I was just thinking the exact same thing! Maybe that was Evil Brooski who posted.
Well, I wouldn’t call it glee, but I am pleased that a wargame has decided to depict this issue in some way. Now that we are far enough along from the war to be free of the Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht, it feels strange to have games about the eastern front that have no mention of one of its defining aspects. I’m not sure if this is the way to do it, and I’m not sure I would want to play a game that made executing these crimes a part of the mechanics, but my interest in these games is foremost as historical imaginings (as opposed to simply enjoying the mechanics) and addressing this in some way feels like progress. Maybe further progress will make me stop playing these games entirely, but I’m glad to see this happen.
Right, It’s hard for me to relate here but those marks on the map are nice little reminders that these sites are more than places I’ve moved a counter over.
Btw, an announcement to anyone planning to “attend” my SDHistCon talk about Fall of the Third Reich by Ted Raicer—I have had to cancel it due to being needed for emergency weekend coverage (at work). Sorry to all who planned to attend. I may turn it into a video at some point.
Well that’s a shame but I totally understand. I have some oncall scheduling issues myself coming up at my job I am trying to shuffle around so I feel the pain there. I ended up picking up a copy of Fall of the Third Reich and downloaded the vassal module. It’s a race between that and Absolute War which I will play first. Of course, that would be dependent on whatever I can convince someone to play.
Yar! Bummer, I was looking forward to it, but very much understand. I’d watch a video on it, for sure. :)
That’s a bummer, but completely understand. I have the game set up, so I’ll use those hours to play instead and just imagine you whispering pearls of strategic wisdom in my ear.
Yeah, sorry everyone. One of my partners has been getting progressively sicker over the week and I’m the only one who can really take over the weekend as the only other person available will be on 24/7 starting Monday. Not fair to make them cover an additional 72 hours, when I have the weekend free.
I had a PowerPoint presentation (!) ready so I can film it at some point and have Harold post it. Keep checking out that game, it’s really good.
I never really jumped into Gary Grigsby’s War in the West or any other WW2 game that began in 1943. It’s an interesting point to look at. When I play a game like Warplan or Stategic Command I tend to pick Germany 1939 as my start because those decisions really drive the direction of the game. I hadn’t really thought of the 1943 point before as a start but there we have Fortress Europe all Axis controlled and now as the Allies the possibility space is open as to how to crack it.
There are a lot of challenges with doing games on the German-Soviet conflict in accord with modern understandings of that conflict, and modern sensibilities. The old standby of “we’re just focusing on the armies, not the politics” doesn’t really cut it; trying to separate the Nazi ideology from their war aims and their conduct of war is both ahistorical and misleading. And yes, the Soviets had their own issues courtesy of Stalin and the Party, but I’d argue that with the exception of Poland, most of the worst of the Soviet actions involved their own citizens. The Germans, well, they flipped the equation, and were far more murderous outside of their own borders.
Much of the stuff the German leadership did makes little sense outside of the context of their drive for living space and racial purification. Conversely, many things that at first seem bizarre actually make (brutal, evil) sense if you accept the assumptions the Germans operated under. Simulating this sort of thing in a wargame is both unpleasant and difficult, but leaving it out is pretty much a whitewash, or at best creating a rather fictionalized depiction of the conflict.
Not that I have much of an idea how to make this stuff work, mind you.
Only after 1941. From Sept 39-June 41 it was the opposite.
Neither do I. But you kind of hit on the essence of it, there.
Actually, I should have even said 1937-41.
Eh, the Germans didn’t deploy the full measure of their depravity on their own people in general, at least not to the extent Stalin did on his. Germans actually pushed back against the Nazi euthanasia and eugenics programs, and the leadership felt it necessary to somewhat obscure their “Final
Solution” planning. The Germans were actively murdering people in Poland from 1939 onward, and after 1940 began working on their “undesirables” in the occupied countries in the west. The USSR continued to abuse its own folks, and AFAIK its treatment of the Finns was not out of line with most wartime experiences, though I don’t really have a great background there.
It’s all sort of irrelevant, though. Both regimes sucked.
Bit of a slow reply here but I got a chance to attend a session/demo today on Downfall. I really like the looks of this one.
Now just have to wait for it to make it through the P500 gauntlet. :)
Germans actually pushed back against the Nazi euthanasia and eugenics programs, and the leadership felt it necessary to somewhat obscure their “Final
Solution” planning.
You might want to read “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” if you haven’t already…
I’ve read it; there is a lot of literature around the Holocaust and a fair amount of disagreement among historians. The eugenics program the Nazis had targeted ethnic Germans, albeit the elderly, ill, mentally ill, and the like mostly. I’m not talking about the broader murder campaigns against Jews and others. In that I’d generally agree with the line of thought that doesn’t cut the average German much slack.
Yeah, Hitler’s Willing Executioners seems like it was more of a polemic than a historical study. I remember the controversy after it came out and the poor reviews it got from academic historians. I remember reading a good summary of the issues somewhere a long time ago and comparing it to the reception of Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which also caused quite a bit of controversy after it was published (but has held up much better over time). I wish I could remember where it was.
EDIT: Here it is. The Internet remembers (almost) everything.
https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1055&context=history-facultypubs
Keeping in mind of course that differences between academic interpretations of degrees of collective guilt in no way changes the near universal understanding of German responsibility for their atrocities. It’s about the specifics and the desire to not over-generalize, and to be more precise. The broad outlines however are starkly clear.