NATO, Nukes & Nazis: The Craziest World War III Game Ever Made

Michael Peck

Security, Europe

It’s as if the Battle of the Bulge met Desert Storm.

It’s 1990, and the Third Reich lives. Ever since World War II ended with a compromise peace between Germany and the Allies, the Cold War has been waged between the Nazis and NATO.

But the German economy has soured. And, just as in 1939, Germany is going to conquer its domestic problems by conquering Europe and then the world. As waves of Nazi flying wings and super-heavy tanks surge into France, the only force standing between them and global domination is NATO. Will western Europe fall under Nazi barbarism, or will enough U.S. divisions cross the Atlantic in time to stop the Third Reich in its tracks?

Welcome to NATO, Nukes & Nazis, the craziest World War III war game you’ll ever play on your dining-room table. It may sound like some skinhead fantasy of a World War II do-over, but the title of the game originated in the late 1970s, when a couple of hobby war game designers decided that that the only games that war gamers were interested in at the time were about World War II or a hypothetical NATO-versus-Warsaw-Pact conflict.

So why not combine both topics into the same game? The Third Reich would essentially take on the role of the Warsaw Pact in an invasion of western Europe. Thus a game where U.S. air cavalry and Israeli paratroopers battle SS panzer divisions.

Why in God’s name would anyone want to play such a game? For the same reason that people love alternate-history movies like The Final Countdown, or alternate-timeline books such as those by Harry Turtledove, or just play historical games in general. They give us the chance to explore what might have been.

What's fascinating about NATO, Nukes & Nazis is how it combines kooky alt history with plausible military analysis and a sophisticated conflict simulation. There are two versions of NATO, Nukes & Nazis: the original and now out-of-print board game published by XTR Corp in 1990 (you might find a copy for sale here) and a new 2016 edition—NATO, Nukes & Nazis 2—available from One Small Step Games.