Historical Reenactment - Criticism

Criticism

It is often difficult for veterans or the public to understand why reenactors do what they do, or there may be questions as to the motivation, or the level of knowledge of the reenactors.

Common criticisms revolve around motivation, as well as concerns about the level of immersion found in some arenas, notably those involving 20th Century conflicts where combatants had stricter regulations regarding personal grooming. The average age of reenactors is also generally far higher than the average age of soldiers in most conflicts. Few reenactment units discriminate, however, based on age and physical condition. However, there has been criticism about the exclusion of women from some American Civil War combat reenactment units. While there were a small handful of women who may have fought in the conflict, almost all of them did so disguised as men. Attitudes on this topic seem to vary widely.

Another concern mentioned by Thompson's book is the "fantasy farb", or tendency of reenactors to gravitate towards "elite" units such as commandos, paratroopers, or Waffen-SS units resulting in an under-representation in the reenactment community of what were the most common types of military troops in the period being reenacted. This is largely drawn from a North American perspective, although there are parallel issues on the European scene, such as the tendency in Britain for Napoleonic War reenactors to perform as members of the 95th Rifles (perhaps due to the popularity of Sharpe) and larger proportions of plate-armoured soldiers in later medieval groups. In the UK there are multi-period events such as "History in Action" where groups get to look at each other's appearance and performances as well as perform for the general public. One other concern which can cause misunderstandings are in countries where weapons of most forms are legally or socially frowned upon (such as in the UK). Reenactors own interactions with the public, and the work of volunteer groups like NARES, help to mitigate such issues.

A final concern is that reenactors may become, or already be, too closely aligned to the controversial political beliefs that some of the reenacted armies fought for, such as Nazism, or the Confederate South. For example, U.S. politician Rich Iott's participation in a World War II reenactment group portraying the Nazi 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking attracted considerable media attention during his 2010 Congressional campaign.