# Historic re-enactors dressing up as Nazis at a private party. Is that kosher? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 18, 2014, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992 "2014-03-18T11:38:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/101 "2014-03-19T00:07:29Z")
But it’s not silly. IMHO, and other’s HO, dressing as a Nazi for kicks is creepy. Someone’s choice of hobby tells you something about that person. Do you deny that? ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/102 "2014-03-19T00:18:31Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > But it’s not silly. IMHO, and other’s HO, dressing as a Nazi for kicks is creepy. Creepiness makes you outraged? Maybe that’s the disconnect. I save my outrage for wrongdoing, things that hurt people. > [@CarnalK](#): > > Someone’s choice of hobby tells you something about that person. Do you deny that? Not in any consistent or meaningful way. More likely, it causes you to speculate as to what kind of person might enjoy the hobby, without the insight that comes form actually being that kind of person. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/103 "2014-03-19T00:20:35Z")
I’m not outraged in the slightest. I think you are expecting robot levels of emotional detachment of humans. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/104 "2014-03-19T00:27:34Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > I’m not outraged in the slightest. I think you are expecting robot levels of emotional detachment of humans. Well, **WheatCat** _was_ enraged by the idea that these folks may have walked from the parking lot to the restaurant entrance in Nazi/German uniform. I’m not expecting robotic detachment, but neither am I expecting that. Meanwhile, I think the evidence is pretty strong that, contrary to the OP, one participant’s seemingly nonsensical explanation of “educating people” is actually a reference to the group’s normal activity, and not the party. If there’s to be outrage or knob-calling, let’s at least be accurate about it. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/105 "2014-03-19T00:35:31Z")
I have been. The act of dressing up as a Nazi for fun is knobbish. Full stop. Calling their normal activities educational is merely rationalization. At least the Civil War reenactments can take place on the same piece of ground as what they are reenacting. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/106 "2014-03-19T00:38:25Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > I have been. The act of dressing up as a Nazi for fun is knobbish. Full stop. Calling their normal activities educational is merely rationalization. At least the Civil War reenactments can take place on the same piece of ground as what they are reenacting. ETA: Eh, strike that. I think it’s clear the sort of accuracy I meant, and it wasn’t value judgments like “knobbish”. ---
**Author:** ![WheatCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/258eb7/32.png) [@WheatCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WheatCat)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/107 "2014-03-19T00:46:28Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Even in the early 1930s, the Nazis received around a third of all votes; by the 1936 parliamentary elections, they received votes from more than 98 percent of all registered voters. (Not that they had much choice by '36, but still …) > > So basically you are asserting that there were almost no decent Germans. Yes. > [@slash2k](#): > > I think that’s a very radical and dangerous assertion, because it assumes that Germany in the 1930s was so very different and unlike any other country ever. I don’t know about radical, but dangerous?- what is more dangerous, that the Nazis could have happened only in Germany, or that they could happen anywhere? > [@slash2k](#): > > Since they were so indecent and insane and abnormal, we don’t need to worry about the same thing happening in any decent and normal country, and there are no lessons to be learned from the rise of Hitler. On the contrary, I would argue that there are very significant lessons to be learned about how ordinary citizens allowed themselves to be led into tyranny and evil, and how propaganda and demagoguery resulted in atrocity. Fine, go ahead and try to give me a lesson. A detailed lesson. A very detailed lesson. I doubt you will be able to offer more than continued rambling bromides, but do your worst. My own view is that aside from generalities such as the need for unwavering commitment to democratic government and racial equality there are no lessons to learn from the Nazi era, and there will never be any until the behavioral sciences evolve into some truly useful state of development. > [@slash2k](#): > > Whether it’s a re-enactor or the real deal (live or in recorded oral history, etc.), there is authority and value in _personalizing_ history. > It wasn’t just faceless people voting for a monster; it was ordinary Johanns and Marias and Gunthers who saw in the Nazis a solution to economic hardship, political turmoil, and the psychological effects of Germany’s international decline. The folks who voted for Hitler in 1932 and 1933 were not voting for the Final Solution and plunging the continent into war and sixty million dead; that was the result, but not what they thought they were going to get. There were plenty of countries doing no better, but only three- Germany, Italy and Japan- responded by embarking on aggressive war. And only one of those three embarked on a plan of racial genocide while they were at it. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/108 "2014-03-19T00:52:52Z")
> [@WheatCat](#): > > There were plenty of countries doing no better, but only three- Germany, Italy and Japan- responded by embarking on aggressive war. And only one of those three embarked on a plan of racial genocide while they were at it. Four, actually: the Soviet Union invaded Poland and Finland in 1939. ---
