I've got a few different things to talk about this week on the blog that will probably result in a few smaller and varied posts on the blog. If they were in any way related, I would put them together in one longer post but they're realistically not. The first thing that I'll cover is the origin and meaning of my blog's name... SITZKRIEG! Over the years, I've been asked one or twice how I came up with the name (usually with some implied dread). I figured I'd finally address it in a quick post given the ridiculously volatile nature of politics here in the US right now and the penchant of certain people to use labels like "fascist" and "nazi" at the drop of a hat.
I'll start with the origin of the word.
Sitzkrieg, aka the Phoney War, was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there was only one limited military land operation on the Western Front following the invasion of Poland. It's a mashup of the German words "to sit" (sitzen) and "war" (krieg) and means "Sitting War". It was a word play on
blitzkrieg created by the British press to make fun of the Nazi war machine in WW2, not to glorify it. When I was trying to figure out a name for my blog, I figured that a "sitting war" was a good way to describe what we as wargamers and rpgers do when we enjoy our hobby; we literally sit on our butts and make war with tiny soldiers. The first version of this blog actually was started under the mechablog name and only switched to this once it became available a year or two later. As a Pole who grew up on first hand stories of my own family's suffering at the hands of both Nazis and later the Communists, I'd never support either hateful ideologies. Hopefully that puts to bed any potential thoughts that I'm some sort of
wehraboo. :)
