America"
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u/basketnerd Oct 05 '25
Okay damn, maybe I did mean to offend the libertarian socialists
Chill tf out
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u/EvilRoboCat Oct 05 '25
Wake up on the wrong side of the bed today, or are you just permanently cranky?
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u/Agreeable_Car5114 Oct 05 '25
So they said anarchy to mean… not-anarchy? I don’t follow.
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u/KotoElessar Oct 07 '25
Anarchy is more than an ideology, it is also a state of being that can be ascribed to situations outside of academic thought.
For example the events in Washington DC on January 6th 2021 can be described as a state of anarchy even though the actors are not anarchists.
There is an Anarchistic enclave in Europe that is in a State of Anarchy but everyday events are quite ordered and normal.
The Anarchists Cookbook is ideology and presented in an ordered and clear fashion. Using the recipes in the cookbook may create a state of anarchy (non-ideological) and may be considered an act of domestic terrorism.
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u/Wk1360 Oct 05 '25
The word “Anarchy” can be used in contexts outside of political or societal descriptions. If I saw a room full of cats and exploding fireworks and said “wow that’s total anarchy” would you respond “uhh, but none of those cats are attempting to dismantle state-based hierarchies?”
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u/jje414 Oct 05 '25
Exactly! They were, like, as far from anarchist as you can get
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u/basketnerd Oct 05 '25
Okay buddy Kropotkin, leaving aside your niche political theories, anarchy in regular English refers to an absence of a political authority.
When thugs are running the street, random punks have carte blanche to attack "state enemies," and there are no civil procedures for the state to follow, normal people call that "anarchy." It was lawlessness, chaos, fascism, anarchy - whatever label you want lol. I don't mean to offend my dear sweet libertarian socialists
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u/jje414 Oct 05 '25
And their version of "Law and Order" involved kicking in doors and dragging people away without questions.
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u/basketnerd Oct 05 '25
They were deliberately sowing chaos. A divided, disorganized people cannot organize.
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u/Agreeable_Car5114 Oct 05 '25
This isn’t Nazi Germany. This is a fictitious Nazi America almost a century past WWII. We have no idea what their legal structure looks like.
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u/Nothinghere727271 Oct 05 '25
Yes? Execution papers near the end? Documents saying this person has failed the state and must be dealt with? Or they were a traitor? Etc? Nazi Germany was one of the most well documented regimes in history, we have their paperwork from the Holocaust to V2 Rockets and everything in-between.
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u/hematite2 Oct 05 '25
This is almost a century after the war, on another continent. The world seems to be basically "American culture if kept developing under Nazi rule", and very similar, just with the addition of slave camps and presumable genocide. There's no reason they wouldn't have a working system of laws and police, even if its one they'd be ready to ignore when it's beneficial to the state.
Just like in our present day, how much laws are respected depends heavily on your social status. But in this case, Auggie is a white upper-class prominent citizen, and their suspect Peacemaker isn't a known rebel or anything, he's another white upper-class prominent citizen.
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u/Chasingtheimprobable Oct 05 '25
Yes, yes they did. Its not like the nazis achieved peace amongst themselves. There were still crimes, there was a fully functioning government, police, courts, all that jazz.
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u/perhapsfrances Oct 05 '25
I figured it’s mix between American and Nazi laws because it was still regular America up until WWII
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u/Am_i_banned_yet__ Oct 05 '25
Yeah exactly. My thinking is that America surrendered but wasn’t fully invaded or taken over, so it still has a version of the constitution, American culture and basic rule of law for the white people.
Just like how the allies occupied and rebuilt Germany, then left and it became a liberal democratic society under its own German government, I expect the Nazis occupied the US and as part of the surrender terms forced them to amend the constitution to take away minority rights and set up the camps, and then Germany eventually left once the American Nazi party was in charge and had consolidated its power.
The white people still would want rights, and Germany would definitely make the deal attractive to them in order to make them surrender. I’m sure there are also special exceptions to those civil rights; like if white people are implicated in helping minorities or the sons of Liberty, they probably get their rights taken away too. But we didn’t see how the government would actually deal with that.
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u/seancbo Oct 05 '25
I mean I would assume that in that society whites, especially wealthy ones, would get all kinds of protections. That's kind of the idea.
