Chronotriggered destroys watches… #7

Leaving the WWII history aside B contains 3 of my favourite brands. B stays and the rest has to go

Again, the rules is rules… pick one and it goes 😂

I’m not stupid. I just find the questions too difficult. Then I send C away.

It’s supposed to be difficult, when have I ever made it easy? 😂

None of these companies today bear any responsibility for their ancestor's misdeeds. Laco was even owned by Timex for a spell, so some sins must have been forgiven.

The more one studies and understands the bombing of Dresden, the less defensible it becomes. Good guys are supposed to act like good guys. War has a way of blurring distinctions. Morality and ideals can seem inconvenient or old fashioned.

I have never fetishized military watches. I have some military inspired watches, it is hard to collect from the 1940's and not pick up some, but I don't think that I have any that were worn by a person in uniform. I think that military watches can be aesthetically pleasing, but I don't have any connection to them.

If one has to go however, it should be the flieger. There are pilot's watches that are just as functional without all of the historical baggage. It is just easier to go with the original bad guys.

Now this one gets my interest, as a history buff and an all round military watch guy. This was simultaneously the easiest and hardest on to choose.

Type B flieger- A pilots watch, some would say THE pilots watch. Smart design, highly legible. What a pilots watch should be. Worn on the wrists of navigators bombing the sh*t out of dear old blighty, in the name of the most evil man to ever live. But, and this is a hill ill die on, these watches WERE NOT WORN BY NAZIS. They were worn by the Luftwaffe navigators. Luftwaffe, meaning these were just ordinary men who enlisted. Not Adolf Hitler, not Joseph Goebels, ordinary men who were told that if they truly loved their country they would get into that cockpit. Its small, but it distances these men far enough away from those evil 'men' that I'd feel OK about wearing an original. Is it illogical? Probably.

6B/159- A watch that I actually want to own one day. These were worn by 'the few' and as a boy who grew up dripfed on war movies, that instantly makes this watch cool. It is worth mentioning Dresden though, as I find this stuff fascinating. Is an eye for an eye justified? Do the ends justify the means? Things happen in wartime. Horrible things. Awful things that good men have to do. There is no black and white in war, and that is an awful thing that our great country did, but 'a true war story is never moral'. Its something we have to accept as part of history.

Radiomir- I've never actually heard of the MAS, and so thanks to a lack of knowledge I am indifferent to this model. I do however have some reading to do now.

Seikosha- Owch. This is where logic flies out the window and human bias comes in, but this series is based off of these irrational human emotions. Almost everything I said about the type B could be put into this column. Just regular men, sent to do the dirty work of 'men's ikea hirohito. If they loved Japan, and had any sense of honour, the next life awited them. But, I have family connections to the Pacific theatre, and hearing stories from there makes my blood boil. I cannot distance the Japanese Imperial Air force far enough away from those horrendous acts and evil 'men' that I could feel comfortable wearing an original. Therefore, the seikosha must go.

The Soviet Union Allies didn't make the cut, I see.

I assign no morality to inanimate objects. I just vote A because the flieger is about the only German thing from the Reich era that has no damn style to it whatsoever.

If the Radiomir had that goofy 9 o'clock small seconds subdial, this would have been a tougher call. Note that all air watches had central seconds. Some makers still, still haven't updated all their offerings to include this innovation. From four score years ago.

Yes, I’m sorry that I didn’t manage to get anything Soviet in there. I am limited to 4 on a poll…

The Radiomir. This is the origin of that stupid 30m dive watch thing, isn't it? 

I figured most would want to destroy the "Nazi" watch, but I had to pick the Japanese watch since it was used in the first direct military strike on the United States.

It's interesting in this day and age of canceling people and companies for something they said or did years in the past, that we still blithely ignore collaborations with governments that committed genocide - whether that be Germany (Jewish), Russia (Jewish) or Japan (Chinese and Koreans). Most likely we feel that making watches is a little too attenuated from the actual criminal actions of the respective governments who committed the atrocious crimes against humanity.

I thought that you were going to make a point about the Swiss and what "neutrality" really meant.

I voted A. Not because of any connection to WW2 history but because I can't stand the style of the dial. Therefore the flieger gets shot down and shredded by the virtue of being f*ing ugly.

“It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.” 
― John Stuart Mill

WWII was such a horrible and devastating time in humankind's history. I've been to the Anne Frank House, Pearl Harbor, and the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. All a stark and sobering reminder of the atrocities that occurred during those few years. I don't think there is a watch here I'd ever be comfortable wearing.