**Author:** ![WheatCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/258eb7/32.png) [@WheatCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WheatCat)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/109 "2014-03-19T01:33:37Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > If you say so. > > Those weren’t the terms you used: > > How was I to know that the “extreme” was the swastika, as opposed to draping the room with the flags? I can’t read your mind. Now I know what you mean, and we can move on. Your question betrays a naive appreciation of the issue. You do not seem to realize that the swastika is as significant to the Nazis as the cross is to Christians. You would not be surprised if objection to display of a flag with a cross on it was taken to mean objection to the cross as a symbol, would you? [Recreational outrage.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=320298) Thanks for the tip. Outrage seems to me an appropriate response to all things Nazi. No need to tack “righteous” onto it. > [@Human\_Action](#): > > Keep them out of your classroom, then, I guess. To presume they have no educational value because they re-enact one particular side in a large, world-changing conflict seems baseless, but hey, if you’re a teacher, you don’t have to book them. A person’s reenactment hobby is not sufficient basis for assuming he has anything to teach other than reenactment practices and procedures. > [@Human\_Action](#): > > That sounds exhausting. It would be exhausting only if I kept seeing the swastika displayed in public. Fortunately I do not believe I have ever seen it displayed in public in my life. Were I to see it displayed I would complain. > [@Human\_Action](#): > > To recap: > > 1. No one was harmed. > 2. There is no danger of future harm. > > _That’s_ excessive tolerance? It is excessive tolerance to accept it without objection. If a troop of people wearing swastika armbands walked into any restaurant I was eating in I would complain to management, and I would leave if management did not evict the offenders. I belive I would also call the local paper; I think there’s a good chance a reporter would shortly be on the scene with promise of some terrible publicity for the restaurant and the reenactment hobbyists. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/110 "2014-03-19T01:59:25Z")
> [@WheatCat](#): > > Your question betrays a naive appreciation of the issue. You do not seem to realize that the swastika is as significant to the Nazis as the cross is to Christians. You would not be surprised if objection to display of a flag with a cross on it was taken to mean objection to the cross as a symbol, would you? I just parsed your words, as you wrote them. Again, not a mind reader, and assuming you meant something broader than your words often leads to misunderstanding. I just did that with **CarnalK** , I took him for being outraged, when he didn’t actually write that, and I was wrong. > [@WheatCat](#): > > [Recreational outrage.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=320298) > Thanks for the tip. Outrage seems to me an appropriate response to all things Nazi. No need to tack “righteous” onto it. I calls 'em like I see’s em. This certainly seems to qualify, beyond the supposed outrage not affecting your life, it doesn’t adversely affect _anyone’s_ life. > [@WheatCat](#): > > A person’s reenactment hobby is not sufficient basis for assuming he has anything to teach other than reenactment practices and procedures. Well, you can always ask them some questions, ask for references from other schools, etc. The re-enactment society has been around since 1975, they probably have plenty of references on file by now. The fact that they portray the German side, as opposed to the British, French, or American, certainly isn’t a sufficient basis for assuming they had nothing to offer as an educator. > [@WheatCat](#): > > It would be exhausting only if I kept seeing the swastika displayed in public. Fortunately I do not believe I have ever seen it displayed in public in my life. Were I to see it displayed I would complain. If the “display” is limited to people walking from a parking lot to a door (and that’s assuming they didn’t wear greatcoats or parkas over the costumes, this was December in Minneapolis after all), the odds of you glimpsing it are rather low. > [@WheatCat](#): > > It is excessive tolerance to accept it without objection. If a troop of people wearing swastika armbands walked into any restaurant I was eating in I would complain to management, and I would leave if management did not evict the offenders. I belive I would also call the local paper; I think there’s a good chance a reporter would shortly be on the scene with promise of some terrible publicity for the restaurant and the reenactment hobbyists. Are you aware that this was a private event, precluding the possibility of offending other diners? ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/111 "2014-03-19T02:01:24Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Nowhere did I say they were unique. > > Pretending that Nazis who committed atrocities were “human beings just like us” is incredibly inane. Yes, they were. Proof is that every time some group wants to exterminate some other group, there’s no lack of volunteers. See Yugoslavia, Rwanda, etc… > [@](#): > > Very serious pathology was at work. See the book “Ordinary men”. No self-selection. No pathology. > [@](#): > > You help prevent such things from happening again by stigmatizing the hell out of them - not by saying the equivalent of “oh well, people just act out sometimes…it could happen to anyone”. You might try to do that, but you will be lying. Yes, people just act out like that sometimes. Maybe you won’t but your neighbour, brother, coworker,… will. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/112 "2014-03-19T02:05:35Z")
