With the wealth of new information we’ve gotten from Celebration, one of the most tantalizing (aside from the new teaser, of course!) has to be the revelation that the Empire is now known as the First Order, and the Rebellion is apparently known as the Resistance. What might this mean in terms of the way things have unfolded in the GFFA in the 30 years since ROTJ? I’ll take a stab at a bit of speculation after the jump and also share with you a new rumor we’ve just heard on the topic.

“You know of the Rebellion against the Empire?!” This was Luke Skywalker’s first inkling that he’d stumbled onto something more than some additional chores and a bit of extra help around the farm when his Uncle Owen bought a couple of beat-up old droids from a passing band of Jawas. And, perhaps even more importantly, it was the first time we heard the names of both sides of the Galactic Civil War spoken onscreen (unless, of course, we happened to read the opening crawl aloud to our little brothers or some such thing.) ;^)

Now, it seems that in The Force Awakens, the Rebellion against the Empire has become the Resistance against the First Order. These new faction names and some of what we see in the new teaser have sparked some thoughts for me (and, I suspect, for some of the rest of you as well) that may indicate a bit about what occurred following the death of the Emperor.

Let’s first consider the name “First Order”. I’m sure that I’m not alone in thinking that this sounds rather reminiscent of the Nazi era in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. It has similar cultish overtones to NSDAP terms like “Third Reich” and “New Order”, and the shot from the new teaser of the legion of stormtroopers in front of the huge banner-draped balcony looks like it’s straight out of Triumph of the Will. The symbolism here is not exactly subtle.

So, let’s assume that this is deliberate, and the First Order is intended to be a GFFA analogue for the Third Reich. This would give the new “Resistance” faction some historical context, in that the Reich was opposed within Germany by the Widerstand, the anti-Nazi resistance, and across Europe by underground resistance movements in France, Poland, Italy, Belgium and most Axis-occupied nations.

Could the TFA screenwriters have drawn this directly from European history in establishing the conflict for the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy? If so, then perhaps we might extrapolate that a bit and come up with a possible scenario for what happened after the Rebellion won the war after the Battle of Endor. Bear in mind, this is based on nothing more than information gleaned from Celebration, and my own historical knowledge, such as it is. I’ve not been following most of the leaks and spoilers so far, though I’ve peeked at a few. But see what you all think of this.

After the “happily ever after” ending of Return of the Jedi, it has always been taken as a given that the Rebellion took over governance of the galaxy under the banner of The New Republic . But of course, it wouldn’t have been a simple matter to do so. Realistically speaking, there would have been star systems that remained loyal to the Empire and wanted nothing to do with a Rebel-led galactic government. There would also very likely have been systems (such as Kessel, Kuat, etc.) that were not merely sympathetic to the Empire, but that had helped the Emperor to commit what the Rebellion would consider to be war crimes.

In dealing with these systems, it would not be beyond the pale for the Rebellion/New Republic to have dealt harshly with Imperial-friendly systems, particularly those that refused to accept that the Empire was no more. I don’t mean that these systems were put down by military force, necessarily. But if the Rebellion/Republic sharply curtailed trade and Senate participation to these systems as a corrective measure, that could easily set up the GFFA equivalent of the Versailles Treaty that followed the conclusion of the First World War.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Treaty of Versailles was one of the main peace treaties that ended WWI. It was incredibly punitive toward Germany who, as the loser of the war, was obligated to pay astronomical amounts of money to the Allied nations as war reparations. This, combined with the loans that Germany had taken out to finance its war effort, arguably led to the hyperinflation that crippled Germany’s post-war economy before the Great Depression came along and hit them with the left hook. This left a great many Germans feeling angry and humiliated by the harshness of the Treaty’s provisions.

Suffice to say, by the early 1930s, Germany was ripe for takeover by leadership that promised a return to economic and military prominence and national pride. Sadly, we all know what kind of human refuse ended up crawling in to fill that vacuum.

Returning to Star Wars, let’s consider what would happen if a similar approach were taken to Empire-loyal systems following the Rebellion’s victory in the Galactic Civil War as to what the Allies took with Germany after WWI. As I said, perhaps trade was restricted to these star systems, maybe they were barred from representation in the Senate, and it’s even possible that the Rebellion/Republic could have forced some of these systems to pay war reparations (I’m thinking specifically of systems that grew wealthy through their Imperial shipyards and other major arms production facilities.)



