panzer officer

Very nice work  Andy...thats one incredible fig...skin tone and all the detail ..your skills never fail to awe me!

cheers mate.

what i dont get...well wait a sec...bodge...definately a great job on the fig...now back to what i was trying to say...this isnt meant to be mean to you bodge...in fact im hoping you'll actually laugh at this...i've been wondering this for a long time and i hope u have an answer...how can someone who's country/people suffered so severely from german/nazi soldiers WANT to paint or build german/nazi soldiers/tanks, etc. like i said bodge that is nothing more than a comical means of asking a serious but hysterical (in my mind) question. please dont take offense to it as it really is meant as only a question. that aside, your work is always great to see (even though im not a ww2 guy). cheers sir!

Nice job Bodge. Great work on the wear on the boots. The skin shading and highlights are very well done and really add depth to the character of this figure.

camo.... for the same reason that Americans, Brits, and Canadians and even more ironicly a disproportionate amount of Russian re-enactors do SS and Heer. Because they can.

that's not an answer renarts... i realize anyone "can"...but why??

I dont really know , i suppose thier tanks look better and so do thier uniforms, but im not the only one , why is there more German WW2 models than any other country. I would say models of German stuff is about 70 % of all armour and figures in 1/72 and 35 scale. Its just popular.When you analize what some of the ss were like i feel a bit guilty building some of the models but most of the time i dont think about it.

ok, i can accept that. like i said it wasnt anything personal...just really curious. i also realize that it comprises most of the modeling community...i just find it not only funny but really ironic since the germans were so brutal and so many people were killed...but i guess that isnt the point. anyway, like isaid not trying to cause a issue, just trying to playcate (?) my own understanding only! thanks for answering.

Nice job oon the figure painting. I like the wear on the water bottle. Too bad the sculptor made the whole right arm. especially the hand, look like some kind of prosthetic device.

Andy,

This is my third Wow! to three different posting within 24 hours!

Fantastic work!

Nice work on the fig....only critique is the rank insignia is all wrong or absent altogether...

camo,
it may have something to do with the idea of beating the boogy man by playing the boogy man. Cultures have always been fascinated with the dark side of things. AS we get further away from the event, things tend to become more blase and we start to lose the impact of what happened. A friend of mine is an ex WW2 German tanker. We've had several enjoyable lunches together talking about his experiences during the war. I took him to an airshow once and he was amazed and genuinely confused over why there was a group of Heer and SS re-enactors there at the show. His only comment to me before we moved on was he could not understand how after so many sanctions, refusals, retributions, reparations and the attempt to separate germany from that part of its history that the same countries that dismantled them after the war now "played" at being them. He jokingly asked me if in 50 years we would have re-enactors dressing up as middle eastern terrorists. He chuckled and we didn't talk about it any more.

Who knows for sure why people are so fascinated with them and why they are so popular. I'm sure that there are any myriad of reasons and there have been threads ad nauseum as to why.

Bodge,
As before, nice work. If you're going to do more of this type of thing a good reference book is Army Panzer Uniforms in Colour Photographs by Wade Krawczyk.

That is a nice figure - I like how the colours tie in together.  Perhaps the insignia was originally there but left out after the makeover?

As for the question of why build German subject matter - mainly I just find it more visually appealing, both colour and construction wise.
 
Not to exonerate what they or any of the axis did, but atrocities were committed on both sides - unfortunately the victor gets to write the history books.  It simply cannot be generlalized that everyone that wore a German uniform was "brutal".  My father (native of Slovenia) was conscripted into the german army and while on the russian front did not want to shoot at anyone, so instead pointed his rifle upwards and fired rounds into the air.  Nor were the allies always on their best behaviour.  Not too long ago I was told about one's father who was a Canadian paratrooper during the opening phase of Normandy.  They had landed on a farm and the owner came out yelling at them for being on his property.  Since they couldn't quiet him down they shot him.

Alright, nuff said - I'm heading for cover lol - happy modeling

Jack