Is there a reason my reply was removed?
I had written a pretty lengthy response to some questions posed by users on this thread - would be nice to know why my response was deleted…
Has nothing to do with wanting to play bad guys… Prussian military traditions having nothing to do with Nazism… But, I did offer an explanation to those who prefer SS over Wehrmacht… aside from a mis-guided view that the SS were an ‘‘elite’’ force, which they were not - their unique camouflage patterns (Dot44 and Oakleaf) tend to attract some who prefer the look over that of the Wehrmacht’s splinter camo or just fieldgray uniforms.
If you have any further questions you can e-mail me or PM me on this forum. We also have a Facebook group ww2 Onatrio which you can find all groups in Eastern Canada.
Thank you
I don’t think so, old friend, 
I really don’t know what the fascination is, aside from getting out of the house for a few days to role play. I guess it’s like internet role playing games for older guys. And it covers all Battles, and Wars it seems, Here in the States, Revolutionary, and Civil War re-enactor groups are commonplace (and probably the most popular) , as are WW I, and WW II. Think there are some for the Boer, and Zulu Wars too. I would say that having all sides of a conflict covered by re-enactor groups would be expected.
Sometimes the movies and history books aren’t enough. There’s nothing quite like experiencing a cold trench for 3 days at -20 degrees, eating hard rations and trying to reload a bolt action mauser with frozen fingers to get a tiny glimpse of what others before us may have experienced.
Hello Stefan! Actualy i have nothing against the role-playing. I just puzzled why so many westerners chose the nazis side in ww2 games
I have to distress you , the units you have listed above like panzed division or luftwaffe ground forces - all of them had a direct relation to nazism and its military. And for a peoples from countryes , beeing ocuped by nazists in ww2 like Poland or Russia and whose relatives suffered the real nazis politic ( ethnic cleansings , mass execution and ets) the prussian military tradition still have a big deal to Wermacht, which alongside the SS , took active part in war crimes on the eastern front. So for me or Kovalski it’s look wierd why peoples from Canada choose the german military re-enactment, while there a tonns of other military units , manies of whome fought very well in ww2, including the canadians.
But, I did offer an explanation to those who prefer SS over Wehrmacht… aside from a mis-guided view that the SS were an ‘‘elite’’ force, which they were not - their unique camouflage patterns (Dot44 and Oakleaf) tend to attract some who prefer the look over that of the Wehrmacht’s splinter camo or just fieldgray uniforms.
You know what is the another call of the peoples who wear the uniform for pleasure- its fetishism;) Nothing personal, just Sigmund Freud.
If you have any further questions you can e-mail me or PM me on this forum. We also have a Facebook group ww2 Onatrio which you can find all groups in Eastern Canada.
Thank you
Thank you as well. Maybe once i will visit a Canada
Why re-enacting as German and not Canadian - in part because there are already allied re-enactment units. If everyone did Canadian or FSSF re-enactment, there would be nobody to fight against 
I am not an expert on military re-enacting by any means. I don’t really get it myself. How do their wives stand it ? As regards WW2 re-enactors, the Wehrmacht in general, and the Waffen-SS in particular, does appear to be disproportionately represent by a country mile. Perhaps part of the reason is a Nazi orientation on the part of some of the participants; more important I think is the false glamour and evil allure of the SS. Not sure if any assiduous psychologist has done research on this.
Of course, re-enactment is not confined to WW2. Apart from a prosperous re-enactment industry in the US regarding the Civil War, there are lots of other re-enactment opportunities being exploited. Britain, for example, has many extremely well-equipped Roman re-enactment groups, and the Sealed Knot (one of Britain’s most prestigious re-enactment outfits) refights battles of the English Civil War. Even here in the Emerald Isle (where military re-enactment is not a big thing) a number of groups devoted to re-enacting the 1916 Dublin Rebellion and the Irish War of Independence have been flushed out by the recent official celebration of the centenary former uprising. It will be interesting to see how things go when we get around to commemorating the dreadful Irish Civil War centenary in just a few years’ time. Yours from the Stonebreaker’s Yard, JR.
Then we have the Cold War Re-enactors.
Thanks again tankgeezer,
I’ll search on FaceBook. I really appreciate the help!
