You may have seen or heard of the recent controversy online regarding a video put out by a much loved, mostly Warhammer YouTuber Midwinter Minis:
In the video he wonders why historical wargaming isn’t as popular as Warhammer, and considering WW2 is by far the most popular historical period, he wonders if it’s the presence of the Nazis that stops some people from wanting to get into the historical hobby. I don’t think that line of thinking is a stretch at all, and in fact makes a lot of sense, I’ve expressed similar thoughts before.
I think the critics of Midwinter have largely missed the point. One critic I watched in particular seemed to think that Guy was pushing for removing Germans as a playable force from WW2 wargames, which he very clearly was not doing at all. He was just expressing the idea that some people may struggle with fielding a Nazi force, building, painting and collecting a group of models to represent people that committed very real war crimes still within living memory. It’s a sentiment that I can completely empathise with. If I had any Jewish friends who lost family in the Holocaust, I would certainly feel uncomfortable showing them my collection of miniature Nazis. Guy and Hatty mention in the video that they both have Grandparents that flew in the RAF at the time, and so you can see the connection for them is very real.
Having said all that it is extremely important that we remember WW2 and we remember the Nazis. I think someone said something once about not repeating past mistakes? It’s therefore almost necessary to have people that paint and collect German forces for WW2 games, I suppose like a lot of these things it must depend on a person’s individual reasons for wanting to collect the Nazis or not.
Some people may just be uncomfortable, and if you play and paint Germans you may have to justify yourself on occasion and I don’t think you can blame people for feeling a certain way, especially when you might not know their reasons. I’m sure the same goes for people that paint and play the Japanese in certain parts of the world, or people that build Confederate armies for the ACW in the States. I feel a little odd about playing my Soviets on Bolt Action. It’s darkly humorous when your Imperial Guard Commissar shoots a retreating Guardsman to stop a unit breaking in 40k, not so humorous when the Soviet Commissar does the same thing in Bolt Action, especially as those same tactics play out in Ukraine with poorly trained and equipped Russian conscripts.
Some people may be very far right politically, while I’m sure it’s in actuality very few, but there will be no doubt people out there that are enthusiastically amassing a Nazi force for Bolt Action or Flames of War because they are Nazis themselves. Games Workshop had a similar issue of late when they realised some people had forgotten that the Imperium of Man in 40k is supposed to be seen as a bad thing, and that it had in fact attracted a lot of far right people (although Games Workshop may have created this problem themselves as although they say the Imperium is a bad thing their artwork says otherwise).
So I think the backlash against Midwinter was entirely unjustified, but I do doubt that his point about historical wargaming being less popular is down to Nazis. But I’m not too sure why it is actually less popular, what do you think?
Deathzap 
I am afraid that the ‘midwinter’ thing passed me by entirely. What happened? But as an aside it did strike me as strange that people were wary of painting Nazi’s , a force very very few living people have seen, yet cheerfully paint not merely the forces of the Imperium of Man but also everything from orcs to chaos demons 🙂
Is it that these are first world problems? Is there a link with the fact that Ukrainian troops appear to refer to Russians as Orcs?
Me, I push toys across a wargames table 🙂
The ‘controversy’ was just their original video and then all the response videos that popped up. I myself have a huge Khorne daemons army, just don’t tell my vicar! 😉
your secret is safe with me 🙂
The Germans had the coolest uniforms and exceptionally well-trained troops with junior officers having great initiative. The Third Reich pioneered the new strategies for effectively using tanks. Their weaponry was advanced and included jets, rockets and assault rifles. The officer initiative might sound surprising coming from a totalitarian nation but that is how it was and way superior to the Soviets. This makes them an attractive army to collect.
It is true that the Third Reich was responsible for atrocities and concentration camps but so too was the Soviet Union. Shooting of POWS happened on both sides although, generally both Germans and the Western Allies treated prisoners according to the rules of the Geneva Convention. (This was not the case for Russian and other POWs that came into German hands or the reverse) At the end of the war Germans had their POW status removed (not just in Russian hands) and no longer had the protection of the Geneva Convention. They could be and were kept in open air camps, with unsatisfactory sanitation and food supplies. Some were forced to clear mines. Many thousands died.
Millions of German women were pack raped by Soviet soldiers. The Russians also have the Holodomor under their belt (before WW2) the fact they were allied to the Germans at the start of the war, jointly invaded Poland with Germany and executed many captured Polish officers. People don’t usually balk at models with hammer and sickles.
The Mongols slaughtered the complete population of cities and made mountains of skulls from them. American Indians tortured their captives. The Turks slaughtered the Armenians etc.
