Playing The Baddies

Its impossible to have WWII re-enactment battles/skirmish events/filmsim 'games' (i use the word loosely as some folk quite rightly see their hobby as nothing more than a game as soliders and they are entitled to do their thing that way) without two sides.

Obviously we're going to need German forces, we're also going to need SS forces as we cant simply pretend they were not at Arnhem for example.

The only thing that has ever worried me in the past (i say worried more made me raise an eyebrow) , and this is on traditional blankfire re-enactment forums and skirmish forums is for some 'German reenactors' to be worryingly partisan.

You occasionally read defences of 'unit a' or 'division b' that are written as if the OP had personally criticised the re-enactor himself rather than the faction he has chosen to re-create.

You then seem to have a 'persecuted Germans' complex which is bizarre when by and large none of the 'Germans' are German (yourself and few others excluded Martin). Cue over defensive posts and some feathers being ruffled.

I've never personally understood that particular blind allegiance to a faction that most folk have no claim to. I'll represent Soviets, Heer, SS, or Brits with equal gusto but not for one minute do i feel that because I’m dressed as a Hallamshire's corporal I have to fight their corner in arguments. I do have a sort of a leaning towards British Infantry regiments and I am biased towards the Staffords (having been an infanteer and Stafford!) but equally don't think I'm a WWII Staffords even though I do have some claim to their lineage.

Moving back to the OPs point, surely the horrors of the holocaust are a good reason *to* portray German units but to do them 'warts and all' and without glamour. While we do portray SS combat units at our events if we were public facing and had to talk to the public I think it would be dishonest not to say something along the lines of 'They were exceptional combat soldiers but their conditioning and training made them excessive and barbaric at times' (obviously in a more tactful and drawn out way), and to accept that soldiers from SS combat units occasionally convalesced as concentration camp guards.

This works both ways, I've represented Chindits before and I knew a Chindit (Sam Davies of uttoxeter now sadly passed) who freely told folk that they didnt take prisoners as it was impossible that far behind the lines and that he'd personally executed Japanese soldiers. I've told that story while representing chindits to people to show that horror and atrocity doesn’t recognise national borders in war, its a nasty fact of the business.

Thanks Gadge. A well thought-out response

Dienst and Pflicht are two words that you hear a lot when talking to Wehrmacht veterans. Dienst basically translates as Service and Google will give you the world Duty as a translation for Pflicht, but the word is actually a mix of Duty, Obligation and Fait Accompli. For a German, his Pflicht absolves him from any awkward clash of personal morals vs. professional duty. The Nurenberg defence of "I was only following orders" resonates much more strongly with Germans than with the British and Americans

I'm not defending the actions of my countrymen in any way, but I consider the combat soldier who fought under the swastika to also be a victim of the same regime that sent Jews to the gas chamber. Feel free call bullshit on that statement if you want to.

The Japanese have 'giri' which is a similar sense or dutiful obligation regardless of personal wishes.

I think a few people need to read up on the less than savory deeds and words of the likes of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill as well (who is revered in Britain for some reason). The British empire had a much larger and wider programme of extermination, based on race and religion, as did Stalin, than the nazis did. After all, WE invented the concentration camp, yet we aren't told to hang our heads in shame about it, noone visits the sites in South Africa where thousands of Boers were maltreated and starved to death by the British.

Don't forget, history is written by the victors, who can put whatever slant they want on it in order to paint themselves in a better light. Many Waffen SS units fought with both courage and distinction and victors' propoganda cannot change that. The scum who dropped the Zyklon B down the tubes were totally seperate from that.

We're playing a game here folks, no need to get too emotional about it. I don't get upset about people dressing up as IRA murder boys, in spite of having served in Northern Ireland (and lost friends there), why should you get upset about the sins of 2 generations ago?

OK, I'll bite.