Many thanks,
AspiringSoldaten
But you meet there not to fight and kill each other, right?;)Should be the other reason…
I don’t know whether the nazis attraction phenomenon has been researched but i know for sure the manies gays love to use the nazis symbolic. No , i don’t want to say all the nazis researches are gays , but for those who find the ss-style romantic and glamoure- there is definitelly the reason to think about;)
Well, if one is going to re-enact a battle from a particular War, one must have an enemy to engage in Mock combat. Other than that, I am pretty sure that the only thing getting “killed” are bottles of Cheer.
Oh no. Carlin was pretty leftist and was making fun of the notion of spending a lot of time reenacting battles which has always been traditionally big here. There are Afro-American reenactors as well as there were “colored units” mainly on the Union side, but the Confederate one as well as the South became more desperate…
The Brownshirts were the real gay Nazis, almost openly gay in some respects. They of course lost out to the SS in the power-struggles (probably having little to do with Ernst Rohm’s homosexuality - as it’s clear that Hitler almost certainly knew of it). Himmler was wholly ineffectual as any sort of military leader, but he was rather skilled and ruthless as a political opportunist building his power-base…
I think singling homoerotism with the Nazi SS uniforms is a bit of a stretch. There also seems to be almost a science fiction aspect as well as an “underdog” phenomena as seeing the SS as high tech (which wasn’t always the case) and ultra skilled warriors fighting against impossible odds by internet fanbois. Of course, much of it is bullshat as the SS still used pack animals and were dependent on rail for their logistics as compared to the Allies that were almost wholly motorized.
There is also the bitter reminiscences of the German regular Army (Heer) soldiers and officers that saw the Waffen-SS as overrated idiots and even thinly veiled cowards. Antony Beevor (your favorite author ) writes in Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge that the SS often tended to conduct “tactical withdrawals” without notifying their Army “comrades” often leaving them holding the bag and even causing premature collapses in the face of U.S. counterattacks. The SS did often receive the newest and the prettiest equipment, but they were also self-important prriick’s that were “too crucial to the war effort” to stand and fight, and often just wantonly retreated. Heer senior officers were also disdainful of the SS senior officers as hacks and military-idiots that were more often than not incompetent and whom were often unjustifiably, arrogantly disdainful of Heer and Luftwaffe ground forces…
… a brilliant worlds!!! Really Beevor could write this? Doesn’t look like his style. But, he is rather fascinating novelist then historian…
Yeah , his “military genious” show it full size in “operation Nortwind”. When after effective conter-offensive , as it has been reported to the Hitler, SS and heer lost twice more soldiers then the “defeated” allies:)
There also seems to be almost a science fiction aspect as well as an “underdog” phenomena as seeing the SS as high tech (which wasn’t always the case) and ultra skilled warriors fighting against impossible odds…
The irony of fate was that when the SS really have faced the “impossible odds” in 1944-45 , their military incompetence and cowardice bacome absolutly clear for all the wermacht;)
But what is sence in mock combat? I can understand the meeting when the people enjoing by the test of the firearms or watching the german weaponry like stg44, Tiger or bf-109.Germans has made a lot of excellent weapon which get a real pleasure to hold in arms, to test, or merely watch it in action.We all like the technical things, aren’t we? But what make the adult man to spend their rare free time by dressing the …uniform and do some strange actions which is called the mock battle? The mystery for me;)
I think I posted this somewhere on the forum many years ago, but my father knew an Australian Army officer who was a POW of the Germans. I’m getting rusty on the details, but essentially the Australian POW was in a train on a siding when a trainload of Waffen SS ended up stopped in a siding (or the main line) while a trainload of Heer infantry ended up stopped on the main line (or in a siding). Verbal abuse between the SS and Heer escalated until the Heer detrained and began setting up firebases with MGs and generally deploying for battle with the SS. Officers on both sides managed to control the situation, but the POW was left with the strong impression that the Heer didn’t have any love for the SS. My recollection is that the SS were going west and the Heer were going east, which suggests that the Heer weren’t happy about having to go into places where the SS had been engaged in various activities which would have resulted in the Heer being very badly treated if they were captured by the Soviets.
Well to each their own I guess, some of the people take the whole thing very seriously in the way of wearing exacting copies of uniforms, and other bits of kit where at all possible, then play out the drama of a battle for a weekend here, and there. I have not viewed this myself, but know several who have, as I supplied them with sundry pieces of the items they used. “Mock Combat” is just the term for re-enacting, just as “Sham Battle” was used in ages past to describe the same sort of activity. It all means just fake fighting. It mystifies me as well Chevan, It’s like re-enacting going to work after one has retired after 30 years of working every day.