Compost Piles, Ninja Pilots and Other Silliness

Oh, Okay

At a 500 table gun show in Ohio last year, a collector asked to examine a Luftwaffe gravity knife in a dealer's case. On releasing the blade, he noted that the blade had been shortened by over an inch and repainted."That's special Heer issue" the dealer said,"they shortened them all like that so they could tell them apart."

Ninja Pilots

A collector in California found a pair of flightsuit type rank patches done on black wool at a local event and took them into a dealer's shop to find out more about them. "Oh" said the dealer, "those are special rank patches for Luftwaffe night fighter pilots -they had special black flight suit's." If dealers in other hobbies were such buffoons, they'd be laughed out of business.

Maybe Darwin Was Wrong

Every wonder how people so stupid have so much money? One of my favorite sink holes lately for the rich and fatuous is the current crop of "Sepp Dietrich" personal items - like the so- called Sepp Dietrich sword, engraved with the initials "SD". How can people this dumb have survived into the 20th Century? Why weren't their slow-witted ancestors trampled by mastodons? SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer Dietrich's given name was Josef. "Sepp" was a nickname, like "Ike" for General Dwight Eisenhower, and no one uses the initial of a nickname in a monogram.

Georgia On My Mind

Aren't all the mint Army daggers fascinating? You know the Germans made millions of combat helmets during the war - every Gl's favorite souvenir. Yet today you can't open any catalogs and find a wide selection of clean, tight, sharp, unscrewed-with helmets. Fascinating.

Gee, They Smell Right

It still amazes me that people don't take the time to read and research what they're doing before wasting large sums of good money on ridiculous garbage. German WWII Paratrooper boots are a classic example. During WWII, German paras often referred to their side-lace boots as "gangster shoes", because unlike hobnailed boots, their all rubber heels and soles made for very quiet walking on city streets. But the guy making them now with the silly rubbish on the bottoms (like metal heel irons) can't turn them out fast enough to keep up with demand. He puts them in his compost pile for two weeks, has his dog visit them a couple of times, and for $350 bucks we have another pair of "VG unissued" boots and another happy collector.

From Pakistan With Love

Lately we've been hearing a lot of garbage about how righteous it is that some repro dealers tell you right up front that their near perfect insignia are reproductions. After all, it's not their fault that they're used by the unscrupulous to make phony hats and tunics, is it? Well, Aman Khosogi probably doesn't loose any sleep over selling thousands of "Bouncing Betty" mines to lunatics all over the world either. What I want to know is, if these honest repro dealers are so noble, then why don't these stalwarts permanently mark the backs or insides of the pieces in some way, so they can't ever be used as fakes to rip people off? Because their buyers are fakers, and nobody would buy them, that's why. If you're not a part of the solution, you're part of the problem, and I don't care how you rationalize it.

Der Maulwerf ,(The Mole), "Compost Piles, Ninja Pilots and Other Silliness", Der Gauleiter, 1990

Valkyrie Tries, Fails, to Kill Hitler

Much ado has been made about "Valkyrie," starring Tom Cruise as would-be Hitler assassin Col. Claus von Stauffenberg.

There is the release date, which has been moved around several times until finally being set for Christmas, the perfect time for a feel-good movie about killing Nazis. There's the marketing of the film: Is it a historical thriller featuring Cruise in an eye patch, or is it a straight-up action picture full of explosions? And then, of course, there is the Cruise factor itself — the fact that his very presence adds a layer of tabloid-friendly fascination.

Turns out Cruise is both the central figure in "Valkyrie" and its weakest link. He's distractingly bad in this, the iconography of his celebrity so strongly overshadowing his performance. He's just too powerfully contemporary. With his hard, flat American accent, he stands out in every single scene. And he's not a good enough actor to immerse himself in this kind of period piece, or allow us to do the same. (Then again, if he had affected a German accent — or a British one to blend in among his co-stars — he would have invited derision for that, too. Maybe the guy just can't win.)

It's too bad, too, because "Valkyrie" looks great. With its impeccable production design and German locations — including the Bendlerblock in Berlin, where Operation Valkyrie began and where members of the anti-Nazi resistance were executed after it failed — it feels substantial, never CGI-fake, and it moves fluidly. No one ever doubted the ability of Bryan Singer, director of the first two "X-Men" movies, to make a solid, energetic actioner. But — and this is going to sound like more piling on — Cruise undermines the potential of "Valkyrie" at every turn.

He's outclassed and outmatched by every member of the strong supporting cast, any of whom would have been more believable as Stauffenberg: Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp and Bill Nighy as fellow German officers, even Eddie Izzard, who's a unique and unexpected choice.

