I need a few good Germans!!!

[Howard Whitehouse]

 

Okay, enough with the bad jokes. I've come here for help from actual native German-speakers.

I'm writing up several squads of imaginary Wehrmacht soldiers for demos of my 'Combat!' one hour WWII skirmish game at Historicon. While it's very easy for me to make up British, Canadian and American characters, I'm a bit unsure on the Germans. For one thing, a lot of them are named after German international footballers through the last four decades, with the names swapped around (!) For another, I'm not sure to what degree the principle of putting men from one city or area into the same unit was in effect by 1944.

I've also been given different advice on the specific rank titles used by the Heer equivalents of sergeant, corporal and private.

So, here are a few examples of what I have so far. I'm trying to avoid too many of the "secret anti-Nazi" or "fanatical Hitler Youth" in favour of ordinary men doing what they have to.

Grenadier Friedrich  Schultz   
Practical joker. Wounded in the Crimea, now recovered

Grenadier Jurgen Haller   
Surly steelworker from the Ruhr. Secretly writes poetry. Machine gunner.

Gefreiter Rudy Weber   
Cheerful, efficient ex-gasfitter from Frankfurt am Main. Obsessed with football.

Grenadier Lothar Grunwald    
Feisty little man from Hanover. Beautiful tenor voice, the pride of the regimental choir.

I'd love some corrections and suggestions - in fact, make a few characters up!

[Westfalia Chris]

"Jurgen" would need an Umlaut, "Jürgen", while the diminutive form of Rudolf or Rudolph would be "Rudi", not "Rudy".

Apart from that, kein Problem.

[Howard Whitehouse]

Cool! I wonder if I have access to umlauts on an English alnguage keyboard ---

Would yo like to invent a few characters in this same style yourself?

[archangel1]

Cool! I wonder if I have access to umlauts on an English alnguage keyboard ---

Try this site.  It gives you the key combos for dozens of accent marks, punctuation marks and other special characters for PC and Mac.  Very neat!

http://www.typeart.com/special_characters.asp

[Poliorketes]

A steelworker in the 40ies writing poetry would have been a rare thing - workers went only to the Volksschule, most of them no longer than 8 years.

Here are some more, I tried to carry on with the football players:

Hans Schnellinger
Called Hans Eins (1). A Knecht (farm hand) from the Münsterland. Large, thin but strong. Stoic and slow to anger. Likes to carve.

Hans Burdenski
Called Hans Zwei (2). A roofer from Breslau. A hothead with little humor and a tendency for brawling.

Franz Liebrich
Called Tante Käthe (aunt Cathy - this is the nickname of Rudi Völler) as he is the squads oldest member with a habit of looking after the youngest recruits. A school caretaker from Rath.

[Plynkes]

On a Windows system a lower case 'u' with an umlaut is obtained by holding down Alt and typing in 0252 on the keypad.

An upper case one is Alt+0220, also on the keypad.

Just to test that I'm right: üüüüÜÜÜÜ. Yep, that's got it.

These and the codes for other marvellous things not appearing on your keyboard can be obtained by clicking on 'Character Map' in the 'System Tools' section of 'Accessories'. Well they do on old versions of Windows. Can't speak for Vista as I am in too much of a backwater to have come across that new-fangled thing.

An alternative approach, common among primitive societies without access to umlaut technology is to add an 'e' directly after the vowel that requires umlautage, such as: Koenig for König, Muenchen for München, and Motoerhead for Motörhead. 

[Howard Whitehouse]

Poliorketes, I love your suggestions! Great stuff! Want more! (he says, greedily) 

(The steelworker/machine gunner's poetry isn't really very good, but it's not as if he shares it with his squadmates. If they read it, he'd have to punch them out.)

Plynikes - the alt 0252 isn't working for me, but the odd little place hidden in system tools does the job. Thanks. That's a place I've never visited before! 

[Mainly28s]

Grenadier Johann Voss
Just finished school, still eager and wants to prove that he's worthy of being a soldier.

Grenadier Joachim Vogel
An older gent, care-taker of the antique weapons in a small Rhenish village's Schloss.

Grenadier Volker Bäumer
Ex-student, started studying medicine but got called up due to failing the last set of exams. Unofficial medic. Still a keen student and carries medical books everywhere.

[NurgleHH]

Grunwald ist also Grünwald with the Ü. But you can also use ue fro Ü, oe for Ö and ae for Ä....

[Howard Whitehouse]

I am now cunningly going through the rosters of Bundesliga teams looking for good names (and trying to avoid those belonging to Brazilians, Nigerians etc).

I realize that this is a process that may produce errors - for instance, if I took the England team roster for Anglo-sounding names, I can find a lot of mundane British names to swap around; I can believe in Private Joe Lampard and Steven Owen. Then I come to Rio Ferdinand, a man whose name would have been bizarrely exotic in 1944. Assuming that German names have become more 'international' in the past sixty-plus years, can I ask if a kindly German person would look over them? 

[Poliorketes]

Go to Wikipedia.de and look for Fußball-Bundesliga or Fußball-Nationalmannschaft

[meninobesta]

Motoerhead

Hërësÿ!!!!!!!   

Howard: why don't you do some research on war movies? for instance:
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0082096/
why stop here? you can search for German rock bands or something like that, and get the name of the musicians! Just don't call your corporal Nena Hagen

I'm Really not sure about other cultures, but in my country in the military or in academic groups (even at work on a big company), people tend to call each other by their last names! usually because the first name often repeats (This perk can save you half-work!)

[Plynkes]

If you're taking your names from German footballers now then you simply have to honour Bernhard Carl "Bert" Trautmann OBE (Pick something out of the bones of all those names).

Iron Cross-winning hard-as-nails Fallschirmjäger and Manchester City goalkeeper. Became a POW and stayed in Blighty to pursue his football career. Broke his neck in the FA cup final and refused medical attention until after the cup was won. Hitler could have probably done with a few more like him.


Got his OBE for "promoting Anglo-German understanding through football." Maybe one day they'll give Alex one for doing the same through "Lead Adventuring". 

[Hammers]

Motoerhead

Hërësÿ!!!!!!!   

Howard: why don't you do some research on war movies? for instance:
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0082096/
why stop here? you can search for German rock bands or something like that, and get the name of the musicians! Just don't call your corporal Nena Hagen

I'm Really not sure about other cultures, but in my country in the military or in academic groups (even at work on a big company), people tend to call each other by their last names! usually because the first name often repeats (This perk can save you half-work!)

Please sneak "Hauptman Udo Dirkschneider ^*" in there somewhere. It just got to be the most German name there is.

^* Of Accept fame