Suddenly, you’ve got all of these star systems that have gone from proud prosperity under the Empire to being impoverished and humiliated under the New Republic… and, like Germany in the early 1930s, ripe for exploitation by those who would see them rise again to crush the Republic.

Consider also that there would have been remnants of the Imperial military that would not have been destroyed at Endor, and which could have gone underground or formed small warlord-led fiefdoms as we saw in the post ROTJ EU novels. There would also have been plenty of powerful families who maintained not only their loyalty to the Empire, but the wealth to make trouble for the Republic besides.

Add to this a charismatic leader of some kind, and very probably (especially given the crimson hue of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber) the influence of a dark Force user, and you’ve got the makings for a resurgent Empire that very much reflects Germany’s Third Reich – far moreso than the original Empire did.

Clearly, if they call themselves the “First Order” rather than the Empire, they’re trying to distinguish themselves from the Empire in some way. The rumor that Kylo Ren is obsessively collecting old Sith relics might indicate that there is a commitment here to avoiding the pitfalls of Palpatine’s reign by going back to an earlier template of some sort, perhaps returning to some sort of “first principles” of the Sith, or to the values and traditions of an earlier despotic regime that predates the Old Republic.

The quest for old Sith relics also recalls the obsession that Hitler and the Nazis had for locating what they considered to be powerful religious artifacts (“Colonel Musgrove and Major Eaton, please pick up the white courtesy phone…”) which may further indicate a deliberate attempt to pattern the First Order after Hitler’s “New Order.”

Our own staff member, TIDMADT, has uncovered what appears to be a quasi-official rumor that adds another interesting wrinkle to all of this. Supposedly, the name “First Order” is related, at least in part, to Order 1, from the Contingency Orders that Palpatine had originally put in place to be carried out by the Grand Army of the Republic (and, presumably, the Imperial military forces) under a variety of specific circumstances. We are, of course, familiar with Order 66, under which the Republic military was to put the Jedi down by lethal force if they ever set themselves against the Republic.

Order 1, allegedly, would have applied not just to the military, but to Imperial civilians as well, mandating that “all citizens of the Empire may act by whatever means necessary to preserve the Empire from any threat, internal or external.” Therefore, the stage would be even more thoroughly set for a resurgent Empire to muster large numbers of willing recruits against the Rebellion/New Republic.

So perhaps, just perhaps, the Rebellion tried too hard to quash Imperial sympathies after the Galactic Civil War and inadvertently caused the rise of something even worse and more fanatical. Perhaps the New Republic never even really took hold, with the First Order disrupting the reformation of the Republic and the Senate before it ever really got the chance to succeed. Or, perhaps the Republic did reform for awhile, and the First Order has only risen to prominence and upset the apple cart fairly recently.

Whatever the situation, we know that the X-wings we see in the teaser are the “signature combat craft of the Resistance forces in their fight against the First Order.” This and the fact that the pilots are sporting the old Rebellion “starbird” emblem on their helmets and flight suits seems to indicate that the Rebellion/Republic is back to underdog status by the time of TFA, a “Resistance” rather than a central galactic governing body. Or, perhaps the Republic is still in place, but they are funneling arms and soldiers to resistance movements throughout the galaxy. But it sure sounds a lot more like the Rebellion is now the Resistance, and the First Order has snatched the reins of power away from them.

George Lucas said, long before he began writing the Prequel Trilogy, that the stories that follow Return of the Jedi revolve around “moral and philosophical problems, such as the necessity for moral choices and the wisdom needed to distinguish right from wrong, justice, confrontation, and passing on what you have learned.”

Perhaps, rather than simply creating a pointless rehash of the Empire merely for the sake of putting stormtroopers and TIE fighters back onscreen once again, the idea in TFA is to show a scenario in which Rebellion inflicted their own version of the Treaty of Versailles on the Imperial-friendly star systems following the Battle of Endor, thus ensuring that a new and even more virulent strain of darkness would rise in the Empire’s place (even using the technology and symbolism of the Empire.) That in mistaking punitive acts for justice, even with the best of intentions, the Rebellion may have sealed the fate of the galaxy.

Talk about a lesson in moral choices and the wisdom needed to distinguish right from wrong!

Again, this is all speculation, and speculation born of a single afternoon of consideration at that (I wrote this up this past Thursday afternoon after the trailer and “First Order/Resistance” info came out at Celebration). I certainly don’t pretend to know what J.J. and company have in store for us, or what concepts may underlie the new galactic conflict in The Force Awakens. But I thought that it might make for a fun read, regardless of whether it actually lines up in any way with what we’ll see this December.