The way I see it is the Germans were/are no different to us. Humans. Given a different time-line, different leadership, different circumstances it could have been 'us' being the baddies. All the atrocities of the past (and indeed present - terrible things STILL going on in our world) are OUR atrocities. With a bit of luck mankind will learn from past mistakes (although I doubt it). Learning from past mistakes doesn't mean looking back and saying 'that was bad' but looking forward and saying 'this might lead to bad things'. Paramount is insane hatred for other humans - how easy it is for those who seek power to manipulate a populous by instilling/inflaming hatred. 'Politics' has a lot to answer for. What one person can commit against another human knows no bounds - we know this from millennia of history. That is to say you and me and no matter how indignant you may feel about that statement this is a truism.

Re-enacting can be both profound in intent or completely frivolous and all shades in between (whether you want to justify it as education or just personal enjoyment by dressing up and playing soldiers). War is at the same time immensely depressing and immensely enlightening. Its part of life as we know it. The German soldier had little choice in the tasks he was set to. They were ordered to by their leaders and were fighting for their country. In the same way our soldiers went to war in Iraq - they weren't fighting for Tony Blair and his ideology, they were carrying out orders as professional soldiers. Come a big war and conscription and there isn't even the professional reason - they were just told to (many willingly of course, they felt the same desire to defend their country that we did).

I'm interested in humanity and what makes the world tick, and WW2 in particular holds a great fascination. Getting into the mind of the front line soldier is what grips me now - I portray US, Brit and German ordinary soldiers and carefully separate the politics from workaday soldiery (as everyone should). I'll freely admit I feel more comfortable playing Brit and feel slightly naughty playing German. I guess that is the kids 'goodies and baddies' thing lodged in my brain. Even so, I'm not in the slightest bit troubled playing a German role. I have thought about it a lot and rationalised it - not as a way of finding some excuse but to be sure I'm doing it for the right reasons.

After all, WE invented the concentration camp,

Urban myth that, actually invented during the American Civil War by a German, those camps had systematic policies of starvation, beating and abuse.

On the other hand the british concentration camp system was *very* different from the ACW version and the WWII Nazi death camps in that the deaths were by accident and due to disease and poot sanitation (killing a good many guards and British solider... cholera and typhus do not take sides) and not deaths as a result of systematic mechanised killing on an industrial scale as practiced by the Nazis and to a lesser extent the soviets.

Dont get me wrong Pete, you're totally right in that all nations were capable of great evil and that the victorious winners gloss over their own sins but the line 'the British invented concentration camps' is one of those falacies that needs setting right really.

The British did use a form of concentration camp in Africa but lets not even try and suggest they were anything like those used by the 3rd reich. concentration is not the same as extermination.edit, thanks gadge, missed your version

and to a lesser extent the soviets.

Sorry, Gadge but you're wrong there. I'm willing to stand corrected on who "invented" the concentration camp but Stalin had mass murder down to a fine art LONG before (and after, for that matter) than old Adolf did. MILLIONS more died under Stalin than Hitler.

I'm not a "holocaust" denier, nor a closet nazi but I think that crimes at least equal to it have been committed by many others. Yet, we're happy to portray Russians or British troops who are not exactly squeaky clean themselves. A visit to a Russian Gulag or any British "internment" camp would change this, just as profoundly as a visit to Dachau, Belsen or Auschwitz. Not all German Concentration camps were "death camps" either, yet another urban myth.

I think the issue is the term 'concetration camp' is British but doesnt mean the same as when we refer to the holocaust, they were *very* different.

It was poor planning and lack of logisitcs to provide food and provisions that caused the disease that killed the Boers ...and 22,000 British Soldiers in that campaign!

As said camps with a deliberate policiy of abuse starvation and death originate in the American Civil War and at the time were as horrific to many as the holocaust when discovered (given the standards of the time).

and to a lesser extent the soviets.

Sorry, Gadge but you're wrong there. I'm willing to stand corrected on who "invented" the concentration camp but Stalin had mass murder down to a fine art LONG before (and after, for that matter) than old Adolf did. MILLIONS more died under Stalin than Hitler.

I'm not a "holocaust" denier, nor a closet nazi but I think that crimes at least equal to it have been committed by many others. Yet, we're happy to portray Russians or British troops who are not exactly squeaky clean themselves. A visit to a Russian Gulag or any British "internment" camp would change this, just as profoundly as a visit to Dachau, Belsen or Auschwitz.

