"Playing the Nazis: Political Implications in..." Topic

… ANALOG WARGAMES

"War has always played quite an important role in board games. For a long time, this fact posed few political or ethical problems. In pre-modern Asia and Europe, stylized battle simulations such as Go and Chess were highly respected cultural artifacts. In 19th-Century Prussia, the game Kriegsspiel, enthusiastically endorsed by King Friedrich William III, was used as a conceptual tool to train the officer corps. In the 20th Century, after the bloodshed of two World Wars –– wars waged by German generals still employing Kriegsspiel to test their plans –– the mixing of game and war gradually became seen as a problem. Already on the eve of the Great War, science-fiction writer H.G. Wells, both a socialist and wargamer, was aware of the politically slippery nature of his hobby. In his Little Wars (1913), one of the very first rulebooks for miniature wargame ever published, Wells somehow tries to "calm his conscience", saying that his game can help people to grasp the horrors of war. His message is essentially: "Do not make war, play it". In less than a year, Europe would fall in one of the most horrific conflicts of human history, whose ending would lay the foundation for a new, even more terrible world conflagration.

As legendary wargame designer James F. Dunnigan noted, it is no accident that the modern wargame hobby was born in the United States, which had triumphed in both world wars without any direct experience of enemy occupation or aerial bombings of its territory (beside Pearl Harbor).2 After 1945, Europe was not a very receptive place for games dealing with war. European game designers produced some successful war-related games, such as Albert Lamorisse's La Conquête du monde (1957), known in the English speaking-world as Risk, but this game conveys quite an abstract representation of warfare, while the great novelty offered by American wargames was precisely their so-called "realism". The very first hobbyist board wargames designed by Charles S. Roberts in the late 1950s, greatly stressed this aspect, as you can tell from the box covers of games such as Tactics II (1958) and Gettysburg (1958)…"
More here
link

Armand

Reading this article, the word ‘Codswallop' came to mind.

I notice that the author didn't actually interview anyone for this article, making it one of pure conjecture on their part.

Playing games with Nazis as one of the opponents does not make you sympathetic to Nazis any more than playing games with thimbles makes you sympathetic to sewing.

'The modern wargame hobby was born in the United States…'

ignores the influence of HG Wells's Little Wars, the many works of Donald Featherstone, the books of Charles Grant senior and Charge! by Brigadier Peter Young – to name but four British authors!

Hex and counter boardgaming, perhaps, was born in the USA, but tabletop wargaming with miniatures had British origins, though there may have been parallel development in the 1950s/60s on both sides of the Atlantic, so that Americans look to Scruby and Morschauser, whereas Britons look to Featherstone, Grant and Young.

Reading the article, the word 'interesting' came to my mind. Even though there's nothing particularly new or ground breaking in it. Most of the ideas about the chic appeal of Hugo Boss tailoring for the Nazi Party and the sanitised 'cool' of Aryan elites amongst young (mainly men) seeking a short cut to manhood has been around for decades.

There are some assumptions that don't always completely hold water – the conflation of 'wargame' with 'boardgame' may be understandable in an article on a site that seems particularly dismissive of (or at least ignorant of) historical figure gaming, but it is nonetheless an erroneous one. See arthur 1815's comment above for one reason it is wrong.

There are others, some of which the author does allude to – the omission of Nazi symbols, most notably the Swastika, from game art in recent years has probably more to do with commercial penetration of markets where display of the symbol is banned rather than any growing political sensitivity on the part of US or UK gamers and designers.

Does the author say all gamers who play the Nazi German side in games are closet (or open) Nazis? No of course not. He does however suggest there is a small subset of gamers who are, and a larger set who have an unhealthy propensity to cut the Nazis rather too much slack. Of course you need someone to play the Germans if you want to play WWII games. It's worth remembering what they were trying to achieve when we do.

The comments about how gamers and designers 'tidy up' warfare was something I think we should perhaps be more aware of. Civilians get killed and maimed. We don't always have to include this in a game, and awareness need not stop the enjoyment of the game element nor the satisfaction of accurately representing some elements of combat in miniature. It should be sufficiently worth bearing in mind though, especially with younger gamers, that there is more to war than neat tactical and operational genius on a board and cool uniforms. It involves scraping bits of people into body bags and accidentally killing the innocent.

