24 August 2007

Nazi board games

Excerpts from the BBC:

Nazi board games under the hammer

A collection of Nazi era board games - including one where players are given points for bombing British cities - are being auctioned in the UK...

The rare trove of wartime board games also includes a version of Snakes and Ladders based on the exploits of U-boat captain Gunther Prien.

"They say a lot about the Nazis, and about the German regime. Our kids were still playing trains and Meccano and hopscotch and things like that. These show how the Nazis were determined that children as young as four or five needed to get into the swing of things."


The two word that come to my mind, though, are National Education.

Think about it, few other countries in the world incorporate national goals, ideology, and the official slant on current affairs into child education and childplay as much as Singapore.

One imagines the family of National Education learning tools that inhabit the same social space as the Nazi boardgames: The Fall of Malaya board game, Command and Conquer, SAF edition...

And for the wired generation, The Fall of Malaya/Japanese Occupation MMORPG!
Play as 3 factions! The Japanese 25th Army , the Malaya Command (i.e. Percival and his Australian and Indian minions), and the Communist irregulars!

Each faction has its unique strengths! Play as the Japanese with their Mobility doctrine, Malaya Command with its Manpower doctrine (easy recruitment from the Commonwealth), and the Communist irregulars with their Progaganda doctrine!

And of course, the moral of the game is: We must ourselves defend Singapore! Woohoo...

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