A screenshot of a reseller's listing for vintage black SS counters
It’s never certain whether it’s a game about World War 2, or a series of World War 2-themed playing fields.
So on the one hand you have voiceover and mission text explaining how the Germans bombed Rotterdam to force a Dutch surrender. On the other hand, as the German team flying into an airborne drop over Rotterdam, you’ll get a generic paratrooper sequence: You’re in a transport plane with a multi-ethnic group of troopers in a random mix of national uniforms, with a jumpmaster yelling at you in German as you hook onto the line in preparation to take the leap into the combat zone. When you land, you’ll be surrounded by men and women fighting for your side, all of whom are carrying whatever is their favorite, class-locked (but nationality neutral) weapon for this battle. Germans wade into battle with American M1 rifles, British medics slap fresh magazines into their Maschinenpistole 40s. Everyone is empowered to be the Fallschirmjäger of their dreams.
Red Orchestra 2 screenshot courtesy of Tripwire
Heather juxtaposed this story with that of concentration camp survivors, and other victims of Nazi war crimes. These stories are more important than that of the Good Germans Who Were Awesome at War. Yet it is always to the war that we return, narrowing our focus until high command disappears, the labor camps and death camps disappear, the Einsatzgruppen, the mass graves, the executions, all the other things that make this particular history a horror show vanish and we are left to wage our battles in peace.a romanticized tale about Nazi guilt conveniently dawning when defeat finally rears its head. The Last Tiger is one of Battlefield V’s most exciting and thematically focused story missions, but it is a story that is painting a mythology that is still coopted by bad-faith actors and used today to justify gross injustice. The Last Tiger certainly doesn’t like Nazis but it still wants you to to appreciate their bravery. Whatever condemnation it offers is washed away by its flattening valorization of any and all forms of soldiery.