Politics and CM in Germany (hey, Moon...)

[Guest R Cunningham]

While playing the demo I noticed the swastikas on the German VL flags. I knew they were going to be there but I had fogotten. I vaguely remember some heated debate on the old CM board last year. So now I am looking at these swastikas and I remember a discussion I had with M. Hofbauer about this issue. Hofbauer is a German law student and he was very adamant in pointing out the illegality of this representation under German law. Because CM is an entertainment product, swastikas are verboten. Hofbauer talked about a case where Airfix models was taken to court because of swastika decals in their model kits. They argued ably that their kits were historical representations, but they lost because they were hobby products not historical artifacts. So where I am going with this? There are Germans here, Moon for one, that will buy this game. They are accepting risk if their games get caught in customs. There is small chance of this in the near term but if this game catches the eye of someone in the know, then for future customers this can become a legally dangerous situation. Then BTS/BF can get labeled as "distributors" of National Socialist trash. Then if they came to Germany for whatever reason they could be prosecuted. This would also be the case if the swastikas were removed but the SS troops stayed and were represented as being somehow better than the average German Landser (no positive association with SS allowed - CC2 German version did not have SS). I live in Germany, and technically I can be tagged by the same laws but my mail does not pass through the German customs as it under military control. My risk is minimal as the German authorities are not looking for people like me, but they'd go after Moon and Hofbauer in a heart beat.

So my question for Moon is, how did you get the the alpha(downloading is also potentially a problem)?

And do you feel you are accepting risk in owning/ordering the game?

Before anyone jumps on the first amendment bandwagon and all that, I am not passing judgement nor saying that I support the German law. I am just stating that this is the way things are and righteous indignation on the part of died-in-the-wool realism camp will change nothing.

[Moon]

You are right about everything you said, unfortunately. But the solution is simple - there will be a german version of the game with slightly changed graphics. In fact, such a version will be hosted shortly on the leading German wargaming website - Der Grenadier (www.derGrenadier.de)

There is nothing wrong with using SS troops, though. What is illegal is the public display of Nazi symbols. You CAN call your troops SS (says the USK which controls these things for computer games in Germany).

Obviously the internet allows anybody to access and download stuff from the US and everybody doing this is doing it at his own responsibility. But since Germany is the second biggest computer games market in the world, I am sure that BF.C will make all efforts to be legal in Germany and ship only German versions to Germany.

Of course I am only using the German version right now

BTW, the Germany issue IS a point to consider for BTS in the "casualties display" issue. Unless they find a way to make two versions of this, they MIGHT potentially be illegal in Germany.

[Guest R Cunningham]

I didn't realize there'd be a German version. I thought that BTS had decided to keep the swastikas on principle. Who'd doing the "eindeutschung?" Gamestar ran an article about how bad the translations really are in the German versions of US games especially with military technical terms.

On the bodies thing.. I don't think they would make the game illegal, but they would get it added to the index from the BPJS rather quickly once somebody reported it for testing. That is unless BTS put up one of those cheesy smoke screens like "in a parallel universe WWII was fought by humaniod aliens with green blood..."

Are you sure about the SS? I thought since they had been declared to be a criminal organization ( no disticntion foir Waffen SS )that any "veherrlichend" treatment of them was not allowed i.e. if SS units are rated better in terms of morale than Heer units then that is making a positive representation and brainless people might praise the SS which is definitely not allowed here.

[This message has been edited by R Cunningham (edited 11-02-99).]

[Moon]

Hehe... good point. It's funny this legal-illegal thing in Germany, isn't it?

I'm not sure that there is need for an "eingedeutschte" version, actually. I was thinking more along the lines of simlpy relpacing a few BMPs...

[Guest Bryan Corkill]

My girlfriends gfather had a story about a div reunion they went to that followed the divs path aross france and germany. Seems they were also going to meet w/ a german vets org and 'return' some trophies etc. So happens one of these was a huge battle flag. Seems the 'bloody bucket' vetrans got stopped at the boder to germany by as he put it 'some snot nosed kid' border guard who saw the flag and tried to confiscate it. He said it got quite comical w/ one US vet saying something along the lines of ' I killed krauts to get this flag and I'll damn sure kill any kraut who tries to take it from me.' And who said the war was over? Seems it was resolved because either the border guard co was a vet or son of a vet, and let them through. He swears the bloodybucket vets had started talking about how to assault the border post... bunch of 60 year old + men w/ there dander up. Saw the thread and thought it was an ammusing anecdote. Plus I take it that the german government ignores the fact that quite a few US units in germany have 'trophies' from the war? (those units who served in the ETO anyway)

[MOS was 71331]

I recall there was a German WWII vet tour bus in the 60s turned back at the Dutch border because it was festooned with signs saying "We're back!"

[Moon]

Heh... interesting anecdotes. Well, the thing with Germany is that it is legal to use these symbols as long as it happens in a historical context and without gloryfying them. The problem starts when we come to things like defining what this really means. Let's take major motion pictures. Is Private Ryan a historical documentation? If your name is Spielberg it seems so

Anyway, one thing everybody seems to be 100% sure about is that a game is PURE entertainment. Nothing historical about it, and hey, as a player you might actually get a chance to play the SS and WIN!!! Uh oh... glorifying aspect right there! Ban it!

