Alternately revered and reviled for their suicidal devotion to duty, the Death Korps of Krieg constitute an indisputable paragon of rampant nationalistic fervor—so much so that, in order to restore collective honor after their planetary governor betrays the God Emperor of Mankind, the Korps progenitor (the infamous Colonel Jurten) reduces their home planet to a nuclear wasteland, thereby ensuring every member of the surviving Krieg race understands their sole objective is to die defending the Imperium. Famously, for the Krieg, ‘atonement’ for their ancestral ‘shame’ comes only with death; the grimdark fatalism of the Krieg is widely understood to be an extreme form of patriotism—Korpsmen are even modeled after 1918 Imperial German Army infantry. What is less explored, however, is the zealotry of the forces the Death Korps is marshalled to oppose: specifically, those led by a messianic Apostate Cardinal during the Siege of Vraks, whose “War of Faith” proposes to empower the proletariat masses through violent purgation of all ‘inherently corrupt’ persons and philosophies. Immediately, both forces assume instant parallels with contemporary Christian Nationalist movements across Europe and North America—as well as their opposition. Through juxtaposing the philosophical tenets held by these antithetical yet fundamentally mirrored legions, we can gain greater insight into how religious fervor becomes subsumed by toxic forms of sacrificial heroism and militant masculinity when translated to a political context—elucidating even more precise mechanisms for how, as Du Mez famously states in her controversial 2020 treatise on the Evangelical corruption of faith in modern American politics, Jesus has been usurped by John Wayne. By more closely examining the physical and philosophical showdown explored, through fiction, between two extremist forces in the 41st millennium, we begin to more fully understand our (re)emergent valuation of jingoism, belligerent activism, and expectant fatalism in the 21st century.
Author bio
A consummate Warhammer 40K nerd, rhetorician, AI researcher, and genderpunk fiction author, Dr LJ DeGraffenreid enjoys exploring the intersection of advanced technology and ethical humanism.
