Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

(typically its an american who starts these topics), flags will be flags. We wont be able to stop people from wearing and showing what they want. All we have to do as normal human beings is ignore it. I know it may be hard to some times. But if you just walk away and think about something else, no problems will happen. What we have to remember is this happened almost happened 75 years ago, and a lot of the symbols and flags and etc are irrelevant to these days. Battlefront was simply putting those patches there for the spirit of the game. I see people paint little SS Swastika arm bans on their little soldiers, maybe I should complain...naaa...like I said...for the spirit of the game

As a Chinese American, I harbor no ill feelings towards Japanese, who force my grandparents to flee from China nor Chinese Communist. While nothing has been done personally to me, there can be arguments on why I feel I have been slighted. I am not offended by the Japanese flag of war nor the Communist flag. I am offended by those who embelish the iconography. I won't hold anything personally against the Japanese who attacked pearl harbor, but I expect the japanese who committed war crimes to apologize and atone. If we want to heal the wounds of the past, we must remove the power from the icons of old and the people who wield the icons as weapons.
That's atleast my opinion.

@ Rougeyopants - Thats the key point though. The spirit of the game, we know what that is because we part take in this. A member of the public generally (Gamers not making up a large percentage of the population) will not think of Wargaming when they see such a Symbol. They see it for what it is, or what it represents. This is not about democracy or freedom of speech, this entire thread I started is about perception or rather public perception.

We have seen the terrible events in Norway over the weekend. Norway is a dyed in the wool democracy, even they today denied the defendant the chance of a public audience at his preliminary hearing. Thus denying (quite rightly in my opinion) a chance for him to vent about his extreme views under a banner of free speech.

Like I have posted several times, freedom of speech is non-existent. It is amazingly immature and naive to spout free speech because it does not reflect any society and I will repeat this for emphasis, any society on earth. It is Freedom of Speech within the bounds of the Law, oh and this can be modified by a Judge as required or befits the case.

Symbology like the SS ones would be a poor reflection of your judgement if you wore it in public. I remember the outrage of Prince Harry dressing up as a Nazi a few years back, and the public backlash over that.

I seem to recall an "Allo Allo" party where an MP was lambasted for dressing as a German officer..despite the obvious links to the comedy series "Allo Allo", which ran on BBC tv longer than the war itself, was damned funny, and ridiculed the Reich extensively. Some people will complain about anything...Doesn't have to be as obvious as an SS emblem to get complaints.

Watched an interesting programme yesterday on Discovery about the KKK. It would seem that there is a bit of a falling out within their ranks as even the traditional KKK find the swastika offensive, go figure..............

I suppose they think they are more honourable or moral than the SS? Its a funny old world isn't it....

From Wikipedia:

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, also known as "the Confederacy". Led by Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy fought for its independence from the United States. The U.S. federal government was supported by twenty mostly-Northern free states in which slavery already had been abolished, and by five slave states that became known as the border states. These twenty-five states, referred to as the Union, had a much larger base of population and industry than the South. After four years of bloody, devastating warfare (mostly within the Southern states), the Confederacy surrendered and slavery was outlawed everywhere in the nation. The restoration of the Union, and the Reconstruction Era that followed, dealt with issues that remained unresolved for generations.

Is this wrong?

Well, Wikipedia is properly sourced at the bottom of the article plus it is a nice succinct summary, we could debate it endlessly but it actually happened. I cannot remember the name of the movement in the US made of Southern Poets, writers et al, that tried to re-write the defeat of the South as some great tragic saga, i think it was the lost cause or something. Slavery was abhorent, Britain was built on it certainly our merchantile expansion in the 16th, 17th & 18th Century benefited hugely. Furthermore, it is very different point, Labour (for low pay) as opposed to indentured servitude where you are possession of an individual not an individual in your own right. However that said in the world today Illegal immigrants are pulled in to the black and murky world of cheap labour and pseudo-slavery. A very sad state of affairs.

mwnciboo wrote:Well, Wikipedia is properly sourced at the bottom of the article plus it is a nice succinct summary, we could debate it endlessly but it actually happened. I cannot remember the name of the movement in the US made of Southern Poets, writers et al, that tried to re-write the defeat of the South as some great tragic saga, i think it was the lost cause or something. Slavery was abhorent, Britain was built on it certainly our merchantile expansion in the 16th, 17th & 18th Century benefited hugely. Furthermore, it is very different point, Labour (for low pay) as opposed to indentured servitude where you are possession of an individual not an individual in your own right. However that said in the world today Illegal immigrants are pulled in to the black and murky world of cheap labour and pseudo-slavery. A very sad state of affairs.