> [@WheatCat](#): > > I don’t know about radical, but dangerous?- what is more dangerous, that the Nazis could have happened only in Germany, or that they could happen anywhere? I think it is more dangerous to believe that the Nazis could have happened only in Germany than to believe that any society, under the right (wrong) conditions, can descend into madness. > [@](#): > > Fine, go ahead and try to give me a lesson. A detailed lesson. A very detailed lesson. I doubt you will be able to offer more than continued rambling bromides, but do your worst. There’s no need for rudeness. > [@](#): > > There were plenty of countries doing no better, but only three- Germany, Italy and Japan- responded by embarking on aggressive war. And only one of those three embarked on a plan of racial genocide while they were at it. At other times and places, other countries facing similar situations have likewise chosen leaders who led them into the inferno, and genocide isn’t exactly unique to the Nazis. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 or the ethnic cleansings in the former Yugoslavia during that same decade are hardly ancient history, and again, ordinary people participated in acts of stunning evil. In Rwanda, for example, priests aided or participated in the murder of their own parishioners; propaganda and demagoguery led to atrocity. Further, in Germany, the country as a whole did NOT embark on a plan of racial genocide. They were led to it, step by step, with each step taking them closer to the Final Solution, but Johann and Maria back in '32 had no clue that’s the path they were embarking upon. Look at some of the planks in the Nazi platform in the early 1930s. “The right to determine matters concerning administration and law belongs only to the citizen. Therefore we demand that every public office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich, the county or municipality, be filled only by citizens.” “We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation.” “We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.” “Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented.” While Jews are mentioned in the platform, racial genocide wasn’t the main point or focus, or even mentioned at all. Ordinary Germans felt comfortable voting for the Nazi Party because the Nazis advocated for old-age pensions and an end to child-labor and confiscation of war profits and breaking of debt-slavery and lots of other positions that sounded really good to distressed Germans. Of course, it turned out that Hitler was using “socialism” as a lure, and he had no real intention of any serious land reform or giving power to the workers or any of his other fine-sounding populist planks: evil people work that way. “An unwavering commitment to democratic government” isn’t going to prevent a nation from electing a monster. Sometimes the bad guys win free and fair elections. Even at the great rallies at Nuremburg, Hitler never said he was going to kill all the Jews. The Nuremburg Laws were explained in German schoolbooks as a way for Jews and the Master Race to live in the same place without mixing (apartheid, basically). Jews were proclaimed to be inferior and subhuman, but Hitler never campaigned on a platform to kill them all. Once elected, however, his propaganda campaigns reinforced the difference between Good Germans and “others”; after a decade of hearing this at school, in the workplace, on the radio, in public and in private, ordinary people fell under the spell and allowed evil to flourish. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/113 "2014-03-19T02:12:09Z")
> [@WheatCat](#): > > I don’t know about radical, but dangerous?- > . It’s dangerous because it gives you a false sense of security. There’s no way all Germans were psychopaths between 1936 and 1945. They were, indeed, regular people. And regular people, after you’ve been properly demonized by the powers that be, will hang you at the nearest lampost with a big grin on their face. It’s not like examples of such are lacking, in all times and in all places. > [@](#): > > what is more dangerous, that the Nazis could have happened only in Germany, or that they could happen anywhere? What is more dangerous is believing that it can’t happen anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/114 "2014-03-19T02:17:34Z")
WheatCat: Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi Party, a spy for the Abwehr, and is honored among the Righteous Among the Nations. Decent guy or psychopath? ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/115 "2014-03-19T02:26:28Z")
> [@WheatCat](#): > > Please direct us to the reply where this suggestion was made. > [@](#): > > Nazi depravity is so extreme that there are no social occasions, including costume parties, where Nazi regalia is acceptable :dubious: None? Even a theme night on “come as an historic villian”? Or a re-enactors event? ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/116 "2014-03-19T02:36:27Z")
