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WW2 Models

Discussion in 'Information Requests' started by Sloniksp, Aug 1, 2007.

  1. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    This is a question for all forum members as it was asked of me by my father.

    My father has always been a long term collector and dealer of model cars and action figures. He has an enormous collection of WW2 model ( toy ) memorabilia of Allied and German historical figures and vehicles ( tanks, jeeps etc. ) However out of all German and Allied WW2 political figures made, Hitler, Himmler, Guderian, Manstein, Rommel, Churchill, Patton, Montgomery and all others, other then a handful of regular Soviet troops with small arms and a T-34 tank, there is nothing else.... No Soviet political or military leaders from the same time period. Now I understand that yes, there is a market for these and none for Soviets. But my father is curious as to why this may be?

    Why is there Hitler and Manstein but no Stalin or Zhukov? Please try to understand me, Stalin was as brutal as Hitler was and I personally have no sympathy towards either one, never the less Stalin was the one who helped us defeat Hitler. Not Stalin but Hitler killed 400k Americans, so why is he so popular?

    I also understand that this question may seem a little elementery however the answer might be a little more complex. It seems that the U.S. market has grown an enormous interest in its former enemy but not in its former ally, why might this be?
     
  2. Owen

    Owen O

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    Quote:It seems that the U.S. market has grown an enormous interest in its former enemy but not in its former ally, why might this be?


    Maybe because Germany was the USA's enemy from 1941 to 1945.
    Soviet Russia was the "enemy" for a whole lot longer.
     
  3. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    Slonik, Adolf had his Goebbels. Who did Stalin have? I think that says it all.
     
  4. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Za,

    now stop blaming Molotov here!

    ;)
     
  5. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    Well, Molotov should be equated to "Bubbly Salesman" Ribbentrop, The best comparison that can be made to Goebbels might be Ilya Ehrenburg? Actually there was no propaganda supremo, and the ones that there were certainly couldn't reach the heights of the Grand Master Dr. Joseph Goebbels whose work is still so effective even after all these years!

    The only truly competent guy in the Reich, sez I.
     
  6. Amrit

    Amrit Member

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    There seems to different conversations going on here:

    1) the presentation of political and military leaders as toys and memorabilia
    2) the presentation of individuals through use of propaganda, and the ability of their respective propaganda machinery.

    To the first point I would agree with WW that in the west Stalin became the enemy, and Stalinism stayed the enemy for a lot longer. The post war anti-communist hysteria meant that the market for such items was there, and anybody who wished to produce and/or own such products was seen as highly suspect (especially in the US). Just as the hysteria was lessening, along came Khrushchev, who put another nail in Stalin's public image :)

    As to the second point, I would disagree with those who state that propagandist presentation of Stalin was not equal to that of Hitler. Whereas, Goebbels was the individual who personified propaganda in Nazi Germany, Stalin had the entire state for the same purpose. His image and writings were disseminated everywhere, and Stalin's name was just as pervasive as Hitler's.
     
  7. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    But 2) sells 1).

    That's not enough, you'll agree that the Nazi propaganda machine was way more effective, competent and appealing. How many German reenactors can you find, and how many Red Army? How many Neo-Nazis and how many Neo-Commies do you find in the streets every day? How many Hell's Angels with Iron Crosses and how many with Sickle and Hammer?

    ;)
     
  8. Amrit

    Amrit Member

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    "Effective?" How does one measure effectiveness? There's a difference between the intended recipients and the retrospective analysis of the medium and message. We maythink that the German propaganda was more slick (for want of a better word) but the respresentation of Stalin in 1930s and 1940s USSR was just as effective. The methods may have been cruder but then again their intended recipients' expectations could be said to be simpler. But the message got across nonetheless.
    "Competent?" See above - but I'm uneasy about how we measure competance. We could measure it by the numbers who laid down their lives because of the propaganda that they had ingested.
    "Appealing?" I'd be worried if people still considered German propaganda appealing.

    I'm not sure re-enactors can be used as a gauge, nor those who use Nazi memorabilia as devices for social rebellion. As to the use of the Hammer and Sickle, just look at it's use as a symbol of protest (leaving aside whether the users were actually communists) during the 1960s and 1970s. And it's still used outside Europe as a symbol of protest (widespread across South America for example).
     
  9. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    Then you do have reason to be worried, you don't have to dig too deep, go here for starters Neo-Nazism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Why not? Go to any large event and compare numbers.

    But in the 60s and 70s the Communist propaganda machine was still working full blast with a couple dozens of regimes pushing it, whereas the official Nazi propaganda source had already died in 1945.

    Of course there are still some dying embers but they are fuelled by social causes, where old banners still do their job for the time being. Gone are the days where "El Che" t-shirts sold like hot cakes, whereas you go to ebay and see how many fake and repro Iron Crosses you find.
     
  10. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    Yes but Hitler was responsible for over 375k U.S.deaths in less then 9 months... How many U.S. deaths can be attributed to Stalin or Soviet Generals?

    Might this be a case of paranoia on the part of the U.S.?


