Weasel | 22 Sep 2014 5:04 p.m. PST |
link About a third of the way through. Pretty good read but curious if anyone on here have read it? |
Weasel | 22 Sep 2014 5:46 p.m. PST |
I haven't gotten to the gaming section yet but flipping through it, there's some pretty juicy board game covers in there. The first sections are the American portrayals of the Russians and Germans during WW2, the beginning of "white-washing" the German military for political purposes, changing attitudes in the cold war and the way German veterans discussed the war. That's as far as I've gotten so far. edit: and Mannstein being a snivelling weasel. |
dBerczerk | 22 Sep 2014 5:53 p.m. PST |
I guess the Roman legions will be the next myth de-bunked. Then the Spartan hoplites. Then there's that myth about Gideon and his 300 Chosen Men defeating the combined army of the Midianites and Amalekites. |
Lee Brilleaux | 22 Sep 2014 6:21 p.m. PST |
How many of us have met That Guy who insists that, while the Nazis were the baddies when fighting the western allies, were miraculously transformed into heroes of civilization when facing the Godless Soviet Hordes? He's usually got a T shirt advertising his panzerfandom in XXXL, just in case you weren't listening to him. |
Mserafin | 22 Sep 2014 6:57 p.m. PST |
Ooh, this looks like it agrees with a lot of what I already think, so I must read it! But really, thanks for pointing this out, it looks quite interesting. |
John the OFM | 22 Sep 2014 6:58 p.m. PST |
That T-shirt is usually for the "5th SS Wiking Division European Tour". My first encounter with s like that was in the pages of the Avalon Hill General in the late 60s. Some rectum wrote about how less than 5000 Germans held the Normandy beachhead against everything the amateur Yanks and effete Brits could throw against, and these Supermen were equipped with the King Tiger II. |
Martin Rapier | 23 Sep 2014 3:11 a.m. PST |
"How many of us have met That Guy who insists that, while the Nazis were the baddies when fighting the western allies, were miraculously transformed into heroes of civilization when facing the Godless Soviet Hordes?" It still seems to be a fairly common refrain on TMP. |
pzivh43 | 23 Sep 2014 3:37 a.m. PST |
As a friend of mine says, you play Easter front, then you're playing Malicious Evil (Nazis) versus Vicious Incompetence (Soviets). Have fun! |
Col Durnford | 23 Sep 2014 5:23 a.m. PST |
Nazis vs. Soviets = everybody wins. |
wminsing | 23 Sep 2014 6:41 a.m. PST |
Not really sure this is a new topic; part of rebuilding the West German Army in the face of the Soviet Union involved a political campaign to change people's minds about these very topics. So it's not all surprising that people were influenced and continue to be influenced by this propaganda. At least when I play Eastern Front I always play the Soviets, so my conscious is clean!(?) :) -Will |
B6GOBOS | 23 Sep 2014 6:51 a.m. PST |
Weasel. Thank you for postage this. Not a big WW2 reader or gamer but this sounded interesting. Went to amazon to read the reviews. Usually read the one star ones first and this book's one stars did not disappoint. A rabid this books sucks reviewed was signed by someone who signed himself"Sepp" Dietrich. Wow! If it offended him them it must be good! Called my local library and they have a copy which I will pick up on way. Again. Thank you I am looking forward to an entertaining evenings read. |
Caesar | 23 Sep 2014 6:59 a.m. PST |
The Soviets under Stalin murdered more people than the Nazis, no? |
15mm and 28mm Fanatik | 23 Sep 2014 8:04 a.m. PST |
Been there and done that I'm afraid: link |
Fred Cartwright | 23 Sep 2014 8:43 a.m. PST |
The Soviets under Stalin murdered more people than the Nazis, no? Yes that is correct, but he was allowed to get away with it for a long time. |
Weasel | 23 Sep 2014 8:47 a.m. PST |
The difference is that there's no industry in the US glorifying the "valiant heroes" of the NKVD. Heck, finding a book about the eastern front at the book store at all is hard unless it's about a heroic Panzer-blahblahblah. Glorifying the nazi's under the guide of anti-communism is covered in the book as well (and is silly, since WW2 propelled the soviets to be a super power. The US did far more to fight communism). B6GOBOS – the copy I got was apparently an old library copy originally :-) |
Clays Russians | 23 Sep 2014 9:46 a.m. PST |
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goragrad | 23 Sep 2014 11:46 a.m. PST |
How much of the 'whitewashing' of the Wehrmacht and 'blackening' of the Soviets was merely a reversal of wartime propaganda? Typical wartime propaganda paints your enemies as vilest of the vile and your allies as saints. While there were political reasons for the Western Allies to revise the record, it was not a realistic portrayal of either to begin with. |
Fred Cartwright | 23 Sep 2014 1:37 p.m. PST |
Typical wartime propaganda paints your enemies as vilest of the vile and your allies as saints. While there were political reasons for the Western Allies to revise the record, it was not a realistic portrayal of either to begin with. Let's face it neither the Germans, Soviets or Japanese came out of WW2 smelling of roses, but of the 3 only the Germans have acknowledged the problem. There is still a fair amount of anger from British victims of the Japanese for the failure to say sorry or make amends. |
Mserafin | 23 Sep 2014 4:23 p.m. PST |
