Wargaming on an epic scale - Harry Pearson on Norman Bel Geddes

I am indebted to Harry Pearson for this article on Norman Bel Geddes and his War Game.

If you think you spend too much money on toy soldiers remember the name Norman Bel Geddes. It is estimated that the vast naval and land battles the architect and designer hosted in the basement of his Manhattan townhouse cost him over $13,000. And that was back in the early 1930s when the world’s highest paid sportsman, Babe Ruth was pulling in $80,000 a season. Imagine spending a fifth of Wayne Rooney’s annual wage packet on figures and you’re near to seeing the mighty scale of Bel Geddes’ gaming fixation.



Born in Michigan in 1893, Norman Bel Geddes was an architect, designer; filmmaker and all-round visionary who popularised the concept of streamlining and who’s utopian Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair shaped humanity’s vision of what the 21st century would look like until well into the 1970s. He’d begun his career designing sets for the Metropolitan Opera and was married to the theatrical costume designer Edith Lutyens, a former-Belgian fencing champion who worked with Orson Welles and Jerome Robbins. The couple’s daughter Barbara would become an actress, best known for playing Miss Ellie in Dallas.

The lavish nature of Geddes’ games, the fashionable location, the a-list participants they attracted (including Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, five-star generals, Russian chess champions, admirals, newspaper editors, even Hollywood sweetheart Mary Pickford) and the fact that – in the era of Prohibition – much alcohol was served, make them perhaps the most swinging and glamorous wargames in history. Geddes; miniature manoeuvres attracted a good deal of favourable media attention – featuring in articles in Time, The New York Times and the New York Sun. Life magazine was particularly impressed, ran several features on the game and during WW2 commissioned Bel Geddes to make a series of huge dioramas depicting actions in Europe and the Pacific.



By 1930 Geddes had already designed a whole range of large-scale entertainments, including mechanical baseball and golf games and a very popular model horse-racing track, but all of these paled into insignificance compared to his wargames set-up.

Like HG Wells, Geddes had pacifist leanings and seems to have believed – like Wells – that the best way to persuade people not to fight real wars was to get them involved in fighting miniature ones. His wargame was a massive affair fought over a period of weeks on a table well over twenty-feet long, with rules of striking complexity, based loosely on World War One, but featuring technology that fell “within the realm of probability” including motorized supply carriers, submarines, tanks and armored cars, machine guns, and landing barges.



“It’s a game, of course… but an extraordinary one… A bird’s eye view of modern warfare for players who can see like birds and reason like mathematicians,” noted a writer from the New York Sun, “Navies, complete from battleships to minesweepers… A flight of airplanes is a tiny symbol on a two-inch-long pin stem. Submerged submarines are invisible, but there…”

You can read more about the extraordinary Norman Bel Geddes and his amazing games here

The Scandinavian Wells, by Harry Pearson

Thanks to Harry Pearson for writing this piece for Vintage Wargaming about a little known (take deep breath and wait for comments) Swedish wargames pioneer.

HG Wells’ classic Little Wars was the first book aimed specifically at people who wanted to fight battles with toy soldiers. The second came from a rather unusual source. Ossian J D Elgstrom (1883-1950) was a Swedish ethnologist, author and artist who may well be the only wargamer ever to have competed in the Olympics (admittedly it was in the “mixed painting” art event at the Berlin games of 1936, and he didn’t win a medal, but even so…).

Elgstrom specialised in richly illustrated books on the myths and folklore of the far north, but as the rest of Europe edged towards the catastrophe of World War One he took a break from collating the legends of Greenland and Sapmi and penned Hur Man For Krig Med Tennsoldater (A Manual For War With Tin Soldiers).