> [@WheatCat](#): > > My own view is that aside from generalities such as the need for unwavering commitment to democratic government and racial equality there are no lessons to learn from the Nazi era, and there will never be any until the behavioral sciences evolve into some truly useful state of development. > > . The Nazis DID come to power under a democracy. To understand why and how, to understand the appeal they had and how they then subverted certain processes to commit atrocities is certainly worthy of study and understanding. Furhthermore - whatever else you want to say about the Final Solution - there is much to be learned from the war-time tactics of the German Army. To not also study this, and throw out the lessons because of what atrocities were committed in the Nazi name is willful stupidity. As a counter example - the Japanese were brutal sadists - by all accounts the individual Japanese soldier was orders of magnitude worse than the individual German soldier - does this also mean that we can never study Japanese tactics in the war? ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/117 "2014-03-19T03:26:13Z")
> [@WheatCat](#): > > So as soon as we obtain a bit more chronological remoteness we don’t need to worry about hurting anyone badly enough, or something like that? Nazi depravity will never be diluted. You have just proven that your knowledge of history is shallow. Much worse than the Nazi atrocities has happened multiple times in the past. There was even a medieval precurser to the holocaust and I bet you can’t name the century. > [@WheatCat](#): > > I reject the premise that reenactors can be presumed able to speak with authority. I also reject the claim that anyone who went so far as to vote for them was decent. Not really sure how to take this. If you’re claiming that anyone has said that reenactors are authorities, you’re setting up a straw man. If you’re saying that no one, ever, who did personal and group research over a number of years could possibly know a little more about a topic than the average person on the street, or that what they learned can’t possibly be of any use to others, or that putting on a costume magically negates any amount of diligent scholarship (and no, I’m not claiming that all reenactors are diligent) then you’re either wildly authoritarian or believe in magic. And the magic evil Nazi supporter thing is just scary. > [@WheatCat](#): > > . . . what is more dangerous, that the Nazis could have happened only in Germany, or that they could happen anywhere? . . . . Another vote for “only the Nazis” being much more scary. > [@WheatCat](#): > > . . . Fine, go ahead and try to give me a lesson. A detailed lesson. A very detailed lesson. I doubt you will be able to offer more than continued rambling bromides, but do your worst. . . . . No comment. > [@WheatCat](#): > > . . . . My own view is that aside from generalities such as the need for unwavering commitment to democratic government and racial equality there are no lessons to learn from the Nazi era, and there will never be any until the behavioral sciences evolve into some truly useful state of development. . . . . That means that the evil you could be sucked into won’t be based on race or style of government. Maybe. You obviously have the stereotype and demonize thing down, and that’s one of the core components of homegrown atricities. > [@WheatCat](#): > > . . . . There were plenty of countries doing no better, but only three- Germany, Italy and Japan- responded by embarking on aggressive war. And only one of those three embarked on a plan of racial genocide while they were at it. You might not want to mention that around any Chinese folks who were touched by the unpleasantness. And of course you know why many historians consider WWII to be an inevitable extension of WWI, so I don’t need to mention that. > [@WheatCat](#): > > Your question betrays a naive appreciation of the issue. You do not seem to realize that the swastika . . . . Is something that we’ve been conditioned to respond to with self-congratulatory condemnation? I got that. Also that symbols can be powerful rallying points and that what they ‘mean’ is determined by consensus - which shifts over time and is somewhat negotiable. “You can break a red feather, but you can’t chose what breaking a red feather means” vs “They call us yankees as if that were a mark of shame and not a badge of honor.” > [@WheatCat](#): > > . . . A person’s reenactment hobby is not sufficient basis for assuming he has anything to teach other than reenactment practices and procedures. . . . . Nor is it sufficient basis for deciding she has nothing to share. You have to listen first. > [@WheatCat](#): > > . . . It would be exhausting only if I kept seeing the swastika displayed in public. Fortunately I do not believe I have ever seen it displayed in public in my life. Were I to see it displayed I would complain. [Places to avoid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_use_of_the_swastika_in_the_early_20th_century#Architectural_use), then. From the[larger wiki article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_use_of_the_swastika_in_the_early_20th_century): > [@](#): > > The swastika (gammadion, “fylfot”) symbol became (as it had long been in the Asian World) a popular symbol of luck in the Western world in the early 20th century. Although the Nazi Party adopted the symbol in the 1920s, it continued in use in Western countries with its original meaning until the Nazi association became dominant in the 1930s. ---
**Author:** ![OurLordPeace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e8c25b/32.png) [@OurLordPeace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OurLordPeace)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/118 "2014-03-19T03:42:14Z")
In the last election of that era in which there was the semblance of choice (March 1933), the Nazis did not win an outright majority of the vote, despite the very recent Reichstag fire and a massive campaign of vote suppression. ---
