Question to our German Friends

[Bullethead 12]

Negative.... Texas is not from the South... Texas is a COUNTRY

 

Amen to that. The US is lucky it had allies like Texas or it would have lost the last few wars.

 

BH <-- Native Texan currently in exile...

[Hasse Wind 46]

I'm no German, so I have no idea how they feel when called Huns (or Krauts), but I know I never use the words "dark side" when talking about the Germany of WW1. Kaiser Wilhelm's Empire was basically nothing extraordinary in early 20th century Europe, just one of the many old monarchies (of course Germany was unified relatively lately, but the same royal families were still in power there just like centuries earlier) that dominated the continent. Hitler's Third Reich is another matter and shouldn't be confused with the Second Reich.

[Algy 0]

The 'Dark side' is surely an expression derived from the 'Star Wars' movies used to describe Darth Vader and his chums(i.e. the bad guys).

 

I don't believe that the term was in common usage during WW1!

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

The 'Dark side' is surely an expression derived from the 'Star Wars' movies used to describe Darth Vader and his chums(i.e. the bad guys).

 

I don't believe that the term was in common usage during WW1!

 

Yes, I must agree... I have never heard of the term pre: Star Wars either! (though it was quite obvious that George Lucas modelled his characters on the Nazis)

[Gremlin_WoH 0]

You KRUMPETS and FROG-EATERS can call me HUN all day long and you would not YANK my chain as I am lurking on the DARK SIDE and never come out to see the light of day except for eating KRAUT out of a JERRY CAN.

 

:grin: :grin:

 

Did I miss someone?

 

Cheers

Edited October 8, 2009 by Gremlin_WoH

[Mr. Lucky 0]

You KRUMPETS and FROG-EATERS can call me HUN all day long and you would not YANK my chain as I am lurking on the DARK SIDE and never come out to see the light of day except for eating KRAUT out of a JERRY CAN.

 

:grin: :grin:

 

Did I miss someone?

 

Cheers

 

I think I got hit somewhere in there.

 

BTW, I usually fly for Germany and I don't mind being called the dark side.

First thing I think of is Star Wars. I need to get the imperial theme in my OFF music.

[JimAttrill 24]

The word 'Kraut' is only mildly derogatory in Br. English, rather like 'Frog' for the French. Both refer to something that is eaten (even the Brits eat frogs nowadays), and Sauerkraut was used by the Royal Navy as an antiscorbutic way back as far as the 18th Century. It had the advantage that it would keep in barrels for a long time, although it did have a famous smell and some sailors had to be forced to eat it. I guess the only way to check this out would be to get a wooden barrel, fill it with cabbage and vinegar, close it up and wait for about 5 years.

 

And our German friends will confirm that it is often used in German to describe a loved one. I think only used by men to women, but I'm not sure here.

 

Mind you, Germans also refer to their wives as 'mein skat', which I think means 'tax'; many of us would agree with that

[OvS 8]

Yes, I must agree... I have never heard of the term pre: Star Wars either! (though it was quite obvious that George Lucas modelled his characters on the Nazis)

 

 

The Dark Side thing I think came from the SOH Forum... it's really just a OFF thing. Isn't that cool?

[OvS 8]

I do believe that New York itself was a Dutch settlement. Stuyversant (sp) traded some baubles with the natives for Manhatten island or some such. So yes there was a strong Dutch influence in the 13 colonies. I somehow suspect the origin is Dutch rather than Brit because it does seem to me that the Englanders used the term Yankee as a derogative. Or perhaps it was coined by the Brits from the Dutch as Olham suggested.

 

 

Yes, it was. Mostly in Pennsylvannia though... NY was British, Italian, and Irish while Long Island became the home to many German settlements. Not sure why.

 

My home town of Lindenhurst was ripe with pre-WWII Nazism everywhere. Look-up the town name on Wilkapedia some time... it will shock you. There were also reports of U-Boats off the coast of Long Island on a daily basis during WWII. There is one still sitting out there, under the sea, as well as all along the coast of the Eastern USA.

 

OvS

[Cameljockey 3]

Whatever happened to the old saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!"? People are too easily offended these days IMO.

[Hauksbee 103]

"Huns" is no problem for me, although it comes from a pretty nasty propaganda poster, showing a Hun-like

German soldier trampeling over the world,

World War One was unique in that it, for the first time, mobilized the full might of each industrialized nation. Prior to, armies campaigned in the summer, re-fitted in the winter. Even long conflicts were episodic. Now it was continual, and the butcher's bill was horrific. All sides demonized each other to an extent never seen before. I know the poster Olham refers to. I thought I had a copy on my HD, but it appears not. ( I post a similar) The term "Hun" preceded the poster. It was an unfortunate term used by Kaiser Willhelm (who had a foot-in-mouth fixation) in a speech to German troops being dispatched to China for the relief of the legations during the Boxer Rebellion. This was seen at the time to be a heinous breach of international protocal. (the 9/11 of its day.) He urged them to "...conduct yourselves like the Huns of Attila."

[Olham 164]

Interesting about the "Sauerkraut", Jim - didn't know the British Navy used it, too.

 

But "Kraut" is not used to describe a loved one - what you mean perhaps is "braut",

which is "bride" in English. Germans say about their loved ladies, even before they

are married "sie ist meine Braut -she is my bride".

And for their wives, they don't say "mein Skat" (Skat is a card game for three), but

"mein Schatz" (my precious, my treasure). I think, you where stationed in Germany,

if I do remember that right - so I assume, your memory mixed up similar sounding

words a bit?

 

Cameljockey, as far as I could read, no one feels offended here yet?

[JimAttrill 24]

Sorry, Olham, getting mixed up with the French who can say 'mon petite Chou' where Chou is cabbage.

 

I must say I was also surprised to find that the RN in the days of sail used sauerkraut. But scurvy was a big problem - they didn't know about Vitamin C, but empirically they knew that if you ate vegetables and especially citrus fruit, the symptoms disappeared very quickly. And of course this is where the American use of 'limey' for the Brits started, though I would be very surprised if the USN did not also use some type of citrus fruit juice. After all, US orange juice kept the whole British population healthy in WWII.

 

And the use of Skat as an endearment is actually Danish. Well, at least I think so, but no doubt one of the Scandinavians on board will tell me the correct usage

[Cameljockey 3]

It was a general statement Olham. If you read the news regularly you'll see many (too many) people crying about being offended by something someone did or said, at least here in the States. It has gotten so prevalent that Robert D. Raeford, "Curmudgeon at Large" for the "John Boy and Billy Big Show" has named this country the "United States of The Offended". People need to grow some more skin and stop all of the whining!

No one here seems to be offended, but, taken out of context, I'm sure there are some who would be offended by and more than willing to whine about such terms as "Hun, Bosch, Limey, or Frog".

 

BTW Bullethead, I'm also a native Texan in exile. Born in Weatherford and raised in Pasadena.

[Bullethead 12]

The 'Dark side' is surely an expression derived from the 'Star Wars' movies used to describe Darth Vader and his chums(i.e. the bad guys).

 

The Dark Side is a state of mind having nothing to do with nationality. Folks who use it as a national tag are incorrect as well as offensive.

 

I was there when the term "Dark Side" became associated with flightsims and, to a certain extent, German planes as well. As you say, it came from Star Wars. It happened like this.

 

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, noobs in DOS MMOFS Air Warrior seeking instruction from expert players typically phrased their requests in Star Wars lingo because being good at ACM seemed supernatural to them. The experts liked this flattery and responded in kind. Because noobs naturally gravitate to turnfighting, this is what they called "the Force" or the "Light Side".

 

In those ancient times, what is now called "griefing" was an expected part of daily online gaming, and a large part of its attraction to the relatively few people then online. Piling up a good score or k/d ratio was fun, but it just made your day if you could get another player so made he'd log off in fury, throwing his joystick against the wall and cursing you in pre-TOS language. This of course led to many personal vendettas, duels, lynchmobs, etc., all driving by Hate. Thus, the Dark Side was there from the start, too.

 

Another good way to spread the Hate was to be an E-fighter. Nothing PO'd a good turnfighter more than, after getting several kills by sheer skill in a huge furball, he'd get swooped by an E-fighter. And because most folks learn E-fighting after exposure to turnfighting, it became accepted AW jargon that E-fighting was the Dark Side. Habitual turnfighters (always the majority of the population) fumed that E-fighters wouldn't turn with them but just took cheapshots, whereas habitual E-fighters regarded turnfighters as ignorant dweebs unable to master the higher mysteries. And because E-fighters were so Hated and Feared by so many folks, they enjoyed calling themselves the Dark Side.

 

Thus, the Dark Side originally encompassed both griefing and E-fighting. But as time went on, AW's code tightened up so griefing faded away, leaving only E-fighting in the Dark Side. Still, this was harmless enough, because in those days AW's arena alternated every few weeks between ETO and PTO plane sets. Thus, the F4U was just as much a part of the Dark Side as the FW190A8, while the Ki84 was just as Light as the Spitfire.

 

But eventually AW ran both plane sets at once in separate arenas. Most customers preferred the ETO set, so that's where all the action was and hardly anybody was ever in the PTO arena. And in the ETO, the FW was by far the best E-fighter. Thus, the F4U faded from memory and Dark Side came to be associated solely with the FW. To be sure, there were P51s and P47s in the ETO, but the P51 could do turnfighting and the Jug was so difficult to kill with in the arena that they never achieved the same popularity amongst E-fighters as the FW.

 

As the 90s went on, griefing became illegal as the AW player base expanded from a few thousand to several hundred thousand. The newcomers didn't know the backstory and of course there were too many of them to carry on with the old Star Wars jargon--too many for most to have ever heard of it, or know who the masters were, etc. So that fell away from simmer culture and all that remained was a vague impression in many minds that the Dark Side was somehow associated with German planes. The newcomers naturally felt this had to do with the Nazis, or perhaps even WW1 Germany as viewed through "Beastly Hun" propaganda posters. And as simmers spread out to other games, this idea has gradually taken over.

 

And thus we have the situation today, where simmers mistakenly call Germany the Dark Side. I hope this helps set the record straight.

[themightysrc 5]

"No one here seems to be offended, but, taken out of context, I'm sure there are some who would be offended by and more than willing to whine about such terms as "Hun, Bosch, Limey, or Frog"."

 

 

Well, I'm pretty sure you can extend that to an awful lot of epithets. I think the general rule should be that you don't chuck round any names unless (a) you're confident that the company you're in won't raise objections, (b) if they do, you can explain you view without offending them further and © you haven't got an ulterior motive.

 

I've used the phrase 'ghastly Hun' in previous posts here because I'm pretty sure that chaps like Olham will see that as window dressing on what is, after all, a recreation of the first world war - complete with stupidity and jingoism on all sides.

 

I would be horrified if it weren't seen in the Blackadder-esque sense that it was used, and if any of our German friends objected, I would simply stop using the phrase.

 

The main reason why I use it is because it encapsulates (more or less) the somewhat paternalistic and simplistic feeling that seems to have permeated the RFC/RNAS during the period, and also because there is - given the lapse in time from the events aboutwhich we speak - a certain distance which renders both the attitudes of the Briddish and their opponents (to simplify matters) anachronistic.

 

For example, I'm a passionate pro-European, in the sense that I - as a Brit - see the benefits to all concerned of the EU. Whoa! Political point!! But that's my take on politics - from, admittedly, a left wing stance - but it doesn't mean that I can't enter into the spirit, as I perceive it, of a long bygone aerial war, but leavened (I hope) with some sense of the absuridty of what happened when empires collided nearly 100 years ago.

 

So, bottom line - keep that sense of perspecitve, but be cognisant of other peoples' sensibilities. That's an unconscious mantra that everyone on the CA OFF forums seems tokeep anyway, so I'll just shut up and figure out how not to get my next pilot killed.

Edited October 8, 2009 by themightysrc

[Olham 164]

JimAttrill: After all, US orange juice kept the whole British population healthy in WWII.

 

Aha! I knew there had to be some vitamins involved! A friend of mine from London had always

bought and cooked HEINZ BAKED BEANS, and repeatedly said, they kept the British healthy

during WW2. Now I like them sometimes, with toast, a fried egg, and a cup of coffee, But I

couldn't imagine, they should alone get you through the years of war.

 

Bullet - wow, thanks for that great detailed explanation! You must have been a simmer, when I

still learned to walk (Lol!) The Ki-84, is that the Frank? That was my favourite Japanese craft in

later sims.

