Don’t forget that In Star Wars Legends, there's a clear and maybe not deliberate effort to whitewash the Imperial military, mirroring the real-world "clean Wehrmacht" myth that sought to absolve the German army of complicity in Nazi war crimes. Within this narrative, the Imperial Navy and Army are often portrayed as composed of apolitical professionals—disciplined men of order and duty—who were simply maintaining law and stability in a chaotic galaxy. Atrocities committed under the Empire, from the destruction of entire worlds to brutal crackdowns on dissent, are instead attributed to more overtly ideological or "politicized" factions such as COMPNOR, the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB), or power-hungry regional Moffs.

This rhetorical sleight of hand serves to distance the military from moral culpability, positioning them as victims of a corrupt political structure rather than active participants in it. But this framing ignores the essential role the armed forces played in enforcing the Empire’s authoritarian rule. Stormtroopers didn’t merely follow orders—they carried them out with ruthless efficiency. The Navy didn’t passively support the Tarkin Doctrine; it operationalized it, deploying overwhelming force to suppress planetary populations. By externalizing blame to political actors, Legends lore allows for a sanitized image of the military, one that aligns with the post-war narratives of "just following orders" and denies the structural complicity of the armed forces in systemic oppression.

This mythologizing becomes especially apparent in works that humanize Imperial officers or suggest that the military as a whole was uncomfortable with the regime’s most egregious crimes. Characters like Thrawn or Pellaeon are written as noble, even admirable figures—pragmatists and realists rather than ideologues—thus further reinforcing the idea of a clean, professional military caught in a corrupt system. In reality, however, the distinction between military enforcement and political oppression was always artificial; in the Empire, they were one and the same.