**Author:** ![OurLordPeace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e8c25b/32.png) [@OurLordPeace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OurLordPeace)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/119 "2014-03-19T04:31:51Z")
I find the whole business of war re-enacting tasteless at best, though I say this as a history buff who would not be surprised if most/many such re-enactors see their avocation as a form of living history education. How much of the wars’ realities are they going to re-enact? Don’t they inevitably and understandably sanitize the reality? Doesn’t that do a disservice to the witnesses (and participants), who, if they’re going to learn anything, ought to learn the horrors of war? It’s perhaps different when re-enactors are helping to make a film/miniseries/etc., but that’s beside the point. This is the same argument that, for example, writers and artists of war comic books had in the 1950s, and again in the 1960s. They felt like they owed the truth to their young readers, and they got in trouble as a result. Furthermore, there’s a very separate problem when we consider that apparently most of the controversy surrounds depictions of the WW2 Germans. This seems to suggest that there was something particularly uniquely evil about this regime and all who were involved with it, including the conscripted Wehrmacht, who certainly did commit war crimes (but not the Afrika Korps, apparently), and were the aggressors. Other comments in the thread concern this same topic, or something very similar. Sticking to WWII, would reactions be the same to those playing the role of Soviet troops? That’s a military who won the war in Europe (the French and British could have done so in the early stages, but they hoped Hitler would destroy the hated USSR, consequences be damned, but that’s a topic for another time) and helped out in Asia, and also were notorious for massive amounts of rape, murder, and similar atrocious behavior, not necessarily with even the fig leaf of reparations/revenge. The Western Allied forces were _much_ better behaved, though far from angelic. In any case, most of their war crimes were committed from the air, which is not relevant to this particular controversy. As for the Eastern Allies, would anyone be troubled by people depicting Mao’s or Chiang’s troops? Was their conduct versus the Japanese (and collaborators) much better than their actions when they fought one another, and Maoism in practice? Does it do a service or disservice to those learning history, and to the memories of those who lived and died in it, to depict it in a manner that, even with the best of intentions, can only fail to really convey its most crucial elements? War often features long stretches of boredom punctuated by sheer terror, and often ghastly inhumanity is visited upon civilians, and usually the whole enterprise is completely unnecessary, inasmuch as the world’s masses should fight their leaders, not one another, if they must fight anyone. I don’t doubt that many of the more thoughtful reenactors do consider these questions. Even so, it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing one should _enjoy_. Actors wrestle with this kind of thing, and at least their art forms can address some of these concerns. ---
**Author:** ![buddy431](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@buddy431](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddy431)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992/120 "2014-03-19T04:37:44Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Nowhere did I say they were unique. > > Pretending that Nazis who committed atrocities were “human beings just like us” is incredibly inane. > > Mass murder has been acceptable in very few societies in modern history. Those that permitted and encouraged it did not involve people “just like us”. Very serious pathology was at work. > > You help prevent such things from happening again by stigmatizing the hell out of them - not by saying the equivalent of “oh well, people just act out sometimes…it could happen to anyone”. People are assholes. Have you not realized that? People in my country have had no problem persecuting, including killing people who are different than them, sometimes with the general support (or at least lack of disapproval) from the general population and the judiciary. Luckily we’ve mostly realized that it’s unacceptable to do so, and the courts have cracked down more (which also makes it less socially acceptable). This doesn’t happen everywhere. Were the people killing each other in the Sierra Leone civil war fundamentally different than me? Or the French who persecuted the Huguenots? Or the Russians who carried out Pogroms? The lynch mobs from my own nation? Am I some sort of moral individual in a world full of irredeemable evil? I think it’s both incredibly arrogant and incredibly dangerous to suppose so. I consider myself an enlightened individual. But I also recognize that I live in a relatively enlightened society, where it is not acceptable to kill someone because they are different. But what if society had been telling me since birth that the Visigoths were the source of all of our problems, that they weren’t really humans, but rather vermin? I bet I wouldn’t be too kind to Visigoths. Does that make me a monster? Perhaps, but no more so than anyone else. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historic-re-enactors-dressing-up-as-nazis-at-a-private-party-is-that-kosher/683992.md?page=7)