You certainly did that.

Asked if you are anti semitic.

Posted your pics of Nazi military uniforms you find "cool".

Think the 8th Air Force at Schweinfurt is equivalent to the SS at Auschwitz.

And so based on the info you chose to share,some of us drew our own conclusions to your question.

A clear unambiguous condemnation of the Nazi treatment of Jews and other minorities would of course clear up any inadvertent internet misunderstandings...

Ok.For my part,I definitively condemn and  am horrified by the treatment of the Jews by the nazi.

But , the facility of some members of this forum to condemn other members to be antisemit and pro-nazi is ,at the least,

a little disturbing.Maybe some paranoïa?

Now,I know that I'll receive a lot of poisoned arrows...

P.S.And no ,Jarhead, I'm not always goosestepping and reading meinkampf.

We seem to be straying away from the original topic... 

Like most others here, I don't believe someone is anti-Semitic simply because they might play as (one of) the Axis powers in a WW2 game.  If that logic were valid, then playing as the Confederacy in American Civil War games would make me a pro-secessionist white supremacist. 

We seem to be straying away from the original topic... 

Like most others here, I don't believe someone is anti-Semitic simply because they might play as (one of) the Axis powers in a WW2 game.  If that logic were valid, then playing as the Confederacy in American Civil War games would make me a pro-secessionist white supremacist. 

Originally Posted By Rolph54 (16 AUG 2012 6:28am)

Ok.For my part,I definitively condemn and  am horrified by the treatment of the Jews by the nazi.

But , the facility of some members of this forum to condemn other members to be antisemit and pro-nazi is ,at the least,

a little disturbing.Maybe some paranoïa?

Now,I know that I'll receive a lot of poisoned arrows...

P.S.And no ,Jarhead, I'm not always goosestepping and reading meinkampf.

 

Not always, but some of the time

Sorry could not resist.. 

I also think anyone who plays the Romans is Anti-Christian and the Muslims a terrorist.

Anyone who plays the turks is anti-armenian and the british anti-boer

Anyone who plays the syrians in combat mission is .... 

Anyone who plays the Confederates is a advocate of slaves

Somebody who plays the Russians an advocate of fratricide

The mongols an advocate of wiping out the whole world 

The Americans advocating the wiping out of the indians and treatment of the japanese during ww2

Seriously guys. Its about the skill and equipment etc of the army. Not the political, religious or even the genocidal side.

I respect and submit to all tragedies of the world and say the holocaust is probably the worst ever seen. But we are wargamers and 

for us it should never be about anything other than the man on the ground or the general with an overall command of a battle, not a massacre. 

Does anybody here believe the average man is not the same the world over, the average man in his fox hole?

What say you to the American tankers with pictures of Rommel inside their tanks during the Gulf war?

Originally Posted By destraex (16 AUG 2012 7:00am)

 

What say you to the American tankers with pictures of Rommel inside their tanks during the Gulf war?

Its a display of complete ignorance and should not be condoned by the chain of command.  Its one thing to admire the accomplishments of a skilled military leader, but to idolize an enemy commander whose forces killed many of one's comrades is extremely narrow minded and thoughtless.

A few thoughts:

I find playing the nazis a little distasteful . . . but not real distasteful.  I do it sometimes, and when I do I get into it.  I would never in a million years harbor the thought that everybody who likes to play the Germans in WWII games is ipso facto anti-semitic.  That's silly.  There are all kinds of great reasons to play the Germans in a WWII game, especially a strategy game if you're not the patient type, because of course they are the ones that come out swinging and the Allies are the ones who come out ducking into a hidey-hole.  In an operational game, they're the ones with the best leaders . . . in a tactical game the ones with the best equipment.  Playing the Japanese is a slightly milder version of the same thing, as they were pretty heinous, too, but they also were the ones who came out swinging and are even more attractive to many because they were such a strong underdog.  Playing the Confederates doesn't make you a racist, perhaps it just means that you're attracted to underdogs or you admire the great generals they had.

I think it's true that if you are racist you're likely to want to play the Confederates, and if you are anti-semitic you're more likely to want to play the Germans.  However that logic can absolutely not be turned around to see that if you play the rebs you're racist.

On another topic in this thread: yes, our (i.e., the Allies', I'm American) mass bombing of civilians was shameful and horrific, and we didn't need to do it to win the war.  We just decided early on we were taking the gloves off, and then never really processed the morality of what we were doing thereafter, which is shameful.