This isn't saying stop playing or suggesting we hit people over the head during every game that their cool looking pea dot camo clad figures were on Einsatzgruppen duty six months ago. As long as nobody walks away from a gaming table thinking looking cool makes their figures the good guys, we should be all right.

His actual position and purpose are difficult to determine in the article. I even doubted he was a wargamer at all until I did a little additional research on him. A few points:

The plight of the common soldier in warfare was spotlighted well before 20th century film. It's a recurrent theme in Shakespeare's Henry V.

When you politicize everything nothing is fun. Monopoly for instance glosses over the social damage done by gentrification and displacement but it's just a game.

I agree with Gwydion. If you have an interest in wargaming there will always be bad guys. It's unavoidable by its very nature. The fact that certain horrific aspects are not covered in a particular game confirms neither silent assent nor ignorance. Those aspects are just not critical with regard to game play nor do they align with simple common decency. Good stewardship by educating the odd nut coupled with a willingness to objectively present and explain the positive aspects of the hobby will serve it well in today's volatile, highly politicized society.

Read through half of this. So you might have Nazi sympathies if you play the German side, or at least be glorifying them? I assume you want to conquer the world if you play the Roman? You are a white supremists if you play the Confederates and paint the stars and bars? You have penchant for torture and murder if you play the Mongols?

"Come on man".

These people really have to get something real to be concerned about. Do they really sit around and think about things like this?

20 years ago we would have laughed this off as a joke. Unfortunately today there are those that take the thoughts of articles like this seriously.

Now get out there and paint up some of those fun loving, kind and gentle Assyrians.

His claim "Modern wargaming began in the US" is both carefully defined and has the caveat "According to", so by his definition he is factually correct. He does acknowledge earlier war games.
He doesn't really address the level of education and mechanization in the spread of wargaming. The first created a (relatively) large market for the products, the second made them affordable. I believe these are more important factors than the US' participation in WW2 in the rise of wargaming (although destruction and rebuilding in Europe probably slowed market development there).
It would either support or deflate his argument if he could show the ratio of veterans who participated in wargaming over the period of interest. I suspect wargamers are more often the children of veterans than actual combat veterans.
His comments about security platoons on the Eastern Front are wrong, he conflates them with einsatzgruppen. Partisans were a very real and extensive problem and the Germans (and their allies) fielded entire divisions to protect vital communication networks (not that there was no overlap, but the basic raison d'etre was different).

Hmmm. My wargame groups have been made up of both veterans and non. Although a lot in non combat positions, still have had some who served in actual combat. Found the same in reenactment and living history. Have had combat and non combat veterans from Vietnam to Afghanistan in my Civil War group.

Kriegspiel 1828 could also be argued as the birth of modern wargaming, though it was a professional tool, but I never think of the modern hobby as anything other than a parallel development in Britain and the USA. We all know the names. If it wasn't for a chance encounter with a Featherstone book and a gift of 1964 AH Gettysburg, I would not have gotten an early start.

Playing the Nazis for me is really playing the Germans, who were not all Nazis. It is devoid of political overtones. Because it is a game. They will always be the bad guys. The storm troopers in Star Wars are the same. We need them for the narrative. We are just kids in this way, and I don't mind playing them as if I were the Hollywood movie Germans in old war films.

This has nothing to do with my understanding of the real history of the Nazis and what the stood for, what they did, their impact on far right political movements, etc.

My Dad was a combat veteran and he taught me to launch rubber bands at green army men in the 1950s. He was not a fan of the Germans, but he never connected this play with real war. It was more like shooting marbles.

Separating the realities of war and evil from play is what we do. In team sports as well. Play is fun and it teaches us about conflict, fairness, teamwork, community, etc.

More pointy-head intellectual drivel.

You said that as if being intellectual were somehow a bad thing.

Surely some mistake?

Who wouldn't want to have a highly developed ability to reason and understand objectively?

Oddly enough, in relation to some of the objects of this discussion, I can think of some historical characters who regarded intellectuals with scorn, but no-one would want to identify with them.

Well albeit I have war gamed and played mostly historical in my past. I just play SF. Who cares if you kill aliens in large numbers … ?

>> the modern wargame hobby was born in the United States

Clearly head up -***

If you cannot discern between ideology and the forces that act, then you should not be 'playing' anything.

Many honest Germans were involved who did not subscribe the ideology; just as many oppressed natives, colonial and (in USA) impressed lowest denominator people didn't support 'their war'.

And the Swastika was an appropriation from Sanskrit history and is a current Indian symbol.