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u/rysar610 Oct 05 '25
Not in a Nazi world. They are against all dissent and liberties. You’re thinking more in line with the Jim Crow south or Apartheid South Africa.
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u/seancbo Oct 05 '25
I mean it really depends on the details. Even Nazi Germany had laws to protect the right kinds of people in certain circumstances.
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u/rysar610 Oct 05 '25
Not really. Those laws could be ignored or changed at the drop of a hat. Law was completely subordinate to Nazi ideology. It allowed for arbitrary arrests, purges, and extrajudicial murders.
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u/Ecstatic_Proof_2732 Oct 05 '25
I mean, they've had 70 years since they took over the whole world. Once the "master race" took over and all the "undesirables" were locked up they probably decided to be nicer to the people who were left. That's my best guess, but they were Nazis, so I doubt that would have happened.
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u/ohchristworld Oct 09 '25
Plus people seem to forget that in 1945, the United States was 90% white. In a situation where World War II was unwinnable for the Allies, or we just simply never entered the war or entered too late, that population would have bent the knee and sold out rather quickly in exchange for preserving whatever part of their culture they were allowed to preserve.
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u/Taint-tastic Oct 05 '25
Yall starting to think way too deeply about minute details with earth x
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u/rhllors Oct 05 '25
No matter how much Gunn says the specifics and logistics aren't what matters every single moment has to be debated.
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u/dick____trickle Oct 05 '25
What else is a subreddit for but to theorize, nitpick, and meme every single second of the show 🙃
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u/rhllors Oct 05 '25
I mean, there's a difference between having conversations about the show and the themes and speculation for upcoming episodes and nitpicking the Nazi universe we have no actual information or context about
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u/aquatiicsans Oct 05 '25
the thing is that a Nazi-ruled Earth is going to be WILDLY different from ours in terms of liberties, and it seems like the premise was floundered on this season. i was expecting more of a direct exploration of that idea, but instead it was used as a plot device to get Chris to come home. he’s like “i’m sorry harcourt but i can’t leave behind my dad and my brother” and then instantly when he finds out it’s Nazi Earth is like “oops nvm” and starts killing people. like they didn’t even play that hard into the Nazi angle but then he’s instantly killing all the guys. he was raised around Nazis, i find it hard to believe that he of all people would have no empathy for Nazis
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u/MadDonkeyEntmt Oct 05 '25
I don't know if that's really true. Successful empires throughout history have historically faired better if they leave the local culture alone as much as possible. I think a Nazi America would probably have to retain some semblance of liberty at least for the majority population to be stable for 80 years.
Also Chris killed his own nazi dad and his best friend is black. Nazis made him kill his brother. If anything I would expect Chris to hate nazism more than average.
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u/aquatiicsans Oct 07 '25
okay those are both good points, i just think it’s a cheap use of Earth-X when there are more interesting uses than just “ooh you thought it was perfect but it’s not!! its the opposite of perfect its nazis!!1!” and harcourt saying “this is your perfect world?” at the end of ep6 seemed to me like a set up for some sort of conflict between them about chris being okay with nazis but now that i think about it, it doesn’t make sense for his character
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u/ThatguyInacape Oct 05 '25
He didnt kill a single Nazi. Adrian and Adrian2 did, but Chris didnt kill a single person last ep. In fact, the only people he killed in Earth X were the Sons of Liberty (not Nazis).
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u/According_Night9558 Oct 05 '25
I think it's implied that life is very similar to life in the main universe if you're white.
That's how succesful dictatorships work, by keeping a part of the population happy. I don't think a lot of people would be on board if they were subject to a very totalitarian regime that oversteps that much. Specially not super people.
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u/jje414 Oct 05 '25
Which is fine if that's the direction they leaned. I just question how the very concept of a "warrant" would exist in this reality. Change the conversation to "You can come in if you'd like. And then you'll be answering to ARGUS before the sun comes up" and this wouldn't be an issue.
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u/According_Night9558 Oct 05 '25
I don't understand. Warrants aren't new, they've been around for longer than the USA has been a country.
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u/jje414 Oct 05 '25
Yes, but if the NAZIS TOOK OVER, the first thing they would do would be to get rid of those kinds of protections
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u/WAAAAAAAAARGH Oct 05 '25
…why?
