Wehrmacht on the Interstate

[beamjockey]

Coming home from Musecon Sunday night on Interstate 88, I was startled to find a large tractor-trailer in front of me, burdened with two sinister brown shapes.



It dawned on me that not only did I recognize those shapes-- a World War II German Army halftrack and a tank destroyer-- but that I had met them before.



Here I am, in 2008, standing in front of the Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer. It belongs to the Illinois re-enactment group known as the 2nd Panzer Division, which operates a number of German military vehicles.

Behind the Hetzer is the SdKfz (Sonderkraftfahrzeug but nobody spells it out) 251/1 halftrack. Actually this started life as a postwar model-- the Czech army continued to produce and operate this design as the OT 810-- but it has been modified to resemble its German ancestor.

I was surprised that both heavy vehicles (17 tons for the Hezer, 8 tons for the 251) are carried on a single transporter. I suppose their owner was bringing them home from some re-enactment outing.

Comments

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

It never occurred to me that seeing Military vehicles on trucks would be odd, but then The Big Red One is west on I-70 not too far from here. The only thing i've ever seen that made me nervous was during Iraq 1, a flatbed trailer with a tarp over cargo, a loose, flapping part showed what looked like shells stacked onto the pallets.

I see so many that i would likely not have looked at the insignia, unless something really jumped out at me.

[jebra.livejournal.com]

Ah! I'm pretty sure I saw these heading west on I-94 when I was heading home.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

My one encounter with tanks in the wild was driving along the A303 in Wiltshire. The roads there aren't particularly wide and are not designed for tanks going in one direction and cars going in the other. We were forced to back up quite a ways before we could get out of the way of the convoy of tanks coming at us.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Not long after the M1 Abrams was put into service, I was on US 60 on the west side of Frankfort, Kentucky. We have a major National Guard base there. Of course, Fort Knox is not all that far to the west of Frankfort, accessible from US 60. I looked out the front window of the little store I was in, and there went a deuce and a half, an M1 and another deuce and a half. And they were bookin'! (I could be wrong about the trucks; I was staring at the tank! ;-)

Don't know anything about the circumstances. Though you'd think if they were traveling between the Guard base and Fort Knox they'd have used a carrier for the over sixty mile trip.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

ITs not just the Americans there are German reenactors around the world: http://www.panzergrenadier.net/reenactment-groups-links.php

And other WWII reenactors: http://www.reenactor.net/forums/index.php?page=17

Its the SS groups that bother me.

To me the German groups should anly exist so the Allied reenactors have someone to shoot at.

There are reenactors for pretty much any time period I think.

[mike johns (from livejournal.com)]

I couldn't find a link, but there are groups in Japan that reenact the Eastern front, even covering Toyotas with cardboard shells to resemble German & Russian vehicles.

[lonotter.livejournal.com]

I'm uncomfortable broad-brushing them all as Nazi reenactors. From my contact with some of them as a vendor at one of the early Reenactor Fests, most definitely did not agree with Nazi ideologies. However, they did have reasons that they wanted to portray Wermacht/Luftwaffe staff/soldiers.

For instance, Rommel was a brilliant tactician, so some people would want to portray a member of his Afrika Korps.

As jeffreyab kinda approached below, reenacting is more fun if there's somebody to play with/against.

My family likes to build 1/35-scale armor models, and most of the ones on our shelves are WWII-era German equipment. Does that mean I'm a Nazi modeller? Does the guy that thinks German equipment of that era is fascinating, collects it, and takes it to reenactments while dressing in a uniform to fit in with his equipment is a Nazi?

I hate Nazis and Neo-Nazis, but there's a difference between Nazis and the vast majority of these reenactors - yeah, there's probably a few suffering from cranial-rectal inversion, but I'd say the same for the guys playing the Allies.

[brooksmoses]

There are perspectives from which that is very similar to the distinction between being sexist and making sexist jokes -- is what matters the person's beliefs, or the end result? The end result is certainly that things closely tied to the Nazi ideology are being celebrated.

I think that how problematic this is depends on how close one considers that tie between the equipment and the ideology of its users to be, and I think that varies widely for different people with different backgrounds.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

As a boy I made a model Spitfire, Hurricane, Mosquito, Wellington... and Messerschmitt Bf 109 and 262. So, Nazi re-enactor.

Elsewhere I just saw someone make a joke about the extras in Gone With The Wind: "If we'd had that many soldiers in real life, we'd have won!" That's where I draw the line, referring to the Third Reich as "we".

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of a somewhat similar experience I had several years ago. As I came around a bend on my way to Lexington, KY - approaching Bluegrass Field - I saw something projecting above the surrounding terrain. It was the rounded top of the tail of an old aircraft. In fact, I said aloud "That looks like the tail of a WWII bomber."

As the road rose near the airport, I saw that it was a B-29. Beyond it was a B-25. The Confederate Air Force was in town.

Were you at the RiverCon where some of the GT folk went to the Patton Museum?

Not sure how this got in the wrong place the first time. I was distracted by problems with my Bluetooth mouse.