i don’t know how else to say it , but what’s with the victory flags on gabby gabreski’s p47? if we are worried about glorifying the most brutal regime in the history of western civilization, then what should we do with the history channel , or for that matter, any media dealing with nazi germany ? deleting swastikas from the side of an airplane is not what you’d call a dark day for model building, but i feel that by not showing the symbols of brutality and supression, we soften the blow they had on humans and history. let these emblems of all past rulers (good and bad ) stand, but only in a historical context.
It’s not a question of “glorifying” Nazism or evading its legacy; it’s a legal issue. In Germany, Israel, and some other European countries, it is illegal to display the Nazi swastika in public. The cover of a magazine certainly counts as public display and FSM is sold in those countries, so we had to remove them from the image of the P-47 on the July cover. You’ll notice that they appear in the photo of the model on the lead spread of the article itself, pp 20-21.
In fact, swastikas are deleted from the decals in model kits sold in Germany.