Swastika's

[Guest]

Been reading on several Newsgroups from Various countries whereby displaying a Swastika symbol is illegal, even on old WW2 model kits. So in those countries, kits come supplied without the relevant markings because of that country's law, purely because they may offend.

I would say let's get real here, if someone chooses to build a WW2 Scale subject then all the markings are relevant no matter what people of today think.....they are part of History...it Happened and you cannot delete that overnight.

It's almost like saying you cannot have Armistice day every year because loads of people died.

Lets not forget why they died ...!!!

Regards.........Mark

[Guest]

By the same token,is it up to one country to tell another country what should and should not be illegal? That is why some of us joined the services, to defend our countries decisions..

" I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

I, for instance, would not tolerate another states leaders telling what I can and cannot do in my own country, but when I am in their country I will obey their laws just as I expect visitors to obey ours.

I personally have no problem with the display of any symbols .

[John]

Like you say it's history and we shouldn't forget it, but the world has indeed gone made with all the "PC" stuff, like the shopping center in Birmingham that has banned Santa Claus for fear of offending non-Christians, but what they going to ban after the Swastika, the American flag because it might offend Vietnamese, if you look too deep in to anything you can find something that will offend someone

[Guest]

Who said " if you forget history you are doomed to repeat it". Time does seem to heal, we dont take offence at older tyrant`s symbols ie Napoleon, Romans, Ghengis Khan etc. I feel we might be getting into deep water here. My chum Mick Lowndes decided to obliterate the swastika on the fin of his Arado seaplane (using "friskit" with matching camoflage on top) when he attended the scale seaplane event at Bodensee in Germany. Opinion amongst German fliers was that he had spoiled his chances of a higher score by doing that. Strange.

[wonwinglo]

This has been going on for a long time now but to understand things we must also know the history of the swastika,orginally an Indian peace symbol,which it still is with some doctrines representing 'The four worlds' of life,Hitler chose to use it by virtue of it representing peace,however he corrupted the peace side of the symbol by placing it at 45 degrees,the reasons for this are that some believe he practised witchcraft and used the symbol to that end,whatever you believe in that direction the fact remains that only the German Hitler version holds fear and terror into the hearts of many still to this day,the Finnish air force also used the symbol albeit placed horizontally on their aircraft ie Bristol Bulldog etc long before Hitler appeared.

When I was searching for kits and models in Germany some years ago I discovered that some kits transfers had literally been scrawled out with a ball point pen !

The general feeling is that it is not used on toys or kits or even historical colour charts,early on Airfix who had some German directors ommited the swastika from their decal sheets for this very reason but later on things changed.

The fact is we cannot re-write the history books and the swastika is an historical reminder of those terrible Hitler regime days,to my mind the choice is yours,you either place the swastika on your models or simply omit it but by doing so the model is incomplete and will not win any competitions.

My own personal feelings are that I would certainly not offend anyone by placing such a model in a 'sensitive' public place.

[Guest]

i agree a model with out the relavant markings isnt a model of the real thing

[Guest]

Basically that's what I was trying to say, Surely if you choose to build a scale mode & it features those markings, then they should be displayed on the model accordingly. Otherwise it is not a real true representation of that particular aircraft/vehicle or whatever. At the end of the day you are not glorifying anything although other people may see it otherwise.

Maybe we should have little warning notices with our models.

"Warning, this model features markings which may offend"

Anyway back to the model stuff, I hate political stuff but I have seen this topic crop up a lot recently.

Regards.......Mark.

[John]

Anyway back to the model stuff, I hate political stuff but I have seen this topic crop up a lot recently.

Me too, politics and religion shouldn't be part of this forum, but you are right in brining it up, because at the end of the day this is probably not the politicians coming up with these silly rules, it's more likely people that have these ideas and the politicians jump on the band wagon thinking they are going to score browney points.

[wonwinglo]

Just to finish on this one,there are several specialist manufacturers who produce swastika decal sheets should the insignia be missing from the kit.

This should enable those wishing to produce accurate miniatures to do so.

I was recently speaking to a cottage industry specialist ( Rug Rat resins I think ?) who said that anything with a swastika on it was more or less guaranteed success as a model subject,sort of speaks for itself ? one thing is for sure German technology at that time was very advanced and the designs of Kurt Tank,Alexander Lippisch and Willy Messerschmitt make ideal evocative model subjects that are 'part of aviation history' that history like the atom bomb needs to be recorded and remembered as gross mistakes of mankinds shortcomings.

[Guest]

Strange that the hammer and sickle didnt evoke such passion. OK in WW11 not so much post WW11. Agree with Barry and the others, no politics, no religion, nothing but modelling on the Forum.

[Guest]

I have seen models where the swastika has been replaced with a cross. It is recognisable but not the original. The world has gone PC mad, that is for sure. A friend who is a Church of Scotland minister is not allowed to conduct services at the local Protestant school as it may offend but Muslims and Eastern religions are allowed to put their message across. We even had the case recently of soldiers who did not want to go to war, sued the MoD for trying to make them and WON compensation !!!

Our hobby is one of respect, respect for those who built the originals. How can we build scale replicas if we cannot put the correct logos on? Does that count against us in competition??

We do not necessarily agree with the sentiments of those who made war, we simply like to make models of the nice machines that did.

Noobee Captain (getting off his high horse)

Make Models, not war!

oster_wa

[Guest]

Bear in mind that if these are commercial models this is done so that they can sell them in Germany where it is illegal (and has been since 1945) to display the swastika. Spare a thought too, for those german modellers, who are caught between a rock and a hard place, in that they have to choose between an accurate finish or the risk of ending up in court. It is by no means a recent phenomena and is a problem thay have had since long before the tern PC was coined. It is a problem that a lot of younger modellers are unaware of.