What was the "Nazi" cliche before, ya know, the Nazis?

Checking whether someone is illegally in the country is “Nazi”. The “Soup Nazi”'s restaurant is gleefully covered as being opened again. Roger Goodell runs the NFL “like a Nazi”… People on both sides of nearly any debate seem to throw around the term “Nazi” at each other.

It’s become the overwrought tired cliche of the day.

Which got me wondering… before the rise of Naziism into the public consciousness in the '30s and '40s, what was the go-to comparison for being authoritarian or controlling or whatever?

I have read in some of the period works references to the “Huns” as a carry over from WWI. Somewhat redundant too…

Injuns?

Napoleon.

I would have guessed Prussian, but can’t find any good evidence.

Indians weren’t really controlling though. They were associated with being distructive, which is also sometimes associated with the Nazi’s, but the OP is asking for people that were considered to be the epitome of authoritarianism.

Were WWI Germans particularly authoritarian compared to the other Europeans at the time? That’s not really something I associate with them.

In the US, King George is (somewhat ahistorically) used as a term to mean a controlling tyrant. I imagine that was true before the Nazis as well. Obviously that would make less sense in Europe, though.

Tyrant.

Or “Attila.”

Weren’t Jews seen as conniving, greedy people before the Nazis? Although, I guess not controlling in a tyrannical way. Arabs? The Ottomans had a considerable empire back then.

Interesting question.

Bloody cossacks.

Hessians?

ETA, IDK, obviously.

We get this question a lot, so you should search for previous threads.

Or not, because the answer is pretty much the same as “what was the greatest thing before sliced bread?”

There wasn’t one. These expressions brought someone new into the language. Happens all the time.

Martinet

And Hun was a throwback to the tribe that overran Europe – Attila and all that.

But there never was as good a real, all-purpose stereotype for an all-purpose authoritarian villain. Usually people would just call someone a “tyrant” and leave it at that.

Yankee!

I recently finished reading “Three Men on the Bummel”, by Jerome K. Jerome, published in 1900. It’s the follow-up to the better-known “Three Men in a Boat”, and is a humorous account of a bicycle trip through Germany. Towards the end, Jerome spends quite a bit of time expounding on the German national character. While generally positive, his account does have as a main theme the idea that the activity of the average German consists largely of doing what the local authorities tell him to do, and that if those authorities were to disappear, he would be at a loss. I remember one particularly chilling passage:

“Hitherto, the German has had the blessed fortune to be exceptionally well governed; if this continue, it will go well with him. When his troubles will begin will be when by any chance something goes wrong with the governing machine.”

Zealot?

**Prussian **used to be a common synonym for authoritarian, officious, militaristic.

And the Nazi stereotype is essentially just the Prussian sterotype made explicitely evil.

No, but as cjepson and Beware of Doug both say, there is an air of militarism.

I remember reading about a case where a man in Prussia impersonated some VIP, and no one ever questioned him about it because he was wearing a uniform – does anyone recall more about it? It would have occurred in the late 1800s.