Sentiments about wargaming in WW1/WW2

[Ingmar]

I was wondering if any one you recognizes this.
I for one have been fascinated by both the first and second World War since a young age. A fascination that especially revolves around the "new technologies" involved (and evolved) during these conflicts. It's one of the reasons these periods continue to resurface when considering new projects to paint/model even though I'm more of a 'fantasy'  type of guy at heart.  
Yet, each time I start a history based modelling project it usually strands; either because I can't get the details entirely correct (are those byzantine kataphraktoi really using the right colour for their capes) or, and thats what this post is really about; it feels somehow wrong to try and play a game using the greatest human tragedies of the 20th century.
I recently got a rekindled interest in WWI when viewing the excellent miniatures on this forum, and have been diving into background info since then (starting 'The Sleepwalkers' by Christopher Clark and ordering some Osprey books).
However, I have since viewed several contemporary war shorts that show the inhumanity of the conflict, which in turn is tempering my newfound enthusiasm. It seems pointless since these conflicts are in the past, but somehow it doesn't always feel quite right to pick up my toy soldiers. Does anyone else have these sentiments now and again?

[Cherno]

To "play war" is not to trivialize it, but rather to take advantage of the immense drama it entails and use it to give purpose to the little tanks and soldiers on the playing field. Of course, there is also the fascination of raw power and technological achievement connected to a late war AFV.

[Red Sveta]

Every now and then I feel the same sentiments about wargaming, especially WW2 and WW1 although I think this is only because it is farely recent history. However I remind myself that I am playing with toy soldiers there is no politics involved or orphans or widows created by our set toos. I also remember that the great Don Fetherstone fought in WW2 and saw no issues with wargaming. It is just a game we play with our toy soldiers that we have spent so many hours painting. I would imagine it is far more  healthy than the computer shoot em ups that people play with out comment been passed.

[tin shed gamer]

Your uneasiness with the subject does you credit.Im responsible for a fair few ww1 items,and have served.Soliders both old and current for the most are indifferent to what gamers do.Also a lot of soldiers game.where they do take offence and to a man ,Is arm chair generals gifted with hind sight,and spouting there of views on how an action should have been fought
Because ground truth isn't in any book nor can it be discovered with dice.

Now speaking from personal experience seeing modern games on current conflicts ,It does feel uncomfortable and for a split second you do relate the figures on the table to you and your oppo's,and half glare at the people round the table,and think unpleasant things you'd love to shout at them.But you stop and you realise there's no point there just toys. And it's unlikely anyone ment offence.
Just remember that if its in living memory ,Then there's still the living to consider  It shouldnt be cause to stop you it's more for those who do display games.To be mindfull of.

For the most the people on this forum are wether they know it amateur historians and aim to produce the most authentic representations and to the best of their abilities.which is respectful in its self.
Your not mocking anyone by rolling dice,and often by building everything ready for the point you do roll dice,you've more incites and reverence than those who just sit in self righteous judgement ,or the generation who switch on a console.

So there's no reason you can't enjoy the hobby ,just be thankful you do catch yourself  every now and then,it makes you a better person.

[Hupp n at em]

In a roundabout kind of way, by having the end goal in mind of putting on a game, we dig into the history and learn about the men and women who lived it.  They enter our memory and (if you have a heart) you empathize with their struggles and triumphs.  In a way, we are remembering them when most people have long forgotten, so I think that is some consolation for any discomfort. 

[Cherno]

For those interested, I wholeheartly recommend the book "Achtung Schweinehund! - A Boy's Own Story of Imaginary Combat" by Harry Pearson. It deals with the British people's strange fascination with wars in general and "The War" (WW2) in particular. All written in a humorous manner, of course, and the focus is on miniature wargaming.

This is a book about men and war. Not real conflict but war as it has filtered down to generations of boys and men through toys, comics, games and movies. Harry Pearson belongs to the great battalion of British men who grew up playing with toy soldiers - refighting World War II - and then stopped growing up. Inspired by the photos of the gallant pilot uncles that decorated the wall above his father's model-making table, by Sergeant Hurricane, Action Man and Escape from Colditz, dressed in Clarks' commando shoes and with the Airfix Army in support, he battled in the fields and on the beaches, in his head and on the sitting-room floor and across his bedroom ceiling. And thirty years later he still is. ACHTUNG SCHWEINEHUND! is a celebration of those glory days, a boy's own story of the urge to play, to conquer - and to adopt very bad German accents, shouting 'Donner und Blitzen' at every opportunity. This is a tale of obsession, glue and plastic kits. It is the story of one boy's imaginary war and where it led him.

Available from Amazon.

[jon_1066]

I can't get any enthusiasm to game WWI.  Not entirely sure why but I think there may be a number of reasons
WWI just all seemed so totally pointless. 
Many parts of it are tactically uninteresting.  "OK so my guys advance across no-man's land."  "OK I mow them down with my machine guns" - kind of like General Melchit in Blackadder sweeping up the soldiers with his dustpan. 
Tactics in WWI certainly evolved by the end but they still apply in WWII just with more, more, more!  More tanks, more different equipment, more dynamism.
At least in WWII you have very clear goodies and baddies- thus fitting into many imaginative tropes.  Nothing better than kicking some Nazi butt!
I grew up on a diet of "The War" tm so that fires my imagination far more than WWI.

