STEELER13
Posts: 141
Joined: 6/7/2003
From: PHILADELPHIA
Status: offline
|
...your SPWAW addiction?  Call 1-800-no-tanks and people are standing by to help you
Seriously, though, have any of you been embarrassed to admit to playing wargames, particularly a WWII wargame? While I personally am not embarrassed or shy about it, I don't get many "somebody commit this guy" looks and "eeww...he likes murder and nazis" looks whenever I mention I play wargames or if someone sees me with a book.
When I was a misguided young soul and had the misfortune to work for the US Postal Service, I constantly received these looks.
More disturbing was the classic "go postal" guy(he actually freaked out 4 or 5 times in 3 years and only when he threatened to kill people's spouses did somebody transferred him--last I heard he works in a post office in NJ somewheres!). The guy saw me reading at lunch a black book with a swastika on it and came over, clicked his heels and gave me a salute(you know what I mean). At first I thought he was making some sick joke, but then he did it again....feeling very uncomfortable I started to leave when he leaned over and in a whisper said that "friends are near by" and if I needed to contact someone he would put me in touch but "beware, the Jews are everywhere". Again I thought he was just exhibiting a sick sense of humor but during one of his public rants he again stated his views on that religion. 
Oh, and the book? "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer. I'm sure you all know what a great neo-nazi Mr. Shirer is, so obviously I must be one, too, right? Idiot never got past swastika on the cover!
I do admit that Gunny's early thread about playing the Nazis struck a chord. I am an amateur WWII historian with over 2,000 books. I love SPWAW for what it is--a tactics game with historical basis. Like a Steven Ambrose book, Medal of Honor, or even that horrible Pearl Harbor movie, pop history does give people some idea of history, and hopefully they go on their own to step up to better books. If not, at the very least they have some exposure to the period. When my wife(a gorgeous woman who suffers with my books and computers) told people how happy our first son was born June 6th, very few people understood the date. Several didn't even know what I meant by Normandy or D-Day. Try it yourself...give a quiz to your next gathering of co-workers or friends...if you find 20% of people who can answer that I'd be amazed. If you find even 5% who know correct meaning of June 6th I'd be even more amazed.
So you see, that is why I am not embarrassed to be a wargamer...I often give my bosses quotes or situations from whatever book I read and apply them to business. My one boss appreciated the comment about George S Marshall when he took over Chief of Staff---he started off with over 190 people directly reporting to him. By mid-1942 that was reduced to 6.  Can you see why the boss likes that fact?
So while I am secure in my SPWAW/WW2 knowledge, what concerns me are the neo-nazis in our midst who as fellow historians or wargamers, share our hobbies but for perverted reasons. Guys, the Germans and the Japanese were horrible---no comparing atrocities to other wars or other countries---what those two countries' governments and by inferrence, people, sanctioned was murder and genocide on a scale rarely equaled or that can be rationlized away or worse "revised" away. To say there is nothing wrong in playing Germans but not SS is rhetorical. Alexander Werth makes a convincing argument that many of the worst atrocities in Russia were committed when the FIRST German troops arrived---the front line guys, not the SS or SonderKommandos who followed. Ziemke and others document quite a few cases where Manstein, Paulus, and Reichenau were personally involved. SPWAW is a game and there is nothing wrong with being interested in the German army's accomplishments, its tactics, engineering, or just playing the German side in a make believe game. BUT lets not rationalize the history that the army was made of Prussian military leaders above the trailertrash corporal and his henchmen. They were all involved to some extent, even if it was to just ignore what happened. 
I think revisionist historians, such as David Irving, also hurt the study of German military history. I've read Irving long before I ever heard of his Holocaust denial spiel of the last 10 years, and I was not impressed with him at all. His seminal work on Rommel, Trail of the Fox, is a case in point. Does anyone really believe that this guy miraculously after 30 years finds Rommel's FM baton? Come on! Most of the book isn't about Rommel, but about Irving himself. Anyway, he and other "Holocaust deniers" have given Revisionism a bad name. They also discourage other authors from writing from the German perspective objectively, or taint talented authors like Joel Hayward.
Sorry for ranting... If any are still awake at this point, I just had to get off my chest about all that. Thank you for listening!
_____________________________
BEST WISHES,
STEELER  
|
Printable Version
Are you ever embarrassed of... - 
) at all. Then again, I've been studying military history and wargaming for close to 35 years! 
)
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread