You are right when we talk about the Wehrmacht as an entity. To do that you have to look at statistics and trends rather than personal views. It's one way to depict history. Anecdotal evidence and personal histories serve to better define that, but those accounts don't override the overwhelming trends.Eeeeeeh, the Wehrmacht had resentment, but it wasn't for the warcrimes, it was for losing influence. The Wehrmacht gleefully participated in warcrimes, for the most part, and often actively instigated them. That the Wehrmacht was the nice part of Germany innocently forced into it is historical revisionism. The opposite is true, the Wehrmacht was one of the most important pillars of the regieme, and many Wehrmacht officers actively pushed for cracking down on "degenerates" (ie: anyone not a western european/not straight/not performatively pro regieme).
It has a reason the "good Wehrmacht" example was actually about protecting *French* POW - these were fellow european soldiers, not "Untermenschen". The same, just with protecting, say, Jews, would have likely not happened quite like that.
Remember, partipating in nazi atrocities wasn't mandatory. People that didn't weren't even punished. And yet en masse, the Wehrmacht did commit these atrocities on an unthinkable scale. They were largely not innocent.
They were largely worse than mustache-twirling villains, because the mustache-twirling villain knows he's evil, and enjoys it, while the Wehrmacht officer thought that what he was doing was good and right.
This. Is. Historical. Revisionism.
We saw over and over again that this didn't happen. Someone not shooting jews was just replaced with another Wehrmacht soldier laughing at the jews he slaughtered, but he wasn't shot or even particularly shunned.
That's the thing. The nazis didn't need to force Germans to do this at gunpoint. Wehrkraftzersetzung did not cover "not shooting jews", it actually just covered outright criticism of the regieme or voicing that the war was lost. It didn't need to cover more: Most Wehrmacht soldiers were perfectly happy to participate.
My grandfather was a Wehrmacht general, and some of the posts in this thread are just completely laughable in their utter ignorance of the period. There's even people using ~both sides~. Just facepalm. No wonder fascism is on the rise again if this is what people genuinely believe to be true about history. I mean, one of the scariest part of the Nazi regieme is now completely dismissed by several people here. It's ridiculous.
I wonder if in a decade, people will start crying that the atrocities themselves are clearly exaggerated, because it's ~portraying the nazis as mustache-twirling villains~ and really, ~both sides were bad~. We sure seem to be heading fast towards that level of ignorance.
I knew this would happen. I don't know why you'd WANT to play as an evil Nazi (EDIT: I mean, I do know why THEY do, but I can't fathom being like that)
Care to explain, you sound like the type that thinks Mein Kampf needs to be read in school
Oh I have a game for you ,I like the idea of playing from the perspective of someone on the bad side, who has too question if what they are doing is right.
Make me think of that "Are we the baddies" sketch.
Honestly I think the premise could work for an entire game.
You'd do yourself a favor just to dip out, because you're making yourself sound even more foolish now.
Eeeeeeh, the Wehrmacht had resentment, but it wasn't for the warcrimes, it was for losing influence. The Wehrmacht gleefully participated in warcrimes, for the most part, and often actively instigated them. That the Wehrmacht was the nice part of Germany innocently forced into it is historical revisionism. The opposite is true, the Wehrmacht was one of the most important pillars of the regieme, and many Wehrmacht officers actively pushed for cracking down on "degenerates" (ie: anyone not a western european/not straight/not performatively pro regieme).
It has a reason the "good Wehrmacht" example was actually about protecting *French* POW - these were fellow european soldiers, not "Untermenschen". The same, just with protecting, say, Jews, would have likely not happened quite like that.
Remember, partipating in nazi atrocities wasn't mandatory. People that didn't weren't even punished. And yet en masse, the Wehrmacht did commit these atrocities on an unthinkable scale. They were largely not innocent.
They were largely worse than mustache-twirling villains, because the mustache-twirling villain knows he's evil, and enjoys it, while the Wehrmacht officer thought that what he was doing was good and right.
