Archived from groups: rec.games.miniatures.historical (
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In message <came06$ifg$1@hermes.shef.ac.uk>, Martin Rapier
<m.rapier@shef.ac.uk> writes
><reply@grouponly.com> wrote in message
>news:9a8sc0lr9s9uvghhe24oklldrpr2vtajkv@4ax.com...
>{snip}
>> But I wonder if anyone's ever gamed such a situation ?
>> "Papillion" (" High Adventure escaping from French Colonials
>> on Devil's Island"), also comes to mind. Imagine; the corrupt
>> guards, the desparate convicts, the naitives, battling the elements.
>> Maybe it could work ? Certainly lots of fun terrain work for the
>> builders out there.
>
>I once played a role playing game called 'Home Front 86' about running a
>refugee camp in Scotland during a hypothetical WW3. It turned out to be a
>disguised scenario and we'd actually been running a concentration camp in
>Germany in 1945. A very, very clever game which produced some fairly grim
>insights into human nature (well, mine anyway) - I was really quite shocked
>at what we'd done, although at the time all our decisions seemed quite
>rational and in the best interests of the 'refugees' as well as meeting our
>production targets. My only defence at the war crimes trial was 'I was just
>obeying orders'. Just ordinary men....
>
I read a report recently that a US military policeman played the role of
a prisoner for practice interrogation, and was so badly beaten that he
was medically discharged. It's no real surprise - there have been quite
a few psychological experiments which demonstrate that ordinary people
will do quite awful things if they are told that they are doing the
right thing. That's the real horror of the concentration camps - the
people running it were not some form of sub-human monster - they were
just normal human beings.
--
John Secker
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