So the cynicism involved in the precis is about as accurate as a eulogy to Stalin, badly mistaken.
- -

I smell scorched flesh.

So Dunnigan is now "legendary."

Thanks.

Armand

"So Dunnigan is now "legendary.""

He is a legend in his own mind.

Chess is a war game. How come no one complains it glorifies war, or ignores the civilian casualties, or promotes Nazis?

My dad used to say, "That guy has had the common sense educated right out of him."

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

My Dad was a combat veteran and he taught me to launch rubber bands at green army men in the 1950s. He was not a fan of the Germans, but he never connected this play with real war. It was more like shooting marbles.

Similar here. A family full of WWI and WWII veterans who encouraged me first with the history books and then with generous gifts of toy soldiers and various battle sets. Helped me create my own very simple rules (two dice and two measuring sticks). The only times I was allowed to stay up late was when I played these games with my uncles. Fun times that I wish I could relive.

Good memmories!…

Armand

Too many generalizations in the article. There might be some truth here if a person is fascinated with these nice black uniforms, listens to furer's recordings or thinks about racial superiority. I guess I've met only one such person in all my life.
Interesting, that in the Soviet Union we didn't really had armies of the opponents. Apart of 1242 Alexander Nevsky set where we had both Order and Novgorod, the rest were just "us".
Nowadays it is different, but I guess it still somewhere deep in our generation that we should not be playing Germans in WWII. When FoW came out, I've seen people fielding Italians, but not Germans. Of course, there're thousands of Russians playing with German tanks in WoT bcs Tigers are cool.
I'm not playing historicals, especially the battles that were still not that far away. In 10-20 years it will be different.

"That guy has had the common sense educated right out of him."

A lot of that seems to be going around with many our elected & appointed officials …

"That guy has had the common sense educated right out of him."

I'm going to use this!

As for the gaming Germans = being pro-Nazi…I've come to the conclusion that, as a society, we have it entirely too good. In essence people have to find something to worry about because our lives are so easy compared to our ancestors, or even our parents.

No Germans, no game. SOMEBODY has to play them, or else all you would have is solo play.

You may want to be discerning in your choice of opponent, and there are certainly people whose views on the Germans are more enthusiastic than I would like, but I guess you should choose your opponents with care.

Whenever I've gamed the Nazis I've never been overcome with a desire to invade Poland.
What have I been doing wrong?

It seems to me that the opening quote is wrong and the article goes down hill from there. Peace games dont sell… obviously the guy hasn't heard of Catan, Carcasonne, Ticket to ride to name but three examples. I stopped reading about half way through as it seems to be aimed at board games rather than wargames played with model soldiers on a table. Also the article seems to be somewhat USA – centric. The writer needs to get out more. As for the politics and people whi play the german side being pro nazi – , is the only appropriate response that I can think of. "That guy has had the common sense educated right out of him." is a more polite response.

>Playing the Nazis: Political Implications

Sort answer: there is none.

It is probably so that those attracted towards Nazism or similar autocratic systems will prefer to play the Nazis (if they play at all) but there is no reciprocal causality. The same goes for playing Soviets, Confederates, Assyrians, …

Playing a specific side is no indication of political sympathy for their cause, not more then a preferance for crimis or horror in books or movies is support for these acts.

was a little surprised with the comment that the usa is the starting point of modern wargaming then the 1950's war the era things started. war based boardgames were available shortly after ww2 i seem to remember one about coastal battles in the channel.
hg wells was played pre ww1 admittedly in middle class homes.

as far as players adopting or preferring the more unsavioury sides as said someone has to play them. now if people design rules deliberately weighted to the nazis or say confederates or british in the colonial era then that would reflect a political standpoint which could be questioned. even then it could be gamesmanship and not purely a political standpoint.

the source article does seem weighted to one viewpoint and seems sketchily research using selective sources.if one of my students presented that as an assignment it would have got a c or d at best.

>the usa is the starting point of modern wargaming

Yep, that was a bit arbitrary. Wargaming did exist in Britain and Germany before WWI, though you can certainly claim it was more Tabletop or Simulation then "wargaming" (weak) and "modern" only comes post WW2 (also weak). It certainly was an important step and many modern strategy games can trace their heritage back to that generation and tradition.

If you believe playing the Germans makes you a Nazi then you believe playing D&D makes you a wizard.

She turned me into a Knut!? I got better.