Wikipedia is open to anyone that can claim that they are "creditable", ture fact are found through JSTOR, articles that are pubilshed by true historian with reliable primary sources. Wikipedia only tells you the half truth and not the whole truth, to understand history and to see what truly happened you have to do your research. These types of sign are everywhere, you are using an Native American picture, colleges like FSU still refered themsleve as the Seminoles "which mean Runways or wild ones" f

Okay, we will leave the avatars out of the debate, because otherwise I will highlight your one is a fantasy fictional one from the future!

The problem with primary sources is that they are not objective nor reliable. Having served in the Military for nearly 10 years, the amount of 1st hand witness accounts that don't tally with the facts or the over-arching operations is quite staggering. I personally think that personal testimony as a primary source is so subjective that it cannot be used with any degree of confidence. I have experienced this "Slice of the pie effect" when on OPS, the reality of what is happening in your 2sq KM around you is not whats going on further a field neither does it give you a feel for overall operation. Humans naturally rise emotionally when their is something highly emotive going on. The 116th Regiment on D-Day is a good example, Omaha was not a great landing whereas most of the others went relatively straight forward. Many of the veterans of the 116th thought that D-day was failing based on their experience at their part of the invasion beachs.

I take your point on Wiki, but then if you read the reference sources you can interpret if you want to believe it or not. History is written by the Victors anyway!

Lets be reasonable...the reasons behind the ACW are way more deep and complicated than just "step away from the slaves", and a Wiki paragraph is not the war. Its not even a very accurate summary of it.

mwnciboo wrote:The problem with primary sources is that they are can be not objective nor reliable

Fixed! (sort of, grammar's a little ropey but the message is readable).

All sources, primary or otherwise, have the potential to be unreliable or lacking in objectivity. (More Fixeder!)

No Flames of War forum is complete without utter morons accusing anyone who doesn't play the Allies as being actual Nazis.

As the OP of this thread I am a Panzer Lehr Division Player. That said, I don't walk around with Nazi regalia or an SS Division Patch (I do have some SS Tigers..)

Adelynn, I am not sure where you are coming from, no one has accused anyone who doesn't play Allies as being a Nazi. This is a thread about the public perception of certain symbology and the ethical ramifications.

By the way I am not sure if this was brought up. I read this the other day. I agree it can be distasteful but we most remember this is a game and no one is trying to raisie a SS division.

But every one during the war did horrible things. Example

"Some of the boys had some prisoners line up. Machine guns were being set up. These boys were to be machine gunned and murdered. We were committing the same crimes we were now accusing the Japs and Germans of doing". US 11th Armored Division

Just a example of 1 US unit who did war crimes but wasn't punished because they where victors of the war.

I am not siding with the SS I am just saying in that war all sides committed war crimes. Ex Fire Bombing of Dresden like really wtf ? the war is pretty much over and they butcher a city that as no value.

Sorry to bring this back to life wanted to post my thoughts the other day but was busy.

One word - Holocaust


Dont care what minor war crimes you want to drag up about the Allies, and my Grandfather committed a few, it all pales into comparison when compared to industrialised genocide.

The Waffen-SS will always be tainted by association with the Concentration Camps and that has to be accepted, not excused.

As for Dresden, there were plenty of reasons given for doing it...

"Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester is also the largest unbombed builtup area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westward and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike, but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas. At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first-class importance.... The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front... and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do."

Hindsights a great thing... But I imagine the last bit was a big consideration at the time. Maybe they didnt need tactically to bomb it, but they did it to prove a point to the Russians. Dont forget though, Dresden was an amalagamation of a series of events and particular conditions that made it as bad as it was. If they had realised the sheer scale of losses that would occur, and they couldnt really have known, then they may not have undertaken the raid. With hindsight its easy to criticise...

