WWII SS

General Discussion General Modeling Discussion
1

Firstly I have to lay down the basis of my arguement: To model something requires a positive passion for that subject.

For a number of years I’ve had a hard time with the depiction of the SS in models. And I hope that I don’t need to go into all the racist, inhuman reasons for my standpoint. I can’t find it in me to have anything but disdain for that branch of the German armed forces. Every so often I’ll see an SS “Band of Brothers” style vignette or a glorification of SS activity and I con’t imagine how or why someone has the passion to conceive and construct such a scene.

Are there other subjects with which other modellers have a moral issue?

2

if i were building dio’s like that, i wouldnt have any moral issues…I mean, it was a part of history, even though it was more deranged and morbid…but it is what it is…its like asking yourself" well, im going to build an antietnam war scene…i have to paint many dead soldiers for the dio…should i do these and disgrace the soldiers who fell? “or should i do it because it depicts a part of history that noone should ever forget?” i say if you feel regret about seeing or building a certain model, than dont build it…if there is a model out there that disurbs you, just pay no mind…just walk away…this is my 2 pennies.

3

As Chester Nimitz said during the closing days of WWII, “If we [the allies] had lost the war, I would have been hung by the Japanese as a war criminal.” History, and the perceptions we have of history, is written by the victors and while we hope that written history is as accurate as possible, the victorious will always minimize their own participation in “dubious” events.

My modeling genre of choice is WWII armor including soft-skin vehicles and guns for all countries during the war. When I model tanks or vehicles belonging to the SS, I have no more passion for these units than I do for a British, American, or Italian unit. My passion lies in modeling the equipment - not the way that equipment was used. I don’t think that it would be any different if my genre was figures of soldiers in WWII. Depicting SS soldiers doesn’t necessarily glorify the actions of the men. The modeler’s passion may lie with their appearance, the equipment they used, and just historical accuracy.

While I can understand the position of those who choose not to model certain subjects for personal reasons, I would hope that they would also respect the opinions of other modelers who do not necessarily share in those views. I imagine that there may be German modelers who refuse to build B-17 bombers and Japanese modelers who refuse to build US Navy ships or build a model of the Enola Gay. I completely understand and respect these viewpoints.

I personally feel that the only modeling that is completely uncalled for are dioramas or vignettes depicting genocide, the holocaust, or murder (including mass murder) in a distasteful or glorifying manner. However, models of these subjects done in a respectful manner (i.e. for museum exhibit), particularly models done for historical accuracy, are perfectly fine to me. This line is very thin and every modeler who delves into these areas must carefully decide for themselves how far they should push the limits of “good taste”. Sometimes the answer is simple…but sometimes not.

4

[#ditto]
Right now I am building a Diorama of an SS tank battalion. I am not glorifying there acts of genocide etc. I am not even trying to portay them as “good” or “bad” Its just an event in time and the only tank division was an SS one. I would never even think to have a dio with them rounding up Jews etc. Never. SO when I see a Vehicle at a competition with SS license plates, I dont look and see genocide, I see a vehicle that was used by them for fighting the enemy, just as their counterparts would have had.

5

Well said Robert. It’s about the history not the glorifiaction. I’ve not seen one modeler rant on about his build if you will. I think we all do it out of interest in military history.

6

i started a GB based on the 12 SS division, the hitlerjugend, or hitler youth division. ther are several reasons i started this. nowhere among them was the intent to promote or glorify the SS from WWII. the point of view take on this is as follows: if we don’t portray both sides of a conflict, both good and bad, joyful and disdainful, then what are we doing to the victory our men achieved through so many hardships? if we didnt portray the conflict as it was, what if future generations just look at our models and say “well, there was a big war with germany, and we won. big sh!t…” they won’t see the tremendous opposition the allies had to overcome, the technical inadequecies of some of our weapons compared to the axis forces. it would down play the allied victory.

next, we need to show future generations what evils and terrible events can come out of letting people like hitler and stalin rise to power. what war and conflict really mean. if we didnt show exactly what happened, our children are destined to make the same mistake our ancetors did at other times. that would be as much a crime to humanity as the holocaust was. finally, just because you were a german, or were attached to a ctain unit, doesnt mean you were an ardent nazis. everyone has their own reasons for the actions they take. i cant say for sure who was a nazis and who wasnt, but the nazis were a political party. they were an extreme party, with deranged intentions, but back then, most germans would have viewed them as the reigning party in their government.

