] Of all the wargame groups, re-anacting groups, military modelling groups, amateur military history groups, library books on military history, etc. etc., the most popular eras seem to have been World War II and Napoleonic times. What is the attraction? Why does Napoleon beat The Kaiser and Ghengis Khan, and Caesar, but not Hitler? Or am I imagining things, and Nappy isn't actually that popular?

He's popular enough. I think it's a combination of things. We know a lot about Napoleonic battles, because an awful lot of people wrote about them afterwards. There was a lot to write about, because the era lasted a long time & the battles were decisive. And the battles were decisive because of the revolution in military thinking that began in the latter part of the 18th century & sprang full blown to life in the 19th. You don't find as many re-enactors of, say, the wars of LXIV, because there weren't as many battles to begin with, they were rarely decisive in a campaign (complicated argument dealing with length of campaigning season & difficulty of supply away from depot omitted here), and the smaller army-sizes makes them less interesting to work with. I mean, Marlborough only fought, what, 4 major battles? As opposed to, what, 30 or 40 sieges? Napoleon might fight 4 major battles in a single season, while I can only recall a few sieges during the whole 20+ years.

Then, too, the Napoleonic battles are part of a general European war. The 18th century battles aren't, not in the same sense, because the strategic and operational mobility of the forces is limited. The campaigns tend to stay in the same frontier areas. Not as much variety. You would get some of the same effect in the 30 Years War, say, but military organization and art are more primitive then & less well-known. Even more so the further back you go. This is less true for the 7 Years War--but then, that tends to be a relatively popular period as well--and having Frederick the Great as a staple doesn't hurt (& of course is analogous to having Napoleon to kick around).

For re-enactors, I don't think it's quite so clear cut. In the US, for example, the Civil War is what they go for, and to a lesser extent, the Revolutionary War. There's very little Napoleonics going on, comparatively, and possibly because we have the battlefields for the first two, and not for the third. (Also, re-enacting WWII is tough in terms of finding working AFVs (-: Although you do find resourceful groups who have restored or improvised working reproductions even of these.)

Got to run, but this should give you something to think about.

YHOS,
Snarkhunter