Is it as bad as intentionally attempting to wipe out a whole culture of people?  Of course it isn't, but while there's a good-sized gap between the morality of the two actions, I'm not sure it's a yawning chasm.  You're as responsible for the foreseeable but unintended results of your actions as you are for the intended results.  Fire an automatic weapon into a crowd and it doesn't make it OK if you're hoping all the bullets miss.  What we did was really, really bad and I'm thankful that attitudes seem to have turned away from the idea that massive civilian death is OK in war.

Originally Posted By Jarhead0331 (16 AUG 2012 9:09am)

Originally Posted By destraex (16 AUG 2012 7:00am)

 

What say you to the American tankers with pictures of Rommel inside their tanks during the Gulf war?

 

Its a display of complete ignorance and should not be condoned by the chain of command.  Its one thing to admire the accomplishments of a skilled military leader, but to idolize an enemy commander whose forces killed many of one's comrades is extremely narrow minded and thoughtless.

Former enemy commander.  I dont know, that viewpoint strikes me as extremely narrow minded.

Originally Posted By BlondKnight (16 AUG 2012 1:40pm)

Originally Posted By Jarhead0331 (16 AUG 2012 9:09am)

Originally Posted By destraex (16 AUG 2012 7:00am)

 

What say you to the American tankers with pictures of Rommel inside their tanks during the Gulf war?

 

Its a display of complete ignorance and should not be condoned by the chain of command.  Its one thing to admire the accomplishments of a skilled military leader, but to idolize an enemy commander whose forces killed many of one's comrades is extremely narrow minded and thoughtless.

 

Former enemy commander.  I dont know, that viewpoint strikes me as extremely narrow minded.

Good point, BK. 

There was a lot of admiration and respect for Rommel from the Allies even during the war. In some accounts of the War in the Desert, it seems that Churchill even treated Rommel almost like a sports rival in his admiration of his skill and his desire to "beat him."

Hans von Luck was a colonel in Rommel's Afrika Korps in his published memoir, Panzer Commander describes the "civility" if you can call it that of that war. Huge mutual respect from both sides. Gentlemen's agreement on "tea time" and to quit fighting after a certain hour and good treatment of prisoners.

Also, because of his alleged links to the Hitler assassination attempt and the German resistance, Rommel was also compelled to commit suicide by Hitler or face a death penalty and retribution against his family.

Originally Posted By BlondKnight (16 AUG 2012 1:40pm)

Former enemy commander.  I dont know, that viewpoint strikes me as extremely narrow minded.

Why? It's the truth.  But, I'm not surprised that someone who calls himself "Blondknight," would think so.

Originally Posted By Jarhead0331 (16 AUG 2012 5:03pm)

Originally Posted By BlondKnight (16 AUG 2012 1:40pm)

Former enemy commander.  I dont know, that viewpoint strikes me as extremely narrow minded.

 

Why? It's the truth.  But, I'm not surprised that someone who calls himself "Blondknight," would think so.

 

sigh, please remember your a moderator.

You can be either Denzel Washington or Gene Hackman, which kind of officer do you think is better for the 21st century?

Personally I think someone open minded enough  to learn about the way others before us did things is better equiped to adapt to the changing situations of battle over a cold war robot.

Originally Posted By BlondKnight (16 AUG 2012 6:02pm)

 

sigh, please remember your a moderator.

As a moderator, I feel obligated to correct your grammar.  It's "you're," not "your."  You can thank me later.

Originally Posted By BlondKnight (16 AUG 2012 6:02pm)

You can be either Denzel Washington or Gene Hackman, which kind of officer do you think is better for the 21st century?

Personally I think someone open minded enough  to learn about the way others before us did things is better equiped to adapt to the changing situations of battle over a cold war robot.

OK.  Do you think Denzel Washington would hang pictures of Wehrmacht leaders around the USS Alabama?  I think not.  It is unprofessional and disrespectful to the men who died fighting the German war machine.  There is a big difference between studying/learning from your enemies, as opposed to glorifying them.  Hanging pictures of them on the wall like you'd see in some college dorm room crosses the line to glorification.  It serves no educational purpose.

I happen to be a Captain in the Army Reserve, and I would never permit a subordinate to hang something like that "in his tank."

This is a sad day for America, next thing you know Jarhead will be kicking General Lee out of the Haunted Tank.

Its like I dont even know you man.

I agree with him.

While it's okay to admire former enemies for their ability, it does seem rather disrespectful to place that kind of hero worship on the guy from an American viewpoint. 