furthermore, like in america, some may have joined the SS for the status it was given, for the adventure, for employment, or for any number of other reasons. all im saying is dont take a a big paint brush to such things, and say ‘well, they’re all terrible people, and damit, we shud just beat them all for it, no matter what’ there were criminals on the allied side as well. s

talin killed more of his own people than hitler ever came close to. he was as much a butcher as adolf, and so were many of his henchmen. its just that they didnt make a dogma out of their practices, and didnt make as much fuss over their operations as the nazis did.

so dont look at something and because of its subject, just knock it away. sometimes you will need to go deeper to see whats really there…

7

Like Gringe said, many joined the Waffen-SS (different from the SS that ran the camps) just because they were the “elite.” They got the best guns, the best vehicles, the best everything. Building the vehicles used by the SS is only about the war, not about anything else.

8

I havnt seen any models or Dios of the political Allgemeine-SS (the ones that ran the camps)
the Waffen SS were the front line troops and had nothing to do with the death camps
http://www.feldgrau.com/ss.html

at my local model club peaple bring in models of He 111 bombers and no one moans about them even when 65 years ago the same type of planes were flying over the city i live in (Coventry, England) and bombed it to the ground,

9

A book has just come out called “In my brother’s shadow” and I think it covers a lot of the feeling I have about this subject:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374103747/qid=1114090790/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-1202733-7444707?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

I have such a hard time with military subjects all together. I didn’t used to but things change in a person and I can only deal with civilian subjects now. I have a heap of military kits from 20 years ago that I will never build and have to unload at some point.

Thanks for sharing your viewpoints.

10

Hi all,

I guess I’m a throwback of sorts. I do build models because I have a passion for the subject, and I do intend to glorify the real thing with my models.

While I can understand the fascination with military equipment ( a fascination I share), I think a model is an homage to the real-life prototype. I think building something because the equipment is cool and ignoring the story behind it is kind of like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then scraping off the peanut butter and jelly to just eat the bread.

So yes, WWII German subjects give me the willies. The Germans really did commit far worse crimes against humanity than the Allies. The Soviets and Japanese weren’t any better. These things are not morally relative. By the same token, I think the Allies have a lot to answer for too. Less than the Axis powers, but still a lot. B-29s give me the same kind of willies that German armour does.

I fully realize that a good many German soldiers were just regular guys doing what they needed to do. In fact, many of them were conscripts from conquered territories. How would if feel to be living in Luxemborg waiting for the American Army to free your town, but knowing that the Americans may have had to kill your son to do that?

Oh well. Build what you want and like what you build. War is a sad, tragic, and horrible mess where the victors suffer nearly as much as their enemies, and the civilians suffer most of all. It also affords the opportunity for the greatest part of our humanity to shine through – loyalty, sacrifice, dedication, and the attempt to end tyranny and evil.

Regards,

11

I study and model history. Good, bad, ugly or otherwise… it’s history.
It ain’t gonna change… and it shouldn’t…

Fade to Black…

12

well said lufbery.

blackwolf, to think that history exists as an objective absolute is taking a very simplistic look at the material. when an event occurs every witness has his/her own take on the matter. when you model an historical subject you are basing it on photographs (photographs as we all know are not objective), paintings/drawings/etchings (highly subjective), eyewitness accounts (by definition subjective) or written accounts (helpful to a point when you are working in a visual medium). And you as a model builder have your own viewpoint, make choices of what to include or not. You are modelling your version of history.

13

First of all, I beleive that history does exist as an objective absolute, and that is not being simplistic. History only seems subjective when you look at who is interpreting it. I model from photographs, technical drawings and such, and fail to see how those are subject to different interpretations. It’s a picture of a vehicle, for goodness sake, how can you put a spin on that? And as far as being a modeler goes, yes, I do have my own viewpoints, but I don’t impose those on my builds because that would be an affront to history. I’m not one of these guys who would leave the swatstika off the tail of a stuka or remove the Japanese rising sun flag from a battleship simply because I disagreed with them. I build models of historical military equipment, not models of political statements.

