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History is written by the victors, and water is wet. As another poster in this thread alludes to, if we go down the rabbit-hole of digging up the crimes against

History is written by the victors, and water is wet. As another poster in this thread alludes to, if we go down the rabbit-hole of digging up the crimes against humanity of every military ever and arguing that we shouldn't play games based around those armed forces.....well, the only thing we'd be left with is Farmville. Do we have to receive lectures on Roman brutality before we play Rome: Total War, or I can just enjoy my endless ranks of lorica segmenta? Do I really need to be told that $famousauthorname was a Roman apologist and the Roman Legions shouldn't be "tolerated"? Are these issues not being discussed in a mature and thoughtful manner in high school these days? I realize education in the US is a dumpster fire but I find it hard to believe things have fallen off the cliff since I graduated in 2001.

panzagl 6y ago
The Romans weren't particularly brutal given their time- being beaten by the Celts and being beaten by the Romans would be a similar experience. What the Germans and Japanese did was of a scale and brutality that had not been inflicted in 'civilized' warfare for centuries. And neo-nazis are a thing now, and they're not nice. When I last donned a lorica and hefted a scutum the most political thing we debated was whether Keens looked enough like caligae to be allowed on the field. Time also plays a factor in these things- I've never known anyone who fought the Romans. If I had a great-uncle Camulos telling me what bastards they were, maybe I'd write an article lambasting Great Battles of Caesar. I graduated 10 years before you, so no idea how history is taught now.
- CapricornNoble 6y ago
  >>>What the Germans and Japanese did was of a scale and brutality that had not been inflicted in 'civilized' warfare for centuries. Doesn't that boil down to skewed perceptions re: the nature of war as much as anything? That's a question for HN writ large, not you specifically, as I think you capture understanding of that with your quotation marks. WW2's death toll was in the same order of magnitude as WW1's, which should have already shattered misconceptions of clean wars. However, I think WW1 had a higher ratio of combatant casualties vis-a-vis noncombatants. WW2 being a "regression to the mean" so to speak with regards to brutalizing civilians, combined with the growth of media dissemination, may be why it's made such a socio-psychological mark. >>>And neo-nazis are a thing now, and they're not nice. Communists are a thing, and they're not nice. There's a lot of reasons we never had mass-market video games singing the praises of Konstantin Rokossovsky (the only Soviet war hero I can think of as photogenic as Rommel), and the virtuousness of the ideology and/or its adherents isn't the deciding factor IMO. We also don't spend anywhere near as much time and energy, as a society, highlighting the sole modern ideology with the dubious distinction of a larger 8-figure excess death count than national socialism/fascism. But I digress... Agreed that the time scale of Romans vs Germans is an issue. I don't know how we can consistently get people to "zoom out" and look at things with a larger, multi-generational timescale in mind and see that the things they are taking exception to are closer to "business as usual" than they realize.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    > WW2 being a "regression to the mean" so to speak with regards to brutalizing civilians It wasn't, though. The level, and degree of planning, of genocide in conquered territories was historically _very_ unusual. Medieval armies, say, were not generally followed by specialist murder units. Even in, say, the Reconquista, there was no real equivalent of the Einsatzgruppen, nevermind what came after occupation. This isn't to say previous wars were clean; lots and lots of civilians died, but there was rarely an organ of the military whose explicit purpose was in massacring civilians until WW2. I think there's a reasonable case that the Nazi military really did have a special, virtually unique brand of evil.
    - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
