2nd world war

[DarkMaster]

There are a few, um, misconceptions in here that don't bear up that well to historical study. Most SS men weren't merely victims of the war, even if they didn't work in the death camps. They were recruited from hard core Nazis in several countries (interestingly enough, the hardest core of Berlin's defenders in the last days were non-German SS units, who volunteered because of the political ideology) and were among the most brutal troops in the war. They were hardly brainwashed, for the most part, unless you only consider the Hitler Youth.
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I guess we have a different definition of brainwashed, I personally consider that US special troops are brainwashed and brutal soldier(and I think that's what we need to protect north america interest adequatly).
I think you need to be brainwashed to be a very effective soldier. And because of that you rarely see a soldier goes again the chain of command. Take those US soldier who massacred Vietnamese villages, not a lot of them went against their officers or team mates. I think that in the heat of the battle some men completly lose it. I would not prevent myself from playing a US GI in vietnam because some massacred vietnamese villages. I hope my GM would focus on something more interesting than that.

If they were not brainwashed how can you explain that the SS -Waffen Charlemagne defend Berlin until the whole unit was killed (why would a French care about the Faith of Berlin, especially when France is already liberated)edit: forgot that they were fighting the Russians, which at the time were worse for their war prisonner than the german.

Hitler Youth for me is similar to the scout or cadet, except that the concept taught were completly crazy. But the idea was the same.

I personally think, like you mention, that the whole problem around the German is that they are still survivor and victim of this war alive. Maybe my son will play a German as I play a Roman centurion without having to bother about all the attrocities commited by his empire and just enjoy a different perspective, focusing on the strategic and romantised history, without hurting anybodies feeling.

Please notes: that I am not a pro-nazi, anti jew or any bull like that, I am just reflecting on a situation and do not approve the genocide like I don't approve any gratuitous and target violence against any group no more no less.

 

[ledded]

What, no Dutch?!


Aaron

Punjnabis!!! I need my Sihks and Punjabi, baby!

Hmm... I'd strongly suggest heading to the library and getting a few good books on the history of WWII, and coming up with some ideas after reading them all, rather than finding info on a D&D message board, but that's just me.

Anyway, I'm not going to touch the Nazi fanboy crap, but I'd like to point out something about resistance movements that's usually overlooked...

They don't begin and end with the French resistance, which was in fact relatively modest in size. While the Vichy government ran what was left of France, in Yugoslavia, for example, the resistance was having full-size battles with the Germans, and in Poland 40,000 resistance fighters were fighting German SS and panzer divisions during the Warsaw Uprising - a fight that lasted two months and resulted in more than 30,000 Polish and 10,000 German casualties. (and around 200,000 civilians murdered as the city was razed) They just ended up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, and never got the recognition.

I completely agree. Before I even felt comfortable creating my setting and adjusting statistics, rules, etc for WW2 play in my campaign, I sat down and read a stack of books about the areas I wanted to focus on. Steven Ambrose gave me a lot of anecdotal stuff and great quotable info, there are tons of others such as On To Berlin by General James Gavin (leader of the 82nd airborne during ww2). And that was mostly just for ETO and Sicily stuff, I didnt even touch on pacific or eastern front in my research. Of course, my players decided that they wanted something other that just a straight WW2 campaign (which is what I originally envisioned), so we added supers and went with that. Not exactly what I had in mind, but has been fun nonetheless. All of the research I did paid off when it came down to playing and having to make quick judgement calls when someone wanted to do something not covered in the rules, and when we did fight, the way battles went in general tended to reflect most of the anecdotal evidence I'd read, so it felt fairly gritty and reasonably "realistic".

Hey, if you've never seen Force 10 from Navarone, it features eastern front partisans and Chetniks in Yugoslavia, and has Robert Shaw, Harrison Ford, Carl Weathers, and Jaws from the James Bond movies. The book, by Alister Maclean, was better to me in that is held more continuity with the characters from The Guns of Navarone, but either is pretty much non-cerebral action-adventure. Also, they are so dissimilar that you can see/read one and then the other for two nearly completely different views of the story. Of course there are plenty of other (much better) historical books and resources, I just thought I'd mention one in popular entertainment. It is definitely an arena worth exploring.

