The statement on the website seals the deal, combined with the unit’s participation in war atrocities. Nazi wannabe, not a re-enactor. Hell with him AND his buddies.
Honest question: how the hell does one justify the claim of historical accuracy while reenacting anything post-WWI?
I get earlier conflicts, where you basically line people up and fire fake muskets at each other (I still don’t understand what “historical value” this has, since…we know how the battle unfolded, thus the reenactment). But do WWII reenactments just gloss over the tanks and bomber planes and heavy artillery? I kind of doubt it, so it just makes me wonder what the point of all this is.
Want to be a soldier? Join the military.
Want to play at combat and being Mr. Macho? Go paintballing, where you can shoot people to your heart’s delight.
Want to dress up in pretty costumes? Congratulations, you’re a seven-year-old girl. Grow up, or at least wait until Halloween. Don’t do it on the weekends and claim it’s for “historical value”.
There was a lot of conscription into the SS, the Waffen SS had a peak strength of ~900,000. The Waffen SS is often thought of as elite units of blonde haired, blue eyed Aryans, but this wasn’t the case at all. Ironically formations were raised from Poles, Ukrainians, Russians and others who were Untermenschen in Nazi ideology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS_foreign_volunteers_and_conscripts
The “crusade against Bolshevism” was a major propaganda selling point in drumming up recruits from occupied territories. That said a politician would have to be an idiot to think that dressing up as a member of the SS on the weekends would be a good idea.
Sad individuals. Soldiers in the British Army has coined a beautiful term - Walt - for those who like to dress up in uniform and pretend to be soldiers. And while they express some tolerance for re-enacting Walts (as compared to, say, those who buy uniforms and medals of ebay and wear them in public), there’s a certain hierarchy:
However, picking the “Wiking Division” crosses from mildly pathetic to downright offensive. “Northern European countries allied with Hitler’s Germany” is apparently their specialized way of spelling “countries under Nazi occupation”. And they use a lot of verbiage to avoid the much shorter word for those who joined the armed forces of the country’s occupiers - it’s even historically relevant: Quislings.
Seriously, not only do those asshats want to play-act at being Nazis, they push it one step further by playing at being Waffen-SS, and the crowning turd in the waterpipe is their decision to emulate a unit specifically formed to accommodate the traitors who saw their countries occupied and decided that throwing their lot in with the Nazis was just the ticket.
I humbly suggest they “re-enact” their post-war return to their respective liberated countries with their tails between their legs.
Fucking please. This is the photo that has caused all the hoopla. Lott is the guy in the SS uniform standing next to a guy in a Scottish uniform. I’m pretty sure the Scots weren’t Nazis in WWII. To claim that the group only likes the nazis is absurd. They got one of the allies right there in the center of the photograph!
Funny, apparently historians hold different views about what was going on:
But what the hell do historians know? They weren’t there, man! Re-enactors at least pretend they were there, so that’s, right there, a kind of… evidence?
The guy played BOTH SIDES. Got that? Is that a hard concept for people? He’s not some neo- nazi; he’s a history geek. This is from an article appearing in that most Hitleresque of publications: The Huffington Post:
“Iott said he has been involved in re-enactments on and off for roughly 35 years. He said he has dressed as an American soldier for World War I and World War II re-enactments, as well as a soldier from each side of the Civil War.”
So he played both Nazis and Americans in WWII reenactments.
Jesus people, I know critical thinking has waned a bit on this board, but the guy is NOT a nazi sympathizer. Anderson Cooper 360 even mentions that swasticas were banned from the attire.
Okay use you critical thinking, and figure out how his statements about the Wiking Division are anything other than a whitewashing of a gang of barbarians and a defense of treason committed by subdued Europeans.
“I think that they thought they were fighting for their homeland” is a whitewashing? Did your mother get a pregnancy discount at the liquor store?
Of course those nationalist bastards thought they were fighting for their homeland. That’s how nationalists think. It’s right there in the word. Do you believe the nazis thought they weren’t fighting for their Fatherland?