      > "Medieval armies, say, were not generally followed by specialist murder units." Wasn't sacking of cities in antiquity and medieval times basically looting of all valuables and either the killing or enslavement of the population, mixed in with considerable brutalization during the process? The entire besieging army took part in that. > "I think there's a reasonable case that the Nazi military really did have a special, virtually unique brand of evil." Nope, I'd say the Imperial Japanese Army had them beat on that score easily: they spared themselves the need for specialized units by simply having the entire military commit atrocities. Much larger scale than the Nazis too.
- Hitton 6y ago
  >The Romans weren't particularly brutal given their time- being beaten by the Celts and being beaten by the Romans would be a similar experience. Funny that you say that. You could say that during WW2 Germans weren't particularly brutal compared to Soviets. Aside of death camps (which weren't really Wehrmacht's thing) you could probably even say that it was Red Army which was more brutal and committed more war crimes (if only by virtue of Wehrmacht's better discipline).
  - panzagl 6y ago
    I was going to add the Soviets to the list, but I don't know enough about their mass treatment of German civilians in particular, though obvious they treated their own civilians badly enough. The Eastern front was more brutal, but brutality of soldiers against soldiers is not really an exception even in modern warfare as opposed to organized murder and abuses of enemy non-combatants on a strategic scale.
    - Hitton 6y ago
      Why just treatment of German civilians? Soviets were assholes to pretty much everybody. Baltic states, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Finland, China, ... - they all enjoyed "friendliness" of Soviets. They also raped women liberated from concentration camps. During liberation of Poland it's estimated they raped ~100,000 women. Talk about saving the victims.
      - panzagl 6y ago
        The Soviets were bad, but I am not personally familiar enough with the sources to say whether Soviet atrocities were official policy, ill-disciplined soldiers or both. The Eastern Front is popular with a certain sort of armchair historian/wargamer/etc. because 'the Germans were the good guys' (or 'there were no good guys') which allows them to distance themselves from the atrocities while still fetishizing the cool tanks and uniforms. Seems spurious to me, but it's not like I would call someone on it and tell them they're a bad person.
  - watwut 6y ago
mcguire 6y ago
"For my part, I can play the German side in a conventional wargame easily enough if I need to, although I would prefer to take the Allied side. But Panzer General, with its eagerness to embed me in the role of a German general goose-stepping and kowtowing to his Führer, is a bridge too far for me. I would feel more comfortable with it if it made some effort to acknowledge — even via a footnote in the manual! — the horrors of the ideology which it depicts as all stirring music and proudly waving banners." "Are these issues not being discussed in a mature and thoughtful manner in high school these days? I realize education in the US is a dumpster fire but I find it hard to believe things have fallen off the cliff since I graduated in 2001." These issues weren't being discussed in high school, mature or otherwise, when I graduated in 1986. And if I read your previous comment correctly, it wouldn't be discussed at all (because the Nazis had better uniforms?), no?
- CapricornNoble 6y ago
  >>>And if I read your previous comment correctly, it wouldn't be discussed at all (because the Nazis had better uniforms?), no? No, you didn't read that correctly. Better uniforms is a somewhat-facetious explanation for German popularity as a faction in wargames. People will naturally gravitate to the team that looks cooler. Same reason why the 501st Legion is a thing in the Star Wars fandom, but there isn't really an equivalent Rebel Alliance fangroup of similar size.[1] That in no way suggests that Nazi atrocities should never be discussed in any medium or venue just because they were stylish. Maybe my experience was different attending Quaker schools, so quite a bit of our history classes covered various crimes against humanity in detail. I'm just saying that nobody needs to be beat over the head with historical moralizing and soul-searching in what is essentially a game of chess with more complicated rules, and the starting positions of the pieces imported from reality. There's plenty of other, better, ways to handle the morality of the history besides a computer strategy game. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501st_Legion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501st_Legion

