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0:00Nearly everyone has played dress up at some point in their lives, whether putting on mom or dad's clothes as their favorite Marvel character at Comic-Con, or maybe as a Civil War. soldier. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where historians say that Civil War casualties were the highest, attracts many reenactors, as they carry their muskets, put on blue britches, and revel in the past.

0:27Producer Karen Michelle headed out to Gettysburg, and to slightly upstate New York, where no Civil War battles were fought, to meet some of these folks who play war. She did not dress up. Four reenactors set up tables at Black Snake Brewery in Statsburg, New York, one windy Saturday afternoon. While most visitors wore jeans and fleeces, these guys, they were all guys, wore replicas of Civil War soldiers' attire, down to the historically accurate buttons, tears, dirt, and crudely sewn patches. Each had a table, photos of ancestors, muskets, bullets, and cannonballs. Pete Bedrosian's been doing this for years.

1:08He goes by Lieutenant Pete Bedrosian in this crowd. But sometimes the reenactors break character. When we met, he was chowing down on a New York slice. Did they have pizza during the Civil War? No. So this is not an authentic lunch you're having? No. What I would have had, bacon. That is one hunk of bacon. He held up what looked like a denuded pig's trotter. That would be one third of a day's ration. Twelve ounces per man per day, about three to four ounces of coffee, ten hard crackers or a pound of flour. So three days' rations raise just under eight pounds. So what you would do is you'd pre-cook your rations.

1:51Why? It carries easier in your stomach than on your hip. So on the third day, you're mighty hungry. One table over, Mike Peets displays a bunch of muskets, the kind you see in pictures and in Ken Burns' documentaries. I picked one up. It was heavy, nearly 10 pounds, and that's plus the ammo. All carried by each soldier, along with all their other gear. Mike's practiced hauling it all. Have you ever shot one of these guns? Um, I am not a great shot with them. Even though he's been doing this, reenacting, for more than three decades, he got into it by seeing a demonstration. So I ended up asking, you know, what's this all about?

2:30and next thing you know I was in uniform and from there I was hooked. I was already interested in history. I'd been in the scouts so I'd done done camping. The Civil War camping is just a little more primitive than what I had done before. You know cooking on a wood fire so it was just a different level. Pete and I joined at pretty much the same time. So how many years exactly? 33 years. And, I mean, it's the kind of hobby where you can go as deep down the rabbit hole as you want to go. And those Civil War rabbits are some burrowers. Many reenactors began when they were younger. My name is Levi Riffenberg.

3:16And Levi, how old are you? I'm 15. What are you doing here? I'm a reenactor with the 150th New York Volunteers. I just joined the unit about a year ago. I'm just here, just hanging out. So what got you interested in Dip 15 and being a reenactor? Since fourth grade, I've been interested in history. Really, it started with my first trip to Gettysburg when I was probably 13, maybe 14. So then I started collecting Civil War relics, and then I met this group right where I'm standing. Of the fewer than a dozen members of the current 150th, Levi is an exception in that he's too young to have fought, while most of the others are too old to have fought and could be his grandpa.

4:04But all have in common a love of history, specifically this history. A belief that recreating warfare honors those who fought, rather than warfare itself. And another thing, says Pete. You look at their profile, scouts, campers, hunters, and military personnel are in the hobby. we have a common experience of maybe being uncomfortable or being with a group of fellows and having to make do with what you have. And I think that makes a big difference.

4:39We're chanting tonight on the old campground Give us a song to cheer Our weary hearts A song of home and friends we love to deal. Despite what they might go without, these guys do pump a fair amount of money into their hobby. Levi says he borrowed his garb from his elders. So tell me what you're wearing today. So I'm wearing, it's all wool. This is a replica of the model 1858 federal sack coat. So it has four general service eagle buttons. It was adopted when the U.S. changed their regulations in 1858. These are model 1861 trousers, which the volunteers wore. And these are called Jefferson booties.

5:31This morning we march into the valley of death as brothers in arms. Help us to be strong. Help us to do our duty. It's as if these folks have a whole costume crew on a movie set. And some of them have. Being an extra on movies and TV is a side gig for Pete Bedrosian. He's had roles as varied as passenger in a car seen from the back, and a priest in full vestments, non-speaking. Some even go to the trouble, like Karen, of taking a boat out to a ruin of a castle in the middle of the Hudson River, formerly the sometime home of Francis Frank Bannerman. That's the guy credited with the founding of the first Army-Navy surplus store on Broadway in New York City.