If you want a *real* roleplaying challege, try playing partisans along the lines of Jewish resistance groups like those in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, or the Bielski Partisans; however, the tone of such a campaign would be so dark and fatalistic that I think I would have trouble finding enjoyment in it.

There are a few, um, misconceptions in here that don't bear up that well to historical study. Most SS men weren't merely victims of the war, even if they didn't work in the death camps. They were recruited from hard core Nazis in several countries (interestingly enough, the hardest core of Berlin's defenders in the last days were non-German SS units, who volunteered because of the political ideology) and were among the most brutal troops in the war. They were hardly brainwashed, for the most part, unless you only consider the Hitler Youth.

Very true. Also, remember, the depradations performed by this regime weren't something they suddenly thought up in 1943 when everybody was off to war.

The point is that the Reich was a regime founded in a basis of hate and racial supremecy, starting all the way back in the early 1930's. It's not like people didnt know what they were about long before they actually decided to institutionalize murder and then perform cost effectivity studies in cold, logical genocide. It may have started with impassioned hate-speeches, arrests, forced relocation, revoking of common rights, and incidents like the Kristalnacht, but those were obvious precursors for what was coming.

And it wasnt just Jews, but Russians, any communists, gypsies, homosexuals, outspoken artists and thinkers, plus the euthanization of their very own chronically infirm/handicapped.

So while I accept that many German citizens did not know the *extent* of the horrors that were occurring, and many of their soldiers did not partake in many of the worst of the abuses, IMO they certainly didnt think that their neighbor Schlomo was off at summer camp after the SS rounded his family up and took them away. Acceptance of a pervasive atmosphere of hatred and abuse, even if you aren't taking part of it, IMO, is a hard thing to rationalize in an RPG.

Of course there are many, many examples of similar events in other cultures, but none so horribly extreme, widespread, or institutional, which is why the entire Nazi regime is demonized like it is today. Racial inequality/hate-mongering in the US, Japanese treatment of the Chinese during the WWII era (Nanking?), British treatment of many of their former 'colonies, etc, so on, and so forth. Those can be as equally distrubing, but maybe on a slightly different scale.

 

[Krieg]

I personally consider that US special troops are brainwashed and brutal soldier (and I think that's what we need to protect north america interest adequatly. I think you need to be brainwashed to be a very effective soldier.

I am going to try and be as tactful as possible when I tell you that your beliefs have very little connection with reality.

 

[DarkMaster]

The point is that the Reich was a regime founded in a basis of hate and racial supremecy, starting all the way back in the early 1930's. It's not like people didnt know what they were about long before they actually decided to institutionalize murder and then perform cost effectivity studies in cold, logical genocide. It may have started with impassioned hate-speeches, arrests, forced relocation, revoking of common rights, and incidents like the Kristalnacht, but those were obvious precursors for what was coming.

Tyranie 101, every known tyran uses those concepts.

And it wasnt just Jews, but Russians, any communists, gypsies, homosexuals, outspoken artists and thinkers, plus the euthanization of their very own chronically infirm/handicapped.

Again Tyranie 101, plus some spartiate/military oriented culture concept nothing new here. Only very recently in the world history nation have become so open to differences. I personnaly wouldn't have like to be a communist, gay, or black a 50 years ago in the states.

So while I accept that many German citizens did not know the *extent* of the horrors that were occurring, and many of their soldiers did not partake in many of the worst of the abuses, IMO they certainly didnt think that their neighbor Schlomo was off at summer camp after the SS rounded his family up and took them away. Acceptance of a pervasive atmosphere of hatred and abuse, even if you aren't taking part of it, IMO, is a hard thing to rationalize in an RPG.

Did a lot of white people helped the black in the US? they were aware of the KKK and they certainly didn't think that those white hooded guys were lightining the cross to provide them with free heat and light. It took the american more than 200 years to realise how stupid it was and you expect the german society to do it in 20 years.

Many Iraquis didn't liked Saddam, but they were living in fear (again Tyranie 101) so they never complained or try to rebel. Same thing with most German.

Edit I usually never include any reference to known attrocity in my RPG games because, my players are here to relax, my discussion started with the idea of doing the same with a WWII game and playing the german side.

Of course there are many, many examples of similar events in other cultures, but none so horribly extreme, widespread, or institutional, which is why the entire Nazi regime is demonized like it is today.

