October 31, 2004
AFTERWARDS WE TERRIFY A DISSIDENT AND THEN HEAD FOR THE TAVERN
Germans flock back to days of the Cold War (Allan Hall, The Scotsman, October 31st, 2004)
They have seen the feel-good movies that captured the spirit of the good old days. They have eaten the food and even rebuilt a stretch of the Berlin Wall. Now the German appetite for ‘Ostalgia’, the love of all-things from the former communist east, is being satisfied with a spell in the army.Germans who lost their pride along with their country nearly 15 years ago are queuing up in large numbers to spend £190 on martial weekends where the discipline is tough, the food grotty, but the thrill "unbeatable".
The venture has been launched by two brothers, Reinhard and Christophe Heyes, who have bought several monster T-55 Soviet-made battle tanks from a scrap metal dealer in Czech Republic along with a set of armoured cars. The guns no longer work but the engines still roar like thunder, and, for stood-down personnel of the former East German "People’s Army" in particular, the thrill of what-might-have-been is what lures them to the tanks’ battleground 50 miles north of Berlin.
It sounds like a masochist’s ball: sleeping under canvas, up at 6am on cold and wet mornings for 20 minutes brisk physical training in the mud followed by an ice-cold shower, bed-making and "personal care". Woe-betide the weekend warrior who doesn’t get his olive-green Volksarmee-issue bedside closet gleaming like a crown jewel.
Afterwards, there is combat training with the weapons of a force that was once destined to be the hammerhead of a Soviet invasion through Europe. While the machine guns, mortars and radio sets attract a certain amount of nerdy interest there is no getting away from the fact that the recruits’ main goal is to drive a battle tank.
Reinhard Leitlauf, who recently joined up again for a weekend in the mud, said: "I was a major in the NVA [People’s Army] but the Bundeswehr [the current German army] doesn’t want me. This brings back old memories of old times when we were respected. The adrenaline rush when I was back on the tank was incredible.
"And I can tell you this - if the word was given, we would have been on the Rhine before the West even woke up!"
Yes sir, a country of thoroughly committed democrats who have long forgotten how to goosestep.
Posted by Peter Burnet at October 31, 2004 1:05 PMAnd once the West did wake up the nukes would be raining down on his stupid, square, Kraut head. Lord, these people are morons.
The Russians have a saying, "A German might be a good fellow, but it is better to hang him." I guess in an ideal world the Russian would then hang himself.
Posted by: Amos at October 31, 2004 2:04 PMCan we chalk this up to youthful hijinks? They think they were left out of the fun during he cold war. Now everything in Germany is socialized. Cradle to Grave custodial care. No challenges, nothing to strive for, everything is boring sameness, so they look back to a time when things were more exciting.
How different is that from people who dress up like the north and south during civil war and act out battles?
Posted by: erp at October 31, 2004 4:37 PMerp's correct. This looks like a reinactment thing. Some people in the USA and the U.K. do WWII reinactments, with uniforms and weapons, and some old vehicles. An old high school buddy of mine has an old 6-by for this stuff. I assume that the U.K. guys are toting deactivated guns, as they pretty much are not allowed to have real ones.
Makes you realize how lucky we are. I live in a major city, and I shoot service rifle matches at a club within the city limits. The whole nine yards: "Ready on the right, Ready of the Left. All ready on the firing line."
Posted by: Lou Gots at October 31, 2004 6:20 PMHey Lou, how's your offhand position? 100 yd. range or 200 yd.?
Posted by: JimBobElrod at October 31, 2004 6:31 PMerp/Lou:
They aren't playing Napoleon and Blucher. For sixty years playing Nazi games has been strictly verboten, but fifteen years after the Wall falls them good ole' boys play Marxist world domination to get rid of their weekday tensions?
Posted by: Peter B at October 31, 2004 8:26 PMJimbob: I'm kind of feeling the years in prone and sitting, but I've still got a pretty good offhand. I figured out back in my collegiate shooting days that you did your aggregate the most good by practicing offhand, so I made it my strong position. Offhand is why I prefer the M1A over the M1 or the Mousegun. I can use mag as a palmrest and take up a smallbore-style, compound back-twist position. We shoot at 100 yds at home; some clubs in the league have 200 yd. ranges.
We are truly blessed with our American freedoms. There are people in Europe and Australia who would give anyting to shoot, but who can only dream.
Posted by: Lou Gots at October 31, 2004 8:36 PMPeter B,
This is the gratitude that 1.6 trillion dollars net transfers from west Germany to east Germany buy. (Since 1990; 110 billion dollars annually on average.)
Only 20 percent of that was spent on infrastructure, the rest went to pump up pensions and salaries.
No wonder that Mr. Reinhard Leitlauf is resentful. Like every welfare queen, he feels cheated.
Posted by: Eugene S. at October 31, 2004 8:42 PMIt's hard to fault them for missing a sense of purpose.
Posted by: mike earl at October 31, 2004 10:52 PMActusally, I think this qualifies more as News of the Weird than anything else. Probably just the local version of fanboys; I've seen a lot of them, and this has a lot of the "What were they thinking?" feel to it.
Chalk it up to the Ossie version of "Stupid People Tricks".
Posted by: Ken at October 31, 2004 11:17 PMWondering if part of the fun includes simulating spending a few days in simulated bombed out basements in simulated Dresden, Hamburg or Berlin...
Posted by: Barry Meislin at November 1, 2004 9:18 AMThe West Germans botched reunification when they exchanged the Ostmark 1:1 for Deutschmarks instead of the actual market rate. Afterwards East German labor was terribly overpriced and umemployment was high. If they had done a market rate exchange, east Germans would have low or at least equivalent unemployment to the west, and there would be much less frustration.
In addition, the attitude of the Wessis to the Ossies is extremely arrogant and demeaning. People here complain about how the coastal elites insult flyover country people - there it's much worse.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at November 1, 2004 10:48 AMExcept if you've been to the former DDR, the Ossis have earned the disdain in which others hold them. It is also a payback, as the old Prussians used to lord it over everyone else. In the non-Prussian parts of the old pre-WWI Germany, if you wish to describe someone as being stupid and rigid and domineering at the same time, the word of choice is 'Prussian.'
Posted by: Bart at November 1, 2004 11:42 AMChris,
If they had done a market rate exchange, east Germans would have low or at least equivalent unemployment to the west
If it had been as simple as you say, it would have been done.
DDR = Der doofe Rest
Posted by: Eugene S. at November 1, 2004 12:44 PM