German football hero battles Nazi doppelgänger

German football hero Bastian Schweinsteiger is none too happy with a Chinese-made Wehrmacht action figure which bears both his name and an uncanny resemblance to the Manchester United midfielder. London's Evening Standard reports that Schweinsteiger has set a pack of attack lawyers on Hong Kong manufacturer DiD over the " …

[Destroy All Monsters]

The Wehrmacht did nothing wrong!

We believe most Germans look like this.

The reverse medal of "all asians look the same"

[MJI]

A strange one

We should all know that the Wehrmacht were the military and not the Nazis, the men sent to the front to die.

So there is no embarrassment of being compared to a Nazi (as they were SS and the like), but when did you last see an Action Man type figure with a willy?

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: A strange one

Lots of Nazis in the Wehrmacht.

Source: my two granddads.

[Charles Manning]

Wehrmacht != Nazis Bah!

Oh FFS.... Most of Germany was Pro-Nazi, including the Wehrmacht. Even a friend of mine (now dead a few years) who was a German Jew who escaped Germany with his family at the tender age of seven. He was generally pro-Nazi in terms of how they got the country going again (though of course he didn't like the Jewish/Holocausty bit).

When a political party rises to the top, it is a symptom of the state of the nation. Germany got the Nazis because they wanted them.

Just was modern poms will lambaste Neville Chamberlain for being an appeaser, the Germans were sick of the appeasement policies of their bumble-fuck politicians. After WW1 they were left with huge reparations bills and the French annexed (aka invaded) the Rhinelands. The Germans were crushed and wanted to regain their place in the world.

They wanted a strong political force. They got behind Hitler because everyone else were sooks.

Hitler was not the cause, he was the symptom. Without that groundswell of dissatisfaction, he would never have had any support.

But no, the revisionists like to put everything onto Hitler: "We Germans were meek little lambs and Hitler did everything that was bad. None of us really liked the Nazis. It could have happened to anybody - like the common cold". Of course that suites everybody - just blame it all on the dead guy and we can bury an uncomfortable period history.

[Turtle]

@MJI Re: A strange one

Do not buy the myth of the clean hands of the Wehrmacht. Barbarity was officially encouraged in all German units - the war was officially and very publicly termed a "war of annihilation" and all German troops were expected to comport themselves accordingly.

[MJI]

Re: @MJI A strange one

Trying to make the point that it was not compulsary to be one.

And if they were so bad home come Allied pilots shot down were fine if caught by civilians or Luftwaffe,but in the doodoo if caught by the SS.

[g e]

The real embarrassment here...

Is being called Mr Pig-Stable, I'd have thought

Dict.cc offers the alternative 'Pig Feeder', also. Perhaps a friend of Cameron? (Even MORE embarrassing?)

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: The real embarrassment here...

Nah, that would be 'Schweinestall'.

'steigen' is a verb that roughly translates into 'to mount' - make of that what you will ;-)

(No really, go right ahead. He always played for the wrong teams from where I stand...)

A 'Steiger' however is a foreman in a coal mine, and you don't want to mess with them.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steiger_%28Bergbau%29

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steigerlied

[Stumpy Pepys]

Re: The real embarrassment here...

[oops, was beaten to it]

[Hans 1]

Re: The real embarrassment here...

Schweinsteiger literally means pig-fucker, iyam. What does his surname have to do here? The toy is called Bastian.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs this model anyway?

I had the usual action figures as a kid, but I can't remember ever needing a cheerful German carrying two loaves of bread and a milk churn.

Perhaps he's part of the special 'Allo 'Allo collection.

[Graham Dawson]

Re: Who needs this model anyway?

Nah, he's not camp enough.

[Midnight]

Re: Who needs this model anyway?

If it was then it should come with wet celery and a flying helmet.

[Turtle]

Marketing Failure: Re: Who needs this model anyway?

"I had the usual action figures as a kid, but I can't remember ever needing a cheerful German carrying two loaves of bread and a milk churn."

An egregious marketing failure: if they'd simply replace the churn with a teller mine, they'd have something that everyone would want.

[Voland's right hand]

Missed one

They should compare Leonardo Di Caprio with Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (aka Lenin).

There is a reason too. It is called "Contracted Genetics at an Early Age".

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one...

...that thinks the model looks nothing like the footballer?

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: Am I the only one...

No, which for these things probably means it was based on him, given that they seem to have an almost passport-photo like ability to look nothing like their real-life counterparts normally.

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: Am I the only one...

"Passport pictures are what people relly look like."

- David Byrne (IIRC it's on the Stop Making Sense sleeve notes)

[GregC]

If you look like your passport photo...

...you probably need to get to a doctor. You may not have much time.

[SteveK]

Re: Am I the only one...

The picture used on the BBC article looked closer, although still not a clear copy.

[Anonymous Custard]

SPB?

And should Lester be contacting the lawyers over the usage of the pipe in the Stalin image, on behalf of all true boffins throughout history (and at least one fictional detective, according to the icon ------> )?

[Anonymous Coward]

takes me back to the 21st feb 1941

[Millwright]

They're not too good with names. The Russian under Uncle Joe reads ' Iosif Vissarionovitch Stalin' as is correct, but the English is a mashup of his early and late surnames. He was Iosif Vissarionovitch Dzhugashvili (Russian form) in his Georgia days.

[hatti]

I think it's quite flattering, I'd be more offended if it was inflatable and naked though

[Anonymous Coward]

How inflatable...

[MyffyW]

That action figure has a nice warm coat and two loaves of bread, which would seem to be some deviation from the lousy conditions on the eastern front.

[Anonymous Coward]

What you can't see...

Is that Russian peasant lying in the mud that he just acquired the two loaves of bread from.

[Anonymous Coward]

A Stalin action figure.

Someone tell Seamus Milne, he'll be on that website quicker than you can say gulag.

[LINCARD1000]

The Matrix must be running low on memory - it's recycling faces a little too often now ;-)

(Termy icon because it's the closest I can think of)

[Crazy Operations Guy]

Well, the face database is probably using an unsigned 32-bit integer, which would give us 4.3 Billion face combinations total.

[Crazy Operations Guy]

Oh Stalin

As a young adult, he spent his time stealing girlfriends, then moved on to just stealing your stuff, the your country, your freedom, and finally stealing your life.

It feels so surreal to see what (in)famous people looked like before they turned into the old, crotchety people we now know.