Kotaku found a story from German Video Game Blog 4players.de (Google Translation) stating that Activision is voluntarily recalling Wolfenstein (all platforms) because the coding team forgot to wipe a few swastika’s from the game. Germany (i.e. the allied controlled govt of 1945) outlawed the symbol, and pretty much all things Nazi following the the end of WWII.

From Wikipedia:

The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland) is the constitution[1] of Germany. It was formally approved on 8 May 1949, and, with the signature of the Allies, came into effect on 23 May 1949, as the constitution of West Germany.

The Grundgesetz gives the parliament the power to ban organizations, symbols, well pretty much anything that can potentially disrupt the democratic order. In 1960 those powers were invoked to officially add the Nazi party to the banned organizations list. And since then the German government has tried to wipe all traces of the Nazi’s from history.

Trying to rewrite history has not been possible even a thousand years ago when there were only a few hundred people in the entire world who could read and write so you could contain any “forbidden Knowledge”. Trying this kind of crap in the age of the internet is like fixing a leaking ship by drilling a second hole to let the water out.

Everyone in Germany knows about the war, they know about the Holocaust. Hell they even have a Neo-Nazi political party IN GERMANY, let alone the thousands of groups around the world that still espouse that Ideology.

I have never been a fan of the “think of the children” crowd let alone a “think of the adults” crowd. You might as well believe that racism will disappear in America if only we can stop people from ever reading or hearing the words, Nigger, Spic, Kike, Charlie, Cracker, Gook, etc….. IF they want to change the minds of current an future generations they need to have an education compaign that states what happened, why it was wrong, and what we can do to make the future better. Simply trying to ban these organizations, and even the smallest reference to them has done nothing , and will continue to do nothing to change things for the better.

‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’
——–George Santayana
Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner’s, 1905, page 284

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