This. Is. Historical. Revisionism.
We saw over and over again that this didn't happen. Someone not shooting jews was just replaced with another Wehrmacht soldier laughing at the jews he slaughtered, but he wasn't shot or even particularly shunned.
That's the thing. The nazis didn't need to force Germans to do this at gunpoint. Wehrkraftzersetzung did not cover "not shooting jews", it actually just covered outright criticism of the regieme or voicing that the war was lost. It didn't need to cover more: Most Wehrmacht soldiers were perfectly happy to participate.
My grandfather was a Wehrmacht general, and some of the posts in this thread are just completely laughable in their utter ignorance of the period. There's even people using ~both sides~. Just facepalm. No wonder fascism is on the rise again if this is what people genuinely believe to be true about history. I mean, one of the scariest part of the Nazi regieme is now completely dismissed by several people here. It's ridiculous.
I wonder if in a decade, people will start crying that the atrocities themselves are clearly exaggerated, because it's ~portraying the nazis as mustache-twirling villains~ and really, ~both sides were bad~. We sure seem to be heading fast towards that level of ignorance.
What the fuck is this.And lol at people who say that it was Germans only who were doing the whole genocide... Polish were pretty in with getting rid of the Jews too, and in most of the European countries race hygienic thinking was pretty hot. US continued that well after that, and some could argue that they are continueing it to this day (when you look what they are doing to minorities etc.)
Eeeeeeh, the Wehrmacht had resentment, but it wasn't for the warcrimes, it was for losing influence. The Wehrmacht gleefully participated in warcrimes, for the most part, and often actively instigated them. That the Wehrmacht was the nice part of Germany innocently forced into it is historical revisionism. The opposite is true, the Wehrmacht was one of the most important pillars of the regieme, and many Wehrmacht officers actively pushed for cracking down on "degenerates" (ie: anyone not a western european/not straight/not performatively pro regieme).
It has a reason the "good Wehrmacht" example was actually about protecting *French* POW - these were fellow european soldiers, not "Untermenschen". The same, just with protecting, say, Jews, would have likely not happened quite like that.
Remember, partipating in nazi atrocities wasn't mandatory. People that didn't weren't even punished. And yet en masse, the Wehrmacht did commit these atrocities on an unthinkable scale. They were largely not innocent.
They were largely worse than mustache-twirling villains, because the mustache-twirling villain knows he's evil, and enjoys it, while the Wehrmacht officer thought that what he was doing was good and right.
This. Is. Historical. Revisionism.
We saw over and over again that this didn't happen. Someone not shooting jews was just replaced with another Wehrmacht soldier laughing at the jews he slaughtered, but he wasn't shot or even particularly shunned.
That's the thing. The nazis didn't need to force Germans to do this at gunpoint. Wehrkraftzersetzung did not cover "not shooting jews", it actually just covered outright criticism of the regieme or voicing that the war was lost. It didn't need to cover more: Most Wehrmacht soldiers were perfectly happy to participate.
My grandfather was a Wehrmacht general, and some of the posts in this thread are just completely laughable in their utter ignorance of the period. There's even people using ~both sides~. Just facepalm. No wonder fascism is on the rise again if this is what people genuinely believe to be true about history. I mean, one of the scariest part of the Nazi regieme is now completely dismissed by several people here. It's ridiculous.
I wonder if in a decade, people will start crying that the atrocities themselves are clearly exaggerated, because it's ~portraying the nazis as mustache-twirling villains~ and really, ~both sides were bad~. We sure seem to be heading fast towards that level of ignorance.
I'm saying that in today's political climate I could understand if DICE had some hesitations about putting the Red Army in a position to look like heroes in the Battle of Berlin given what they did to that city after the Battle was over.
I'm not saying that's why Russia isn't in the game yet, but if they told me that it was I would understand.
