Radetzky

michael and andreas are perfectly right. i can hardly see any sense in further arguing over this topic. and correct me if i'm wrong, is there someone out there accusing the allies of bringing unjustified war to nazi germany? now that's an unjustifiable argument in itself. blame france for not having crushed the nazi villains in 1936, after the wehrmacht re-occupied the rhineland, but this one - oh boy.

great work! i'd really like to liberate nw europe again, but this time without some of the rather annoying glitches of cmbo gameplay. may david I be a worthy successor of thomas' outstanding work for cmbo.

just a short summary of the weekend: the fascist invaders took a hell of a licking from the defenders of the motherland! seriously, being halfway through the battle, the waffen-ss lost about 3 full platoons and most support weapons. i experienced some desperate, costly house-to-house fighting over the ruins of south fedorowka. plus the appearance of t-34s tearing into my left flank didn't help to raise morale. this is going to get tough! p.s. george, i beg for reinforcements arriving - but i start thinking about not getting any?

take a look at http://www.warfarehq.com/index.php?page=interviews/cmbb_eu_release.shtml to find out why the WG were invented

george i'm currently advancing on south fedorowka, encountering light resistance so far. my opponent lives in the us, hence this game will take some time to play. but it's really one of the best maps i've seen so far. i decided to push with 2/3 of my troops to the south, leaving 1 coy to cover the rest. i hope my computer can cope with the battle growing in size. p.s. btw, mr peiper leads the way on foot, i won't let the evil hun come away in this one, of course

why shouldn't there be a repair truck? or some way to replenish ammo on the battlefield? we're talking about a game here, so why bother with what happened in real life? if something adds to game balance and playability - bring it on!

speaking of realism and historical conditions, there should be no dispute about cm being a game to play for recreation and fun. it wasn't made to stand up to the experience men made on the fields of battle some sixty years ago. so the technical worries of keeping vehicles going under the most difficult conditions possible isn't modeled at all. meaning mud, frostbite, sand, lack of oil and spare parts are no things to worry about in cm. even the advantage of russian-made equipment, being crude but reliable and better adapted to the outer conditions, hasn't been simulated. so what?

a german scientist working for the ig farben discovered sarin as early as 1938, a nerve toxic gas. some of you might know it for being used by some japanese terrorists in the tokyo underground in 1995. the germans started to produce nerve gas (called "tabun" and "sarin")in the spring of '42 in considerably amounts and made all necessary preparations to use them against the allies. by the end of '44 the germans had about 12.000 tons of tabun ready in bombs and grenades. but they believed in the allies having comparable stocks of nerve gas (they didn't even know about it until they discovered the factories and arsenals) and so never used it - thank the lord for that. anyone interested in the subject should take a look at "a higher form of killing" by robert harris / jeremy paxman (arrow books 2002)

does anyone know if cm simulates airbursts from bouncing shells on frozen ground? the russian rocket arty was feared by the germans bc of the intimidating optical effect (huge explosions) but less effective in causing casualties than normal shelling. so if properly modeled, a rocket barrage should easily suppress infantry but not button or take out tanks.

regarding gameplay, the good thing about early war engagements is the fact that the astonishing amount of combat engineers used to be seen in h2h battles shouldn't be de rigeur with the humble commander any more. these troops weren't trained and equipped to do the shooting on the frontline but to desttroy pillboxes, bridge rivers, lay or search for mines etc. the germans eg used them as regular infantry only in case of emergency. they were regarded as being trained specialists and thus far too valuable to waste in a everyday firefight.

snatched this one almost immediately after upload. looking guh-reat! as soon as all of peiper's men and tanks are wiped out, i'll post an aar at tpg.

i agree with paul and we should all agree to his last sentence. whether you like downfall or not, it is a compelling film with strong actors (bruno ganz is absolutely brilliant, but also corinna harfouch as magda goebbels) and you should definitely try to find a cinema playing it. maybe sergei is right and i expected sth different to see, so i'll think it over and give downfall another chance when it comes out on dvd.

i was taught that history was not created by one man but by many and you won't get a better understanding of the things that happened by focusing on hitler. the film does capture the third reich when it is on its knees and the hollowness of its ridiculous propaganda and made-up belief system. But it also portrays the Germans caught up in the fighting in berlin as hitler's victims too, just fighting to survive and i think it's very dangerous if you get into the territory of the germans feeling sorry for themselves. especially regarding the fact that a lot of the heroic defenders shown were war crimnals of the first order. but the most severe drawback of the film is: it's a piece of entertainment. look at eg the queasy approximation of a happy ending to the film. and that's why the film is a "mega-hit" (qb bernd eichinger) with 5 million admissions in germany alone. and to go easy on the ss-villains is not a good idea then. would you like to see a film about treblinka done by jerry bruckheimer?

dear sirs let's stick to criticizing the film, alright? it is a stunning, compelling piece of work regarding some of the actors, especially bruno ganz. he masterfully displays the mental decrepitude and physical decline of hitler in a chillingly authentic way. the set is adequate and convincingly done and the events are reconstructed dramatically. so the film has enormous emotive power. but its explanative power is lacking severely. and that is where i made my point: if someone like ian kershaw left the cinema "gripped by the film", that's fine. he knows better anyway. but anyone not being an expert of the third reich is vulnerable to the trivialisation and moral insensitivity of entertainment films. and downfall comes very close to these.

that's what historians should do: to look things up precisely and without prejudice. but relativism ends at the entrance to concentration camps where officers wrote letters to their loved ones by the cosy light of the table lamp. with the lampshade made of human skin. it is perfectly acceptable to show that hitler and his villains were obviously human beings. but it is only acceptable to do so for a purpose: to reveal how grotesque the tatty charlatan ruled over the shattered bonehouse. and in that, the film is rather successful.