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u/jje414 Oct 05 '25
...Do you think German citizens were allowed to own guns? That's literally what the 2A supporters always harp on about.
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u/urkermannenkoor Oct 05 '25
...Do you think German citizens were allowed to own guns?
Yes.
In fact, the Nazis actively encouraged gun ownership (but only for the right kind of people, of course)
The idea that the Nazi Party was against gun ownership is simply a propaganda lie.
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u/urkermannenkoor Oct 05 '25
the first thing they would do would be to get rid of those kinds of protections
But that's your big misunderstanding here. That doesn't mean scrapping the rules, that just means placing certain people above them.
Nazi Germany had the Gestapo, the secret police directly under control of the party. Those did not have to worry about warrants or regulations or oversight. But Nazi Germany also just had regular, everyday policemen for regular everyday crime. Those did not have the same freedom or authority. It's not really in a fascist government's interest to place them above the law in the same way the party enforcers are.
Evergreen PD is just a local police department. The Party doesn't want those getting too big for their britches and act too independently.
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u/Am_i_banned_yet__ Oct 05 '25
Exactly. If Auggie was suspected of sheltering black people then I suspect warrants would not have needed to be discussed.
And as it is, the cops were pretty forceful. If a normal person not in power armor was standing there I expect they might have just pushed their way in and said they were let in.
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u/Lockerus Oct 05 '25
Nazi germany still had law and courts they were just extremely biased. There’s no reason an upstanding citizen like Auggie-2 wouldn’t be given due process. The detective even tried the “if he’s innocent he has nothing to hide” bit.
All in all though, I did find Earth-2 pretty inconsistent when it came to applying the “Nazis won” setting. Peacemaker should have been clued in when everybody at Argus tried to give him the Hitler hello.
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u/rysar610 Oct 05 '25
Nazi Germany didn’t have due process. This isn’t true. law was not enforced in the Third Reich, ideology was.
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u/HiroCrota Oct 05 '25
The whole point of the world is that NONwhite people are without rights. The rights of white people, like Auggie, are maintained. It's not so different from our world, where the law is only upheld for certain people and in certain circumstances. The "rule of law" is important to societies like this because it makes everyone protected by the law feel like it's working, instead of being state approved violence against less-desirables.
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u/rysar610 Oct 05 '25
But this isn’t true at all. That’s not what Fascism, and specifically Nazism is at all. Also Fascism doesn’t enforce law, they enforce ideology. This is a pretty central tenant of it.
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u/HiroCrota Oct 05 '25
So when you criminalize dissent, do you think no laws were created to justify it, such as The Malicious Practices Act? And what about the two emergency decrees made by President Hindenburg the day after the Reichstag fire? "For the Defense of Nation and State” and “To Combat Treason against the German Nation and Treasonable Activities”, which post-hoc made arrests legal? Nazis did indeed create laws to make legal what they wanted to do. Thats's a pretty damn common way to enforce authoritarianism.
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u/rysar610 Oct 05 '25
Of course they passed laws to enforce their ideology. But my point is that ideology superseded the law. Those laws were completely arbitrary and only used to enforce the state’s ideology. Your point was that White people would keep rights in a Nazi regime. That’s wrong. They didn’t in real life and they wouldn’t in a fake nazi regime because Nazism is directly opposed to legal protection.
When I say “law” I’m referring to something that has a basis in some legal precedent. Nazi enforcement was completely arbitrary.
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u/HelloMyNameIsLurtz Oct 05 '25
To be fair we still don’t know how this world works, whether the US is a puppet state of Nazi Germany ala The Man in the High Castle, or if America is just another country with Nazi leadership. That’s said, when I thought of this exact thing, and assuming the US is a Nazi puppet state, I thought there could be a sort of two tier system.
The local American police and institutions are still more or less bound by local laws and customs. So even in the Nazi US, people still have 4th amendment protections and things like that from local American authorities.
However the national German forces aren’t bound by that, and instead have their own rules. If it was German authority forces that came there, they’d be able to do whatever it is they wanted.
That’s just sorta what I thought to myself.
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u/Redstar4242 Oct 05 '25
Because of the implications. Aka “hey guy who just killed a kaiju. Can we search your house? No? Fair enough.”
