Flash Gordon is a successful athlete who was abducted from earth and ended up in a war that raged on the far-away planet of Mongo.  Pushed between the armies that fought for Prince Barin, Mongo’s rightful leader, and Ming the ruthless, a self nominated emperor over the universe, Flash became a hero through showing amazing courage.  During his long reign, Mongo’s oppressed people were finally able to rise and escape from Ming’s long reign of terror.

In 1941, something rather strange occurs in the Flash Gordon strip.  Both in the daily and weekly press, Flash suddenly leaves Mongo to fight fascism on earth.  In Raymond’s Sunday strip he stops a naval attack on the USA, under the code name of “the Red Sword”.  It remains unsaid where the attack originated from, but the uniforms are unmistakably Nazi and besides that, there is a small, chubby officer with a characteristic Hitler style moustache.

In the other strip, the daily one illustrated by an assistant, Flash lands in an unidentified Scandinavian valley, threatened by an attack from a dictator.  After successfully stopping these two attacks, Flash returns to Mongo.

During World War II, the American comic strips became a propaganda weapon against fascism and Nazism.  Hence, Hitler banned them in Germany.  Mussolini followed suit but he made an exception for his favourite strip Popeye.  So, Flash Gordon was banned in Italy but the Italians created their own version and the man who wrote the script was no other than Federico Fellini.  When Fellini later became a famous film director he once said that he had learned almost everything about film through working on Flash Gordon. 

Furthermore, two films have been made about Flash – although not by Fellini.

Few comic strips have captured readers' imaginations like Flash Gordon.  Originated in 1934 by legendary comic-strip artist Alex Raymond, Flash has set the standard for science-fiction adventure, even inspiring such modern-day classics as "Star Wars."