My friend Josh Green of The Atlantic created quite a splash this past week by revealing that Rich Iott(pictured, second from right), the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio’s 9th District, and a Tea Party favorite, who for years donned a German Waffen SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments. As Josh reports, Iott was involved with a group called Wiking, whose members reenact the battles of the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, which fought mainly on the Eastern Front during World War II. Iott told Josh that his interest in Nazi Germany was historical and he does not subscribe to the tenets of Nazism. “No, absolutely not,” he said. “In fact, there’s a disclaimer on the [Wiking] website. And you’ll find that on almost any reenactment website. It’s purely historical interest in World War II.”
Iott may believe that his “historical” interest is isolated from the larger evil of Nazism, but nobody else does, and he was roundly ridiculed by one and all. But here’s a question: why are Civil War reenactors who play Confederate soldiers not subject to the same criticism. The Confederacy was built on racism and slavery. If widespread genocide was not practiced, regular homicide was approved. Some Confederate soldiers owned slaves and ardently supported slavery; others fought simply because they answered the call to arms of their leaders. No doubt the same distinctions could be applied to the German army, although I assume SS Panzer divisions were pretty hardcore. Still, the question arises: why do Confederate reenactors get a pass?