Then again, the script from Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Academy Award for writing Singer's breakthrough film "The Usual Suspects," never fully fleshes out his motivations. (Nathan Alexander is a co-writer.) Stauffenberg is depicted as a loyal but wounded army officer who loves Germany yet finds himself increasingly horrified by Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

But we never get a sense of inner conflict, of the doubt he may have felt in betraying his duties, of the fear he may have faced in putting himself and his family in danger by going through with the plan. When Stauffenberg states with clenched-jawed, hushed certitude, "We have to kill Hitler," we'll just have to take his word for it that he feels strongly about the task he's about to lead.

He joins the German Resistance for the last of several failed plots to take out Hitler, scheduled for July 20, 1944. Stauffenberg was to plant a bomb and then head a regime change known as Operation Valkyrie, based on Hitler's own emergency plan to keep the government running in case of his death.

As we all know from the start, that didn't happen — Hitler killed himself a year later — and surprisingly, Singer never generates enough suspense to make us forget that as we're watching. The whole effort feels rather smoothly detached. The actual bomb-orchestration sequence is well-staged and has a few breathless moments, but a scene that's supposed to be pivotal and poignant — when Stauffenberg reluctantly thrusts his partially amputated arm in the air and declares "Heil Hitler!" — instead comes off as laughable.

"Valkyrie," a United Artists release, is rated PG-13 for violence and brief strong language. Running time: 120 minutes. One and a half stars out of four....

Christy Lemire, Associated Press

Say what you will about Tom Cruise’s acting in other movies; in "Valkyrie," which opened yesterday, he is awful. Amid British and European actors, Cruise stands out like a sore thumb. He doesn’t even attempt a German accent, his mannerisms are all from his "Jerry Maguire" era, and his earnestness suggests at best some kind of fictional American soldier trying to infiltrate the Luftwaffe. You knew it would be bad, and it is.

I’m more concerned that “Valkyrie” could represent a new trend in filmmaking: Nazi apologia. We know already what Valkyrie is about: a group of German soldiers who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944 and failed. Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg—referred to in this film constantly as “Stauffenberg”—as if to make him sound less German or something.

On top of that, there is the matter of the uniforms and the set design. Suddenly, we have German officers in World War II who are not wearing arm bands. Their swastikas are now small tokens on chests of medals. They look more like airline pilots than Nazi soldiers. When they meet, it looks like they’re at a lovely retreat in the Adirondacks. Director Bryan Singer is so sparing with his Nazi flags, swastikas, etc that you’d think the Nazis hardly existed. What’s everyone so upset about anyway?....

Fox News

Tom Cruise, his reputation defamed, his career desperately in need of a makeover, has chosen as his comeback vehicle a film in which he plays a Nazi officer who tries to kill Hitler. C'mon, Tom, you're not making this easy on us. Couldn't you have gone with a story that would allow your character to, oh, I don't know, succeed?

Valkyrie is the film, nimbly directed by Bryan Singer (X-Men) and based on a true story about an elaborate, complicated, almost-successful assassination attempt that occurred in 1944. Cruise plays Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, who at the film's outset has already been sent to the North African front as punishment for his outspokenness against Hitler (although he must not have been too outspoken, since he's still alive). He's one of a growing number of officers who believe that, as he puts it, "We can serve Germany or the Fuhrer, but not both." Germany is losing the war under Hitler's direction; the only hope is to remove him from power, cut their losses, and make peace with the Allies.

Once Stauffenberg's opinions become known throughout the underground, he's brought into the inner circle of coup plotters, whose numbers include a lot of high-ranking German officers -- a lot more than you'd think a cabal could have and still remain secret. Unfortunately, with their similar uniforms, their matching British accents, and their near-universal middle-aged-white-maleness, it's hard to keep track of them all in the film, but they're led by Major-Gen. von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh) and Gen. Beck (Terence Stamp), now retired from duty but still keenly interested in the future of Germany. Gen. Olbricht (Bill Nighy) is onboard but overly cautious; Gen. Fellgibel (Eddie Izzard) is a communications officer whose cooperation will be vital; and Gen. Fromm (Tom Wilkinson) -- by far the most interesting of the lot -- manages to endorse the plot without doing so openly, thus remaining sufficiently two-faced to save his own neck....

film.com

There are more... but why bother?