It also reinforces my disgust with some of the Axis Fanboy types, because this is exactly something one of them would do.  Whomever that dude is - he was probably one of these types who constantly display hero-worship type awe at nazi uniforms, equipment, etc to the exception of everything else as is regularly seen.

CurlyRedKnight would be more at your satisfaction?

There has long been a legend about the civility of the North African

war and the proper behaviour of the combatants.  In most of the areas

where there was fighting there were very few civilians about to get

run over.  If they were they they doubtless would have been.  The civilian

population of Tunisia, much more dense than Cyrenica or the Western Desert,

did not enjoy the passage of the armies and suffered badly from both sides

penchant for blowing things up rather indiscriminately.  Tunisia had a substantial

Sephardic Jewish population before the war and the Afrika Korps gave them the

treatment they gave to the European Jews, forcing many into slavery building

roads and fortificaions under allied fire.  On the other side of the coin the father

of a childhood friend was captured with the Italian portion of the Axis army

in Tunisia.  Instead of being shipped off to England, Canada or the USA, a fate like heaven,

he had the fortune of being part of the fraction handed over to the French.

He laboured as a slave in a Tunisian vineyard until the French government "remembered"

to repatriate them in the early 1950's.  We play games.  War is a nasty buisness

and deserves the epithet of "cruelty unrefined".  Looking at the near psychotic responses

to some of this discussion is a good reminder of how things get rolling......

Smack on. Scratch the surface & the beast in us all will shine through. It doesn't take too much to let it out.

Originally Posted By danlongman (16 AUG 2012 10:36pm)

We play games.  War is a nasty buisness and deserves the epithet of "cruelty unrefined".  Looking at the near psychotic responses

to some of this discussion is a good reminder of how things get rolling......

Originally Posted By glen55 (16 AUG 2012 10:49am)

 There are all kinds of great reasons to play the Germans in a WWII game, especially a strategy game if you're not the patient type, because of course they are the ones that come out swinging and the Allies are the ones who come out ducking into a hidey-hole.  In an operational game, they're the ones with the best leaders . . . in a tactical game the ones with the best equipment. 

I realize this is the general perception -- that it is fun to play the Germans because they always have better items in the games.

I think there are at least two problems with this perception: 

1) in many cases it is based on myth

2) in many cases it is a matter of only having games about the relatively few times the Germans did okay.  So for example there are tons of games about Manstein's backhanded blow usually known as 3rd Kharkov (which is odd because it is really 4th Kharkov -- when the Russians take Kharkov they don't even get a number -- they took it in what should really be 3rd and 5th Kharkov) but almost nothing about many Russian offensives of much greater playability (smaller for example).

I've been playing games for more than 40 years.  I was bored with the Germans 40 years ago and I'm really astounded that the weird perception of their invariable superiority somehow survives in war gaming circles.  War gamers should have more interest in the dynamics of these situations and less in restaging a set of myths and fantasies, I think.

I don't even know where the perception of invariable German superiority comes from these days.  Most good detailed studies have been systematically revealing the myths about the Germans from Blumenson's official history work on for the last 60 years.  You have to read a pretty narrow selection of sources to maintain the idea of invariable German superiortity.   

Originally Posted By MengJiaoRedux (17 AUG 2012 8:21am)

I don't even know where the perception of invariable German superiority comes from these days. 

maybe you ask those historical sources who were on the receiving end of more then 3000 Agregat 4 (V2) rockets

(well, not the precisest kit in town, but there are rough nations out there -like Iran or NK- that cant even touch the boundaries of space todays with their home grown rockets with modern prodcution equipment and 'computers' instead of sliderule at their hand)

and the Redstone rocket family which launched the first US satellites and astronauts into space ... were build by 'papercliped' German engineers

i never had read about a liquid-propellant ballistic missiles from the Allied in service before maybe the early Sixties

also you may ask those pilots, who had to deal with more then 1000 Me262 in the sky over Europe

there were only a handful ( P80 ) jets in the theater, and none saw action so 

go figure ... you wasted 40 years on the wrong books, were 4 min of Wikipedia will do

I don't mean to imply anything about historical realities but I guarantee you these ideas of German superiority are alive and well in many and probably most wargames.  Ever tried to fight PZ IIIs in Combat Mission with Shermans or T-34s?  I could give plenty more examples.

