Visitors to the Severn Valley Railway’s World War Two-themed weekend were banned from dressing up as Hitler or SS officers.
They were invited to don 1940s-style clothes, both British and German, for the event at the 16-mile Severn Valley Railway, which runs between Bridgnorth and Kidderminster.
But the swastika, Nazi uniforms and Hitler impersonations were barred from the event because organisers feared they would cause offence.
The ban was introduced after someone turned up at a previous re-enactment dressed as the Fuhrer.
Event organiser Steve Fulcher said the ban was not new and had been in place for many years.
He said: “The public like to see both sides of the re-enactment and we do have people dressed in the uniforms of German soldiers.
“But there were some pretty nasty things that went on in that war and we didn’t want to cause offence to anybody who could still be offended by what happened.
“We have a lot of people coming as soldiers, which we welcome but we do ban the black SS uniforms and and swastikas.”
Mr Fulcher said the event, which also featured a flypast by historic planes, proved a big success.
“About 1,000 people turned up in 1940s dress and we also had a lot of people dressed up pretending to sell black market goods, which was fun,” he said.
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11 Comments
Yet more prejudice. How can we ever hope to build a better society unless we allow freedom of expression?
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No news here – this event has been going for years, and it’s been the policy for several of those at least that no Nazi or SS regalia is to be worn.
There were still plenty of German re-enactors there at the weekend, and as usual good fun was had by all, including a gentleman of Afro-carribean descent who dresses as a Herman Goering lookalike… It’s a bit like wandering on to the set of ‘Allo, Allo’.
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Who exactly would it offend? the majority of people who took part in the war are already dead!
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Given that the Severn Valley Railway was very busy during the war surely the organisers could have saved themselves a lot of bother by attempting a historically accurate re-enactment. The only people in German uniforms would have been POWs in transit or on labour details.
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Don’t mention ze war! Anyway who started it?
give me humour over pc any day!
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How about dressing up as a concentration camp guard? Or a Jew going to the gas chambers? Or a British air-raid victim? Many people who lived through the Second World War are still living and may see nothing funny in dressing up in any kind of German/Japanese uniform. As for ‘who would it offend’, maybe it would offend people who don’t think wars are funny.
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Political correctness has made the world infantile. Where are the adults in all this? Few people are so dumb they not to be able to discern the real thing as opposed to an enactment. What’s next? Elizabethan swashbucklers holding sensitivity training on the poop deck of the Golden Hind? Viking sewing circles? Alfred the Great-Cake-Maker-and-Househusband? Mr. Fulcher represents how political correctness reduces adults to inanity and foolishness. This decision is cowardly, a-historic and utterly ridiculous. If it wasn’t becoming so depressingly common it would be the stuff of comedy.
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Rob, Stephen,
I think you’re taking this event a little too seriously. Think ‘Dad’s Army’ rather than ‘Band of Brothers’.
There’s no jingoism or ill-feeling about the event, only a lot of fun in the beautiful setting of the SVR. It’s just a bit of living history for the weekend. Perhaps, Rob, you would have introduced rickets, cholera and diptheria to the Victorian town at Blists Hill – you know – just for added realism!
Many of the people who dress up for the event are people who lived through the war, and a number of them are WWII veterans. I don’t begrudge them a little reminiscence – do you?
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I appreciate that there can be a light-hearted take on WW2, but we should remember that some people, particularly those who lived through that war, do not think it is right to treat it as recreation; is dressing up in the uniforms of such an evil regime really fun? My mother had a number of school friends killed in the Blitz and so it is still very real to her. Surely the point is that where people are still living we need to be sensitive, not PC. Would we feel it right to have a terrorism-themed weekend on the London Underground, a ‘dress up as al-Qaedi’ day in New York or an IRA-themed weekend in a Birmingham pub? And if not, what exactly is the difference?
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CORRECTION
I think many people above have missed the point of this event; it is not a light hearted take on WW2 nor a celebration of it. It is a celebration of camaraderie, a time of great struggle that was overcome. Something that we should remember just as much as the devastation caused by the war – introducing Hitler or any Nazi officer has nothing to do with this and is completely out of context anyway.
I wonder if my uncle, who lives round the corner from the station would find it offensive. As he met them face to face as a prisoner of war.
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Surely the only logical way to view this is
To present the “railway” as it was, and as it would have been used, during wartime.
That clearly means NO German officers, SS or otherwise and CERTAINLY not Hitler! would have been there! (Unless of course the war had been lost … and …..then …..stop to think where we’d be be now!)
There were many (unpleasant) things about the Germans etc that did happen during the war, which MUST be remembered – but the SVR is not in my opinion the place to refer to it.
There are many excellent places to visit particularly in Berlin, Kracow, and of course Auschwitz to find out what really happened.
And ….
Once you’ve done this, I can’t imagine how anyone would want to “refer” to that on the platforms of the SVR.
What happened in those places should be remembered in it’s correct context, and not reduced to a side show on the SVR
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