Let's not kid ourselves, German campaigns were pretty common in RTS games. Panzer General, Sudden Strike 1 and 2, Blitzkrieg 1 and 2 or Axis & Allies to name a few of the important ones. I would even say not having a German campaign in an RTS game is an exception.
Yes, however I would argue that they weren't as "mainstream" games so to speak as something like CoH, which I would say was highly popular for historical strategy fans.
I myself have played Blitzkrieg and Blitzkrieg 2, however fewer people sadly know about them as they were made by Russian developers and were thus not as popular in the West as in the East.
STALKER and the Cossacks as well as American Conquest series followed a similar trend, they were developed by some Ukrainian guys called GSC and never really took off in the West unfortunately even tho I would say they were some very brilliant games.
Ah yes, I'm a socialist liberal (neither of those things) for saying that actual Nazis are attracted to World War II games. I thought this was fairly obvious but of course, if you ask around there are about as many Nazis here as the Nuremberg trials, thankfully because it has been obviously stigmatized to hell and back.
It's funny because forums like these for World War II games are the last places that I see the myths about the Wehrmacht that were debunked by actual historians still spread around. Myths that were written by the actual SS and former high-ranking Nazis looking to avoid a noose and garner additional sympathy from their occupiers. Company of Heroes 2 got in trouble for its campaign which largely (save maybe burning its own soldiers alive) depicted actual atrocities that happened at some point or another in the Red Army over the course of the war, without touching on some of the real atrocities, as you've mentioned, also lovely things like using penal squads as human minesweepers, etc.
I'd wager this game would get an equal amount of backlash if they realistically portrayed Rommel as a lucky opportunist and not 4D chess-playing Nazi Jesus as his popular portrait seems to make him out as, which was, mind you, part of that postwar propaganda which was encouraged by the British because it made them look better for beating him in North Africa when he didn't have a chance of winning it to begin with.
And I love the "Wehrmacht wasn't racist" thing, pretty much every army was fucking racist to whatever degree, it's just the British wouldn't have turned their colonial troops into soap and candles if they didn't have a crippling manpower shortage. If you missed it that was intentional hyperbole by the way.
For the record I don't really have a "side". I think, generally, the glorification of war is troubling, doubly so when it leads people, in whatever small ways, down the path of sympathy for an awful regime, whichever one. I also think the American army committed a ridiculous share of war crimes and incited a racial hatred against the Japanese that at least approached the level of Jews in Germany, but you see a lot fewer people reacting to that with denial or deflection as opposed to merely mentioning that some people harbour sympathy for the Nazis.
I never called you socialist or a liberal, or both but okay I guess?
I said that your socialist liberal education has gone to your head based on things that I've read about Canadian education and most recently, people being angry and breaking monuments for the tragic events of Canadian schools killing native kids which is not going to bring them back unfortunately, it's just trying to erase the history which I don't really agree with but I guess people don't really have anything else to direct their anger at.
And yeah, WW2 and history is in general a hotspot for extremists, on both sides unfortunately. It's very rarely that you can have a civil discussion that's not full of bias or shit flinging from either side.
Extremism, regardless on which side of the political spectrum it falls on, ends very badly as history has proven but that's something a lot of people seem to disregard and keep to it that they're right and that their views and their side are the right ones while the others are bad regardless of any evidence and historical proof.
I also never said that the Wehrmacht wasn't racist, I'm just saying whenever I see somebody say they were while defending the Allies or Soviets, who also held contempt for the jewish people and called them capitalists, not to mention that they outright banned religion, but again this is rarely ever even mentioned for some reason.
As far as you picking a side goes, again I never said that you did altho your comment makes it look like you're suggesting that only right wing extremists play and enjoy these games while in reality there are many nationalistic and extremist types also on the left that play and enjoy them but again, only the Nazis are ever mentioned.
And I think that's dangerous because people grow up with these Hollywood like beliefs that life and the world work in absolutes and that things are black and white and not grey and complex as they are in reality.
One example that I can give is actually as you said that of the 422nd Infantry Regiment of the US Army which was the only Japanese-American unit in the entire US military during the war I believe to serve in the war due to America's distrust towards the Japanese after Pearl Harbor happened and the segregation policies that followed. Roosevelt is often blamed for the US concentration camps set out for these people and this is never mentioned as well because many people want to believe that he was the good guy that established the "arsenal of democracy" and took America out of the great depression while in reality it was a bit different.
I also find it ironic how after the war the Lend-Lease plan was turned against the US as the Soviets started lining up tanks between the East-West border that was set up in Europe.
The West basically traded one dictator for another, arguably an even bigger and more cruel one as history shows.