    As for Amrit and Za, I find your debate interesting and am following it closely ;)

    I would also very much like to hear as to what our American friends in this forum might say on this matter.
     
  11. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    What paranoia? Senator Joe McCarthy? "The Russians are Coming"?(TM)? The Pentagon lying so hard that Pres. Eisenhower had to rebel against the Military-Industrial Complex?

    Cold War US at times was not nice.
     
  12. Amrit

    Amrit Member

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  13. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    Very interesting article, thank you. I wouldn't go completely along the author's conclusions in all cases, some yes, others not, "it takes all sorts".

    I have inherited my father's architectural books, and those are either from German authors or heavily influenced by them, as well as some propaganda books straight from the German embassy (Being from a neutral country at the time, we were bombarded by propagande from both sides). There is no doubt that the regime propaganda was very well served by the men (and woman, Riefenstahl) working for them, the aesthetics were very powerful.

    Curiously, the Soviet Socialist Realism school was very similar in style, if you look for istance at both the German and Soviet pavillions at the Paris World Exposition in 1938 (or 36?) if you switch the statues on top they are almost interchangeable.

    [​IMG]

    This is Stalin Square in Kharkov (Liberty Sq. nowadays).

    [​IMG]

    This is a textile institute in Moscow, it almos looks like Bauhaus (ok, the Nazis didn't like Bauhaus, they were persecuted and at least Mies van der Rohe went to the USA!)

    [​IMG]

    Here if you took off the hammer and sickles and put in swastikas instead, you could use it for Berlin's reconstruction!

    But in any case the Soviet architecture didn't catch outside the Iron Curtain. We need a better psychiatrist than me to figure this out.
     
  14. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    Yes Amrit, I enjoyed the read as well thank you.
     
  15. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    By the way, in what I said half a dozen posts above, I'm not calling "German" reenactors nazi sympathizers, that would be as shallow as calling Stefan who is a Red Army reenactor a commie!
     
  16. Amrit

    Amrit Member

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    Ahh go on Za, I dare you. Maybe we could get them to re-enact Stalingrad :)

    On the issue of similarities between cultural representations of Nazism and Communism, I've often wondered as to whether modernism affected the political or the other way around?
     
  17. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Good Ol' Boy Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    I can only comment from my perspective.

    As a child, when we played "army", we always fought the Germans. I can only guess that it was because that is who we saw US troops fighting in the movies. There were no great US/USSR battles to be portrayed by 8 year olds with BB guns in the woods back of my grandfather's house. The Cold War between the two major biligerants was fought mainly by spies in the shadows (if you understand what I mean) and that type of fighting wasn't appealing to young minds. Who wants to slink up and drop poison in your cousin's drink, when you can blast him away with a 150 caliber double machine gun firing exploding shells, then argue over who hit the other first?

    Anyway, carrying this forward, the makers of toys and the memorabilia market sell what people will buy and for those who are remembering their childhood, Germans tend to be thought of first. Also, a great deal more movies were made of the Western European war for many reasons too numerous to mention, ranging from apathy towards the USSR to the unwillingness of the USSR to be open about the war.

    And if you think about it, when the Brits usually made an appearance the US movies, it was as the odd guy who said "cheerio" alot, but really had no other function. Even in the Bridge on the River Kwai, Alec Guiness played an officer slightly off kilter.

    I have joined another forum that is mainly Brits because of this. I don't post much in the way factual information there because I know very little of the Brits past Churchill and Monty and they were our allies also.

    I don't think that helps much that Americans seemed to admire the underdog, and if you think about it, Germany certainly was the underdog in the war. There is a certain amount of admiration for the armed forces (not the government and it's policies) of Germany after the war for their accomplishments in fighting a large part of the rest of the world for nearly 6 years.

    Finally, so very little information came out of the Soviet Union after the war about the Eastern Front. I am just recently finding autobiographical books about the average Soviet soldier. The Western Allies occupied the fighting grounds in the West and South after the war, but not the East. I feel that not having access to the area and being denied any factual information made many less interested in learning about the Eastern war. I know that I was affected in this way.
     
  18. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    I find that sad, going from Übermensch to Unterhund :D
     
  19. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    I don't know, I don't think Stefan has so many colleagues in his unit ;)

    I can't answer that as I'm not so conversant on the history of Modernism, although I'd go out on a limb and dare say that politics is the summation of a number of forces, social, economical, party, etc, whereas a cultural current will have a much weaker substratum.
     
  20. Skipper

    Skipper Kommodore

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    I think the commie thing has a great deal to do with it. Same thing in Europe. As early as in 1918, the White Russian refugees in Paris (there were entire neigbourhoods and Boulogne Billancourt was then called "Billankourks" and almost a taxi driver out of two , was Russian, mostly aristocratic too). Any way, these Russians were still patriotic and sad to realise that their country, although being part of the allied camp, was denied the right ot participate at the victory parade in Paris. Things changed a little after WWII when at one point over a third of the population voted Commie, but De Gaulle and the Allies did their best to stop Stalin's influence in Western Europe. As early as 1945 Stalin stopped being the nice guy and when talking about freedom people would mention the western allies only. This was encouraged by Holywood and the media too.
     

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