[Hupp n at em]

I can't get any enthusiasm to game WWI.  Not entirely sure why but I think there may be a number of reasons
WWI just all seemed so totally pointless. 
Many parts of it are tactically uninteresting.  "OK so my guys advance across no-man's land."  "OK I mow them down with my machine guns" - kind of like General Melchit in Blackadder sweeping up the soldiers with his dustpan. 
Tactics in WWI certainly evolved by the end but they still apply in WWII just with more, more, more!  More tanks, more different equipment, more dynamism.
At least in WWII you have very clear goodies and baddies- thus fitting into many imaginative tropes.  Nothing better than kicking some Nazi butt!
I grew up on a diet of "The War" tm so that fires my imagination far more than WWI.

I can certainly understand that, other than building a trench system it's true that WW2 does have more general appeal, though I think that's why you see many of the smaller theatres of that war represented on here...Mesopotamia, Palestine, German East Africa, etc.

Bern watching "The Great War" on youtube with my roommate and just hearing the casualty numbers, it's really astounding and depressing, especially considering the pinheads that were commanding the armies.

[Red Orc]

It's not just you. If it's 'within living memory' then I feel uncomfortable. I think one of the reasons I've stalled with a projected Russian Civil War project is that it's just too recent for comfort.

Having said that, I don't game historicals further back either. But I suspect the nearest I'll get to C20th conflicts is something like VBCW - an unreal setting in which one can be as irreverent as you like.

[tin shed gamer]

There's no getting around the attrition of trench war fare.its difficult too represent it without reminding your self of the volume of waisted lives.
WW1 is a strange bird to game,early war and your gaming a near Napoleonic game,late War and your gaming near blitzkrieg.As for the trenches not many people have the space to represent sections of the front where there's hundreds of yards between the lines.So if you represent the areas with short distances then modified objectives to take and hold then its more than possible.
Because its such a strange period you get more use out of your figures than pretty much any other gaming period as there useable for all the aforementioned.
The main difference between gaming ww1andww2 is the lack of tiger tank syndrome.Because armoured vehicles(tank or car)can be devastating they're also. Vulnerable to infantry and artillery as well as each other.So no one is sat with one tank sweeping dice and figure before them.So you have to think.
Also the speed of vehicles(on the whole )tends to be low so you can use them on smaller tables without them whizzing off the other side or doing handbrake turns to keep in play.

[Michi]

thats what this post is really about; it feels somehow wrong to try and play a game using the greatest human tragedies of the 20th century. Does anyone else have these sentiments now and again?

I feel the same. However I found my personal way to approach WW2 at least (WW1 attracts my gaming interest in the African colonies only, due to their limited skirmishes instead of big battles):
I wrote a couple of scenarios that are more a sort of pulp adventures. It´s not necessary to take the subject as far as Weird WW, but it tends to a more adventure and less warfare on the gaming table. It is still serious with a historic background, although it is a fantasy setup using the stage of that period. Something like this:

I spent the last two months preparing a big WW2 game we finally played yesterday. I sent information by email, provided maps and orders to brief both sides. Three other players chose their factions and I joined as the French which nobody else wanted to play.

I wrote everything down and printed it out as a little scenario that can be used with any ruleset of choice.
We decided for Disposable Heroes Point Blank.
I call the scenario "Sturmsieg im Westen" (assault victory in the west), an original title I adopted from a book about the subject that was published by the OKW in 1940.


It is June, 24th 1940, Dunkirk harbour by the French channel coast. The French signed a truce two days ago. German occupiers have started to fortify Dunkirk to hold it until the day after their surrender in May 1945. Here is the story:







































I also provided some advertising posters to give the terrain a French look:


Two German players decided to play the Germans (one played the army and the other the navy). An American player chose the British and I was left to take the French. We Allied picked Mission 1, codename "Mermaid" first, because the American expected that one to provide the most fun.
Here comes the AAR:






















Please notice that the terrain, miniatures, vehicles and everything else were not built for this entry and are not new with three exceptions:
I scratchbuilt a gangway to access the freighter and I made some placards for the Germans to scatter. The French text translates "The bad days are over. Daddy is earning money in Germany". The Mercedes G4 is a new bought die cast that was a bit enhanced with Wehrmacht license plates and some additionally painted details.









Here are some of the original photos from the AAR which were way to many to be shown here.
(Anyway if you like to see a certain picture feel free to ask and I will load it up here)

[malto cortese]

Thank you for raising this issue. I have had these same feelings for a long while, for different reasons. For World war I, it was the gigantic scale of the tragedy and the fact that the war seems to reach unthinkable levels of absurdity. I vacation in the Dolomites every Summer and when you see how soldiers lived and fought at 3000 meters your mind begins to reel. (I served too, as a draftee, many years ago, although only in peacetime). My solution is similar to what some suggested, and I fight a different World war I, in exotic and far away places - mostly in Libya where Italy tried with very limited success to hold on to some of its colonies.

