Interesting subject. Fascinating replies. Many thoughts follow. Ignorant recent generations and the cancerous Cancel Culture insanity. Robin brought up some interesting examples, i.e., some people want to bust on Sweden because Swedish shackles were used to bind Africans on slave ships. So I am a supporter of slavery because I built a S-Tanks and a Draken? Swedish Bofors were used by the Allies. Bofors were also used by the Nazis. Can I not build an Allied subject armed with Bofors without being denounced?
Guessing I can’t build recent 1/35 railroad subjects because trains hauled so many people to the concentration camps? During the German submarine war off America’s east coast, U.S. railroads hauled millions of barrels oil, so railroads are partly responsible for fossil fuel pollution and/or enabling the evil oil industry? Trains carried nisei to interment camps. Wow - railroads are evil and I hereto swear on a gandydancer’s grave that I will not only discard every railroad model, but I will burn it, too! (Oops, burning plastic puts poison into the atmosphere. I’ll just throw them away - oops, that puts zillions of micro particles into the environment.) Can I build models of airplanes because airplanes strafed/bombed/nuked thousands of civilians? Can I build a Boeing 777 without giving a nod and wink at bombing Dresden, which was bombed by Boeing B-17s?
Can I build a model of a Finnish subject? I mean, in 1939-40, the Allies were supporting Finland, and Germany was not because Finland was standing fast against Hitler’s BFF Stalin. Then came Barbarossa and suddenly Finland was at war against the Allies.
Churchill was drawing up plans to attack Stalin’s oil fields and Stalin was drawing up plans to attack British interests in the Middle East up to 21 June 1941. On 22 June 1941, Stalin and Churchill were brothers in arms.
Can I build a French subject? After all, France’s SS Charlemagne Divison fought to the death defending the Nazi capitol Berlin from the Soviets. Were they fighting for racial bias or against communism? France’s Manouchian group - how do we model the Resistance? And what do we think of them in regards to no French Communist resistance against the Nazis before Barbarossa, when Hitler and Stalin were friendly?
Can I build models of British infantry, or es ist verboten because a Tommy captured in Greece in 1940 and repatriated to England in 1943 stated the SS were “good blokes?” ( Waffen SS: The Asphalt Soldiers, Keegan, John, 1970)
Recently, on a Japanese aircraft social media group, someone posted a model of Saburō Sakai’s Zero. Someone else then vented that the modeler should not glorify ‘a murderer.’ Probably 1/3 of my models are WW2 Japanese subjects. My dad grew up with and joined USN with his friend David Flynn, both ending up on CA-30 USS Houston. Houston was sunk by the Japanese; of the 1/3 of the crew that survived, dad was the only one to avoid capture and make it to Australia. David spent the next 3.5 years a POW and suffered terribly. Dad did not talk about the war and I don’t remember him speaking pro or con about he Japanese. Dad never told me I couldn’t/shouldn’t build Japanese subjects. By 1980 all of the family cars were Japanese. (My uncle, a Pacific War destroyer sailor, never forgave the Japanese and even demanded it should be illegal ‘to buy Japanese.’ Former POW David told me in 2013 that he loved his post-war 10 years in Japan with IBM. When I asked him how he felt having been a POW, he told me, “The Japanese are great. They were just a bunch of kids forced to do what they did.”
So what? factor(s).
I can build models of Nazi Germany tanks and planes and ships and figures without believing in/supporting Nazis. My models do not support or glorify concentration or extermination camps.
I can build models of Japanese subject without believing in/supporting the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity and the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians at the hands of the Japanese, anymore than building a T-34 or MiG supports/glorifies USSR atrocities.
I build the subjects I do because they interest me. They interest me for a multitude of reasons - or none at all. None of the reasons need be a promotion or rejection of XXX or YYY philosophies and theories. Sometimes it is just that the subject looks cool or its place in history. And history is like an onion - it can add flavor, it has many layers, and sometimes peeling those back bring tears to one’s eyes.