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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 8753897" data-attributes="member: 3400">A lot of people gloss over the moral implications of the German war machine when looking at it, playing it via war games, or even being fascinated/impressed by some aspects of it - like the training of officers that valued taking initiative, etc. Because it was very good at what it was designed to do - it's just that a significant portion of what it was designed to do was in service of a racist, colonialist government bent on carving out living space from points east by obliterating most of the resident population. And the fact that it did so enthusiastically until the Soviets stopped them doesn't exactly help. That aspect is typically not recognized in the wargamer fascination.And you've also got the people writing their memoirs about it, like Guderian and von Manstein who downplayed their own moral culpability. A lot of wargamers will kind of worship their tactical and strategic skills, completely ignoring the fact that the Wehrmacht was responsible for deliberately starving millions of Soviet prisoners to death - either on the orders of guys like that or through their administration of orders from higher up.So... yeah. I can see how someone might get the impression that WWII wargames enable players to be a bit too Nazi friendly. Not directly friendly with the politics and racism, but also not too questioning since that gets in the way of a good wargame, or a good discussion about how important the close coordination of air support and concentrated ground assault was in the annals of tactical warfare, etc. It's kind of hard to wax on about the coolness of dive bombers clearing the way for tank assaults when they had been so busy murdering Polish civilians - so that kind of gets not included.</blockquote>

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