What is it about public officials and Nazi uniforms these days. We just saw a Portland police officer accused wearing a Nazi uniform and building a memorial to fallen German soldiers including a SS officer and a war criminal. Now, Rich Iott, Ohio Republican nominee for Ohio’s Ninth District (second from the right) has been shown in his World War II German uniform.
Iott a wealth businessman running against Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D). He likes to hang out with other World War II reenactors as a faux member of the 5th SS Wiking Panzer Division. The Atlantic article below has some incredible quotes from the website of the group about how the real soldiers were “idealists” who fought to protect the motherland. However, the site says:
“This page or anyone involved in its creation, or members of reenactment groups listed here, are in no way affiliated with real, radical political organizations (i.e., KKK, Aryan Nation, American Nazi Party, etc.) and do not embrace the philosophies and actions of the original NSDAP (Nazi party), and wholeheartedly condemn the atrocities which made them infamous.”
Iott insists that he is not a Nazi — he essentially just plays one at these events.
Parts of the 5th SS Wiking Panzer Division were accused of war crimes against Jews in the Ukraine.
Of course, this allows Iott to release his new slogan: “Vote for Iott: Because It Is Better To Be A Little Reich Than A Lot Wrong.”
Source: The Atlantic.
I will alleviate your curiosity mespo727272. It was an historical reenactment. Nothing more, nothing less. Should we pick and choose the history we want to remember, or believe in, like the President of Iran?
Do you think we ever landed on the moon? If so, where is your proof?
I find it curious that you can’t understand what living history is all about.
I am not as tough now as I once was, God knows. Years of service to my country and my community has taken a toll. One knee hardly works and the right arm sometimes fails me. I have a 20 inch scar right down the middle of my gut. A poor dead NVA kid with an AK47 did that to me.
But guess what honey, I am still plenty tough enough to take care of you.
As for the rest of your post, mespo727272, sounds childish to me. How old are you? What in the hell does “mespo727272′ mean? Don’t you have a real name?
BTW Mike, here’s some Latin to convey just my thoughts in the way only Latin can:
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
MIke Adams:
“It is always difficult for me to understand how supposedly grown up people, aka “adults’, can begin acting like children when an issue like this pops up. The truth is very simple children; he was participating in a ‘reenactment’.”
*********************
My sentiments exactly. Why grown men would want to dress up and play army is beyond childish to me. Why they’d pick the role of history’s most ghoulish murderers is even more curious. Well maybe after reading tough-guy (“If anyone out there dares to call me a “Jew Killer” I will come find you, slap you across the face and challenge you to a duel using M79A1 launchers.”)Mike Adams, I think I can figue it out. I think possession of a M79A1’s might be a felony, so when you stop by bring yours. I know some guys in uniform who’d like to see it.
Maybe all our little Nazi wannabe’s can set up a lemonade stand and translate Latin for all their little dress-up army buddies. I hear this crowd is really into tea parties, too. I nominate plain ol’ “everyman” Mike Adams as the Mad Hatter.
(sung to the tune of YMCA)
N A Z I
it’s fun to play as an
N A Z Iii
you can shoot anything
you can drink lots of beer
you can hate whoever you feeeel
[The leadership of the Nazi Party included at least one avowed homosexual, Ernst Roehm. He was a member of Hirschfeld’s League for Human Rights and openly attended homosexual meeting places. Between 1933 and 1934, Roehm was the leader of the SA (Stormtroopers) and, before the death of Hindenberg in 1934, he was a potential challenger to Hitler’s supremacy. With the Nazis’ rise to power came an attack from Germany’s political left. Attempts were made to discredit Hitler and the Nazis. One of their arguments was the charge of homosexuality in the Nazi ranks. Hitler’s old friend Roehm was one of their main targets.
Interestingly, one of Roehm’s principal defenders was Heinrich Himmler. He articulated the belief that accusations against Roehm were the work of Jews who feared the SS and were trying to discredit the movement. The mood of the party, and of Himmler, changed, however, when Hitler decided in 1934 that Roehm was a threat to his authority. Specifically, Hitler feared that Roehm was attempting to turn the SA (at this time, over 2 million strong) into a militia and was planning a military challenge to Hitler. While there is no evidence that such a plan existed, Hitler ordered a purge. On June 30, 1934, Roehm, many of his supporters, and over 1,000 of Hitler’s political and personal enemies, were murdered in the famous “Night of the Long Knives.” While the purge was politically motivated, the justification given for it was the homosexuality of Roehm and several of his associates in the SS command.]
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/homobg.html
“William Shirer says in his definitive “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” not only that Roehm was “important in the rise of Hitler,” but also “like so many of the early Nazis, (he was) a homosexual.””
Now we know why he dresses up in this particular uniform
Were not some of the Soldiers in the SS gay?
Top Social Conservative: Hitler Used Gay Soldiers Because They Had ‘No Limits’
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/top_social_conservative.php
The Denial of Homosexuality: Same-Sex Incidents in Himmler’s SS and Police
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3704558
The above was made possible by a Shapiro Grant…..
Blouise- I give you a secular “Amen”!
Emmys
“Iott participated in the group under his own name, and also under the alias “Reinhard Pferdmann,” … which Iott described as being his German alter ego.