I'm still annoyed that BF1 didn't have any Central Powers campaigns, and literally just consisted of Brits, Americans, and Australians. Frankly, I'm bored of redemption stories. Also, I don't know but if its really set in Berlin, during some Fall of Berlin scenario, to have it be set against Americans against the Red Army, it....sorta feels disrespectful for the Russians. Dunno. You wanna use the fall of Berlin, imo, a big part of it was the fact that they were facing the Red Army, not the Americans, actually, many German units held as long as possible to allow German forces and civilians to retreat westward to surrender to the Western Allies.
Could you elaborate on what exactly you are talking about here? Because I don't get it. The Red Army certainly weren't angels during their invasion of Germany in '44/'45 but it doesn't even compare to what the Wehrmacht has done during their invasion of Russia and more so during their retreat (Rape, murder, burning down everything...).
People from US have no place in telling us Europeans what we should feel about WW2 or anything remotely concerning that. You have always lived in your bubble there, you have your own problems with constitutional racism and the heritage of slavery we don't have here. It really annoys me when Americans try to say that it is all the same. No the fuck it isn't we didn't keep slaves. We didn't think that other humans are animals and you can abuse them as much as you want. We don't introduce drugs to our minorities on purpose, to keep them from rising. Even our far right is like middle in your politic system, and our actual neo-nazis are emulating US nazis, not German or anyone else (they have those silly stupid Southern flags etc., tells how stupid they are, and they have picked everything from American TV shows).
Clear your own country first before you judge us others.
lol at people who say that it was Germans only who were doing the whole genocide... Polish were pretty in with getting rid of the Jews too, and in most of the European countries race hygienic thinking was pretty hot. US continued that well after that, and some could argue that they are continueing it to this day
(...)
We don't introduce drugs to our minorities on purpose, to keep them from rising.
And your point is?The Red Army were "no angels", you say?
Wikipedia says the following about the fall of Berlin:
"The majority of the assaults were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers have ranged up to 2 million.[7][8][9][10] According to historian William Hitchcock, in many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times.[11] At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports,[9] with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath.[12] Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000.[1][13] Antony Beevor describes it as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone."
(source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany )
Not to nitpick or anything, but I think it is fucking disrespectful to broadly claim that all Germans are (were) Nazis. I think it is mostly a problem with the US people, Europeans remember that there was a fuckton of civilians and ordinary people fighting for and against Germany.
It is so sad to see that peeps continue this broad generalisation to this day.
If you have a German campaign, it doesn't mean that you have to play as actual Nazis. There were many, many people in Wehrmacht etc. who were soldiers loyal to their country, not the ideology. Talking about the leaders, ordinary soldiers went where they were told to go. Of course there were lots of people who were on board with Nazi ideology too, but that's hardly damning in those times, since like half the population of Europe had sympathies with Nazis (until it became clear that Germany will lose, then they jumped the ship and loudly condemned the nazi atrocities).
Situation in Germany was never black and white regarding the Nazi ideology. Of course it is simpler to say that German=Evil, kill them all. Luckily some countries teach critical thinking in schools, and even young people understand that nothing is never as simple as that (we have our glue sniffing turdlets too, of course, but everyone demographic has those, be it a country or a group of friends, there's always someone utterly stupid).
And lol at people who say that it was Germans only who were doing the whole genocide... Polish were pretty in with getting rid of the Jews too, and in most of the European countries race hygienic thinking was pretty hot. US continued that well after that, and some could argue that they are continueing it to this day (when you look what they are doing to minorities etc.).
And some people whining about playing as Germans, grow up. I think it is great to see a story like that. We need more movies from the Axis view point, preferably as historically accurate as possible. That helps even the stupid ones (you know, those who can barely read, and need a dub for their movies since they can't be arsed to read subs) understand the reality back then.
There is a reason far right is getting foothold among the less educated, they use simple language. People opposing far right get way too poetic in their waxing, or they just punch the far right people. It is not working, it only creates more hate among the hateful. We went that road once already (the revenge mentality of the Germans after being shat from a great altitude after WW1), did it work?
