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Swastikas on model aircraft....what's behind that story..??


Artie

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3 hours ago, Artie said:

Ok, but I wondered about what happens in any other countries, regarding other totallitary symbols.....a polish friend once told me that comunist symbols were forbidden in Poland....is that true?

Artie, unfortunatelly this is not true. This is much more complex. Here is text (unfortunetely in Polish - please try use google translater it is said to be much improved recently) about what is forbbiden and what permitted by Polish law regarding presentation of symbols and ideology of fasism or communism: 

https://oko.press/brudzinski-chce-scigac-sierp-mlot-symbole-komunistyczne-sa-legalne-przeciwienstwie-faszystowskich/,

There is a trend to equalise both (among some people) but it is not a rule yet.  Maybe your Polish friend is willing to have it forbbiden but it is not the law, still.

Regarding the swastikas on airplanes there is a story from past, which I alredy once told here on BM in similar thread. Me and brother (@KRK4m here) we had in youth an adventure with Polish state customs. It was deeply in communist time, we were teenagers (it was around 1975) and our grandpa lived in London. The tighness of communist borders became a bit smaller these days and we were permitted to visit him. Since we had beeen already doing models (and got some pocket money from grandpa) we have bought in London some Germans of WWII among others kits of airplanes. While returning at the customs they took away all Germans models due to the swastikas. But they told that they will release them if we can proove that we are modellers. So we obtained a kind of certificate from Krakow's Museum of Aviation (since we had been alredy going there to library to study Profile Publications,, Air International or others publications on airplanes ) and after some months we obtained back our models! I remeber there were for example BV 141 and FW 189 by Airfix and likely Arado Blitz by Frog among them... So even in these dark days there was understanding for modellers!

Cheers

J-W

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1 hour ago, NPL said:

'elephant beer'

That's the stuff , now we're talking . The Chemical Cosh

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  On 10/11/2017 at 6:51 PM, shatters said:

I wonder  when it was that kits stopped including swastikas? 

Here in Germany it was 1979, when they stopped using swastikas in public. The sellers had to cut them out  from each decal film and paint them over on the old boxarts on the boxes. In fact Germany is the only land in the world, where their use in public is forbidden under penalty (§ 86a III StGB). So Matchbox, Airfix and all others had to remove them, when trading with/ in Germany.

This was part of the litigation and jugded by the BGH (supreme court) dealing with Matchbox PK 83 and 171:

https://www.jurion.de/urteile/bgh/1979-04-25/3-str-89_79/

Edit Posted that in the Matchbox group build in 2017.

Yes not allowed here in public. Only for correct historical purposes like museum exhibitions or so. At home you can use them,  but I'm not keen to put them on a model for personal reasons. Cheers

Edited by bbudde
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I have to admit despite being German I have become completely blasé whether there's a swastika on an aircraft's fin or not. On the other hand I still do find aircraft showing "censored" national insignias of Finland or Latvia rather odd looking...

And finally - I'd probably start suffering sleepless nights if someone would go on and outlaw decorating RAF aircraft with fin flashes ... :wacko:

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2 hours ago, bzn20 said:

Airfix didn't have Swastikas on the box art or decals . Has that ever been changed ?

 

2 hours ago, AWFK10 said:

They did include swastikas for a time in the 1970s - for example, see the box art on the original release of their 1978 Stuka, compared with the later versions where it's disappeared again along with the falling bombs and crashing aircraft. The bombs and explosions made a comeback but the swastikas didn't.

1971/2 to 1979/80, to be precise, beginning with the 1/24 109 closely followed by the Do 17. Final one would have been the new tool D-9, I think. They were removed from stock kits immediately after the Supreme Court ruling I mentioned by cutting them from the sheets or blacking them out with felt pens, also on boxarts and instructions.

@JWM Jerzy Woitek, only the Frog 234 had swastikas of those you mention, as as far as I am aware, old-tool (=pre 1971) kits only received them if they hit new art and decals - I am hard pressed thinking about any at the moment 😉

 They made a very brief reappearance on a version of the Series 3 photobox Fw 189 ca. 1986, but I have never managed to see one in the flesh, so can’t comment which market that box was intended for. Anyone happen to have one of those?

Edited by tempestfan
Adding lines on Airfix existing kits
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3 hours ago, tempestfan said:

only the Frog 234 had swastikas of those you mention, as as far as I am aware, old-tool (=pre 1971) kits only received them if they hit new art and decals - I am hard pressed thinking about any at the moment 😉

 They made a very brief reappearance on a version of the Series 3 photobox Fw 189 ca. 1986, but I have never managed to see one in the flesh, so can’t comment which market that box was intended for. Anyone happen to have one of those?

You are right - the question of Polish custom was not in swastikas on Airfix kit (indeed - as I remeber they were absent) but the German nazi airplane by itself!

Regards

J-W

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3 hours ago, tempestfan said:

 

1971/2 to 1979/80, to be precise, beginning with the 1/24 109 closely followed by the Do 17. Final one would have been the new tool D-9, I think. They were removed from stock kits immediately after the Supreme Court ruling I mentioned by cutting them from the sheets or blacking them out with felt pens, also on boxarts and instructions.

@JWM Jerzy Woitek, only the Frog 234 had swastikas of those you mention, as as far as I am aware, old-tool (=pre 1971) kits only received them if they hit new art and decals - I am hard pressed thinking about any at the moment 😉

 They made a very brief reappearance on a version of the Series 3 photobox Fw 189 ca. 1986, but I have never managed to see one in the flesh, so can’t comment which market that box was intended for. Anyone happen to have one of those?

Then please explain the box arts for the Fw190 I posted - first issue 1978 and still with the swastika in the type 6 box.

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5 hours ago, NPL said:

Be careful when you drink Carlsberg beer. The two elephants at the entrance to the brewery in Copenhagen have huge swastikas on their sides!

For the same reason, I don't drink Heineken.....that Red Star in their bottle frightens me....!!!!!

Edited by Artie
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I was stationed in West Germany from September 1980 to September 1983.  At the time, the or a Luftwaffen Museum was located near Hamburg.  There were lots of models of German aircraft with the swastika on it.  Sometime during the summer of 1982 I had to go down to Frankfurt am Main for a doctor's appointment.  As I recall my now first ex and her mother were with me.  Near a U-Bahn station not far from the main bahnhof was a shopping center with a hobby shop in it.  They were openly selling Micro-scale decal sheets of Luftwaffe swastikas in various sizes and styles for 72nd aircraft.  As it turns out, I have never used any of the decals, and except for some Luftwaffe nightfighters because of their unusual color schemes, any Luftwaffe aircraft that I now build does not carry German markings so as to avoid using swastikas.  Likewise I do very few soviet aircraft, and those that I do build, with some very few exceptions, are done in markings of other air forces.

Later,

Dave

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In the early seventies, the swastika was becoming quite common in German news stands. Almost like Viasat History today where you almost everyday see the ugly face with a moustace. Then something happened -- I believe that it was the Holocaust series where you followed a Jewish family from its safe life in Berlin to the gates of the gas chamber. The trend changed and the politicians in the Bundestag realized that there was a prohibition against showing this sign. 

 

But it is a mess also in Germany. If you visit the museums in Berlin and Rechlin, the swastikas are there, even on replicas (in Rechlin), whereas in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, they are absent. I have not been there. Both Berlin and Rechlin seem highly interesting. I would like to see if they have scale models collections, and especially if they include swastikas on small scale models when they have them on full scale models!

 

 

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10 hours ago, Ratch said:

Then please explain the box arts for the Fw190 I posted - first issue 1978 and still with the swastika in the type 6 box.

What precisely requires an explanation? The earlier T6 box will have a 1978 © on the box, possibly 1979. If such a box was on sale in Germany before the ruling, it would not have been affected. As far as I know, all stock at Plasty, the German distributor, was censored immediately. Stock already at shops may have been a bit slower to get the treatment. Your late T6 may be a French boxing, but there was at least one Haldane Place run with „quiet“ artwork. A lot of the kits for the 1980 programme was in for less violent artwork anyway, as evidenced by the 17. edition catalogue.