For World war II I have a different problem. I cannot identify with my country, Italy, as we started the war on the wrong side, and I have been brought up on an integral and unshakable scorn for Fascism for what it did to Italy.  My solution has been to build up a post-1943 army of Italian partisans mixed with SOE and OSS operatives for special actions behind German and Fascist lines (bits of which I have used for participating in LDPL seasons 7 and 9 - with some success!). And yet... not far from where I live in Tuscany there is a monument to the victims of a Nazi brutal reprisal, and if you stop and read the names on the memorial, they are children less than five years old, some of them just babies, and women.. who were slaughtered by the same uniformed Nazis I am supposed to represent on the wargame table, even if just to defeat them. I feel bad every single time I drive by, and I do not think "it's just a game" is the correct answer. I think that asking ourselves these questions is the right thing to do

[Ingmar]

Thank you all for your thoughts and comments. I hadn't counted on there actually being this many reactions, let alone this many well thought out and thoroughly balanced ones! They sure set things into perspective.
I for one still have my doubts..yet when I see the kind of material Michi produces, there's such an urge to try and recreate such a world in minute detail, be it fictional or not..

[monk2002uk]

...it feels somehow wrong to try and play a game using the greatest human tragedies of the 20th century.
...I have since viewed several contemporary war shorts that show the inhumanity of the conflict, which in turn is tempering my newfound enthusiasm. It seems pointless since these conflicts are in the past, but somehow it doesn't always feel quite right to pick up my toy soldiers. Does anyone else have these sentiments now and again?

My Grandfather served in WW1. He survived the war. I spoke to him many times about his experiences before he died at the age of 99. The war was tough, of that there is no doubt. Whether it was more 'inhuman' than any other war... (put another way, all wars are inhuman). I have no qualms about gaming this war though. The process of gaming large battles enables me to better understand the challenges that faced the commanders on all sides, from a military perspective. It has provided me with much deeper insights that I could not have obtained by any other means.

As to the issue of respect or otherwise for the combatants, I can only share what my interest in wargaming this period appears to have had on other families. My passion has always been to reproduce the large battles in 6mm. It provides a ready appreciation of the scale of these battles. The largest example to date has been the accurate reproduction of the First Battle of the Marne. You can read about the project here. A full scale replica of the battlefield was set up in the huge commemorative chapel in Dormans, with the more than willing support of the town major. Huge numbers of the local French inhabitants came to visit. They were totally absorbed. Many had family members who were involved in the battle or were directly affected in other ways, for example the family farm house was occupied by the Germans at the height of the battle. For the first time they were able to visualise what the battle had been like and it lent new understanding to their family memories. In the broader context of the chapel, it was a truly a symbol of respect to all those who fought and died in the battle as well as their families today.

One English visitor came to the exhibition of the wargame with his family. He was the son of a British cavalryman who was involved in the battle. He was absolutely delighted to see where and how his father had been involved. He had never understood this previously.

But I fully appreciate and respect that other people may have different views on wargaming WW1.

Robert

[monk2002uk]

Several contributors have highlighted the scale and seeming senseless nature of the losses. My Grandfather was very clear on this. He reiterated several times how tough, determined, and competent the German soldiers were. He said that it was obvious from the outset that it would take an enormous and protracted effort if the invasion of Belgium and northern France was to be defeated. From the German perspective, most if not all soldiers were driven by the fear of homeland invasion, as well as the desire not to let their section colleagues down (or their infantry colleagues in the case of the gunners, etc). Jack Sheldon illustrated the former motivation in his recent book 'The German Army in the Spring Offensives 1917'. Writing of his experiences as a machine gun company commander when the village of Roeux came under bombardment during the Battle of Arras, Reserve Leutnant Seyfarth wrote:

"When the [artillery] fire eased, we left our cover and were greeted with scenes of misery which we had hardly ever seen, even when we were on the offensive. [He went on to describe the terrible examples of civilian casualties] It all formed one great shocking image which inspired our men to do everything possible to prevent any such disaster from occurring back in the homeland."

So long as the combatants remained determined to win, the outcome was an attritional war. The only reason we have these views about attrition in WW1 is that Britain and the Dominions did not have to play the role that the Soviet Union played in what they called 'The Great Patriotic War', i.e. WW2. Otherwise we would be looking back on WW1 thinking how light the casualties had been overall by comparison to WW2!

Let us not be fooled by the idea that the generals were incompetent. Otherwise we will think that if we could have really 'smart' and gifted generals, with 'smart' weapons' then war would be easy. It is not. The First Gulf War seemed lightening fast by comparison to WW1 but it did not end with the much admired (rightly so) assault into Kuwait and hook into southern Iraq. The aftermath continues to grind on and the human toll continues to rise. All wars are inhuman.

Robert