6:10Once they're there, people look for treasures, sometimes finding original Civil War cannonballs and Civil War uniform buttons. Mary Babcock sees the ruins from the window of her home on shore nearby. She's a tour guide there, and she knows the local lore, including a story about a Civil War cannon. This is the garden shed. It was when it was Bannerman's. It is still today. On top, I was told that there was a cannon kept out here. And of course, Bannerman's sons would come out here in the summertime. It was one of their favorite things to do, and they would often shoot it out into the river. A little bit like the Wild West back here, not many rules.

6:45There's lots of stuff left in the ruins and the waters around them and on the mainland in Beacon, New York, where archivist Rebecca Du Bois shows a military relic that bears signs of wear and war. Yes, we have a Civil War canteen. It looks like it almost has some bloodstains on it. And it's just got U.S. labeled on the front. And then we also have a black Civil War, like, wash basin, wash bathtub that they would carry around. And that's some schlepping.

7:23Believe it or not, war reenactments are a fairly common hobby in the U.S. Hundreds of thousands of men and women put on combat gear to reenact the lives of soldiers and the nitty-gritty of war without the deaths or lost limbs, and sometimes without toilet paper. But today that hobby has taken on new meaning. Survivalists on the left and right and even some pundits have suggested that a second U.S. Civil War isn't quite so unlikely as it might seem. So we thought we'd head out to learn a little bit more about why some folks like to play war and what they think about the prospect of another. That's on this episode of Things That Go Boom.

8:02I'm Lacey Healy.

8:13Hi, I'm Kate Laycock, host of DW's weekly European news podcast, Inside Europe. Our correspondents were there when the Berlin Wall fell, when the Balkans' wars broke out and when Britain voted to leave the European Union. Now the continent is changing again, and we're rising to the challenge with our weekly combination of expert analysis and on-the-ground reporting. Find Inside Europe wherever you get your podcasts.

8:45Pete Bedrosian, Lieutenant Bedrosian, leads demonstrations of military drills and camp life and takes his period wardrobe seriously. Pete and his wife Peggy have quite the array of Civil War garb in their Poughkeepsie, New York home. Much of it made by her, a former reenactor herself. She brought out blouses, a hoop skirt, which looked like multiple hula hoops stacked like a giant tomato cage. Corsets, wool stockings, nothing that looked especially comfy, especially given what Peggy and her compatriots did as reenactors while camping out. I used to belong, well, I guess I still do belong to the Hudson Valley Ladies Aid Society, which was the women's, not auxiliary.

9:29We had our own organization separate from the men. We did laundry. We did pretty much anything, not really nursing, but the women's support to the men of the 150th. The 150th was a regiment composed entirely of men from Dutchess County in New York's Hudson Valley. It's one of several regiments from New York State, though no Civil War battles were fought there. What do your friends think of your involvement with this? Well, they were crazy. You know, I'm going out this weekend to do laundry for other people by hand. Excuse me? Yes, that's what I'm going to do. Even the Bedrosian's infant daughter was involved.

10:11Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Since she was five months old. She was the youngest participant. Who unsurprisingly had some unique and counterintuitive needs as a reenactor. In the 21st century or 20th century, she had cloth diapers. So it wasn't a big deal for her to have cloth diapers. But out in the field, cloth diapers were not really practical. Even though they were more authentic, she would have disposable diapers in the field and cloth diapers at home.

10:46There are pilgrimage sites for reenactors where some of the more significant and violent moments of the Civil War were fought. None more weighted than the deadliest confrontation of them all, the Battle of Gettysburg. One of the most sought-after makers of historically accurate uniforms lives there. Another reason Karen trekked out to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to get a sense of what drew otherwise seemingly sensible folks, a postal worker, an engineer, a high schooler, to do this, to meet one of the people who made them look good while doing it. My name is Kyle Windahl. I'm the owner of Kay Windahl & Company Historic Reproductions.

11:23I make museum-quality reproductions of primarily Civil War-era uniforms and clothing and equipment. We're talking really real-as-possible reproductions. This is a serious undertaking. He's got work in museums. Kyle's creations may have authentic notions from Civil War uniforms and cost more than$1 ,000. It has sky blue piping on the cuffs and on the collar. His shop in the rear of his home, not far from the Gettysburg battlefields, is stuffed with bolts of fabric, bins of buttons, badges, embellishments, finished or in progress shirts, jackets, britches, and models of Star Trek's Starship Enterprise.

11:59Rather than outfitting himself as, say, Captain Kirk, he started dressing up and playing mid-19th century soldier as a teenager. Now nearing 40, he's a professional historian. Sort of, yeah. For all intents and purposes, I guess you could kind of call it a historical cosplay. Jocelyn Windall is Kyle's wife. Some people have equated it to that or like live-action role-playing. But there's also reenactors who do things like Vikings and medieval life, and there's a group in England called the Great Unwashed. Does it actually happen? Whereas, you know, Star Trek didn't happen. Red! Red! Red! You go!