There is still a fair amount of anger from British victims of the Japanese for the failure to say sorry or make amends. I'm sure that's true, but they'll have to get in line behind folks like the Chinese and Koreans when it comes to being unhappy with the Japanese about WW2. |
Weasel | 23 Sep 2014 7:17 p.m. PST |
I don't think I've ever even seen a book discussing the Japanese perspective in WW2 though, at a common bookstore. Even in specialist stores with a ton of stuff, that's hard to find. |
raylev3 | 23 Sep 2014 7:38 p.m. PST |
The fact is that the UK and US alliance with the Soviets was a marriage of convenience to defeat Germany and nothing more. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." The fact that after WWII the Soviets lost their luster was just a return to status quo ante, especially when you remember that the Soviets invaded Poland and Finland, and incorporated Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as parts of Romania into the USSR before the war. And then after the war they kept those areas and occupied the other countries of Eastern Europe. |
Kelly Armstrong | 24 Sep 2014 5:32 a.m. PST |
To help your wargaming conscious, you can read van Creveld's The Culture of War. He says it is ok to be macho, collect militaria and panzer porn, play wargames and opine about great armies of history. |
OSchmidt | 24 Sep 2014 6:25 a.m. PST |
Dear List I wish to make for my comments two points. I draw a distinction between "Germans" and "Nazis" and between "Russians" and "Bolshevism." To try and wage debate on what was more evil, "Naziism" or "Bolshevism" could well be described by the words Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Richard III "For I am so far in that sin doeth pluck on sin." One must never forget that the immediate horror of the concentration camp and it's six million victims, pales in comparison tot he Stalinist terror famine, where Salin's collectivization and war against the Kulak's engineered the death of over 20 million Ukrainians, which may explain why the Ukrainians hate the Russians. When it came to WWII then I prefer to do it with Imagi-Nations so that I am not faced with the idea of fighting for one of the two greatest moral evils of the 20th century. The name of the game is The Shattered Century and is in a small way written in "omage" to Robert Conquest's "Reflections on a Ravaged Century", which is a narrative piece on the "totalizing ideologies" of the twentieth Century. What conquest defines as "a totalizing ideology" is any which assumes that all the history, society, culture, art, mores, the one, the true, the beautiful can not only be explained, but Controlled by one organizing principle, and it doesn't matter if that's Naziism's "race," fascisms "power," Communism's "control of the means of production," or fundamentalism's "God", all of these creeds are united in one common thing- their organizing principle is not in any way derived from humanity, and thus inevitable makes them inhuman. One should also note that untrammeled "Robber Baron capitalism," and modern "sentmental identity politics is also considered a "totalizing ideology" for conquest. The other base for the game was an old book, or rather the appendicies to a book, that of George S. Patton's War as I knew it. OK, that's the serious part of the research. I overlaid all that with great heaping loads of my usual "Imagi-Nation" high jinks and broad buffoonery to put the humanity back IN!
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OSchmidt | 24 Sep 2014 6:25 a.m. PST |
Dear List I wish to make for my comments two points. I draw a distinction between "Germans" and "Nazis" and between "Russians" and "Bolshevism." To try and wage debate on what was more evil, "Naziism" or "Bolshevism" could well be described by the words Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Richard III "For I am so far in that sin doeth pluck on sin." One must never forget that the immediate horror of the concentration camp and it's six million victims, pales in comparison tot he Stalinist terror famine, where Salin's collectivization and war against the Kulak's engineered the death of over 20 million Ukrainians, which may explain why the Ukrainians hate the Russians. When it came to WWII then I prefer to do it with Imagi-Nations so that I am not faced with the idea of fighting for one of the two greatest moral evils of the 20th century. The name of the game is The Shattered Century and is in a small way written in "omage" to Robert Conquest's "Reflections on a Ravaged Century", which is a narrative piece on the "totalizing ideologies" of the twentieth Century. What conquest defines as "a totalizing ideology" is any which assumes that all the history, society, culture, art, mores, the one, the true, the beautiful can not only be explained, but Controlled by one organizing principle, and it doesn't matter if that's Naziism's "race," fascisms "power," Communism's "control of the means of production," or fundamentalism's "God", all of these creeds are united in one common thing- their organizing principle is not in any way derived from humanity, and thus inevitable makes them inhuman. One should also note that untrammeled "Robber Baron capitalism," and modern "sentmental identity politics is also considered a "totalizing ideology" for conquest. The other base for the game was an old book, or rather the appendicies to a book, that of George S. Patton's War as I knew it. OK, that's the serious part of the research. I overlaid all that with great heaping loads of my usual "Imagi-Nation" high jinks and broad buffoonery to put the humanity back IN!