For the sake of the exercise, I decided to select the Seikosha Tensoku. The actions of the Japanese Imperial Air Force were the first domino to drop in the path that led to nuclear war. In the words of James Agee in response to Truman's speech,

"The race had been won, the weapon had been used by those on whom civilization could best hope to depend; but the demonstration of power against living creatures instead of dead matter created a bottomless wound in the living conscience of the race. The rational mind had won the most Promethean of its conquests over nature, and had put into the hands of common man the fire and force of the sun itself."

Something I feel is an enormous misjudgment and a "bottomless wound" that we today, 77 years later, still live in fear of. 

But that's just my opinion. I will also be interested to see what Crunchers' thoughts are in response to the post. 

That's a very tough call and very tough argument. What separates an ordinary individual who loved his country and enlisted from a Nazi? I don't know. I'm in a very similar situation right now to those ordinary people of Germany in late 1930s early 1940s and I love my country (Russia) very much, but I understand what is happening and will never kill or harm other people for the imperial aims. War is dirty that is no doubt, but the moral is inside us.

Yeah, history 

My grandfather - was English, and became a POW after being captured in Singapore,  was forced to work on the death railway into Burma.  He was one of the few surviving the experienc.
My wife’s grandfather, a junior zero pilot soon was to graduate to kamikaze work, when he was saved by the war’s end.

Both were kind, gentle, and amazing men. 

Before and during WW2, Japansee citizens considered their leaders to be semi divine , following orders, even to one’s demise wasn’t questioned.    Ones inaction, would be frowned on by both your living and dead ancestors.

Both men were being loyal to their respective countries, and I loved both of them. 

The Flieger gets crushed, nothing to do with countries or WW2, but because I don’t like flieger style 

Slava Ukraine 🇺🇦 

I need an option to save them all. Watches should not take responsibility for people wearing them. Even the Reverso. We can judge people who made them, but these four are just functional little pieces. 

No… and it’s not like we can attribute the blame to the watch, but this whole series is kind of about the feelings these watches bring up. This is (a) why every instalment is difficult, and (b) the answers are so wide-ranging. There is no right answer, and there is no wrong answer. In the same way it is difficult to separate art from the artist at times, it is fun (for me) to try and see what makes a lot of you tick. You won’t find anyone ask these questions on IG…

I chose D (Seikosha Tensoku) because the atrocities of the Japanese Empire and the Japanese ultra-nationalist who still denies it, but, to quote Griffin Johnson from The Armchair Historian YouTube channel: "war is a brutal business, and sometimes, international law is just ink on a piece of paper." (from the video about the fates of German soldiers after the Second World War)

Damn. Stay safe my friend 🙏 

They both sound like good men

Destruction is… not quite my style, but I understand the question…

And would have to go with A, having first stepped it down to ‘what watches are you unlikely to wear due to history’ and qualifying it with “I also don’t much mind what other people wear, and am fully aware of the difference between the people of the past and the people of the present” which I very much am, and bear no ill will to anyone based on their nationality nor national history.

(In fact, my wife quite likes flieger watches, and quite likes the Laco models — maybe one day)

For me though, I do not much like the design (as I said at the meet, one of my design tastes or quirks is that I do not even much like numerals on watches, and fliegers are all about the numerals) but in reference to what is talked about here in terms of corporate rather than national history, I could not continue to wear my grandads old watch in good taste, if I then had it share the watch box with a flieger (especially for example a Junkers) given how he lived through the blitz.

I think if maybe it was the same company, but a style of watch that does not harken back to those exact designs in that era, then I could possibly Quite happily get one if it were to my taste… it would almost be a physical symbol of precisely how a thing, person, nation, or company, can move on through time. 
It is a never ending source of amusement that the car of choice for those of a Hippy mindset is the Volkswagen after all.

Another brand I would likely avoid is Vostok, partially because of now, but also because of back then (well, the occupation of East Germany and the Cold War at least) and history again.

But it is not so heavy really — perhaps I am fortunate to not really have to think about it so often, because the watches are not to my taste anyway. 
 

Not enough fiddly bits xD 

Thanks for pointing this article to me. Maybe the post could be extended but i’d understand that would be beyond the poll and would take hours of research.

If I could, i’d choose all to be destroyed, but in order of atrocities the top one that hits home as a Singaporean, I would choose D.

I do love Japan, and Seiko, today But it still hurts that they haven’t formally apologised (i think?)