3 hours ago, e8n2 said:

I was stationed in West Germany from September 1980 to September 1983.  At the time, the or a Luftwaffen Museum was located near Hamburg.  There were lots of models of German aircraft with the swastika on it.  Sometime during the summer of 1982 I had to go down to Frankfurt am Main for a doctor's appointment.  As I recall my now first ex and her mother were with me.  Near a U-Bahn station not far from the main bahnhof was a shopping center with a hobby shop in it.  They were openly selling Micro-scale decal sheets of Luftwaffe swastikas in various sizes and styles for 72nd aircraft.  As it turns out, I have never used any of the decals, and except for some Luftwaffe nightfighters because of their unusual color schemes, any Luftwaffe aircraft that I now build does not carry German markings so as to avoid using swastikas.  Likewise I do very few soviet aircraft, and those that I do build, with some very few exceptions, are done in markings of other air forces.

Later,

Dave

The museum then was at Uetersen/Appel to the northwest of Hamburg. The Luftwaffe May have been taking the „we’re educational“ stance there, but it has to be mentioned that until rather recently the Bundeswehr in general upheld their peculiar tradition hedging, where members of Bundeswehr units (e.g. Boelcke) would meet with members of similar Wehrmacht units, and conventions of former Wehrmacht units would be sponsored with tax money.

The shop probably was ModellInternational at Hauptwache B-Ebene. 

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10 hours ago, Artie said:

For the same reason, I don't drink Heineken.....that Red Star in their bottle frightens me....!!!!!

For you it is the star..for me the taste...and i am dutch....

 

 

But on the serious side, in the Netherlands it is possible too show them on your model and we where occupied as well for five years...

Nevertheless if  you don't like  swastika's don't go to Nepal and India or do anything with hindoeism..... (they are displayed the otherway around overthere)

I am not a Nazi fan but i want those crosses on my subject or otherwise we should leave off the balkenkreuz as well, it reflects the same regime...or the Japanese meatballs...

 

 

Edited by janneman36
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29 minutes ago, NPL said:

But it is a mess also in Germany. If you visit the museums in Berlin and Rechlin, the swastikas are there, even on replicas (in Rechlin), whereas in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, they are absent. I have not been there. Both Berlin and Rechlin seem highly interesting. I would like to see if they have scale models collections, and especially if they include swastikas on small scale models when they have them on full scale models!

  

 

While I was stationed in Germany during the 1990's I visited several museums including the Deutsches Museum where there are several Luftwaffe aircraft, including the Me 262 of Jg7 that was interned in Switzerland at the end of the war.  When the Swiss returned it, the swastikas were on the tail but they were removed, but other museums leave them on for historical accuracy. For historical accuracy I put the bent cross on the tail of any luftwaffe aircraft, it looks wrong when it is missing.  I did display at a model show in Frankfurt during 1999,  I was told to cover the swastikas on my Bf 109 E's, I tried pointing out it was just historically correct for 1940, but was told I could received  a large fine if I did not, I asked about the small swastika kill marks on the Spitfire's but was told that was ok because " they were dead ". At the time Finnish blue swastikas were ok.

 

Bob

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15 hours ago, tempestfan said:

 

1971/2 to 1979/80, to be precise, beginning with the 1/24 109 closely followed by the Do 17. Final one would have been the new tool D-9, I think. They were removed from stock kits immediately after the Supreme Court ruling I mentioned by cutting them from the sheets or blacking them out with felt pens, also on boxarts and instructions.

 

 

 

39 minutes ago, tempestfan said:

What precisely requires an explanation? The earlier T6 box will have a 1978 © on the box, possibly 1979. If such a box was on sale in Germany before the ruling, it would not have been affected. As far as I know, all stock at Plasty, the German distributor, was censored immediately. Stock already at shops may have been a bit slower to get the treatment. Your late T6 may be a French boxing, but there was at least one Haldane Place run with „quiet“ artwork. A lot of the kits for the 1980 programme was in for less violent artwork anyway, as evidenced by the 17. edition catalogue.

