Sidestepping history - hiding swastikas.


  • I would be surprised if this topic has not come up before. But I was wondering what people think about the lengths gone to cover up the swastika in some material directly referencing World War II.

    Is this appropriate?

    I don’t know. But as someone with quite an interest in the war - it feels a bit like censorship impacting quite a major piece of symbolism - semiotics as it were - of the war.

    The swastika represents Nazism - to pretend that Germany became embroiled in WWII independent of Nazism is wrong. For the years 1933-45 Germany literally was Nazi Germany. Symbolised by the swastika - an emblem which insinuated it’s way into every facet of german culture - and was even grudgingly accepted by the Wermacht.

    The Hammer and Sickle is a symbol with equally terrible (if opposite) political and philosophical implications - yet this is represented in the game and notably on the game box.

    I have no objection to the current use of the Iron Cross symbol on the gameboard and National Control Markers. They were definitely major insignias of German Military Forces. But do object to the (to me) blatant way on many boxes there is the Russian, British, US, and Japanese national flags - and the German National Flag (circa 1940) is obviously obscured by a face or tank or whatever.

    It reminds me of an instruction manual for a PC WWII flight simulator which had photographs in it which had been doctored to remove swastikas from Luftwaffe aeroplane tails! Standard markings of German WWII aircraft were that swastikas were on the tail fin - not according to some game makers however.

    Nazism was evil. It was predicated on racial purity and the extermination of millions of people either directly or through overwork. It argued that this was ‘survival of the fittest’ (a term not coined by Darwin but by social darwinists much later) - and carried it forward as actual genocide. The Nazi war machine arose in Germany and spread blood and death across Europe, Africa and the Atlantic killing millions of people - Americans, Europeans and Asians. It’s symbol was the swastika.

    I believe the swastika should be seen. We should never forget what it stood for.

    My father believes A & A trivialises a terrible time in history (he thinks it is wrong to make such a game)- and while I agree with him to an extent- I play because I think it keeps people interested and brings in ‘new recruits’ who want to learn about this vitally important time in World History. But do us a favour - and don’t sanitise it too much.

    I say put a swastika somewhere - they do on the covers of some WWII books or books about the workings of the third Reich. Let’s get real.


  • That last one is joke, obviously, but the swastika has a longer history than the Nazis.  They just gave it a bad name.  I think most of the swastika editing is happening in Germany, but I could be wrong.

    I totally agree that we shouldn’t ignore past atrocities.  If we forget them, they will occur again.


  • Interesting pics Jermfoot.

    Who are those sporty dudes?


  • The first is a Canadian hockey team (appropriately enough called the Swastikas), the second is an American Indian basketball team, both from the early 20th century.


  • Swastica is the symbol of the sun, a pagan symbol corrupted by the nazis, but also is a peaceful symbol in Far East. Different cultures have different use for the same symbols. Per example, if you see a guy like those …

    If you see guys like them in USA: Help! The Ku-Klux-Klan goes for us!  :oops:
    If you see guys like them in Spain: they are nazarenos, a popular spanish religious rite common in spring  :wink:


  • The way I understood the swastika was it represented a political party.  So to use it in the game or to reference Germany by a swastika would be no diffrent then referencing the US by the Democratic symbol as both US presidents in the war were Democrats.

    Just my two cents,

    LT


  • @LT04:

    The way I understood the swastika was it represented a political party.  So to use it in the game or to reference Germany by a swastika would be no diffrent then referencing the US by the Democratic symbol as both US presidents in the war were Democrats.

    Just my two cents,

    LT

    Exactly…it was branding the Nazis with imagery.  And they had a distinct way (turned 45 degrees, red background, etc.) of making their swastika unique.

    It is apparently treated very seriously in Germany more than anywhere else, but there is a stigma in the Western world that may not cause prosecution, but a lot of headache anyway.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Post-WWII_stigmatization_in_Western_countries


  • The swastika represented a political party - but not in anything like the same sense we understand that in a democracy. The swastika represented the ONLY political party.

    It was also the German National Flag from 1933-1945. Therefore the NATION of Germany - as it was at the time of world war II represented itself to the world with the swastika (as Jermfoot pointed out - tilted at an angle.)

    That demonstrates the difference, in the western democracies - flags are not changed according to politcal leadership. That is the hallmark of some totalitarian states.

    Also note - that the German flag of the period is represented on some boxes of A&A - we see its red field - we simply see the swastika censored.

    As I pointed out - I recognise that the iron cross symbol used on National Control markers, game stationary etc is appropriate as it is the proper symbol of the Wermacht. I hope it is clear in my orignial post that I’m not some neo-nazi hell bent on seeing Swastikas all over the game… just noticing that the swastika is hidden here as it is in other game-related literature be they computer games, board games.

    Also - the swastika I am talking about is the black swastika, tilted on a white circle, floating in a red field. As in the Nazi one.


  • There was another topic in the 50th section where someone asked why Rommel was on the box and not Hitler.  This person pointed out that you saw faces like Churchill and Stalin (world leaders) not Montgomery or Eisenhower (country specific generals) for example.

    The answer was that the game would not be legal to market in Germany with Hitler’s face.  I would imagine this would fall under the same school of thought.  Germany doesn’t deny that the war happened but they would like marginalize the bad PR that goes with it.

    LT

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