12:40Where shall I go? What shall I do? Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Jocelyn, who's still an occasional reenactor, portrayed a member of a unit that needed a drummer. A musician, she was a natural, except that it meant disguising herself as a man. She referred to it as doing an impression. Yeah, I did. I had to have a masculine name just so that when they were doing roll call and stuff, because I was trying to be authentic. And so I would go by Joe. I didn't really do the female impression as much at the end. There was the dressing up as a drummer boy. So I would disguise myself as a guy and put my hair up under my hat.

13:20and wear the uniform and go out and drum in the fife and drum band and play the calls and things for the soldiers. I've had men not know I was female and then apologize to me later. And I was like, no, that's what I was trying to do. Like, I was trying to disguise myself, so I must have done a good job. After the break, we head to the battlefield.

13:51Right face. Civil War. Nearby on the battlefield, there are hundreds of monuments and markers to the men and few women. Historians estimate that at least 620 ,000 people died fighting in the Civil War, the bulk in Southern troops. Matt Atkinson, I'm a park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park. I have been in the service for 25 years and most of them here. And I make a living at a hobby. I truly do. Civil War is my hobby, and I get to come to a hobby every day. And I'm out here on my work day talking about the 150th New York. I mean, what more could you want out of life?

14:44We're standing on Culp's Hill, on the site of one of the most famous of the famous battles here. It's a foggy day, mighty cinematic, and easy to imagine thousands of soldiers charging up the rise, muskets blazing. Next to us is one of the grandest of commemorations of the dead, a 30-ish foot tall edifice to the 150th Duchess Regiment. This is where we get into art. You know, the Empire State, it looks like one piece of granite on top of each other They're stacking on up in kind of like a castle-like structure. It looks like a white castle. You say that in the South, and I start thinking about pickles, double pickles at one in the morning.

15:24Matt, who's from Mississippi, was a reenactor. He'd like his 16-year-old son to get into it, but nah. Matt reads an inscription on the monument. So one side says mustard in, one side says mustard out. Now, the mustard out date reads June 8, 1865. So the three years between 62 and 65, it's showing you the change in officers between who originally went in and who was commanding at the end. And I'll read it to you, the bottom, at least the overview of it. The regiment was recruited to 1 ,277 men. That means over the course of its three years, it had 1 ,277 men. killed in battle, officers two enlisted men, 44.

16:12So a total of 46 killed in battle, died from wounds and sickness in service, three officers and 85 men. Total lost in the service, 106 right here.

16:30Another side of the monument lists the many battles the 150th engaged in, Gettysburg notably among them. Taps was composed during the Civil War by a New Yorker, the much-decorated Major General Daniel Butterfield. The battlefield feels animate. You could almost see the turmoil. People come out and they try to feel the spirits or whatever, but I don't know about that. You come out here in this fog, and you can see how dense the smoke would have been in the battle and how the land can still speak to you. That is, so long as it doesn't dwell on death or serious injury. There were a lot of lost limbs during those battles.

17:10But, of course, reenactors come out of the experience unharmed. And the Parks? They would prefer they not let it all look too real.

17:23As the Gettysburg National Military Parks communication specialist, the PR guy, explained, they don't want people gyrating in death throats. He says it's neither respectful to the deceased nor the kids in the audience, though they don't shy away from things that go boom, rifles with black powder, cannons. But to see it battle and witness some mighty scary action, for that it takes going to see the four-story tall, bigger-than-a-football field, cyclorama indoors, at the somewhat sanitized, though some might say sanctified, museum. The scale here is akin to a giant Gulliver and the tiny Lilliputians, with Gulliver being the spectator and the Lilliputians on screen, here slaying each other.

18:07It's no wonder the park doesn't want reenactors literally reenacting. It's terrifying, even though the soldiers, horses, and artillery are all a painting. When Matt reminded me that in Pennsylvania, it's perfectly legal to walk around the park with a gun, a real one with 21st century ammo capability, that was a lot scarier.

18:31The thing is that as scholars and reenactors, and at least one park ranger will tell you, the term civil war is an oxymoron. There is nothing civil. The irony of a civil war is the definition of a civil war is between two groups of people that come from the same cloth. So there's nothing civil about it. Historian Kyle Windhoff. There are so many myths misconceptions and romanticizations. We have a lot of like Moonlight and Magnolia kind of mythology around the Civil War that like as a historian, as a living historian, my goal is to try to work to help to dispel a lot of those myths and to help people understand the Civil War was a lot more complex than a lot of people tend to think it is.