panzagl 6y ago

The Romans weren't particularly brutal given their time- being beaten by the Celts and being beaten by the Romans would be a similar experience. What the Germans and Japanese did was of a scale and brutality that had not been inflicted in 'civilized' warfare for centuries. And neo-nazis are a thing now, and they're not nice. When I last donned a lorica and hefted a scutum the most political thing we debated was whether Keens looked enough like caligae to be allowed on the field. Time also plays a factor in these things- I've never known anyone who fought the Romans. If I had a great-uncle Camulos telling me what bastards they were, maybe I'd write an article lambasting Great Battles of Caesar. I graduated 10 years before you, so no idea how history is taught now.

CapricornNoble 6y ago
>>>What the Germans and Japanese did was of a scale and brutality that had not been inflicted in 'civilized' warfare for centuries. Doesn't that boil down to skewed perceptions re: the nature of war as much as anything? That's a question for HN writ large, not you specifically, as I think you capture understanding of that with your quotation marks. WW2's death toll was in the same order of magnitude as WW1's, which should have already shattered misconceptions of clean wars. However, I think WW1 had a higher ratio of combatant casualties vis-a-vis noncombatants. WW2 being a "regression to the mean" so to speak with regards to brutalizing civilians, combined with the growth of media dissemination, may be why it's made such a socio-psychological mark. >>>And neo-nazis are a thing now, and they're not nice. Communists are a thing, and they're not nice. There's a lot of reasons we never had mass-market video games singing the praises of Konstantin Rokossovsky (the only Soviet war hero I can think of as photogenic as Rommel), and the virtuousness of the ideology and/or its adherents isn't the deciding factor IMO. We also don't spend anywhere near as much time and energy, as a society, highlighting the sole modern ideology with the dubious distinction of a larger 8-figure excess death count than national socialism/fascism. But I digress... Agreed that the time scale of Romans vs Germans is an issue. I don't know how we can consistently get people to "zoom out" and look at things with a larger, multi-generational timescale in mind and see that the things they are taking exception to are closer to "business as usual" than they realize.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  > WW2 being a "regression to the mean" so to speak with regards to brutalizing civilians It wasn't, though. The level, and degree of planning, of genocide in conquered territories was historically _very_ unusual. Medieval armies, say, were not generally followed by specialist murder units. Even in, say, the Reconquista, there was no real equivalent of the Einsatzgruppen, nevermind what came after occupation. This isn't to say previous wars were clean; lots and lots of civilians died, but there was rarely an organ of the military whose explicit purpose was in massacring civilians until WW2. I think there's a reasonable case that the Nazi military really did have a special, virtually unique brand of evil.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    > "Medieval armies, say, were not generally followed by specialist murder units." Wasn't sacking of cities in antiquity and medieval times basically looting of all valuables and either the killing or enslavement of the population, mixed in with considerable brutalization during the process? The entire besieging army took part in that. > "I think there's a reasonable case that the Nazi military really did have a special, virtually unique brand of evil." Nope, I'd say the Imperial Japanese Army had them beat on that score easily: they spared themselves the need for specialized units by simply having the entire military commit atrocities. Much larger scale than the Nazis too.
Hitton 6y ago
>The Romans weren't particularly brutal given their time- being beaten by the Celts and being beaten by the Romans would be a similar experience. Funny that you say that. You could say that during WW2 Germans weren't particularly brutal compared to Soviets. Aside of death camps (which weren't really Wehrmacht's thing) you could probably even say that it was Red Army which was more brutal and committed more war crimes (if only by virtue of Wehrmacht's better discipline).
- panzagl 6y ago
  I was going to add the Soviets to the list, but I don't know enough about their mass treatment of German civilians in particular, though obvious they treated their own civilians badly enough. The Eastern front was more brutal, but brutality of soldiers against soldiers is not really an exception even in modern warfare as opposed to organized murder and abuses of enemy non-combatants on a strategic scale.
  - Hitton 6y ago
    Why just treatment of German civilians? Soviets were assholes to pretty much everybody. Baltic states, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Finland, China, ... - they all enjoyed "friendliness" of Soviets. They also raped women liberated from concentration camps. During liberation of Poland it's estimated they raped ~100,000 women. Talk about saving the victims.
    - panzagl 6y ago
      The Soviets were bad, but I am not personally familiar enough with the sources to say whether Soviet atrocities were official policy, ill-disciplined soldiers or both. The Eastern Front is popular with a certain sort of armchair historian/wargamer/etc. because 'the Germans were the good guys' (or 'there were no good guys') which allows them to distance themselves from the atrocities while still fetishizing the cool tanks and uniforms. Seems spurious to me, but it's not like I would call someone on it and tell them they're a bad person.
- watwut 6y ago

mcguire 6y ago

"For my part, I can play the German side in a conventional wargame easily enough if I need to, although I would prefer to take the Allied side. But Panzer General, with its eagerness to embed me in the role of a German general goose-stepping and kowtowing to his Führer, is a bridge too far for me. I would feel more comfortable with it if it made some effort to acknowledge — even via a footnote in the manual! — the horrors of the ideology which it depicts as all stirring music and proudly waving banners." "Are these issues not being discussed in a mature and thoughtful manner in high school these days? I realize education in the US is a dumpster fire but I find it hard to believe things have fallen off the cliff since I graduated in 2001." These issues weren't being discussed in high school, mature or otherwise, when I graduated in 1986. And if I read your previous comment correctly, it wouldn't be discussed at all (because the Nazis had better uniforms?), no?

CapricornNoble 6y ago
>>>And if I read your previous comment correctly, it wouldn't be discussed at all (because the Nazis had better uniforms?), no? No, you didn't read that correctly. Better uniforms is a somewhat-facetious explanation for German popularity as a faction in wargames. People will naturally gravitate to the team that looks cooler. Same reason why the 501st Legion is a thing in the Star Wars fandom, but there isn't really an equivalent Rebel Alliance fangroup of similar size.[1] That in no way suggests that Nazi atrocities should never be discussed in any medium or venue just because they were stylish. Maybe my experience was different attending Quaker schools, so quite a bit of our history classes covered various crimes against humanity in detail. I'm just saying that nobody needs to be beat over the head with historical moralizing and soul-searching in what is essentially a game of chess with more complicated rules, and the starting positions of the pieces imported from reality. There's plenty of other, better, ways to handle the morality of the history besides a computer strategy game. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501st_Legion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501st_Legion