[Bullethead 12]

You must have been a simmer, when I still learned to walk (Lol!) The Ki-84, is that the Frank? That was my favourite Japanese craft in later sims.

 

I started offline flightsims as soon as they were invented back about 1980. I had the original MS Flight Simulator, which ran on an Apple IIe with 48K of RAM. You loaded it from a cassette tape, a process taking 20-30 minutes and failed more often than not, requiring you to try again. Thus, you could spend all your available time just trying to load the game.

 

The world was about 5 miles square and consisted of a flat wireframe grid with a vertical jagged line along 1 edge to represent mountains and give you a visual cue as to which direction you were flying. There was also a narrow rectangle in one of the grid squares--your runway. The ground extended away forever beyond the grid but you couldn't see it.

 

All control inputs were via the keyboard. There was no view of your own plane out the window, just a couple of low-rez instruments drawn at the bottom of the screen. You could fly either a Cessena or a Sopwith Camel, the latter being very nasty to fly with just a keyboard, and even worse when you had to fight 5 enemy planes at once. The enemy planes were just dots that never changed in size no matter the range, and of course gave you no visual clue as to which way they were heading. They also flew like UFOs, able to change direction at will without regard for aerodynamics. In all the times I played this, I think I only ever shot 1 of them down. I thus rate this as the most difficult flight "sim" I ever played .

[Olham 164]

Haha! From stoneage to the first air combat sim! Great, never knew there where some that early.

My first one was "Their Finest Hour" by LUKAS ARTS.

More advanced already. You saw the planes as a bitmap or pixel-picture; there where various angles of it,

no real 3D model, but you would recognise the craft.

And I must have flown it with "glowing red ears and cheeks" - I played it for hours some days.

[Bullethead 12]

Haha! From stoneage to the first air combat sim! Great, never knew there where some that early.

 

Flightsims were about the 1st games written and are at least contemporary with things like those old Star Trek games where everything on your scanner was an ASCII symbol. Remember those? X = you, * = star, K = Klingon, and . = empty space. Believe it or not, the 1st so-called MMO game I every played, back in the mid-80s, was like that. It was called Megawars and could have up to 8 players at once. The 1st version of DOS Air Warrior came out only a couple of years later, and I never heard of it until much later. Of course, back then, the Internet was new, very small, and very sparsely populated, so it wasn't like you could hear about new things that way. Print media was still the dominant way to advertise computer products back then, and if your product didn't get published, nobody heard of it.

 

What the Internet was for back then was exchanging info on how to hack various programs FTP sites to download free porn. In those days, there weren't quite yet graphical web browsers, so all your porn had to be downloaded without seeing it first, at 1200 baud, and usually for a fee. Hence the hacking. Back in those days, the Internet consisted of hacking, flightsim, and porn sites, all connected by ISPs like Compuserve and Genie. Not even game developers had home pages, but just reps who MIGHT be found at the BBS sites (not yet forums) on the various big ISPs. But if you can hack, discuss mutual interests, and get porn, all else on the internet is fluff and gravy, eh?

[Olham 164]

Geeze - you Americans where far ahead then!

Back in the 80s, I got porn still in glossy magazines, to be honest.

[Rickitycrate 10]

Oh yeah, glossy porn. Those were the days.

[Duce Lewis 3]

Aha! I knew there had to be some vitamins involved! A friend of mine from London had always

bought and cooked HEINZ BAKED BEANS, and repeatedly said, they kept the British healthy

during WW2. Now I like them sometimes, with toast, a fried egg, and a cup of coffee, But I

couldn't imagine, they should alone get you through the years of war.

Don't forget SPAM ...vulcanized pork

Put it in a can & it'll last forever

Never been a better motivator to get a war over

Strangely, it's very popular in Hawaii

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

mmmmmmm...Spammmm. Fried egg and SPAM between two slices of hot french toast, one of the best breakfast meals ever, and so healthy too.

 

And Austin, Minnesota, home of Hormel, the makers of that infamous Shoulder of Pork And haM product, and location of the SPAM Museum.

 

 

 

...now I'm hungry...

 

 

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

[Olham 164]

SPAM? Vulcanized pork???? Sounds horrible!?