Albert Bonniers, a prestigious Stockholm publisher who might best be described as the Swedish equivalent of the UK’s Penguin, published the book in the autumn of 1914 as part of a “pocketbook” series which also included volumes of Tibet, Prince Otto fo Denmark and the childhood of Erik Menveds. The cover price was 2 krona. Two years later Elgstrom’s work was translated into German and published, as Wie man mit Zinnsoldaten Krieg Fihrt, in Liepzig. Germany’s own early wargame book, Karl Floericke’s Strategie und Taktik des Spieles mit Bleisoldaten appeared around the same time.

Some years ago I came across a rather battered and coffees-stained copy of Hur Man For Krig Med Tennsoldater in a vintage toyshop in Stockholm’s Gamla Stam. It has hard covers, is about the size and thickness of one of the old Ladybird books and is illustrated throughout with drawings and plans of what must be the most eccentric and wonderful wargames paraphernalia ever invented. Sadly my knowledge of Swedish is not sufficient to translate the main text, but the wild originality of Elgstrom’s approach can easily be gleaned from the illustration on page 11, which shows how to make a machine-gun (“kulspruter”) using 7mm hollow glass rod and a wooden box filled with dried peas.

Other fabulous devices include the “gummislang kannon”, which might best be described as a mini ballista firing rods fitted with wire heads to simulate “direct bomabardment with shell”, and the “bombkastare” a sort of tabletop siege engine made from wood, a steel strip and a jam jar lid which flings a lethal-looking missile fashioned by sticking cocktail sticks into a cork to simulate “indirect bombardment” presumably by howitzers.


Amazingly Elgstrom manages to top even this extraordinary contraption when, a few pages later in a section headed Minor I Terrangen, he demonstrates how to construct a tabletop landmine using a spring-loaded steel strip released by a fuse made from saltpetre paper (available, the text explains, in photographic shops at a cost of 25 to 30 ore per packet). Take that Lionel Tarr!

Following chapters on how to build a fort and make barbed wire and trench systems the book concludes with what appears to be an account of an action between North Army and South Army, some notes on compiling a wargame journal and an illustrated list of figures – tin flats – available from the Swedish makers Santesson and Ohlsson both of whom had shops in Stockholm at the time.


What sort of readership was Hur Man For Krig Med Tenn Soldater aimed at? My guess would be that like Wells, Elgstrom was covering the popular “children of all ages from 9-99” demographic. The model making required is certainly too complex for young children and at one point the author appears (as I say my grasp of Swedish is limited) to suggest that a suitable army might consist of 500 figures, 12 cannons and 7 machineguns, quite a collection for even the most privileged youngster.

Sadly many aspects of the book remain obscure. Did Elgstrom approach the publisher with the idea, or were Bonniers looking for a Swedish answer to Little Wars and commissioned him to do the job. Who did Elgstrom – living in Norrviken at the time he was writing Hur Man – wargame with? Did he continue with his hobby, and if so what refinements did he make to the manifold warmachines he had invented? Alas we may never know.

Harry Pearson

What Harry Pearson really meant to say about the first wargames figures

Idle googling of "Vintage Wargaming" turned up this interesting version of Harry Pearson's article for this site on Groves and Benoy figures . It is from http://radiolaluna.com/blogs/wargames/ and is reproduced here as a tribute to the spirit of Nigel Molesworth and his grate friend Peason. I particularly like the idea of midget battles, heap mules and the importance to the Peninsular Campaign of a Spanish char.

Vintage Wargaming: Harry Pearson on the at the start wargames figures

Groves And BenoyGroves and Benoy’s circumstances of one-inch Peninsular War figures can legitimately assertion to be the blue ribbon wargames figures at all times made. Designed almost 1947 via exemplary maker L Groves of Olton close to Birmingham and Brigadier James Francis Benoy (who had served as Quartermaster-General of the BEF in France in 1940 and later served in the done level in the Far East) the models were designed to be slotted into exclusively made copper bases to contention multiple believe stands specifically fact of midget battles. In complete it seems that at least same many thousand figures were made.

