Inglorious Bastards

One of the oddities of the contemporary world is the obsession, in some parts of society at least, with Nazi Germany. We can hardly peruse a TV guide without falling across something which is related to the Second World War, its precursors and consequences. This can be, of course, either fictional or documentary (or, in some cases, of course, both). Given that the whole ghastly affair was nearly 75 years ago, it seems that the appetite for it is as strong, if not stronger, than ever.

In the March 2020 issue of History Today, four historians give their views as to why the obsession with Nazi Germany is still so intense. Perhaps the one most relevant to wargaming is the last, by Martyn Rady, whose view, so far as I can paraphrase and summarise it is that the Nazi had the best toys (six engine aircraft, the V2, the Tiger tank) and the best uniforms. He recounts an anecdote by British humourist Arthur Marshall who took the surrender of four German officers on a yacht at Flensburg on the Baltic. They were immaculately turned out and looked at Marshall, thinking ‘Whatever is this riff-raff? What went wrong? How could we have lost the war?’

Another point Rady makes is that the idea that education makes people better is subverted by the Nazis. Between 20 and 25 per cent of the most committed Nazis (SS, SD, Death’s Head units – I’m not sure what the latter were, but that is just my ignorance of the period) had PhDs from ancient German universities. They were ‘super-educated, elegantly attired mass murderers’. How this came about in a nation that produced such cultural achievements as Germany did is a mystery. After all, as Roger Moorhouse observes in another of the articles, Germany was a nation of ‘thinkers and poets’, and the Weimar Republic had 16 Nobel prizes to its name.

Given the traumatic events of the 1930s and 1940s in the world, I suppose it is reasonably explainable why there is a strong cultural memory of it, and possibly also why there are such a large quantity of representations around. Nevertheless, some parts of society take the interest to the point of obsession and, it has to be said, wargaming is part of the said obsession. I am told that sales of World War Two wargame figures is scarily healthy, and a glance around my local show suggested that the subject is as popular as ever, with approximately half of the display games being related to the subject.

I do not want to go on a rant that we shouldn’t wargame World War Two. I have indicated before, quite a while ago, that I am not sure that as a subject it is particularly wargamable (if that is a word) due to problems of scale. I can also happily concede that World War Two should be kept in the memory as an awful set of events. Too often the subject of Nazi Germany and its crimes get hijacked by political extremists for their own purposes.

Some contemporary politics works in the other direction. Elizabeth Harvey’s piece on the subject notes that the endless round of VE and VJ day celebrations, along with anniversaries of D-Day and so on cement in our minds the days when Britain faced tyranny alone, united, undaunted and fearless. As she notes this can get used to justify modern political stances, such as the dreaded B**xit. It is not, I suspect, the case only in Britain. I have not been to the United States for a while, but I do suspect that the years of the later Second World War and early Cold War are looked back upon, and possibly appropriated by some populist politicians as a golden age when America was great.

All this is a rather long way from representing World War Two on a tabletop, I concede. But action such as a wargame can carry a certain amount of cultural and conceptual meaning. By wargaming, say, a Nazi SS division, are we condoning the behaviour thereof? I hope that none of the participants in such a game would be trying to do so, but it might leave us feeling just a little uncomfortable.

If a little ethical discomfort does arise from a World War Two game, I think that is probably a good thing. One of the problems Harvey notes is that Nazi propaganda, even today, has an alarming power over our imaginations. Nazi staged spectacles from the 1930s, or even some of the ‘authentic’ war footage is framed and presented very carefully, and we often buy into it. This works both ways, of course – as the Nazis as being the embodiment of evil, as ‘fanaticised robots in uniform’ or as the purveyors of the greatest troops and tactics of the middle Twentieth Century. Neither viewpoint is, of course, entirely correct, but recognising that should enable us to think more critically about the nature of the Nazi regime, the ways it has been represented and the way which we represent it on the tabletop.

Does this matter? Well, given the normal impact of wargaming on the wider world, I think we can probably say ‘no’. But as part of a cultural wave, an element of the obsession with the Nazis and World War Two, I suspect it might matter a little bit. After all, if we, as wargamers, are part of the book-buying public which ensures that every volume regarding Nazi Germany becomes, if not an absolute bestseller then at least has sufficiently solid sales to encourage publishers to bring another such tome to the shops, then we are part of the problem.

The problem is not remembering the past, but the uses to which the past is put. As a highly-charged cultural event, the Second World War still matters. Therefore how we represent the sides on a wargame table still matters. Cries of ‘it is only a game’ are, in my view anyway, rather insufficient. Even arguments of historical accuracy are subject to question – the viewpoint that the SS were superb soldiers should be questioned, in the same way that the effectiveness of Napoleon’s Old Guard should be.

The problem here is, of course, the wargamer’s obsession with ‘Ooooh! Shiny!’ How many of you thought when the Messerschmidt Gigant was mentioned earlier ‘I wonder what that would look like as a model?’, or pondered, however briefly, what a squadron of Tigers could do on the table?

Harvey finishes her essay by advising us to reaffirm our commitment to the words of a fine modern ethicist, Indiana Jones: ‘Nazis. I hate these guys.’ How do we do that in a wargame?