I beleive it is no worse than any other genocide, it was just done the German way, based on productivity and efficiency, I am pretty sure that any nation nowadays wanting to perform a serious genocide would study their model. Look at any genocide and you will notice one thing in common the desire to elimate the hated one as quickly as possible, it just happened that an industrialised and Engineer driven country came up with that horrible idea, so they just figured out what was the most effective way for them giving their mean to acheive their goal.

The reason why Saddam Hussein didn't kill all the Kurds is because of political issue, which the germans didn't have at the time. Don't tell me that the British, US, French and other allied were completly unaware of what was happening there, but they still waited to be attacked to enter the War. The US were even selling steel to the germans and were putting their head in the sand for quite some time. If the German would have done their little business in their country I doubt the others would have reacted. One good thing that came out of this is that Western Country learned from that and don't allow such attrocities anymore (especially if their interest is at risk )

Racial inequality/hate-mongering in the US, Japanese treatment of the Chinese during the WWII era (Nanking?), British treatment of many of their former 'colonies, etc, so on, and so forth. Those can be as equally distrubing, but maybe on a slightly different scale.

The Japanese philosophy was that the best way to control the petrol in foreing territory was kill all it's inhabitant, like that you wouldn't have to deal with rebellion or resistance group. Pretty horrible when you think about it. I personally wouldn't put the British at the same level as the German, I don't think, correct me I might be wrong, they ever performed a planned genocide. They badly treated the natives but never in such a coordinated effort. Even the US, who I think performed a lot of horrible deeds, never allowed such an open mass extermination.

All this to say that two equally horrible events view from different angle/cultures may have a completly different effect. Take 9/11 and the 94 genocide in Rwanda that killed 2.4 millions people in 3 months (compare that with 6 million in almost 10 years), most american will be much more troubled by 9/11, it's all a matter of what the media want's us to beleive.

 

[billd91]

Lurching toward being back on topic

The reason why Saddam Hussein didn't kill all the Kurds is because of political issue, which the germans didn't have at the time. Don't tell me that the British, US, French and other allied were completly unaware of what was happening there, but they still waited to be attacked to enter the War. The US were even selling steel to the germans and were putting their head in the sand for quite some time. If the German would have done their little business in their country I doubt the others would have reacted. One good thing that came out of this is that Western Country learned from that and don't allow such attrocities anymore (especially if their interest is at risk )

<snip>

All this to say that two equally horrible events view from different angle/cultures may have a completly different effect. Take 9/11 and the 94 genocide in Rwanda that killed 2.4 millions people in 3 months (compare that with 6 million in almost 10 years), most american will be much more troubled by 9/11, it's all a matter of what the media want's us to beleive.

Again, I think there are misconceptions here. It's not what the media want us to believe. There was a great deal of coverage of the atrocities in Rwanda at the time, but the distance was pretty remote for many of us in an area of the world whether violent conflict isn't exactly uncommon. But most Americans knew the skyline of lower Manhattan pretty well and to see a pair of planes smack into the most prominent elements of it was quite a shock. It's not the media controlling what it wants us to believe in this case, but the stark proximity of the calamity in distance, cultural iconography, and human relations.
And the Holocaust didn't occur over 10 years, not with respect to the Final Solution. That was derived at after the war against the Soviet Union was in full swing. Sure, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, religious fundamentalists, the developmentally disabled, and many others were horribly oppressed in Germany under the Nazi government, but the wholesale industrial butchery was not spread out over 10 years. It was conducted in mostly 2 years, well after the English, French, and Americans were in the war. So I think your implications about complacency are misplaced.

Now, enough hijacking of the thread.
To swing this back onto topic, it might be a good idea for any RPG covering the WWII era to have some kind of discussion of the topic of war crimes and such. Perhaps saying that it is not the goal of the game to gloss over any aspect of the war that people may have trouble with, nor to embrace it, but to leave the touchy subjects up to the individual Game Master.

I would consider including a general timeline of events in WWII, including some of the known atrocities, and a bit of commentary about who knew about them and when. That could generate some interesting adventure hooks for anyone interested in touching those topics. For example, maybe the PCs get to be the Polish agents who volunteered to investigate what is actually going on in the concentration camps and they have to race to get the information out. Maybe they are German underground agents trying to figure out who's telling the truth about the murder of Polish officers at the Katyn Massacre site: the German officer they are trying win over to sow sedition and defeatism in the ranks of the army, or their SOE contact trying to mollify bristly Soviet allies by sweeping the whole issue under the rug. Having a timeline with a few of these events on it might help spark interesting campaign situations for game masters and groups willing to wrestle with difficult moral issues inspired by the real world.