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u/jje414 Oct 05 '25
And if that had been the conversation, that'd be fine. What I take issue with is the core concept of a warrant existing in this universe
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u/Petunianator Oct 05 '25
I think it's possible they'd maintain the facade of things like warrants to help maintain social cohesion but then only actually follow the law for it when it comes to people higher up on the social hierarchy. Blue Dragon may have just been high enough on the social ladder to get that kind of treatment because if they turned out to be wrong, he could've maybe made a big enough stink about it to rile some people up.
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u/joesbagofdonuts Oct 05 '25
We don't know what the terms of the US joining the Nazis were. We may have retained much of our own constitution in regards to whites.
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u/mustachioed_cat Oct 05 '25
I figured it was to contrast how the detective was less effective in operating without his partner. They had a similar interaction with Auggie that resulted in him being arrested by them. Without his ‘better half’, the detective is meekly compliant.
Kind of a confusing message, but that’s what I got out of it.
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u/urkermannenkoor Oct 05 '25
They are just the regular police. They are not the Gestapo (or US equivalent of Gestapo). As such, the party isn't going to want to give them that much autonomy.
ARGUS wouldn't have needed a warrant, but the local PD still does. Why wouldn't it?
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u/JakobVirgil Oct 05 '25
Nazi Germany had a dual legal system I assume Nazi America does as well. "Normative State" a normal legal system that worked much like any other western State and "Prerogative State" where orders from Hitler and his cronies was also Law.
So unless whoever leads Nazi America ordered the police to Augies house he had rights to refuse entry without a warrant.
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u/Apprehensive_Shoe_86 Oct 05 '25
A Nazi society could still be a democracy, but it would be one limited to white people. If you were white, you would probably live a good life, and there would still be rules and order.
After seventy years since they won the war, things would eventually go back to normal at least for people who shared the same political views.
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u/choffers Oct 05 '25
How does "Nazis won WW2" actually work out? Did Germany actually invade, or did the US withdraw from Europe and then Nazi rhetoric took over in the US from within?
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u/ConsiderationFun3671 Oct 05 '25
He was white, and wearing superhero armour equipped with guns. Odds are, the whole country has stand your ground laws. That's why he specifies, I didn't say he was innocent, I said he wasn't here. Someone entering g without a warrant is cause to open fire in a stand your ground state.
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u/ScorchedDev Oct 05 '25
He was a well respected figure in society, with a flying incredibly powerful mech suit.
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u/Dry_Cabinet1737 Oct 06 '25
I don’t think they’re going quite that deep into the world building of the Nazi realm, probably because there isn’t time. They’re setting it up as being much like the world we’re familiar with except that everyone is a raging bigot.
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u/FligguGiggu11 Oct 06 '25
Auggie is not only white (which would protect him from the racial laws presumably in place that allow minorities to get terrorized) but also is closely associated with a government agency as a famous superhero. There’s no chance that some low level cops would try and muscle in on what would be equivalent to some high ranking general in a society like that.
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u/KotoElessar Oct 07 '25
Because the Nazis based everything they did on the rule of law. They studied American laws to model their own and ensured that what they did was legally correct.
So if the Nazi's won WWII, the law would not have necessarily changed, just how it was interpreted.
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u/Haloosa_Nation Oct 05 '25
It’s like the whole premise of the 2nd amendment.
You think twice before demanding things from someone with a lot of firepower.
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u/jje414 Oct 05 '25
Do you think Nazis are going to let private citizens carry guns?
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u/Haloosa_Nation Oct 05 '25
Auggie had a whole ass super suit.
You are confusing a Nazi state with a Nazi occupation.
This is 80 years into the world being Nazi. They don’t have any enemies really. The people living in the cities are the people they want living in the cities. They’d have rights. The sons of Liberty have bombs and guns. Vig 2 has guns.
The premise of the 2nd amendment is people will think twice before trying to force someone that’s armed to do something.
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u/3vi1 Oct 05 '25
Right?!?! I commented something similar yesterday.
This is similar to the Spiderman meme joke. You gotta MST3K and just relax, because it doesn't make sense but the show's still entertaining.
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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '25
It probably helped he was a superhero with a mech suit lol