We need to educate the masses. We need to show the results of concentration camps in school (if your country isn't already doing that, we were shown that stuff when I was like 15-16), we need to use easy-to-understand messaging. And movies are good at that. Not movies glorifying war (like US WW2 movies tend to be blatant pro-US military propaganda), but movies showing what it was really about. It was pain and suffering, men going crazy under the pressure, people fighting for their lives because they had no choice (The Pacific was good at this, better than Band of Brother even though BoB is the finest WW2 story about US soldiers ever done).
The new Unknown Soldier is a harrowing movie, and it tells a story from a non-Allied side (Finnish movie). I cried so much during that movie, partly because of a group of elderly people who sat behind me. They remembered it all, I heard them cry and shout throughout the movie, they lived it all again (I think that they were from Karelia and driven out from their homes when Soviets came).
That reminds me, German soldiers stationed in Finland didn't have anything against Jewish people. They even fought side to side, Jews had their synagogues and all in the front and (most of the) Germans didn't have any problems with that. Some Germans made good friends with Jewish, if I remember right there was either a SS officer or regular officer who became like best buds with one Jewish man. There is a book about Jewish in Winter and Continuation War, written by a Jewish person. Some of the Jewish did face racism, even from Finnish officers, mainly stuff like not getting a promotion to higher ranks etc. but those seem to been individual aggressors.
That above alone tells me that not all of the Germans were Nazis, even though some people even here like to say so. I try to fish the name of the book and edit it here, it was a small book in my local library.
People from US have no place in telling us Europeans what we should feel about WW2 or anything remotely concerning that. You have always lived in your bubble there, you have your own problems with constitutional racism and the heritage of slavery we don't have here. It really annoys me when Americans try to say that it is all the same. No the fuck it isn't we didn't keep slaves. We didn't think that other humans are animals and you can abuse them as much as you want. We don't introduce drugs to our minorities on purpose, to keep them from rising. Even our far right is like middle in your politic system, and our actual neo-nazis are emulating US nazis, not German or anyone else (they have those silly stupid Southern flags etc., tells how stupid they are, and they have picked everything from American TV shows).
Clear your own country first before you judge us others.
i love this kind of scenario. after COD WAW, i always wanted to see a game that had US troops emphasize with civilians during the invasion of Japan and perhaps show a different side to the conflict that isnt actually shown. It wasnt about buff freedom loving white dudes versus evil asians
What the Red Army did to the eastern European states is horrendous. BUT shouldn't be accounted in the same way as what they did when they capturerd eastern Germany. No other country's civilian populatian suffered as much under Germany as Russia, same goes for the military. It's certainly not my intend to support rape as an legimate act of warfare, but what the Red Army did in Gemany (and I single out Germany here) is in a way understandable (and I only use this because of the lack of a better word on my side) when you look at what the Wehrmacht did to russian villages, russian civilians and russian women over the span of three years.My point is that the atrocities perpetrated by the Red Army, particularly in Germany (although other "liberated" countries rarely fared much better) were comparable or even worse than what Nazis did during their Russian campaign.
What the Red Army did to the eastern European states is horrendous. BUT shouldn't be accounted in the same way as what they did when they capturerd eastern Germany. No other country's civilian populatian suffered as much under Germany as Russia, same goes for the military. It's certainly not my intend to support rape as an legimate act of warfare, but what the Red Army did in Gemany (and I single out Germany here) is in a way understandable (and I only use this because of the lack of a better word on my side) when you look at what the Wehrmacht did to russian villages, russian civilians and russian women over the span of three years.
Your point is also brought up often by german Neo-Nazis in the same way they call the Dresden bombing at the end of the war the "Bomb-Holocaust". It's victim reversal. The german civilian population brought that war on themselves by supporting it in the first place.
What the Red Army did to the eastern European states is horrendous. BUT shouldn't be accounted in the same way as what they did when they capturerd eastern Germany. No other country's civilian populatian suffered as much under Germany as Russia, same goes for the military. It's certainly not my intend to support rape as an legimate act of warfare, but what the Red Army did in Gemany (and I single out Germany here) is in a way understandable (and I only use this because of the lack of a better word on my side) when you look at what the Wehrmacht did to russian villages, russian civilians and russian women over the span of three years.