19:13And it was a lot more deadly. It was a lot dirtier. It was a lot more miserable of an experience. Any war basically comes down to power. The retention of power or the loss of power is what it's going to come down to. Now, in the American Civil War, you have, of course, slavery being number one and everything that falls number two, three and four behind it. You know, forms of government, tariffs, societies, however you want to split it. But it's still between two common people. In the Gettysburg of today, Karen says it's easier to believe in a tidier version of the past. Gettysburg is its own reenactment of that misery the historians mention.

19:56You'd never know. In the museum, the campsites and uniforms are clean, in perfect shape. And it's just that way in town, too. Do you need a coffee? I do not. All right. Have a good day. At the Gettysburg family restaurant in a small strip mall set back from the main drag, It seemed everyone was known by the servers and knew what they wanted from the menu of deluxe favorites, delicious melts, and triple-decker clubhouse specials. The place has been around since the 1980s. Sherry Stoltz's brothers owned it since 2001. Born in Gettysburg, Sherry had never been to a reenactment, though she'd seen plenty of reenactors.

20:34In the restaurant, in costume. As a local, do you find this amusing or what? No, as a local, I think it's honorable. They want people to know. Not that I want to be out there, but it's nice that they're out there in the heat, because most of the time it's really hot. And they just want people to know about the reenactment. But of course, nobody gets hurt or killed or maimed or any of that stuff. Or dirty even, probably, you know? Right. Not exactly like it was in the Civil War times. I want you to go. I hope a cannibal lad slap on you. I hope you're blowing into a million pieces. Never mind the rest.

21:13I follow your general idea. And when I'm dead on the order of my country, I hope you're cautious, Herjie. Goodbye, Scarlet. The reenactors, LARPers, cosplayers, whatever you want to call them, do to a point embody the soldiers they emulate. There's something about putting on a costume, whether it's Ghostbusters gear or a Civil War getup, that changes the wearer. The clothes affect a person's bearing. and maybe even their thinking. Not that many of the reenactors I spoke with, all deep students of the minutia of the Civil War, extrapolated to the present, when the country is again in conflict, the citizens have markedly different opinions on what constitutes America.

21:56Though for some, maybe it was the beer reenactors drank at the Black Snake Brewery that affected their attitude. Except for the youngest, 15-year-old Levi Riffenberg, unlike the others who wore his hair long, brushing his shoulders. Do you think we can have a civil war now? I would say yes, due to the election that we just had, how close it was and how mad people would get over it. So I would say yeah, yes. 71-year-old Pete Pedrosian. I can look at this and say it's more of a caution, looking what happened 160 years ago and say, don't wish for something. You may not want the wish to come true.

22:34Does it mean people aren't going to be silly or foolish or stupid? No, it just means that the likelihood of creating the same kind of environment that would have existed in the 1860s is far less likely today. 60-ish Mark Russell. The way things are going, I think we could, but it won't be like North against South. It'll be extremists, extreme left against extreme right. And us people who are in the middle, I don't know what we're going to do, which back then it was. The North was extreme by freeing the slaves. The South was extreme by continuing slavery. I just feel now that the way our society is, we are so divided left and right that it could cause problems.

23:13We'll have to see. I hope not. And we all need to come to the middle and moderate. Everybody has their choice and opinion, no matter what you like, no matter what the thing is. If I'm on one side and you're on the other side, well, I do my thing, you do your thing. And next to the battlefield, 40-ish Kyle Windahl. In order for people to get angry enough, you also have to make them uncomfortable. And it's too easy to say, oh, I would do that, but the football game's on today. I would do that, but now are we at a cold civil war? That's a little bit harder to answer. Some people would say yes, some people would say no.

23:52Certainly we are in one of the most divisive periods of American history since the civil war. I think probably the only period superseding where we are right now is the civil rights era. And that was a period where people were willing to act upon what they say. Now, the wild card here is, of course, the internet and the role that it plays in extremism and political radicalization on any political perspective that you have, because you can find an echo chamber for any view that you might want to look into somewhere on the internet. That's the wild card. How much is going on online that we're not aware of, that people aren't talking about openly, things like that.

24:33But ultimately, you know, it comes down to, are people angry enough to break their comfort to go and do violence or wide-scale violence? In order for it to become a civil war, you'd have to get potentially millions of Americans to decide to leave the comfort of their living rooms and pick up a gun and go do something. On both sides, you know, it's not just a one side or the other. And I just feel like at the moment, we're not at the point where millions of people are willing to leave that comfort. All of the Civil War reenactors I spoke with do agree their hobby will contribute to an awareness that war is nasty business.