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OSchmidt | 24 Sep 2014 6:25 a.m. PST |
Dear List I wish to make for my comments two points. I draw a distinction between "Germans" and "Nazis" and between "Russians" and "Bolshevism." To try and wage debate on what was more evil, "Naziism" or "Bolshevism" could well be described by the words Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Richard III "For I am so far in that sin doeth pluck on sin." One must never forget that the immediate horror of the concentration camp and it's six million victims, pales in comparison tot he Stalinist terror famine, where Salin's collectivization and war against the Kulak's engineered the death of over 20 million Ukrainians, which may explain why the Ukrainians hate the Russians. When it came to WWII then I prefer to do it with Imagi-Nations so that I am not faced with the idea of fighting for one of the two greatest moral evils of the 20th century. The name of the game is The Shattered Century and is in a small way written in "omage" to Robert Conquest's "Reflections on a Ravaged Century", which is a narrative piece on the "totalizing ideologies" of the twentieth Century. What conquest defines as "a totalizing ideology" is any which assumes that all the history, society, culture, art, mores, the one, the true, the beautiful can not only be explained, but Controlled by one organizing principle, and it doesn't matter if that's Naziism's "race," fascisms "power," Communism's "control of the means of production," or fundamentalism's "God", all of these creeds are united in one common thing- their organizing principle is not in any way derived from humanity, and thus inevitable makes them inhuman. One should also note that untrammeled "Robber Baron capitalism," and modern "sentmental identity politics is also considered a "totalizing ideology" for conquest. The other base for the game was an old book, or rather the appendicies to a book, that of George S. Patton's War as I knew it. OK, that's the serious part of the research. I overlaid all that with great heaping loads of my usual "Imagi-Nation" high jinks and broad buffoonery to put the humanity back IN!
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Monophagos | 24 Sep 2014 5:48 p.m. PST |
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Murvihill | 25 Sep 2014 10:51 a.m. PST |
"Say it thrice, that makes it true." |
Matsuru Sami Kaze | 25 Sep 2014 11:53 a.m. PST |
Only thing better than a cup of coffee is two cups of coffee. |
Weasel | 25 Sep 2014 12:40 p.m. PST |
True anti-fascists drink tea ;) |
Milites | 25 Sep 2014 1:53 p.m. PST |
I flicked through this book a couple of years ago in Foyles, the chapter on wargaming was pretty poorly researched, IIRC. It seemed to paint everyone in the hobby with a pretty broad brush and seemed to the casual observer, quite agenda driven. |
donlowry | 25 Sep 2014 5:35 p.m. PST |
I'm pretty sure there really was an Eastern Front (as seen from the German side -- to the Soviets, it would have been the Western Front). |
Bill N | 25 Sep 2014 7:54 p.m. PST |
My teachers must not have gotten the memo and I must have read the wrong books. What I learned was not that the Germans on the Eastern Front weren't that bad. It was more that the Soviets weren't that good. |
thomalley | 25 Sep 2014 7:55 p.m. PST |
"Heck, finding a book about the eastern front at the book store at all is hard unless it's about a heroic Panzer-blahblahblah". Not sure this is true anymore, since the fall of the SU people have be able to get at the Russian side and write the good and bad of their war effort. On the Japanese side there is an excellent book "Japan at War" by Cook and Cook. It's an oral history of mostly common people, though there are several veterans. But as the book points out, which war. The one that started in 1931, or the one in 1937 or maybe 1941? |
Weasel | 27 Sep 2014 9:39 p.m. PST |
Thomalley – I meant at most book stores. There's been a lot of decent stuff if you know where to look. Appreciate the recommendation though. I'll grab it next time I go on a book buying spree. |