Your point is also brought up often by german Neo-Nazis in the same way they call the Dresden bombing at the end of the war the "Bomb-Holocaust". It's victim reversal. The german civilian population brought that war on themselves by supporting it in the first place.
Not all of them. And would an extension of that argument not mean saying those young British men who supported their country in WW1 and volunteered (often lying about their age to get through) to be ordered to walk in front of machine gun fire brought it on themselves......
Seems like these woman hating incels what a campaign that glories Nazism. And a prot that isn't regretful of his side. Fucking bastards.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. They supported the war with enthusiasm until it came back to them in '43 and even then they kept fighting until the very end. Meanwhile they not only knew about but helped organizing and executed the holocaust. They deserved what they got and then some. Jesus, why is this even a point that has to be adressed.Miss me with that "understandable" shit k?
The Russians raped, pillaged and murdered their way through my country as well, and we were also occupied by the Germans.
And are you really, really saying that GERMAN POPULATION BROUGHT IT ON THEMSELVES? Disgusting.
I'm surprised it took this long for this kind of discussion in a WWII game but I guess the online commenting community has opened up considerably from the last FPS go around on WWII.
There is so much nuance to the overall history of WWII and there are a multitude of perspectives here that comes into play.
Yes. It's entitely reasonable that there are sympathetic Nazis. Look up John Rabe, the Nazi stationed in China that witnessed the horrors of genocide the Japanese was doing to the Chinese.
It also goes to say that not all Nazis were aware of Hitlers own genocidal plans. I mean, it's not many, but they exist. While most of the nation was indoctrinated and swollen with blind, national pride, they all still have souls.
I saw some comments here as well about sympathy for the Japan side of the war, which, the two bombs against the civilians are absolutely a heinous crime, but at the same, America saw no other way to put a prompt end to the war.
The American view on the Japanese side is also insanely nuanced. Where they were intense with sentencing war crimes for German soldiers, they were completely lax when it came to the Japanese.
One of the most notorious medical regimes of Japan during WWII, unit 571 (don't look it up if you've never heard of it) were mostly spared due to the US taking in their medical findings for their own benefit.
But there's also the perspective of, "well, Americans put Japanese Americans into camps and then also dropped two nuclear bombs on two of their cities, killing countless civilians... we should take it easy of them."
However, to this day, Chinese and Koreans look at the Japanese with just as much general disdain as a typical American would at the Nazis during WWII. Yes, the bombs were absolutely awful but it was an extremely unfortunate circumstance of war.
This is further compounded by the fact that Japan as a nation refuses to address their dark period during WWII within their textbooks so future generations will have no idea of what transpired. They've even gone so far as to outlaw and ban documentaries that walk about it that's made within their own nation.
And then you look at Germany, which has made it a point as a nation to never forget their role in the war.
So, yea, like most forms of media covering a topic like WWII, and especially in game form, it's going to be extremely tough tackling the nuance.
Not all of whome and what?
And what has the high number of volunteers in all european countries at the start of WW1 in 1914 has to do with anything here
You want a game to show something that never happened to dispel a "myth"? Not sure about that.
What the Red Army did to the eastern European states is horrendous. BUT shouldn't be accounted in the same way as what they did when they capturerd eastern Germany. No other country's civilian populatian suffered as much under Germany as Russia, same goes for the military. It's certainly not my intend to support rape as an legimate act of warfare, but what the Red Army did in Gemany (and I single out Germany here) is in a way understandable (and I only use this because of the lack of a better word on my side) when you look at what the Wehrmacht did to russian villages, russian civilians and russian women over the span of three years.
Your point is also brought up often by german Neo-Nazis in the same way they call the Dresden bombing at the end of the war the "Bomb-Holocaust". It's victim reversal. The german civilian population brought that war on themselves by supporting it in the first place.