But I'm more than anything talking about strategic games where it is undoubtedly the Germans who are on the offensive at the start of the game.   If you are able to take an early offensive in 1939 as France or even Britain it's probably because the game has exploitable AI.

Originally Posted By MikeGER (17 AUG 2012 10:20am)

Originally Posted By MengJiaoRedux (17 AUG 2012 8:21am)

I don't even know where the perception of invariable German superiority comes from these days. 

 

maybe you ask those historical sources who were on the receiving end of more then 3000 Agregat 4 (V2) rockets

(well, not the precisest kit in town, but there are rough nations out there -like Iran or NK- that cant even touch the boundaries of space todays with their home grown rockets with modern prodcution equipment and 'computers' instead of sliderule at their hand)

 

and the Redstone rocket family which launched the first US satellites and astronauts into space ... were build by 'papercliped' German engineers

 

i never had read about a liquid-propellant ballistic missiles from the Allied in service before maybe the early Sixties

 

also you may ask those pilots, who had to deal with more then 1000 Me262 in the sky over Europe

there were only a handful ( P80 ) jets in the theater, and none saw action so 

 

go figure ... you wasted 40 years on the wrong books, were 4 min of Wikipedia will do

 

  

 

It's true.  A random 4 minutes of Wikipedia may very well make it look like the Germans were victorious in WWII, however, a slightly different selection of sources makes it clear they lost much worse than Japan when Japan had a much smaller industrial base and had two atomic bombs dropped on it.

I just don't buy the idea that the Germans did very well at all in WWII, from any point of view and certainly nothing about their record makes them seem like an obvious choice to prefer in games.

All those V2s did then no good at all and all those jet fighters availed them not in the least, so they must have been very, very far down on all fronts by the time such things became available.

The USA on the other hand, started mobilizing seven years later than the Germans and outbuilt them in all categories of weapon and even topped it all off with atomic weapons.  So again, no obvious reason for preferring the Germans on technical grounds.

Originally Posted By glen55 (17 AUG 2012 10:26am)

 

But I'm more than anything talking about strategic games where it is undoubtedly the Germans who are on the offensive at the start of the game.   If you are able to take an early offensive in 1939 as France or even Britain it's probably because the game has exploitable AI.

 

There would not be much point in starting a strategic game before 1939, because in 1938 or earlier, strategically, Germany would be crushed so fast there would not be much of a game.

So 1939 would be the only year in which Germany would not be potentially subject to a pre-emptive strike by either the Western allies or the Russians.

So you can see how narrow the options have to be to make the Germans look like a worthwhile game position and that is typical of how games represent Germany: you pick the one time the Germans have a slight chance and you base the game on that.

Originally Posted By glen55 (17 AUG 2012 10:26am)

I don't mean to imply anything about historical realities but I guarantee you these ideas of German superiority are alive and well in many and probably most wargames.  Ever tried to fight PZ IIIs in Combat Mission with Shermans or T-34s?  I could give plenty more examples.

  

In a realistic game such as CMBN, the PZIII is so outclassed it is not even in the game.

I haven't played CMBN, but that' 1944, right?  The early PZ IIIs were on the field in the Polish campaign and were outdated by 1944.  Ask the Americans how Shermans did against Panthers and Tigers in 1944.  Ask the British how Crusaders and Matildas did against PZ IIIs in 1940-41.

Originally Posted By glen55 (17 AUG 2012 10:59am)

I haven't played CMBN, but that' 1944, right?  The early PZ IIIs were on the field in the Polish campaign and were outdated by 1944.  Ask the Americans how Shermans did against Panthers and Tigers in 1944.  Ask the British how Crusaders and Matildas did against PZ IIIs in 1940-41.

Ask the Germans how well the King Tiger did against the Firefly.  Not all that well considering a King Tiger was twice as heavy and burned an enormous amount of fuel (of which the Germans never had enough -- no superiority there and it is a quite basic problem).

About 30 years ago I talked to the intelligence officer of a US armored division about how it felt to fight the Germans in France in 1944.  He said that in his experience it was usually not that much of a problem since "We always knew where they were and we always had gas."  Which suggests two basic areas of US Army superiority in 1944: 1) much,much better radio discipline.  A US armored division could shut off its radios and disappear completely from German knowledge, whereas any German unit in motion basically broadcast its position to US intelligence.  2) Supply:  The US Army had plenty of gas and the Germans could only move most of their army using horses -- a pretty basic problem. 

Do games simulate this?  Not really.  Games misrepresent basic things about the real war.