Can you see that I am not happy? Probably

[Fionn]

Of course, if the swastikas are taken out I am certain that someone who doesn't agree with Germany's laws re: the swastika who has a website somewhere and supports Combat Mission will post the "offending" BMPs and give easy instructions for their download and use.

I don't know who that would be though

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Fionn Kelly

Manager of Historical Research,

The Gamers Net - Gaming for Gamers

[dumbo]

Fionn is right there is a mini industry of german conversion patches (eg: C&C and others).

By the way Moon and our other fellow german gamers I would like to express my appreciation of the crap you guys have to go through from our English & Western games in general. I had a rude shock the other day playing Age of Kings, as an Englishman I got pretty pissed being portayed as the "bad guy" in 3 of the campaigns and this is from a period of time centuries ago! I kept thinking "you know the English had perfectly decent people on thier side as well". I can only imagine how insulting the endless portrayal of all germans as "evil" in WW2 must be a constant irritation. I dont want to get too deep into this but many of my English countrymen to this day to not beleive the wiping out of entire civillian cities by the RAF was a war crime of terrible magnitude.

Sigh, anyways again thanks for you and your countrymens patience I know these wounds take a long time to heal.

Now back to gaming and this excellent game!

_dumbo

[Fred]

Please, no "eingedeutschte" version, i.e. no translation of in-game text or the manual!

I ordered an US version of CM (for good reasons) and that is what I expect to receive! I order ALL my games in the UK or in the US because of the ridiculous "political correctness" here. There never was ANY problem with mail order games I received, believe me.

So BF, for the book, I officially ordered the original US version and no whatsoever "changed" or adapted version!

Thanks for listening

Fred

[Guest R Cunningham]

Go ahead and do that Fionn. You'd be a one man army fighting for accuracy and you might get 2 people to download them. And FWIW there are German Police Officers whose job it is to surf the net looking for "bad" things. Obviously an Irish wargaming upstart would be very low on their list of targets. Offering images on a homepage wouldn't bother them, but German citizens downloading them will (this is the equivalent to importing them). From my experience, the Germans will not be lining up in droves to get swastikas for their version of the game. I think they'd rather see crosses and stars for VLs than the Stars and Stripes and the flag of nazi Germany. Make it Army against Army not ideology against ideology. I suspose you will do what you want but in the end it doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things.

Anecdote from previous experience with "bad" sites. My original ISP is the German Telekom. I was once in a discussion on the CC3 board about Otto Skorzeny. People seemed to know his exploits from 1943 onward. My question was "what did he do prior to 1943 that made him so special?" No one had an answer so I searched the net using yahoo or infoseek. I found some questionable sites (something like whitepride) that offered bios of "NS heroes." I went to look at one and got a 403 error saying that the page couldn't be viewed. I cannot say absolutely 100% that this is the case but I think the site has been identified and blocked by Telekom. A minor inconvenience but an indication of how seriously the Germans view this subject.

Something else to consider: The current german Foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, used to go to rallies with signs stating "Soldaten sind Moerder." Soldiers are murderers. To you and me this statement may be laughable and left wing BS, but in Germany this statement is accepted by many at face value. The press is always full of reports about the radicals on the right, but no one digs into the radicals on the left.

[Marcus]

Pls no "eingedeutschte" version for me too. I could live with different BMP's though.

I'm wondering, however, how the customs officers would become aware of swastikas inside the game. As far as I recall,CM won't be shipped in a box (that might show nazi symbols) but only with users manual (NS symbols?) and CD in kind of an envelope, right? Maybe, if there's no obvious NS symbol the game will slip through customs without trouble. Unless the customs officers install and play it...

[Fionn]

R Cunningham,

Well, I'm not taking any major ideological stand etc but basically I think that if decent gamers want to play the SAME version as the rest of the world plays then that's ok by me.

Of course, downloading it is illegal in their country so if they choose so then the consequences are on their heads.

It only takes 5 minutes to rig the BMPs up for download so what the hell.

As for Skorzeny. He was in an artillery battery, did some work as an FO, showed quite a bit of bravery when many of his battey were wounded, played an interesting role in the German occupation of his country (prior to the war) and got Jaundice which plagued him for many years.

Good war record but not absolutely outstanding.

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Fionn Kelly

Manager of Historical Research,

The Gamers Net - Gaming for Gamers

[Guest R Cunningham]

Marcus,

That's why I posted that this isn't a problem in the near term. The game won't get any press or previews in Germany, I wouldn't think, and it won't end up on the shelves at Media Markt. But it is entirely possible that the authorities could become aware of the game down the line and look for them coming in. Wouldn't want to be Willi Normalzocker who discovers CM in the spring when someone wants to ask about a package he got.

Half-Life and such get sold until somebody gets the BPJS to index them.

CM probably wouldn't get indexed because there aren't any bodies or blood, but indexing wouldn't mean anything since it won't be advertised or sold over the counter.

The eindeutschung is a slightly different issue since that has mostly to do with bad translations. Some games get good treatment while others come of really badly. I got the German version of Starcraft which was recently rated as the best "localisation" in Gamestar. A friend tried the US demo of Hidden and Dangerous and was intrigued. Then he bought the German version and found much to his dismay that when his commandos killed the Germans instead of bodies there were only rucksacks (and they fall to the floor very nicely). There followed many a joke about the Rucksackumwandlergewehr 44.