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To: Rockingham

My impression about the German reenactor groups (back when I followed reenacting) was that they realized they were under intense scrutiny, took what they were doing as living historians very seriously, tended to focus more on equipment and tactics than the period politics, and kept the unhinged and problem cases out of their groups.

The most problematic reenactor group I ever witnessed was a Free Polish group.


10 posted on 06/18/2023 10:04:07 AM PDT by M1903A1 ("We shed all that is good and virtuous for that which is shoddy and sleazy...and call it progress" )
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To: M1903A1
I can well imagine the Free Poles as problematic reenactors because, while remarkably brave in WW II, the Free Poles did not always bother to take prisoners of surrendering Germans or treat those they did take prisoner in accord with the Geneva Convention.

Sadly, the Allies forfeited much of their moral standing with the Free Poles when the British failed to provide pensions or medical care for them after the war. They were left to hardship as individuals in exile in the West, with the Polish nation itself abandoned by the West to domination by Soviet Russia.

Of course, whether as ill-treated soldiers, their later day reenactors, or as a nation in captivity, Poles have a tendency to be troublesome. A fairly good case can be made that the USSR and Soviet communism dissolved because Poland and the Poles proved to be indigestible, ready for the bitter glory of guerrilla warfare if they could bring down Soviet Russia in the process. Not even the Kremlin was willing to accept such a risk.

17 posted on 06/18/2023 2:32:50 PM PDT by Rockingham
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