None of this stops me collecting WW2 Germans, Soviet troops, Turks, Mongols, American Indians and so on.
As far as kids are concerned they are into fantasy and science fiction rather than history is that it excites them and ties in with their cartoons and films. However, they are as likely to be excited by WW2 tanks and army men. The thing is that Games Workshop ties it all together in nice packages with rule books, codexes, paints and so on.
I think you missed the point entirely with the blow back on MWG, they constantly referred to the German faction as NAZIs, not once did they talk about them as Germans. They also failed to point out the war crimes of all the other nations involved in WWII. Just because the victors weren’t put on trial for their crimes doesn’t make them angels.
I myself have pulled back my subscription to their channel, I can’t be bothered with the ignorant,
I watched a few response videos as I didn’t get any pointing out those points so thanks for bringing them up. I did wonder why they continually used the word Nazi instead of German but as they didn’t say we can’t really know the motivation there. It could be down to a lack of understanding, but I doubt that, also being from the UK our history education is pretty extensive when it comes to WW2. I thought it might be to distance the Nazis from the German people, and certainly modern Germans, who may be very uncomfortable when plastic Germans hit the table. I think the criticism that they didn’t bring up Allied war crimes is a little unfair, they didn’t mention Soviets at all (who as far as I understand were the worst Allied power on that front), and I can only guess but think it’s likely Guy and Hatty would be uncomfortable with them too. Obviously there’s a huge debate in regards to things like Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with smaller scale crimes, but I think the point could be made that while war crimes did happen on both sides committing war crimes wasn’t the end goal of the Allied war effort, whereas the Nazis will always have the Holocaust against them, and had they not have been stopped would have continued that globally. Allied war crimes stopped (as far as I’m aware) when the war ended.
Eh, I think they’re just stuck-up. I keep playing the “bad guys” and I’m sure it won’t make me into a devil worshiping psychopath!
I very much doubt it will lol, I hope not, I like playing the bad guys too.
I happen to be a lifelong fantasy gamer, as well as a 30+ year member of the Historical Miniature Gaming Society (HMGS East).
To me, the biggest difference between the groups is that fantasy/sci-fi gamers want to create their own worlds and/or play in games where they can make up their own armies and engage in “battles that never were”. Historical wargamers actually enjoy the researching/reading about past battles, the actual forces that showed up and the layout of each particular battlefield, and seeing if they can change the historical outcome of the battle by outsmarting their opponent.
I don’t think historical wargaming is less popular because someone has to play the bad guys. I think it’s a sub-niche in the overall wargaming hobby because it requires something extra (a deeper and more exacting interest in history) that the average person isn’t interested in. Most of us just want to play a challenging & fun game with cool looking toys.
For fantasy gamers like me, I still enjoy playing historical games like SAGA, Lion Rampant, and What a Tanker!, but it’s rare that we ever look at recreating a real historical battle. We make up our own battle scenarios and force-lists and play an imaginative battle “in the period”. If anything this is smart business by the companies who developed these games — expanding the reach of historicals to gamers who might not otherwise want to play them.
In the eighties and nineties, the (late) Doctor Paddy Griffiths spawned a host of “Black Wargames” in response to the then prevalent trend to “Whitewash” WW2 and skip over the atrocities of both sides. They were very effective, in that they made players uncomfortable, and made them examine their attitudes towards military history. They were also, of course deeply uncommercial and are now mostly lost to history.. 🙂
Personally, I think the history vs fantasy split divides somewhere along the lines of “Why can’t I use my favourite Centurion Tanks at Alamein?” With fantasy, you can. You can also have those massive multi-turreted tanks and giant stompy robots, and space knights with plasma guns and, and … squee, Space Nuns!!! 😀
At the end of the day, it boils down to a bunch of people having fun without frightening the horses, or mums with prams. History takes a bit of effort, and if someone wants to spend their time putting that effort into Space Nuns with Guns (which are sooo cool, by the way) then that’s fine. I’m sure that if Games Workshop had decided that History was more profitable, then Scifi/fantasy would still be a niche product, not the mainstream product that it is.
Regards, Chris.
P.s. For modern Germany, WW2 is still to close to living memory to be the subject of a hobby game for mainstream players.
Thanks, that’s great insight!
Once upon a time, depicting Vietnam scenarios would be considered poor form but now it is common. For that, matter wargames set in recent wars in the Middle East are also not unusual. Motives of extermination were perhaps not big in those wars except, perhaps, from ISIS which wanted to wipe out those not subscribing to its religious view.