Good Guy History

When you're writing a novel, and, as in our case, inventing a new world, it's always kind of hard to think out everything by yourself. Problem is; you can't exactly go and pick out stuff from other novels or movies unless you want to get sued.
Then there is this funny trick I've learnt: You can actually steal freely from the whole history of the world, and instead of being looked at as a copycat, people think you're really smart and well-educated. Huzzah! 
At the moment I'm doing history for my A-levels, and we're learning about the totalitarian states of Nazi-Germany, Fascist-Italy and the Soviet Union. Fittingly enough our story is about two totalitarian states at war. 
Another fun thing you can do is mixing time periods together, like we have some technology and style from the 20s, but the also stuff from, say, old Mongolia. 
So in the end, history's a nice fellow. Use it well! 
Some of my current inspiration:

Europe during WWII

Ancient Mongolia 

The Mafia in the 20s 

The French Revolution