That is correct. However, that is not what this particular event is about.
This is a re-enactors set who, besides having their fun playing what amounts to historical paintball against Allies-kitted folks once in a while (which is fine by me), dress up once a year to go to a German-themed restaurant for Bratwurst and Malzbier. Said restaurant either “puts on the Reich” for them, or lets them redecorate for the occasion.
Now, I’m only an amateur history buff, but I don’t remember the Great Strudel Battle of April '43. IOW on this particular occasion, they ain’t re-enacting shit. They’re enjoying Nazi cosplay for its own sake.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Long as they don’t go out clubbing Jews as the digestive, let them fly their freak flag high. I very strongly doubt that there are no closet neo-nazi sympathizers in the bunch, but shrug. Ain’t illegal either.
[QUOTE=Grumman]
Do they ever have non-Nazi parties? If we found out that next month they’d be having a British Officer party I’d call this a complete non-issue.
[/QUOTE]
Typically re-enactors don’t switch sides, no. For one thing, it’s already somewhat expensive to get just the one historically accurate kit ; for another dressing up is serious business, with unit loyalty and esprit de corps up to here !
My gut reaction would be, “those guys are a bunch of fucking racists.” But it’s hard to know where to draw the line on such things.
I don’t understand this at all. What part of what she said do you disagree with? Pretending the Nazis were somehow unique leads to an “it can’t happen here” mentality, which means we won’t figure it out until too late when it does happen here (or somewhere).
Nazi depravity is so extreme that there are no social occasions, including costume parties, where Nazi regalia is acceptable.
Furthermore I have my doubts about anyone who takes the Nazi side during wargame reenactment, reasoning given by the attendee quoted in OP being nonsense: there is a vast written and audiovisual literature available for anyone who wants an education in any minute detail of the Nazi era, especially including German WW2 strategy and tactics, and reenactments are not a significant addition to the rest. Maybe reenactors who dress up as Waffle SS do not exactly love Nazism, but I suspect there is much they do love about the spectacle of German WW2 military prowess, and I am not at all sure that is mentally healthy.
I anticipate rebuttal in the form of attempt to distinguish between “Nazi” and “German”, but that is not reasonable because the Nazis were the absolute overlords of Germany, and their rule was not even passively contested by more than about a per cent of the population, if even that. Nazism and Germany were indistinguishable.
“Dumb”? As I claimed? Here’s an idea. Send your thoughts in an email to mrmiskatonic@gmail.com. Then log into the gmail account and debate that email as it seems that’s what you’re doing here and at least then I can get out of the way of you debating yourself.
I knew a guy who did the reenacting. He played some Waffen SS crap. Can’t speak for all of them, but that guy was a Nazi wannabe, which has to be only slightly above being a Nazi.
The mere concept of dressing up like that strikes me as glorifying that which should be shunned, but then the history channel anymore is Hitler central.
If you’re going to do reenactments, somebody has to play the other side. If everyone takes your approach and refuses to portray the Germans, then the World War II Historical Re-Enactment Society becomes “Guys in Allied uniforms standing around”.
I never called your hobbies dumb. I said they can seem dumb to outsiders. That does not make them dumb by any stretch of the imagination. Especially in light of your comments about reenactors in general.
Turn off the hypsersensitivity and read what I actually said.
I may be putting words in her mouth, but what she’s trying to get at is that part of the importance of understanding the real impact and atrocity of the Nazis is realizing that they weren’t cartoon character supervillains, but rather ordinary men who did terrible things. The implication there is that they weren’t special- this sort of thing could happen again with ordinary people like us, and that we should be doubly vigilant as a result.
It’s easy to look out for clear villains, but it takes a lot more awareness to realize your neighbor may support this kind of thing.
That said, I think “Nazi cosplay” as Kobal2 so aptly described it is freaking weird. At the very least, there’s some astounding tone deafness going on there, and probably more than a little inappropriate admiration going on. I do think it’s more than likely a lot of socially awkward or possibly sheltered people doing it, which is somewhat of a mitigating factor.
Try to be a bit more discriminating. The analogy you suggest would hold only if Nazi reenactors set up mock gas chambers, or reenacted other forms of homidicidal atrocity.
However, the KKK is a close analogy with Nazism, so much so that it would likewise be unacceptable to wear KKK regalia for any social occasion, including costume parties.
That seems almost fair to me, except that it’s more like Klan re-enactors who just like the pillowy uniform–your analogy would work precisely if the Nazi re-enactors were setting up mock death camps.
Interviews with Civil War re-enactors show a disturbingly high number of them who long for the good old days. I have no reason to doubt that the Nazi re-enactors have similar numbers.
And that restaurant? They should be ashamed, and their shame should be widely disseminated, so that folks who aren’t big into Nazis know where not to get their knockwurst.
Reading through the article - it seems that it’s not a single group, but rather an annual get together of multiple re-enactment groups.
The article also seperatly (gah! spelling) mentions German Army, SS and Gestapo -
so I do again have to wonder what uniforms were being worn by how many (I can’t recognise the difference between the uniforms anyway, particularly at that quality)
If there was a hobby where people re-enacted lynchings for historical purposes, would you judge the people who chose to portray the victims as morally superior to the people who chose to portray the perpetrators? Or would they all just be participants in a hobby that required two sides?
OP and my reply limited the case to include wearing Nazi regalia. However, my 2nd paragraph introduced some ambiguity. I might be willing to give a pass to war games where there were no swastikas on the uniforms.
As I understand it, the groups who arranged the annual dinner in the OP are members of the World War II Historical Re-Enactment Society, so they are war-game re-enactors. They can’t do their hobby in the wintertime, so they have a Christmas dinner to hang out with their war re-enacting buddies. That is to say, the war games came first, the dinner is just an offshoot of it.
Having seen and known my share of WW2 German reenactors they kinda have the same attitude - not for the good reasons however.*
SS units tend to be looked upon (probably fairly) as fetishistic Nazi memorabilia collectors who would rather sit in bunkers showing off their latest collectable than go outside and practice small unit tactics, drills, battles or other aspects of reenacting.