Vespa boy, I’m really not trying to bash you here, but I just wanted to expand a little on what “history-buff” modelers like myself think. In fact, going back to your first post, I actually agree with you and can see how a “Band of Brothers”-type diorama glorifying SS troopers would make someone uneasy. Sometimes I wonder about the reasons for a certain builder’s outright infatuation with everything German from WWII. Personally, I tend to build more Allied subjects, since I can relate more to the cause my grandfather’s generation fought for. But to be balanced and have some diversity in my collection, I also have a few German aircraft and tanks, and will probably build a couple Japanese planes too. No sense in only modeling one side of history – people need to see who and what we fought against, too.

But back to the original post, my only moral issue with modeling is the representation of dead or severely wounded persons in dioramas and vignettes. It doesn’t matter which side – axis, allied, or civillian – the fact that somebody takes the time to build and paint up a figure of a maimed or dead soldier really turns me off. It’s one thing if you build an ambulance, and show a wounded soldier on a stretcher with it, but quite another when I see a figure with missing limbs or bleeding all over the diorama base.

14

This is the reason I only own one German WWII model. It is hard for me to build up much passion for building Nazi equipment, so I don’t do much of it. Yes, I really have to question the humanity of some Allgemeine SS troops as they did some atrocious things that no decent person could do. To be fair though, there were a lot of guys from the Waffen SS and the Wehrmacht who were just ordinary Joe’s (or Heinrich’s) who were drafted to defend the Fatherland. Whether or not they feel proud of their service, I am not qualified to comment on, but I don’t doubt that many of them felt they were fighting for their families and their comrades and their lives more than anything else.

15

Personaly I won’t build stuff that includes dead or dieing animals. Dead horses in front of carts, dogs being used to carry bombs under tanks, just isn’t in my ability to reproduce. I don’t deny, forget or overlook these aspects of warfare, I just don’t care to depict them in any way.

16

Well then, as a pro-subjective type… you should surely realize that that is simply your interpretation…

Fade to Black…

17

History is a fickle thing and has to be looked at carefully. Not to defend their actions or anyones action with complicaty to the events of WW2 and the camps but when you look at the big picture and make generalizations you can say “All SS were bad and killed Millions” .

The SS used less than 10% of their total “guarding personel” to operate the internal workings of the camps. The rest was done by Ukrainians, Russian and Jewish Kapos. Towards the end of the war there were aprox 35000 SS and 10000 troops picked from the Navy, Luftwaffe, and Heer for guard duties at the labor camps. There were few SS who actually operated inside the camps.

20,000 Rusian prisoners of war were deliverd to Auschwitz for execution by Wermacht transports using wermacht troops and officers. A regular exchange program was instituted that rotated troops in and out of guard duties at the camps and they were returned to their units after their rotation. That in my estimation makes more than the SS complicate in the workings of the camps.

18

The SS were a political organ of the state, and the Waffen SS a military means of projecting the aims of the state.

The Wehrmacht on the other hand was a supposedly non-political force, however having sworn an oath to a dictator you have to wonder how apolitical the Wehrmacht really were.

Despite their differing origins, both the Wehrmach and the SS, Allegemeine or Waffen were instruments of the Nazi state used to oppress the peoples of many nations.

Based on that should we model any German subjects from WWII?

I will still model German military subjects from WWII, not because I agree with the aims of the Nazis, but because I am interested in the subjects themselves. I cannot deny their role in history, and nor would I want to, they are simply a piece of history that I want to reflect in a model.

Karl

19

Vespa,
I have a question about your first statement: “to model something requires a positive passion for that subject.”
Does this mean in the broad scope, as in a passion for knowledge of history, or that by choosing to model machines of war, we have a passion for war?

Don

20

My interest in history informs my choices in modelling; as I learn more about subjects that interest me, I am able to bring more fidelity to my models. One area of particular interest to me are the wars between Finland and Russia from 1940 to 1944… which means I build a lot of Soviet armor, even though I have no sympathy whatever for the Russians in these conflicts. Some I paint as Soviet, some I do as Finnish capture with the appropriate camo and markings. I also do American, British, German, Italian, and Japanese subjects as I feel the urge to do so, regardless of the “side” they were on. War and conflict in general interest me much more than peace and harmony, so to speak. I would rather do a bomber than an airliner, an AFV rather than a NASCAR racer, etc., but I can respect and admire the efforts of modellers who feel differently and work in their areas of preference.