Tea Party-Backed OH-9 Republican Candidate is a Nazi Reenactor

David Streeter — October 10, 2010 – 8:37 am | Comments (0) Add a comment

The Atlantic reported that Tea Party-backed Republican House candidate Rich Iott (R-OH) has “for years donned a German Waffen SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments.”

Click here to see a photo of him in his uniform.

The Atlantic reported:

Iott, whose district lies in Northwest Ohio, was involved with a group that calls itself Wiking, whose members are devoted to re-enacting the exploits of an actual Nazi division, the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, which fought mainly on the Eastern Front during World War II. Iott’s participation in the Wiking group is not mentioned on his campaign’s website, and his name and photographs were removed from the Wiking website.

When contacted by The Atlantic, Iott confirmed his involvement with the group over a number of years, but said his interest in Nazi Germany was historical and he does not subscribe to the tenets of Nazism. ‘No, absolutely not,’ he said. ‘In fact, there’s a disclaimer on the [Wiking] website. And you’ll find that on almost any reenactment website. It’s purely historical interest in World War II.’

Iott said of his involvement with the Nazi re-enactors:

‘I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that here was a relatively small country that from a strictly military point of view accomplished incredible things. I mean, they took over most of Europe and Russia, and it really took the combined effort of the free world to defeat them. From a purely historical military point of view, that’s incredible.’

The Atlantic also reported:

Iott says the group chose the Wiking division in part because it fought on the Eastern Front, mainly against the Russian Army, and not U.S. or British soldiers. The group’s website includes a lengthy history of the Wiking unit, a recruitment video, and footage of goose-stepping German soldiers marching in the Warsaw victory parade after Poland fell in 1939. The website makes scant mention of the atrocities committed by the Waffen SS, and includes only a glancing reference to the ‘twisted’ nature of Nazism.

One historian said of Iott’s group:

‘They have a sanitized, romanticized view of what occurred.’ [Charles W.] Sydnor added that re-enactments like the Wiking group’s are illegal in Germany and Austria. ‘If you were to put on an SS uniform in Germany today, you’d be arrested.’

The Atlantic asked Iott what he thought his participation with Nazi reenactments would mean for Jewish voters:

Asked whether his participation in a Nazi re-enactor’s group might not upset voters, particularly Jewish voters, Iott said he hoped it would not: ‘They have to take it in context. There’s reenactors out there who do everything. You couldn’t do Civil War re-enacting if somebody didn’t play the role of the Confederates. [This] is something that’s definitely way in the past. ... [I hope voters] take it in context and see it for what it is, an interest in World War II history. And that’s strictly all.’

The Atlantic also noted that the historical romance Iott and the Wiking group contains a major historical omission:

The actual Wiking unit has a history as grisly as that of other Nazi divisions. In her book ‘The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews Through Austria in the Spring of 1945,’ Eleonore Lappin, the noted Austrian historian, writes that soldiers from the Wiking division were involved in the killing of Hungarian Jews in March and April 1945, before surrendering to American forces in Austria.

‘What you often hear is that the [Wiking] division was never formally accused of anything, but that’s kind of a dodge,’ says Prof. Rob Citino, of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas, who examined the Wiking website. ‘The entire German war effort in the East was a racial crusade to rid the world of “subhumans,” Slavs were going to be enslaved in numbers of tens of millions. And of course the multimillion Jewish population of Eastern Europe was going to be exterminated altogether. That’s what all these folks were doing in the East. It sends a shiver up my spine to think that people want to dress up and play SS on the weekend.’

NJDC condemns Iott for his participation with the Wiking reenactors and believes that it shows an alarming lack of judgment. Iott’s historical affinity for the Wiking SS group reflects a concerning, total apathy towards the concerns and sensitivities of Jewish voters - especially the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors. Further, it is a slap in the face towards all American and allied WWII veterans.

It should be noted that the Republican Party has rightly removed Iott from their Young Guns website and that others have begun to denounce him. Nonetheless, NJDC calls upon all remaining Republican Party leaders to denounce this shameful candidate.

Sadly, this is another example of the Republicans choosing to support candidates who simply are not ready for prime time, let alone ready to fight for the concerns of American Jews within the halls of Congress.

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