Don't go and ruin his "our guys were as bad as theirs" rant with facts.

Well put Piers, I'm not going to add except to say this thread had died nicely and should have been left alone.

I am not agreeing with the SS, they are monsters. But this is a game so who cares if some one wants to play SS who should care if they want badges to rep. There Army.


The 2nd Atom bomb, Stalin's purging of his own people worse then Holocaust. Just saying.

How the heck can you say bombing Nagasaki is worse than the holocast?

One killed several million people just because the Nazis didn't like them.

The other, that you consider worse, targeted a port town important to the Japanese navy, killed less than 100,000 folks, and got the Japanese to surrender so we did not have to invade to end the war. An invasion would have killed a LOT more civilians (over 1 million by most estimates) and resulted in the deaths of a lot more US and allied troops.

How deranged is your thinking that you consider a legitimate attack to be worse than the systemic murdering of millions civilians towards no military purpose?

Just saying.

Aldramelech wrote:Well put Piers, I'm not going to add except to say this thread had died nicely and should have been left alone.

Should have been, yes.

As to ghostmaker's points - yes, Stalins' purges were horrific, but no one here have put the soviets on the 'pedestal of heroism'. And don't claim that the atomic bombs were worst than the Holocaust. Again, they were horrific, but the other plan - an actual invasion of Japan - had a calculated casualty number as high as 1 million dead, mostly Japanese.

ghostmaker wrote:
The 2nd Atom bomb, Stalin's purging of his own people worse then Holocaust. Just saying.

You're a muppet... Just saying.



The difference with any other genocide and the Holocaust, is the industrialised nature of the machinery of death.

Stalin's purges and enforced famine in the Ukraine are realistically estimated to have killed around 25-32 million people. Far in excess of the established Holocaust figure... But they didnt rationalise it and industrialised the killing. While the sheer number of Stalins victims was huge, added to by the immense losses sustained in WW2, they still lack the modernisation of genocide that the Germans brought to the event. We know how many they killed because they kept such good records, their counting machines came from IBM. They built factories of death that could process thousands a day to their deaths, even reconsituting the useful parts back into objects for use. They brought about an attempt at a mass extinction of various types of people by utilising technology and scientific advances. This sets it apart. While we generally see advances in science and technology as a force for good, here it was put to a despicable use.

To a degree you could argue that alot of useful scientific knowledge was gained from the camps. Alot of what we now know regarding genetics came directly from Nazi research who had an unlimited amount of live subjects to practice on. We know a great deal of how the human body reacts to extremmes of temperature and pressure from the grusome experiments they carried out on live inmates. We know what happens to a pregnant women if she tries to give birth with her legs tied together... all thanks to Nazi 'research'. If you want to argue something, try arguing that.

Stalin was as evil as Hitler, but he didnt really pick on one specific racial group. He would happily murder anyone. This seeming random nature, and the fact that he tended to murder just his own, seems to temper the fact that he killed millions. The Nazi machine of Death moved genocide to a whole new level.

To compare it to being a lesser event than Nagasaki just proves you know nothing of history.

Most current historical work sees the dropping of the two atomic bombs as actually saving Japanese civilian lives in the long run. Had Operation Olympic, the invasion of the Japanese homelands taken place, and it would had the atom bombs not been dropped then a rough estimate of 3-5 million civilian casualties would have occured. However, if the civilians had suffered the same rate of deaths as those on Oknianwa (who committed suicide en masse whenthe US invaded) that number could have been massively more and there is no reason to suspect that they would not have reacted in this way... It was hardwired into their culture. Add to that the huge losses in Japanses and US military personnel and you quickly see that the two bombs ,ay well have saved Japan from virtual annilation.

The second bomb, like Dresden, also served as a warning to the Soviets - It told them the US had at least two atom bombs... Which meant it wasnt a one-off and could build more. In the increasingly chilly atmosphere of Allied-Soviet relations in 1945, this was another key strategic consideration.

game is a game and whatever armies people field during the game, I am fine with it. However publicly wearing certain symbols (especially totenkopf- not only having war connection but being one of the most popular symbols of neo-nazis right now) will not have any of my understanding ,whatever the lame excuse is for that. Back where I come from if one of my mates would spot anybody wearing totenkokp or other SS regalia you would get your head kicked in and that person would only have himself to blame for it.

infinite_array wrote:

mwnciboo wrote:I would agree that the Confederate Flag is extremely disrespectful, it's not the Official Flag of the United States and ceased to be relevant the moment the Union Army defeated the confederate army.

