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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 1738861" data-attributes="member: 3400">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. And the Wehrmacht itself can hardly be considered too innocent in all theaters of the war. While they may have been reasonably well behaved in France, their behavior in the USSR was very different as the nature of the war there was very different. Of course, not all Germans were bent on the race war between Germans and Jews/Slavs but the fact remains that too many did nothing to oppose the program and that will have a tendency to taint any view we have of playing German soldiers.Now, if you built a scenario around some of the German officers of Army Group Center trying to assassinate Hitler, then I think you have a really good case for playing Germans in WWII without being morally obligated to feel a little bit squeamish. But then, it's all in how you prefer to play. I'd think a campaign about that, or one that focuses on the moral ambiguity of soldier life in the Russian steppes and challenges the players to question the morality of the situation would be pretty cool. But I'd pretty much look down on a campaign where German characters just get to blow up Ivans and lay waste to Russian villages in an orgy of violence. Of course, I tend to look down on such raw violence when it's in a fantasy RPG as well.You're right that there are pleny of other nasty events in history too. It's just that WWII is still pretty fresh as far as history goes. There are plenty of veterans, war heroes and war criminals, still alive on all sides of that conflict with very few lives over most of the world that weren't touched in some way by it and its aftermath. So moral issues can run pretty hot.</blockquote>

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