stylistic:style_transfer
Influence on German and Polish nationalism and Soviet patriotism

Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany posed for a photo in 1902 in the garb of a monk from the Teutonic Order, climbing the stairs in the reconstructed Marienburg Castle as a symbol of Imperial German policy.

The German historian Heinrich von Treitschke used imagery of the Teutonic Knights, a Germanic myth, to promote pro-German and anti-Polish rhetoric. Many middle-class German nationalists adopted this imagery and its symbols. During the Weimar Republic, associations and organisations of this nature contributed to laying the groundwork for the formation of Nazi Germany.

An organization predating the Nazi Party itself, as well as Nazi-supported preceding and Nazi preceding and during World War II propaganda made use of the Teutonic Knights' imagery, with the common goal of instilling the importance of Lebensraum for the future of Germany and the German people. According to medieval historian Erik Christiansen, " Himmler ’s plan to mould the SS as a reincarnation of proved the irresistible strength of bad history." Though gradually taking hold ever since with one of Prince Adalbert of Prussia 's 1849 proposals, after a lull during the Weimar Republic, whereupon it reverted to a simple tricolor overlayed with an Iron Cross, (though itself also derivative,) a version of Germany's Reichskriegsflagge (war ensign) emerged with a more closely resembling The State of the Teutonic Order's cross's original shape with a circle-overlaid balkenkreuz. Hitler based his German Order on the Teutonic Order, while especially the Hochmeister's ceremonial regalia, also the Marian Cross of the Teutonic Order, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and of the cross of the Knight of Justice of the Order of St. John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg). After Hitler approved the Generalplan Ost (GPO), Germanization campaigns were extolled as the modern adaptation of what it portrayed as " civilizing missions " of the Teutonic Order. Yet, despite these references to the Teutonic Order's history in Nazi propaganda, the Order itself was abolished in 1938 and its members were persecuted by the German authorities. This occurred mostly due to Hitler's and Himmler's belief that, throughout history, Catholic military-religious orders had been tools of the Holy See and as such constituted a threat to the Nazi regime.

The converse was true for Polish nationalism (see: Sienkiewicz " The Knights of the Cross "), which used the Teutonic Knights as symbolic shorthand for Germans in general, conflating the two into an easily recognisable image of the hostile. Similar associations were used by Soviet propagandists. After the Battle of Grunwald the Teutonic Order was portrayed as the medieval forerunners of Hitler's armies and Teutonic knights villains in the 1938 Sergei Eisenstein film Aleksandr Nevskii, while the battle itself was seen as the medieval counterpart to the Battle of Stalingrad.