As an American who both lives in Pennsylvania and has an interest in the American Civil War, I don't see the Confederate Flag as disrespectful, as long as it's being worn for the right reasons.

There's a stereotype when people think of the American Civil War - that it was fought to end slavery. This is, in fact, wrong. Slavery may have been a factor in the War, but it certainly wasn't a deciding factor when some states seceded and formed the Confederacy. The Confederate flag stands for States Rights over Federal Power - a conflict that was still ongoing just before the ACW, and which the ACW ended.

So, wearing the Confederate flag isn't disrespectful - unless you're some hillbilly redneck who's wearing one in order to show those 'other races' whose boss. Then you're in the wrong.

This is a huge, huge, huge common misunderstanding about the war. The deciding issue was indeed states rights, but it was unequivocally centered on a state's right to maintain the institution of slavery, which the southern states felt was under threat.

Slavery was the central factor of the war, and thats a fact.

The % of FOW players with an SS army that are actual Neo Nazis is probably about the same as the % of 40k Chaos players that are actual devil worshipers. It's a non issue in my book.

To the poor white enlisted soldiers in the confederate army the civil war wasn't about slavery. They had some very legitimate complaints, and there was a legal argument at the time if states had a right to secede from the union. The south could have peacefully succeeded from the union or won the civil war through English support if they emancipated the slaves before Lincoln did. Unfortunately for the poor white enlisted soldiers the southern aristocracy only cared about 1 issue, and that was keeping their slaves. The harsh truth is the brave confederate soldiers who died for what they thought was a noble cause died in vain as deceived pawns of the southern aristocracy, and that's a bitter pill the soldiers and their decedents have never wanted to swallow. The southern aristocracy told the poor white enlisted soldiers the war wasn't about slaves which was the easiest lie to sell because it was a lie that the people being lied to wanted to believe. The fine southern tradition of poor white folk believing the lies that they wanted to believe continues on to this day.

The manipulation of the lower classes of the southern states by the controlling aristocracy remains one of the saddest parts of the ACW. Though at the end of the day, it doesn't change the cause of the war.

Good post, shadenfreude.

Every war is a case of the "ruling elite" using their people like pawns - what a better world it would be if everyone used little lead soldiers instead?

As for the claim that if the South freed the slaves they would succeed is plain wrong . The southern economy (indeed a lot of the wealth in the US in the 1850's) was based on slave labour. Where were these newly freed slaves to go, who would pay/feed them. Certainly Lincoln did not want them - indeed he had plans to effectively deport them.

Regardless, FOW is still only a game, it is not real. You paid for your models so how you paint them up is your choice.

schadenfreude wrote:The % of FOW players with an SS army that are actual Neo Nazis is probably about the same as the % of 40k Chaos players that are actual devil worshipers. It's a non issue in my book.

But you are comparing something that actually existed (the SS) that conducted an evil event (the Holocaust, Industrialised murder) and 40k (fantasy realm that has never existed) with Devil Worshippers (Who may or may not exist).

So really your entire argument is flawed. It is very Real (certainly in Europe maybe not to our isolated American Cousins), go to Belsen or Triblinka or Auswitz. You will come out of those places with a very different opinion, I most certainly did. I saw some Royal Marines (who were on the same Royal Navy tour), some of the worlds crack light infantry crying like babes for the tragedy of the place. I don't see people weeping for 40k or devil worshippers. Please can we be objective and live in the real world.

wilycoyote wrote:Every war is a case of the "ruling elite" using their people like pawns - what a better world it would be if everyone used little lead soldiers instead?

Silly comment on many levels. Not every war sees folks being used as pawns. That is just not a supportable statement at all. And somethings are worth fighting, killing, and if need be dying for, and there are folks who understand that. The 'wouldn't it be nice' is just hippy crap ungrounded in the real world.