The infantry (standing anent 27mm high) and horses are mounted on sheer copper bases with clipped edges (similar in form to those of Stadden); rifles and horse reins are soldered on. All arms were manufactured as adeptly as wagons, heap mules, character figures (including Wellington) and equivalent a Spanish char. They are intelligible in look but with a charming “toy soldier” look that more than compensates fact of any deficiency in the modelmaking - a photo can be start on epoch 34 of John Garratt’s “Model Soldiers fact of the Connoisseur”. The just figures I care for in my aggregation came via eBay from a lady whose late-husband had bought them from a stallholder in Portobello Market in the 1960s.

It is unclear whether the figures were at all times commercially about in the accepted have or were made purely fact of Brigadier Benoy. mostly The make ready consists of six British riflemen, eight horses (but no riders) and four degree dashing cannons each with its manipulate discrepancy painted on the side in silver. Wade was to begin with based in Dublin, but he later moved to England and ran a plaything soldier secrete away in Brighton. Brigadier Benoy died in 1972, but anon previously to to that an Irish believe gatherer and barter, Shamus O.D Wade, had bought his complete aggregation of 2,000+ figures.

Wade kept a shard of the aggregation but clearly sold the buttress on to a gatherer in North America, Allan Robinson-Sager of Toronto in the old-time 1970s.

Harry Pearson on the first wargames figures

Groves And Benoy

Groves and Benoy’s range of one-inch Peninsular War figures can legitimately claim to be the first wargames figures ever made. Designed around 1947 by model maker L Groves of Olton near Birmingham and Brigadier James Francis Benoy (who had served as Quartermaster-General of the BEF in France in 1940 and later served in the same capacity in the Far East) the models were designed to be slotted into specially made copper bases to form multiple figure stands specifically for miniature battles.

In total it seems that at least several thousand figures were made. All arms were manufactured as well as wagons, pack mules, personality figures (including Wellington) and even a Spanish priest.

The infantry (standing about 27mm high) and horses are mounted on thin copper bases with clipped edges (similar in shape to those of Stadden); rifles and horse reins are soldered on. They are simple in style but with a charming “toy soldier” look that more than compensates for any deficiency in the modelmaking - a photo can be found on page 34 of John Garratt’s “Model Soldiers for the Connoisseur”. It is unclear whether the figures were ever commercially available in the accepted sense or were made purely for Brigadier Benoy. The only figures I have in my collection came via eBay from a lady whose late-husband had bought them from a stallholder in Portobello Market in the 1960s. The set consists of six British riflemen, eight horses (but no riders) and four rather splendid cannons each with its weight category painted on the side in white.

Brigadier Benoy died in 1972, but shortly prior to that an Irish figure collector and dealer, Shamus O.D Wade, had bought his entire collection of 2,000+ figures. Wade was originally based in Dublin, but he later moved to England and ran a toy soldier shop in Brighton. Wade kept a part of the collection but apparently sold the rest on to a collector in North America, Allan Robinson-Sager of Toronto in the early 1970s.

The Dover Amendments

Harry Pearson writes:

The Dover Coven

The Dover Amendments were designed by Charles Grant and “The Dover Coven” to use in conjunction with WRG 3rd Edition. Charles Grant mentions them frequently in his writing, notably in The Ancient Wargame and Ancient Battles for Wargamers, but I am not sure if they were ever published.

The Coven was a large, loose body of likeminded gamers from the Dover area who met at Grant’s house on Sundays. The photo shows (l-r) Rob Waldren, Charles Grant, Chris Spriggett, Peter Sheppard, Ray McGarry (on chair), Andrew Green and Ian Osborn. Other members included Alan Stoneman, David Matthews, Chris Longhurst, Martin Dice, Gregory Perry, Alan Bennett, Alan Angus, Derek Casey, Mark Smith, Nigel Andrews, Stanley and Martin Medrow, Andrew Mummery and Barry Martin. Charles Grant junior does not seem to have been much involved in the ancient games.