Monday, August 20, 2007

Nazi Board Games

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Nazi board games exist. I guess I had never thought of it before. I particularly like this one:

In the game, players use a crude spring to launch wooden pieces onto a board
with four sections with different point values. The two outer rings included the
names of German cities. The third ring had cartoon images of top Nazi officials
such as propaganda minister Joseph Goebbel. The inner ring -- with the highest score of 100 points -- showed Adolf Hitler.
The box for the game, called the V-Game, showed a picture of
Hitler riding atop a German V-1 rocket and wearing a British royal crown.


I want to imagine what games children in other totalitarian regimes played. Did Cambodian kids during the Khmer Rouge play games where you practiced shooting your friend with glasses? Did the Stasi promote games to trick your parents into saying something anti-government so their kids could inform on them? Did Franco's Spain have games where you saw how far you could launch a figure based on a gay male stereotype out of a cannon?

Good times.