What happened to GMT?

No doubt it's irrational, as I said. But that was my point, I feel like some people are so into the Third Reich as to be irrational as well. Anyway, that's a little OT.

Southernman wrote:

Also, would you play the Japanese in the Pacific - they were as brutal to civilians and combatants as the Germans ?
It never (has never) even crosses my mind.

I have no problem either with playing the germans or the japanese. But the point is that I saw a lot of people who refused to play anything else than the german side ! I don't mean that they were wearing brown shirts or were acting as neo-nazis. But they had clearly a deep and scary fascination for the 3rd reich. When I play the German, I don't regard myself as the new Guderian. We will probably make stupid jokes during the session, but I will have the same satisfaction if I win with the axis or the allies. Those guys are so much involved that you have the feeling that when Stalingrad falls, they will stand up and sing the Horst Wessel Lied. The goal of the game is not to win against their opponent, it's to prove that history was wrong. So they keep on playing obsessionally the same East Front conflict, looking for every new monstergame that will provide them maximal chrome, and allow them to find every single detail they know about the Wehrmacht. This is probably why, just like Gary, and despite the many books I read about the conflict, I'm not that interested in East Front wargames: I don't need that level of detail, I'm just looking for a good game. Preferably in good company.

Sounds like you have encountered wargamers who have an obsession with a certain period - just like, as someone pointed out, Warhammer devotees can get obsessed (as I'm sure CCG players did get in the 90s).

But it does sound like the main issue for some people is that they equate anything German in WWII as being Nazi and therefore anyone obsessing with the Germans must be a closet racist. Now if they were only into SS units well then I would be on your side of the fence then.

Some of the Warhammer minis guys in our club are getting into 'Flames of War', and nearly all of them are building German armies. These guys are not skinheads or weird, they are quite normal and no different to me (except they can read and understand army codexes). They probably chose this for reasons like the German army had many elite and superior fighting units (I think most people acknowledge that the German defeat was due heavily to weight of numbers of men/machines against it, low resources at the end, and terrible decisions by the political high command rather than the quality of its armed forces) and that German vehicles just look better than a lot of allied units.

Plus from a previous gaming group there were a couple of guys mid-30s who did AD&D campaigns, but also went across to Europe for events where people re-enacted WW1 environments and they used to dress as German infantry. Once again these guys were pretty normal, but I wouldn't do it myself.

Like I said, it ain't everyone. There are hordes of normal gamers out there who prefer playing the Wehrmacht [my tyrant of choice are the Sovs; I prefer the sheer volume of force as it can help compensate for my lousy decision-making]. I'm talking about the sorts of guys who, like one I had the misfortune of sitting down at a table against, have their box of Einsatzgruppen minis and Horst Wessel T-shirts. He was neither the first nor the last that I had encountered and it's a little fucking weird. I think the best description was the comment someone made earlier about being driven by wanting to win the Knight's Cross, not win the game. There is a very real difference in the mindset there. It's a minority, but an easily identified one, which perhaps make them seem more numerous than they really are.

mikoyan wrote:

Gary Sax wrote:

That is a great post Milo. I don't have your time in the hobby, so I can't speak to that. I am the definition of a new-school wargamer, 26, and I started in the hobby 1 1/2 to 2 years ago with C+C Ancients and then POG as my first real wargame.

Also, you really touched a nerve with me. I don't like East Front games. It is probably my least favorite subject for a wargame! The slugfest of it all bores me. I don't think I'll buy another one. Also the German thing creeps me out, from my perspective I can't relate at all. In fact for me it is the opposite--I try not to use the Germans, even when I shouldn't mind (WWI POG). It amazes me how attracted some of these guys, especially older guys, are to the minutiae of Hitler's horrible machine.

It's not just wargames. I collect higher end action figures. It seems like there are about 3 Germans to every Allied figure. If you throw out Americans, the ratio is even worse because it's about 10 Germans for every British soldier. The German high command is almost entirely represented and none of the big players have released Montgomery or Churchill (3 companies have done a Hitler figure...go figure). I also do models on occasion and the Germans are pretty well represented there too. There are also diecast military figures and the Germans are pretty well represented there too. I think alot of it is the "coolness" factor of the Germans, they have camoflage and a billion different tanks and vehicles. The Americans were alot more pratical. At least I hope it's the coolness factor.

It's similar to something I've discovered in recent years. Visit the history section of any bookstore or a library. At least 75% or more of the German history section is about Hitler, Nazis or the Third Reich (some book stores have nothing but). It's as if Germany had no history until the 1930's!

The problem here in Germany is that I would be looked at strangely if I openly stated I played WWII wargames. The war in itself is really kind of a taboo topic, although every other Sunday there is a movie in TV about the great tragedies the war brought us, like the Sinking of the Gustloff, The Bombing of Dresden, etc. I really despise these movies because they show Germans strictly in the role of victims only.

Now as everybody knows, selling or displaying swastikas is forbidden in Germany, so I really shouldn't show off gameboxes with them on it. But again, these symbols are shown all over TV in documentaries which for example euphemise war atrocities commited by the Wehrmacht.

I'm Anti-Fascist and I even once refused to play Axis&Allies with a Nazi. I think this is naive in retrospect, because closet-Nazis are far worse, especially those who create movies like the aforementioned ones and sell them as anti-war films.

But back on topic: Most good playable Eastfront games are oop, I think. I'm not interested in a simulation of the whole war neither, but Stalingrad and the Soviet winter offensive of Jan/Feb 1943 in the South make good games. Stalingrad because it was the first time the Soviets beat the Germans. In 1943 Manstein stopped a superior Russian force with beat-up remnants and a few Elite units, the so-called Backhand Blow. This operation is also very interesting because of the different strategies both opponents tried to enforce. The rest of the Eastfront was just one side devastating the other...