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Senior Member
I've noticed that Wal-mart has some scale model WWII Aircraft for sale in the toy section. They are fully assembled and plastic 1:32. For $15 they are nice. The detail and paint schemes are impressive.
So I buy an E4 w/ JG27 N Africa Scheme.
Now I knew good and well that the swastika would be absent from the tail. I don't mind. I'm not a purist. In fact, I've a poster of a Stuka hanging in my bedroom and the swastika bugs me; often thought of covering it w/ a smiley face or something.
So, I'm showing my toy to my brother and he comments on the nose art. it's small and hard to make out. I say "yeah, it's a Tiger I think. Seen it a million times in the game". And I went to Google images to get a better look.
Well, as some of you already know, I was in for a shock.
I'm reluctant to post the pic. It's included in the game. But ironically I think it would break the terms of the forum.
I'll describe it. It's a black silhouette of Africa. In the foreground is a jaguar menacing a black "native" who has a huge red donut lips and eyes wide in a expression of fear. You don't have to be Freud to get the symbolism.
It's not news that Nazis were racist. And disneyesque depictions of racist attitudes certainly weren't limited to Germans. I was still surprised at this.
Isn't it funny that the Swastika is omitted from a toy with this historical accuracy left in? Wouldn't Wal-mart just brick if they knew? (I hope nobody tells them, I'd like to get the F model 109 they had)
I'm going to paint a Swastika on the tail. No since in holding back now.
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Senior Member
I've noticed that Wal-mart has some scale model WWII Aircraft for sale in the toy section. They are fully assembled and plastic 1:32. For $15 they are nice. The detail and paint schemes are impressive.
So I buy an E4 w/ JG27 N Africa Scheme.
Now I knew good and well that the swastika would be absent from the tail. I don't mind. I'm not a purist. In fact, I've a poster of a Stuka hanging in my bedroom and the swastika bugs me; often thought of covering it w/ a smiley face or something.
So, I'm showing my toy to my brother and he comments on the nose art. it's small and hard to make out. I say "yeah, it's a Tiger I think. Seen it a million times in the game". And I went to Google images to get a better look.
Well, as some of you already know, I was in for a shock.
I'm reluctant to post the pic. It's included in the game. But ironically I think it would break the terms of the forum.
I'll describe it. It's a black silhouette of Africa. In the foreground is a jaguar menacing a black "native" who has a huge red donut lips and eyes wide in a expression of fear. You don't have to be Freud to get the symbolism.
It's not news that Nazis were racist. And disneyesque depictions of racist attitudes certainly weren't limited to Germans. I was still surprised at this.
Isn't it funny that the Swastika is omitted from a toy with this historical accuracy left in? Wouldn't Wal-mart just brick if they knew? (I hope nobody tells them, I'd like to get the F model 109 they had)
I'm going to paint a Swastika on the tail. No since in holding back now.
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Senior Member
This is sort of related.
I love the stylised picture of a littel boy peeing on the Japanese rising sun on the tail of a P40. I have a fantastic large illustration of this aircraft in one book. Here (below) it has been simplified so much that you can't see what it is.
I have seen very similar illustrations on lorry/truck stickers (I saw one recently on a Volvo truck where the figure is peeing on a rival truck companies logo). I wonder if the inspiration has come from that aircraft art.
BTW I've seen the emblem you are talking about lots of times, and wondered what it was. I have never seen it in detail.
The sanitised version:
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Senior Member
Are you sure there's racism behind the nose art?
I have no idea on the history of it but I wouldn't assume it's racist. Does it look something like this pic below?
At first glance you might assume this is racist. But that's as far from the reality as possible. That pic is the Coat of Arms of Coburg, Germany.
Saint Maurice (also Moritz, Morris, or Mauritius) - was the leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion in the 3rd century, and one of the favorite and most widely venerated saints of that group. He was the patron saint of several professions, locales, and kingdoms.
According to the hagiographical material the legion, entirely composed of Christians, had been called from Thebes in Egypt to Gaul to assist Maximian to defeat a revolt by the Bagandæ. However, when Maximian ordered them to harass some local Christians, they refused and Maximian ordered the unit punished. Every tenth soldier was killed, a military punishment known as decimation. More orders followed, they still refused, due in part to encouragement from Maurice, and a second decimation was ordered. In response to their refusal to use violence against fellow Christians, Maximian ordered all the remaining members of the 6,600 unit executed. The place in Switzerland where this occurred, known as Agaunum, is now Saint Maurice-en-Valais, site of the Abbey of Saint Maurice-en-Valais.
So reads the earliest account of their martyrdom, according to the public letter Eucherius, bishop of Lyon (c. 434–450), addressed to his fellow bishop Salvius. Alternate versions have the legion refusing Maximian's orders only after discovering a town they had just destroyed had been inhabited by innocent Christians, or that the emperor had them executed when they refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods.
So, he is actually a hero. Although I can't remember the nose art, by what you have described, the nose art portrays the African as a hero.
Fritz
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Senior Member
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Senior Member
I see nothing racist about it. It looks like the same character as Coburg's Wappen. Remember, many Christians were fed to the lions. That nose art might represent martyrdom or courage.
Maybe Bewolf or one of the others knows the meaning behind it. But racist? No way.
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Senior Member
The swastika is absent simply b/c it is illegal in Germany, not for any political correctness. At least, that's what I believe. I believe the gore was also never fully developed for a similar reason (sales that is).
--Outlaw.
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Banned
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by georgeo76:
So, I'm showing my toy to my brother and he comments on the nose art. it's small and hard to make out. I say "yeah, it's a Tiger I think. Seen it a million times in the game". And I went to Google images to get a better look.
Well, as some of you already know, I was in for a shock. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Yeah, the resemblance to the blackface minstrel stereotype is unmistakable. What's even stranger is that you can get hats, mugs, beer steins and t-shirts with the same emblem.
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Senior Member
Nothing "racist" about it. In fact the emblem was drawn a long time before german forces set their foot on african soil, well before Hitler even thought about sending them there.
One of the first commanders of I./JG 27 simply had personal ties to the former german colonies in Africa and had a great interest in "colonial questions". Some pilots even painted the names of the former colonies on their aircraft during the BoF.
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Senior Member
OMG, history is history. Anyway, if you drew a white guy or an asian guy next to a huge lion I bet they'd be scared too.