You need to calm down, or we’ll take your blankie away.
Get bent. You’re not the one being called a “seven-year-old girl” by some dumb cow.
Hey. If they if the Peter Pan costume fits … wear it.
It’s worth pointing out that historian John Keegan has talked about how small, isolated, and ineffective German resistance organizations were, and how quickly and pitilessly they were wiped out when discovered or exposed, which was often immediately. I’m absolutely no fan of the Nazis, but to oppose them internally almost always meant to die quickly, in obscurity, without affecting any political change for the better. It was a personal choice, really, not any kind of movement one could “join.”
I do think it’s possible that the guy in question was just a moron who didn’t realize what the history of the specific unit he was reënacting was, never read the stuff on the web site, and so on; but even so that’s a bit too stupid to vote for.
There were a few Civil War battles, e.g., the Battle of Salineville, which was near the northern tip of West Virginia, and which was the end of Morgan’s Raid through Kentucky, southern Indiana and Ohio.
You needn’t bother, though - as mentioned, the democratic governments of the occupied states (well, the ones that didn’t end up behind the Iron Curtain) did a perfectly fine job of judging that these men were treasonous scum of the very lowest sort.
I understand and respect this point, and I don’t think it’s wrong. I gotta say, though, that I would personally be very frightened of portraying a Nazi. I’m an advocate by nature - if you task me to write a memo outlining a litigation strategy, say, I won’t just draft a memo outlining a strategy I believe can win. By the time I’m done, most of the time I’ll genuinely believe I’m right. I won’t lose sight of the counter-arguments, of course - I’d be a poor lawyer if I did - but my conviction will be with that memo, even though it likely could have gone the other way had I been tasked to write the same memo for the other side. I’ll believe in it.
If I’m playing a Nazi in a role that’s largely improvised, I can only do that if I get into the proper headspace - if I convince myself that what I’m doing is good and proper. And the thought of believing in something like this is scary as hell. I can normally switch myself out of my belief in a litigation strategy, and I’m sure I could switch myself out of this - but still.
There’s a definite middle ground there you are ignoring. My friends who were Sealed Knot members (and I went along to some of their re-enactments) certainly wanted to be as historically-accurate as possible, but the purpose behind the meetings, in the final analysis, was neither educational nor to spread Parlimentarian ideology. It was to have fun.
And that’s fine - though I never saw the fun of being a pikeman and getting your ribs cracked, but I am sure they didn’t see the fun in a lot of what I did. I certainly enjoyed the liquid aspects of the meet.
Now, I just don’t see the “fun” aspect so much of re-enacting packing Jews into gas chambers. I don’t have an issue with WWII re-enactment, even Wehrmacht re-enactors. But deliberately picking a unit that was made up of traitors, committed horrendous war crimes, and was part of an overall criminal organization that was central to the Final Solution is sending a message deliberately. And not a pleasant message at that.
Do you really want someone with my username to wake up?! 
Some folks have tried to point out that this fellow has played soldier on both sides. That certainly might be but as a reenactor it doesn’t really settle things much.
Many folks go from unit to unit trying to find a ‘fit’. They may think a unit looks good from its history but when they join they find people they have a hard time socializing with. If you don’t get along with the people you are ‘fighting’ with you are not going to have a good time. Very few people formally leave units, they just start mustering with another. Most units have a good number of people on the rosters who haven’t shown up in years.
The question is if this guy tried an American unit and it just didn’t ‘sit’ well with him and he went to the SS group. That seems a likely scenario and it points to him being more comfy with guys who whitewash the nazis.
The other option is that this person is a ‘Uniform Collector’, which in reenacting is a special form of wanker. These are people who join multiple units, get all the equipment, and then show up in a random uniform at each event. They are not very common in America Civil War as the uniforms are a bot on the drab side - but for Revolutionary War or earlier they are a gold mine for folks who want the green & blue of Continental, the Red of British, and the Dark Blue of Hessian (plus all the colors of other units). I look upon Uniform Collectors as being kinda waffly, unable to decide on a group to play with and more interested in the toys.
(There is a special kind of uber-‘Uniform Collector’ I refer to as the ‘Unit Collector’ who are sadly quite common and won’t mention at this time unless folks want the details. )
If this is just their bakers, I’d hate to see what their butchers were up to.
Not to mention the candlestick makers.
That’s not something I care to think about.
No problem. Just don’t call the bad guy “Valiant”, as the Iott group’s website did. And don’t say, “Well, who am I to judge Snidely Whiplash?”, as Iott did on CNN. Also, if you’re doing an historical reenactment of SS troops, don’t whitewash or ignore their human rights abuses.
He made a stupid uneducated rebelious statement joke - it was not ment to re-enact, it was meant to shock … and well, it did not go down well at all for him.
… but his choice for wearing a Nazi uniform it was not for re-enactment purposes
It’s part of history and people do re-enact - that dude, might made a poor choice in picking a SS Nazi, but lets pretend we have a new blockbuster movie about the Europeen WW2 without any Nazi’s.
The Allies bombing some place that does not exist, shooting bullets into the sea at nothing, having hand to hand combat with themself… because NO ONE can or will wear a Nazi uniform.
There is a slight difference between someone having a weird hobby in dressing up in whatever uniform - Fairy, Hobbit, Starship Trooper, Nazi, Klingon or wtf ever - to actually believing in the goodness of Nazi’sm like a Neo-Nazi.
They even have an exibition about The Fuhrer now in Germany:
No, no, I wasn’t trying to ignore it. A big, big part of re-enacting is fun. Yeah, stupid as it sounds it’s fun to dress up in historical costumes, pretend to be someone else, think in a way someone who died 80 years ago in a foreign country thought, etc. That was one of the biggest reasons why I got into reenacting. I think your next comment:
…might be a bit misleading. Is that was this group was doing? If so, that’s suspect unless it’s for one of those “living history” type of events I mentioned before (showing schoolkids the awful truth of the Shoah, for example). I could understand the “fun” in dressing up in a historical costumes and recreating camp life while on the march or something like that. Recreating historical atrocities would raise my eyebrow. But, again, I don’t think that’s what this group does.
Probably not.
villa just has a poor grasp on things.
Yet is proud to sit in judgment
I think this is the first time I’ve seen a strawman wearing a Nazi uniform.
This might make me unique on the board: I’ve played Josef Mengele onstage, so in a roundabout fashion I do have experience in dressing like a Nazi for no pay. (This was in a high school production of Playing for Time by Arthur Miller. It’s based on a true story but it’s not a historical reenactment by any stretch.) I did my fair share of research for the part. At no time was I left awestruck by his valor or the way he defended Germany and fought for freedom. That’s all bullshit. He was an astonishingly sick and amoral man. Nothing he did had any scientific value - not even in theory. He was the equivalent of a child who kills animals for fun. The difference was that he was a grown man with medical training, and instead of tormenting a few housepets, he had access to an unlimited supply of people who he didn’t recognize as human beings, and had permission to do whatever he wanted with them. He killed thousands of people directly and through neglect (and I’m ignoring the people he sent to the gas chambers because he wasn’t interested in experimenting on them), and did it without a shred of compassion. He was motivated by insane racial theories and callous curiosity - “I wonder what would happen if I sewed a pair of twins together or vivisected this person?” - and that was about it.
See if you can spot the subtle differences between what me and Rich Iott’s Wiking wannabe friends.