I'd argue that while the end result is the same (i.e everyone died) Stalin didnt create 'death factories' to use a tabloid type phrase to push a population through and kill them as quickly as possibly... i.e industrialised killing.

He may have had purges of the inteligentsia, officers and detained many and worked them to death in Gulags which is horrific but my point was that the Russians didnt find a way of expediently killing as many as possible and then utilise their body parts in the most efficient way (industrial felt and socks made form human hair etc).

If its a question of who mindlessly slaughtered the most, its probably the Soviets but... part of the horror of the holocaust is the scientific deadication to 'efficiency' imo.

Glad you agree that Stalin killed more people! He probably thought it was more "efficient" to work people to death, rather than gas them abitrarily, the difference between the "peasant" Russian and the "efficient" German.

The point I'm trying to make (before we go totally off topic!) is that noone should get hung up on the "sins of the fathers". Noone who does WW2 airsoft portrays the units responsible for the mass murder of the Jews (and, if they did, serious words would be had with them!). The German fighting soldier was totally seperate from (and, in many cases, ignorant of) the industrial killing centres and is not to blame for what went on there.

Exactly so Pete. Please don't turn this into a 'who was worse than whom' thread chaps 'cos that is utterly pointless.

Yeha I'd agree with that considering many soldiers had not been home for years.

I'm not sure if the general population were as ignorant, but then again as said earlier, would *you* have stood up and said 'hang on a minute, where have all the jews gone?'

I've taught the holocaust in schools, and while I've not been personally affected by it I can appreciate it utter horror, I dont think its going to stop me from doing Axis or SS impressions (if done *honestly* as said before). I think while we shy away from them for very sound reasons at our events, even political SS impressions can be done with dignity if the scenario is suitable.

For example a jedburgh team may be tasked to assasinate a Allegemeine SS official, if its clear that the man is responsible for great evils then surely portraying that 'character' at a battle as a target/objective is fine. Rather than glamourising that uniform it re-inforces the reason why we frown upon participants dressing as such.

Indeed, context is everything.

It is very easy to over-analyse though. Goodness, even the act of running around with guns and pretending to shoot people is pretty naff if taken one one level. Yet we cheerfully do it!

All good points. I think it's too easy to get bogged down with discussions on who "invented" concentration camps. The difference is that the Nazis were the first to engineer and implement the systematic destruction of an entire race. It's why seeing the sign Arbeit Macht Frei makes me feel physically sick.

OK, so I know it's just a game and I appreciate that portraying Reinhard Heydrich for a scenario doesn't mean that you subscribe to his views, but the argument about separating politics and soldiering, as with separating politics and sport, gets touted a lot. So my next question is: How how much CAN those things be separated? I don't play German because I want to portray a baddie. i do it because I want to portray a German soldier as accurately as I know how. Does that make me a cnut?

Martin, in a word "NO!".

...So my next question is: How how much CAN those things be separated?

How? We all do this at every event. We simply portray the front line soldier - no big political objectives, no ideology. We do what we are tasked to do, mostly trying to preserve our own lives. Simple stuff, all on a personal level. We aren't trying to take over the world, just taking out a machine gun post.

I suppose that the real question is how much has 65-odd years insulated us from the grim reality? Do we even want to acnowledge the grim reality? Does it matter if we don't?

If we all had the right skin colour, would we do Rwandan Civil War Airsoft? Would the argument:
"We simply portray the front line soldier - no big political objectives, no ideology. We do what we are tasked to do" cut it?

Rwanda is a bit different, in that it was tribally motivated, self serving and oppurtunistic genocide, rather than racial or religious. People seem to have no qualms dressing up as Al-Qaeda insurgents, IRA terrorists, or Chechen "rebels" these days and that's much more contemporary and, therefore, much more likely to "offend" someone who has been touched by them than by events which occurred 70 odd years ago.

I personally think that the average German soldier of the second world war was a shining example of discipline, self discipline and camraderie in the face of adversity, that should be held up as an example, not a legal precedent. Was he any more indoctrinated than a Russian, or a Japanese? I think not.