Marketing Militaria on the Web

"You can have the slickest web site on earth, with the greatest militaria ever seen, but if no one can find it, it don't mean dick!" *

Most knowledgable militaria dealers and collectors (...who know all the originals from the fakes; can quote the value of every piece to the penny, and know how to drive to every show in the country without a map) know zip when it comes to marketing on the net. To them, their web site is just a side line to their main business of buying and selling in person or on the phone. This is unfortunate because they are missing out on the greatest marketing tool since George Washington invented the dollar bill.

Don't get me wrong, I think every dealer should have a web site. It should provide basic info on the dealer such as his address and phone number, how he does business and what he deals in. And, he should offer some of his militaria on the site as well. This gives the dealer a "web presence" which is good P.R..

Building a web site is easy. If it's a simple one you might be able to do it yourself. If it's going to be more complicated, there are thousands of individuals and companies eager for your business. Either way, creating a web site and getting it up, is a real no-brainer.

Here's a typical scenario of what happens next.

Ok, let's say you've built your web site and it's up and running. Now what? You have to get the word out. So you email all your collector buddies and customers and tell them about it. You also trade links with some other sites. Maybe run an ad or two. Then you sit and wait... For the first couple of weeks you get quite a few "hits" as collectors look to see what you have. Then you notice that slowly you are getting less and less traffic, until finally, it drops off to a trickle. It doesn't always happen like this, only about 99% of the time.

What now? You're not getting any NEW customers. Why? The site is running; you've got great stuff for sale and besides, you're a nice guy... So why are things so slow? If you're imaginative at all, the next thing you do is check to see if people can find your site. So, you go to the search engines and start typing in search terms like , militaria, Nazi, Reich, daggers etc. etc. Each time you get a list of sites and you start looking down the list for your web site. After you get to about page 150 you figure that this is a waste of time. You can't find your site anywhere. Oh, it's there alright, probably buried down around page 1,243.... Great! What the heck good is that??? Answer: none. Research has shown that most people, after doing a search, will only look at the first few pages of sites. If you're site isn't on the first 3 or 4 pages, forget it! Hardly anyone is going to find you. And if you're buried down on page 1,243, you'll be lucky if you get a hit once every 10 years! (I've looked at all the militaria sites that are on the first couple of pages of results, using the most common search terms in our hobby. For the most part they are "grandfathered in". Which means they are there because they have been up so long, not beause they are doing anything magic... Search engines reward longevity.) Of course, your new site has none...

So, as things now stand, you have a shiny new web site, all your friends and old customers know about it and buy something occasionally. But, you're getting little or no new business. This sucks! You've spent money building this site; you're paying each month to host the darn thing; You spent a lot of time designing it and trying to make that stupid computer guy understand what you want. And for what? The business just ain't there. What should you do?

In order to get customers to the site you will have to do some "web promotion". Now, from what I've seen, most militaria sites mainly do this by trading links with their buddies. This works and will bring in some new customers. So, you sit at the computer for hours searching out good militaria sites which have a lot of links and you send them a nicely worded email offering a link trade. You get "some" responses and a few trades and you're off! Somewhat....

But still, thinking about those serach engines bugs you! You want YOUR site to be on the first couple of pages when people serach for your kind of militaria. The question is... How do you get there? Now the real fun starts.

Getting position on search engines is an art, as well as a science. The more heavily a category is represented on the net, the more difficult it is to "massage" the search engines to your benifit. There are bigger categories, but believe me, "militaria" is big enough.

Going into detail on how to make your site "search engine friendly" is beyond the scope of this little article, so I'll keep it short. First you have to "know" what to do. Then you have to do it. Every day you will need to work on the site. Checking your stats to see what collectors are searching for and "tweeking" the site to take advantage. Adding new content constantly. Seach engines don't like sites with stale information. You should add features to your site, like this blog, a newsletter, or a militaria forum, to help generate new content. You even need to go so far as to make sure certain characters don't appear in any of the URLs on your site, because they can lower your search engine rating! The "tweeking" can get into some very detailed work. And it goes on and on.... You don't just do these things once and forget it. You have to do them every day to keep on top of things. It takes time... and more time.

You can hire one of those so-called "web promotion companies" who promise to get you on a slew of search engines. They'll do just that, get your site on dozens of search engines... on page 1,243, or 1,242 if you're lucky. And besides most of those search engines don't mean a thing. There are only a hand full that are important. These "services" are a waste of money. You're really on your own.

So, in conclusion, if you spend time studying how the net works; improving and maintaining your site daily; constantly adding new content; massaging the search engines for advantage; and doing all those other little fun things that are required... you will have a successful militaria web site. Of course, you won't have time left to buy or sell any militaria.

Bob Treend

* An old saying I just made up. B.T.