Germans Re-enacting the U.S. Civil War

As Confederates?  The Atlantic explains:

There is no escape from this uncomfortable truth. And unlike their American counterparts, most Confederate reenactors in Germany cannot claim to be honoring their ancestors or their heritage. There were, in fact, some 200,000 Germans who fought in the war. But by donning Confederate gray, they are betraying their legacy, not preserving it. 

"Take the [Germans] out of the Union Army and we could whip the Yankees easily," Robert E. Lee allegedly remarked. The quote, likely apocryphal, captures an important fact. Immigrants born in Germanic lands were enormously overrepresented in the Union Army. By one estimate, 176,817 donned the army blue, half again as many as their share of the overall population would have predicted. Other reliable estimates range as high as 216,000. And adding in the descendants of earlier generations of German immigrants would more than triple that total. The Germans, one contemporary judged, understood "from the beginning, the aim and the end of the civil war, [and] they have embraced the cause of the Union and emancipation with an ardor and a passion."   

If the German reenactors actually "model their characters in the reenactments after...German immigrant soldiers," as they explained to the reporter that they do, then those who wear gray have their work cut out for them. Less than 10 percent of the Germans immigrants in the United States, scarcely 70,000, dwelt in the entire territory controlled by the Confederacy at the outbreak of the war. Many fled north, with perhaps 2,000 joining the Union Army. Hundreds of those who remained petitioned the consuls of German states for protection from the draft. There were certainly some ardent secessionists, and even a few slaveholders, and between 3,500 and 7,000 Germans may have served in the Confederate Army. But of that number, many were conscripted, a large number deserted, and some mutinied. "The German minority of the South," one scholar concluded, "was all but insignificant politically, economically, and militarily during the American Civil War."

According to the story, the popularity of Gone With the Wind may be one reason why many people want to be Confederate re-enactors, but I would fear the possibility of darker reasons.  I would think that most Germans would want to honor the Iron Brigade (Black Hat Brigade):

The Iron Brigade (including the 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments) was in the thick of the battle on the first day. The 3rd, 5th, and 26th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters, Company G (Berdan’s Sharpshooters), also fought but sustained many fewer casualties.
On the morning of July 1st, the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry was the first to engage with Confederate troops. It immediately lost nearly a third of its men, among them Colonel Lucius Fairchild, whose left arm had to be amputated. On the second and third days, the remaining Iron Brigade units were generally kept away from the front lines. Over the course of the battle they lost a total of 578 men.
The 26th Wisconsin Infantry, which was composed almost entirely of German immigrants, fought throughout the first day and lost more than 210 of its men. The 3rd and the 5th Wisconsin Infantry regiments arrived late in the battle and saw less action than the other Wisconsin regiments. Berdan’s Sharpshooters were instrumental in repulsing Confederate attacks, including Pickett’s Charge on the third day.

Many Americans pick the Iron Brigade as their favorite.