“These guys don’t know their history,” said Charles W. Sydnor, Jr., a retired history professor and author of “Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death’s Head Division, 1933-45,” which chronicles an SS division. “They have a sanitized, romanticized view of what occurred.”
Rabbi Moshe Saks, of the Congregation B’nai Israel in Sylvania, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo that sits in the 9th district … “Any kind of reenactment or glorification of Nazi Germany, to us, would be something unacceptable and certainly in poor taste, if not offensive,” he said. “I think the reaction here will be very negative. And not just among the Jewish community, but the broader community.”
What you often hear is that the [Wiking] division was never formally accused of anything, but that’s kind of a dodge,” says Prof. Rob Citino, of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas, who examined the Wiking website. “The entire German war effort in the East was a racial crusade to rid the world of ‘subhumans,’ Slavs were going to be enslaved in numbers of tens of millions. And of course the multimillion Jewish population of Eastern Europe was going to be exterminated altogether. That’s what all these folks were doing in the East. It sends a shiver up my spine to think that people want to dress up and play SS on the weekend.”” (Joshua Green, The Atlantic)
The “I’m not a real Witch” meets the “I’m not a real Nazi” in the latest installment of the Republican Teabagger Reality Show produced by the same Republican Committee that brought you the West Virginia Hick Commercial. I smell Emmeys!
The link to “The Atlantic” shows Iott as second from the right in the photo, not second from the left. He’s not the man in the kilts.
rafflaw and Maaarrghk
This guy just wanted to bond with his son. What better way to choose than reenacting Nazi rather than Union or Confederate soldiers . The uniforms are sharper, you can ride around in cars, not on horses, and you don’t have to sleep in tents and cook your food over an open fire.
The Tea Party has pictures of President Obama as a Nazi, so what’s the beef? Wasn’t it Prince Charlie that dressed up as a Nazi for Halloween one year?
They were careful to choose a unit that didn’t fight any American soldiers; just rounded up Jews. What could be more innocuous?
It is always difficult for me to understand how supposedly grown up people, aka “adults’, can begin acting like children when an issue like this pops up. The truth is very simple children; he was participating in a ‘reenactment’. These are done to keep history alive. I have visited Dachau and I remember a strong plea by a survivor who led a bit of our tour. She asked that we “Always remember what happened here and keep the memory alive.” In case you have been sleeping under a rock lately you may have missed out on the fact that more people than ever are crying that the “Holocaust never occurred”. Including the President of Iran.
So, I have an idea, let’s have a military reenactment of WWII and pretend that Germany was not involved and that the Holocaust never happened. How is that for honoring the wishes of the survivors from that period of hell?
Feel better now, little ones, playing pretend in the sandbox?
I am a Vietnam Vet and a Desert Storm Vet. Started in one and stopped after the other. I have participated in WWII reenactments as an American, a German, and a Russian, depending on what the group needed that day. If anyone out there dares to call me a “Jew Killer” I will come find you, slap you across the face and challenge you to a duel using M79A1 launchers. (Look it up if you are a woos who never served your country.) Alternatively we could debate, but I doubt you are ready for grown up truth as opposed to childish rants.
While I cannot vote in your elections I can influence them. I am going to start by donating to whoever is running against Kaptur because no matter what kind of person she is, her supports appear to be eight year olds. Not such a great base.
Someone please translate that last line into Latin for me so even Turley can understand it. He is just an elitist, maybe not a complete child.
Thank you,
Mike Adams
Austin, TX
Whilst taking a dim view of all this tea party malarky that seems to be going on in parts of the colonies, I would tend to disagree with you rafflaw.
The man may or may not be a nazi sympathizer. The fact that he likes to dress up and play soldiers for the side that lost WW2 has nothing to do with it.
WW2 re-enactment is quite popular in the UK (as is any period from the roman invasion onwards – even your own civil war has societies dedicated to it over here). None of this would suggest that any particular member of these societies has a particular political leaning. An interest, yes, but not an agreement. By making such assumptions we are doing a dis-service to all members of living history groups.
Had this chap been caught engaging in holocaust denial or some other actual nazi activity then I would be the first to condemn. But he wasn’t.
This Teapublican is the face of the entire Tea Party. This factoid should be spread in every paper in Ohio to make the point of who this guy really is.
Col. Klink off of Hogan’s Hero was Jewish….Really and a classically trained violinist…(Roy Clark of Hee Haw fame as well). As I under stand it…Klink objected to the role until he was convinced that the character played was a bumbling idiot…inept at best….well…the rest is show biz history…..then well, Bob was killed the show was doing what he was doing and then got killed….I wonder if drugs played a role in that…
The story of today…surprises me not…there are people who do all sorts of reenactments…what was that movie Tom Hanks was in ah yes, Valkyrie?
Here’s another slogan…
Vote for Iott: A True Reich-Wing Conservative
Gayle:
As in IdiOTT?
It is Iott, not Lott
I think you do us and haute couture a disservice by not publishing the entire photo of our ersatz Nazi Lott. That kiltie is not to be beleived. Maybe he crash-landed with Rudolph Hess in Scotland?
BTW I am anxiously awaiting our Sunday pet entry.