 

[ragboy]

Now, enough hijacking of the thread.
To swing this back onto topic, it might be a good idea for any RPG covering the WWII era to have some kind of discussion of the topic of war crimes and such.

And depending on your campaign mood, you may want to plumb those depths even deeper. The horror potential alone is worth a look. And not just war crimes, but the situation in Germany as the war was winding down (and after). I believe Clive Barker had a book set at the end of the war or just after (Damnation Game?). You'll definitely want to cover these topics if you're leaning toward the dark side of the RPG experience. If you're looking for Blood n Guts, you probably don't want to dwell. Lots (most) of WWII books and movies don't even touch on the subject, so it really depends on the mood you're going for.

And I think playing the other side isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, the Germans did some very disgusting, very evil things to the occupied countries and their own citizens, but there were also normal soldiers on the ground that were not fighting to destroy/take over the world. They were in a situation that was handed to them, or forced on them, and had to deal with it, same as the American/British/Russian soldiers. If you exclude the Germans because you claim the whole population was morally suspect and complicit in the regime's crimes, then you'd have to exclude playing Russian soldiers, French resistance (or any resistance force, really), American, British, etc... Every soldier in the war was a killer. Every government was practicing wholesale slaughter. Everyone had their propaganda machines churning out catchy slogans and jingoistic causes. And every soldier on the ground would kill the man (or woman) across from him so that he could eventually go home alive (regardless of what they believed they were fighting for).

Sorry. Not to get the discussion off track, again.

I have some stuff together for my own WWII campaign. Most of it is SOE related, but I'll post the resources I drew from when I'm at my home computer.

One book you probably want to get if you're interested in resistance in Europe and the SOE is Secret Agent. Lots of good crunchy stuff to draw on there.

 

[DarkMaster]

I am going to try and be as tactful as possible when I tell you that your beliefs have very little connection with reality.

Maybe, but the best soldier I have known were all people I was scared of. A friend of mine had a brother in the airborne, he almost kill his brother with his knife for a stupidity but he was one of the best. Recently in Canada we had a major problem with our elite soldier performing all kind of degrading acts during initiation, US soldiers making all kind of stupid and senseless action with prisoner. A cousin of my wife who was in the military, raped with some of his friends a few women after drinking in a bar. They got all togheter in a room and abused the girls.

Military culture is very harsh and forces human to become like beast, they teach you to kill without remorse, and the whole environement is very harsh. I want the front line soldier defending my interest to be like that, I am actually very impressed by the US military on the field, but I am pretty sure that after the war we will hear more horror story. We are asking the impossible to our soldier to be human, compasionate and ruthless killers. War is like the jungle the fiercest and strongest survive not the most human one.

 

[DarkMaster]

Ragboy,
Exactly my point since the begining, sorry for the others if I disgress too much. I only wanted to express that it would be nice to have a game where you would be allowed to play the germans without having to deal with all the attrocity like we do in any other RPG. What was a simple comment became a thread hickjack (and an interesting discussion, at least for me).

 

[Ranger REG]

We are asking the impossible to our soldier to be human, compasionate and ruthless killers. War is like the jungle the fiercest and strongest survive not the most human one.

Instead of asking them, we teach and help them. The civilized thing our civilized society should do is help soldiers integrate back into our community. Give them a peacetime role, be it go to college to start up a civilian career or a government service. If we have invested in them to become the best trained soldiers they are, then we should also invest in them to become the best productive members of our society.

Sorry for the hijack, which is albeit political. We return you now to our regularly scheduled programming.

 

[Turanil]

US soldiers making all kind of stupid and senseless action with prisoner.

I want to quickly post this before the thread is closed...
Well, it shouldn't be a French to say that, but the "US soldiers making all kind of stupid and senseless action with prisoner" in Iraq weren't elite soldiers, but reserves with a few weeks of military training.

I know only one professional soldier here in France. He looks impressive, for sure, but not a mindless brute. Probably soldiers get more opportunities for abuse, but violence is a problem that concerns nearly everybody, and is a problem at large of the human specie.