I miss you too @oriskany. You should visit Germany some time 🙂

On the topic: yeah this is a real tough one. A lot of people here in Germany are not able to or don’t want to look a that really dark time of our country in depth or even on differentiating basis. “It was just bad. All of it. Can we talk about something else?”. I think it is partly due that we do that stuff in basic and elementary school over and over (literally 10 years of history classes und you only get WW2 and the French Revolution, I never even heard of how the first world war started in 13 years of school). This now may sound like: hey shouldn’t be everybody then be really good informed about the topic? Unfortunately no. Most of that stuff in school is quite superficial and annoying. Let’s be honest, a lot of people don’t have an interest in history. Especially not as teenagers. Same goes for me. When I played 40k as a 12y old, I always though of playing a WW2 would be so uninteresting and dull. With 20 I started an interest in Flames of War and WW2, but thought I could never play Napoleonics. That would be so uninteresting and dull. Later I read up on the French Revolution (again) and the 20 years after it (I never payed attention in school). Today I play Napoleonics. A lot. And Romans. And other Ancients. And WW2. And 40k. And Shotte&Pike. And a lot more…

So back top topic. There are a few laws in Germany that prevent you from showing certain logos and insignia in public. Swastikas, SS Skulls, etc.. They can only be shown to give a historic representation or in art. But even that is up to how the law for example defines art. Only last year Computer Games were declared art in that sense. Before you could only buy a censored copy of let’s say Wolfenstein without those symbols.

We did a lot of FoW events and tournaments back in the day. And we could possibly have argued that our big D-Day event five years ago (3 days, 11 6×4 tables, nearly 20 players and about 4000 minis), was a historic representation and it was ok to show those symbols. But we didn’t want to risk it and always had a disclaimer in our event and tournament discriptions that models and dice  with those symbols are not allowed in our events. Yes we had to ban dice, as Battlefront is producing dice with unit symbols on them. Like the Afrika Korps Palmtree or the SS Skull. Sounds silly, but we felt much better with a ruling like that. From a legal standpoint. I know that 90% of other organizers feel the same. I also know that most people handle it like this in their private gaming groups. I even recognized that the German Tank Museum on their open day put some duct tape over the Afrika Korps Palmtree on their running Panzer IV when they were showing it off in the mud pit. Because the television was there and they don’t want to be stamped in a certain way. A FREAKING MUSEUM! wtf…

But, I can remember that a lot of years back a good friend of mine put a Stuka on the table with a Swastika on the tail fin during a private game. Historically correct, but it made a few people (including me) quite uncomfortable. I can’t really explain why. It just felt weird. I guess indoctrination still works today.

Talking about the D-Day event: First of all, it was AMAZING! On the first day (Friday Evening) I played the British to land at Pegasus Bridge and got annihilated. Saturday I was defending Utah Beach while being attacked by two players. One from the beach and one from the 82nd Airborne behind me. I managed to hold the beach for nearly two days (ingame time). Sunday we played Villers Bocage and I got to field Wittman and his 101st heavy tanks. We annihilated the Desert Rats. BUT during the Saturday suddenly two Police Officer walked into the place in full uniform looking like they were on duty. The temperature dropped a few degrees immediately and every conversation and playing stopped. Everybodies first thought was: We are in trouble, someone called the police. Although we definately did nothing wrong. Turns out those two were on lunch break and are absolute history buffs. They read about our event in some newspaper and wanted to check out what was going on. Really nice people and really knowledgeable about WW2. I’m glad that I got to know them. But I can instantly recall the feeling I had when I first saw them. Yeah, indoctrination definately still works…

Fun fact: during that event we calculated that the sun came up on the British Beaches 6 minutes earlier than on the US Beaches.

So take from this wall of text what you want. Sorry, it got much longer than expected. But the topic is still hard to discuss in Germany and you have to approach the topic with much care unless you want to get stamped as a Nazi. Really thin ice. And yes I really don’t like and it was one of the best things about the Bootcamps I visited, that you can just sit around with @oriskany, @DavePBG, @limburger, @brucelea, @buggeroff and all those I am forgeting right now (sorry) and just talk about this stuff without the “fear” that every word you say could be interpreted in a wrong way.