If you happen to notice, vast number of films over the years had countless number of nazi references irrespective of genre. Comedy, horror, dramas etc. all of them have it. Is it because filmmakers by and large are influenced in someway by holocaust as part of learning about human condition ? or is it an easy reference to make so more number of audience can understand what a scene is about ?
I noticed this while watching a few good men and a random nazi reference is thrown in there.
Since WWII, it's been a cheap go-to as a reference point for evil. If you want to make sure the baddie is clearly seen as the baddie, the Nazi-fy him.
Don't let it concern you that Nazi's had similar go-to devices, because you know that the hero you're writing is good and the villain you're writing is bad.
Despite the splash that the Devil made in
The Exorcist in the 70's, people don't really believe in metaphysical evil anymore. If Oprah and consumerism fill the God-shaped hole in our lives, Nazis have filled the Devil-shaped hole. We need a reference point for evil, lest we become totally debilitated by the relativism implicit in the materialist worldview, and the Nazis are it, an icon, a reference point, a place to definitely draw the line.
Of course, it doesn't take long for images to wear into cliches. After WWII, Nazism was felt as a real threat. It only took a few decades, however, for Daleks on
Dr. WHO to represent Nazism as goofy robotic trashcans and for
Hogan's Heroes to depict them as baffoons. Nazis are EZ Mac evil.
Today, however, in our increasingly polarized society, Nazis are becoming quite scary again, because our bards want to raise the alarm about wolves among the sheep in the real world. When the world is scary and conflicted, we need a tangible Devil to fight, and so we've seen an uptick in Nazi references in media. Nazis are everywhere, or so we are told by moralizing pundits, and films are echoing this message.
Consider the original Star Wars trilogy. There were visual references to fascism and Nazism, but it was light. There was just enough there to establish that the Empire was indeed B-A-D bad. In the new Star Wars, however, we have been explicitly told by its new makers that the Empire is a White Supremacist organization (which makes absolutely no sense in a universe with endless species) and that the Force is Female (because that matters, I guess - because you have to smash the Patriarchy which is White Supremacist and therefore... ...A Witch!) and the visual references in the set design and clothing and dialogue lay it all on very thick now. When General Hux (Sic? I don't really even care) gives his rally speech in one of the new films, he might as well have been shouting in German.