Well at first you say only the 1/24 109, Do17 and D9 had swastikas. The Type 4 box with 'NEW' on it must have been 1978 because that was when the kit was issued, but then the later Type 6 with oval logo still has the swastika, so German Law probably wasn't a consideration. I don't think its a French boxing because Airfix boxes were printed in English and French (model kit - modele reduit) from Type 5 onwards.

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1 hour ago, janneman36 said:

For you it is the star..for me the taste...and i am dutch....

 

 

But on the serious side, in the Netherlands it is possible too show them on your model and we where occupied as well for five years...

Nevertheless if  you don't like  swastika's don't go to Nepal and India or do anything with hindoeism..... (they are displayed the otherway around overthere)

I am not a Nazi fan but i want those crosses on my subject or otherwise we should leave off the balkenkreuz as well, it reflects the same regime...or the Japanese meatballs...

 

 

The Japanese have kept their meetballs also on present planes

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As I wrote in another discussion about swastikas -- only a couple of weeks ago -- they are more conspicuous by their absence than by their presence. Everybody with just the slightest knowledge of II WW German insignia will immediately say: Where are they? Therefore it is from a psychological point of view contraproductive not to include them. And without starting a fight (I hope): isn't their absence not an expression of the mania of forgetting the past which struck Germany on the 9th of May 1945? 

 

And when they can include them on 1:1 scale models in Rechlin, why not on scale models?

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48 minutes ago, Ratch said:

 

Well at first you say only the 1/24 109, Do17 and D9 had swastikas. The Type 4 box with 'NEW' on it must have been 1978 because that was when the kit was issued, but then the later Type 6 with oval logo still has the swastika, so German Law probably wasn't a consideration. I don't think its a French boxing because Airfix boxes were printed in English and French (model kit - modele reduit) from Type 5 onwards.

Not the first time you haven’t really read a post of mine and perceived a non-existent contradiction. I didn’t say only the 1/24 109, Do 17 and D-9 had them, I said new tools and old tools with new art and decals (but I can’t think of any of the latter at the moment). There were quite a few more new tools in the period specified, like the various Ju 87s, 1/72 109E, Hs 126, Me 163 etc.

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1 hour ago, tempestfan said:

Not the first time you haven’t really read a post of mine and perceived a non-existent contradiction. I didn’t say only the 1/24 109, Do 17 and D-9 had them, I said new tools and old tools with new art and decals (but I can’t think of any of the latter at the moment). There were quite a few more new tools in the period specified, like the various Ju 87s, 1/72 109E, Hs 126, Me 163 etc.

Once again you have failed to express yourself clearly, leading to a misunderstanding. There were many Airfix kits issued with swastikas.

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It's an emotive issue, and with a good reason.  If it's frowned upon in your territory/country, obey the rules and regulations.  Here at Britmodeller we'll never remove any Swastikas that are historically accurate, but we don't want them in signatures, Avatars or banners.  That's been the same since we started, and we've all rubbed along very well on that basis for over 10 years now.  We hate Nazis and any regime that hasn't got the best interests of their people in mind, but that's politics and as it describes far too many countries for comfort these days, I'll shut up. :tapedshut:

 

Let's not fall out over the nuances of what is and isn't allowed in which countries though, especially not this deep into the season of goodwill.  It's up to every modeller to know the rules of their own country or where ever they're displaying their models to ensure they don't fall foul of any local laws.  That's all that needs to be said really. :)

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On 19/12/2018 at 13:14, Folkbox1 said:

How about non-Nazi swastikas, such as on Finnish airplanes.  Is this banned in Germany too or would modellers in Germany avoid it just in case?

The Finnish ones are reversed. So they are not a problem.

 

Rio

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The finnish ones, are not reversed, just parallel to the leading edges and in blue colour. It's not a matter of historic origins, but hysteric use of it. It's generally known that for a lot of ancient cultures, the swastika was a symbol.of good luck. My original question was related to other extremist symbols wich, for one reason or another are not just allowed, but apreciatted as well....

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