SimpleSimon

It basically can't, since it lacks the necessary all-arms design that the Soviets assumed an Army operating under the umbrella of a fully-realized Deep Battle would have. There are some hints of it around still, in the "bones" of equipment and organization but in practice yeah they've had to alter their methods because they're fighting a civil war. 
Shock Force 2's original release lacked just about any kind of off-map support options for REDFOR, so they stood around and got pummeled. The later modules and recent re-release have come stocked with pretty much everything you'd need to pull off a Fulda-Gap in the desert though. You have to just be willing to step aside from standing reality and accept circumstances of a premise that involve things like a Syrian Air Force not being doomed right away and BLUFOR making uneven commitments to the theatre in a way more piecemeal and disorganized fashion. We already accepted to suspend our disbelief for the original game premise, and I can get why some might not want to go further. If one can't go a little bit further though than yeah, the Syrians will just sit around and get whipped, but if Soviet Generals saw the illustrated situation they'd go "duh, they have no support". 

It's amazing to me how profound the mythology of "Flanders" and "The Western Front" has been on the history. It's really exemplified in many of the game's scenarios I think. Gotta seize the enemy position by T+2:00 is never really a good objective to saddle the player with. Why that position? Why am I starting where I am? Why only two hours? Usually confronted with the context of a CM scenario I often quickly end up feeling like i'm going to need far more support or better circumstances or both to match the scenario in a single save without causing a huge bloodbath. 
That's why I like the idea of things like an overtime meter just being a modest VP penalty. Usually the highest value of them all should be the integrity of your own force, in 2nd place destruction of the enemy's, and dead last the circumstantial objectives such as the time limit, captures, exits, etc. 

I'm honestly hoping that the weakness of a Barbarossa module for Red Thunder will lead to the release of a full 1939-41 Blitzkrieg title instead. 

If you want "Japanese Troops" it's literally as simple as setting scenarios with unsupported light infantry with maybe 2-3 light machine guns between one hundred riflemen, the occasional light mortar, and in defense a pair of HMGs. Troops sent to the Pacific usually had nothing like their assigned equipment allotments-there appears to have been very little in the way of assigned equipment tables at all in the Japanese Army. Forces in China were generally better organized than the ones in the Pacific to be fair-but the near total lack of infrastructure in that country could make it just as hard often to justify the presence of heavy equipment that couldn't be brought up ever. Again-the one exception to this seems to have been airplanes. 
Much of this is due to the peculiar manner in which Japanese troop detachments "coalesced" around charismatic and individualistic commanders who seem to have generally just grabbed whatever troops and equipment were available and carried out attacks on their own initiative. Superiors were then usually obliged to support such actions in the name of avoiding humiliation for poor discipline. There are a ridiculous number of examples all over CBI and the Pacific of Japanese Troop detachments marching off to attack or bypass enemy positions without formal orders to do so and at least at the start of the war this sort of bravado usually paid off against enemy troops who were badly led. Allied Commanders in particular invited their own destruction all the time by simply assuming Japanese forces wouldn't be able to bypass strongpoints by using the jungles to just outflank them-since Allied Commanders would never do that. It's how the British lost Malaya so fast. The Americans had minimized their own vulnerabilities to such tactics at Bataan-but not because they knew how the Japanese were conducting their attacks, more because the objective was to thwart efforts to use the Port at Manila for as long as possible by protecting Corregidor. 

I remain unconvinced that a theater of fighting predominantly set by naval objectives and starving island garrisons neutralized and bypassed without a fight will end up being very interesting for very long. 
Like the pace of fighting on Pacific Islands was generally one of two states-skirmishes between patrols, and sieges. The terrain and poor local infrastructure left virtually no avenues for the full combined arms kits to be of much use. Tanks were reduced to supporting roles in the few situations roads were the sight of actual fighting. Infantry maneuvers were frequently done with a preference for as little fighting as possible-since the jungles were far worse than the enemy was. It was seriously normal for infantry regiments to be reduced to battalions by malaria *alone*. 
One interesting exception to this is a campaign most guys seem oddly oblivious too. Japan's invasion and seizure of the Philippine Islands from the Americans in 1941-42. The fighting on Luzon involved close air support, tactical maneuver, and yes even panzer blitzing but so little is spoken of this campaign since the Americans lost. The fighting also did degenerate into a siege once Bataan came under attack-but there's just enough scope for a short CM style campaign in the early part of the campaign there and maybe also Malaya. 
If you want a CM game about the Pacific War you will-unsurprisingly- find few examples. If you want a game about *the way* fighting in the Pacific War happened there are plenty of examples actually. Radio Commander is a good one.
 

If you want "Japanese Troops" it's literally as simple as setting scenarios with unsupported light infantry with maybe 2-3 light machine guns between one hundred riflemen, the occasional light mortar, and in defense a pair of HMGs. Troops sent to the Pacific usually had nothing like their assigned equipment allotments-there appears to have been very little in the way of assigned equipment tables at all in the Japanese Army. Forces in China were generally better organized than the ones in the Pacific to be fair-but the near total lack of infrastructure in that country could make it just as hard often to justify the presence of heavy equipment that couldn't be brought up ever. Again-the one exception to this seems to have been airplanes. 
Much of this is due to the peculiar manner in which Japanese troop detachments "coalesced" around charismatic and individualistic commanders who seem to have generally just grabbed whatever troops and equipment were available and carried out attacks on their own initiative. Superiors were then usually obliged to support such actions in the name of avoiding humiliation for poor discipline. There are a ridiculous number of examples all over CBI and the Pacific of Japanese Troop detachments marching off to attack or bypass enemy positions without formal orders to do so and at least at the start of the war this sort of bravado usually paid off against enemy troops who were badly led. Allied Commanders in particular invited their own destruction all the time by simply assuming Japanese forces wouldn't be able to bypass strongpoints by using the jungles to just outflank them-since Allied Commanders would never do that. It's how the British lost Malaya so fast. The Americans had minimized their own vulnerabilities to such tactics at Bataan-but not because they knew how the Japanese were conducting their attacks, more because the objective was to thwart efforts to use the Port at Manila for as long as possible by protecting Corregidor. 

Ideal scenarios with Conscripts would feature a lot of maneuvers or a lot of fighting but not a mix of both. It was generally hard enough to get Conscript troops to show up as arranged at all let alone expect serious willingness to engage in a pitched fight with enemy outside of anything but the most favorable circumstances. Don't get me wrong you can make interesting scenarios and narratives with them-but expecting them to be very heroic is a lot to ask of guys who were drafted or even shanghaied into uniform. 

If you want "Japanese Troops" it's literally as simple as setting scenarios with unsupported light infantry with maybe 2-3 light machine guns between one hundred riflemen, the occasional light mortar, and in defense a pair of HMGs. Troops sent to the Pacific usually had nothing like their assigned equipment allotments-there appears to have been very little in the way of assigned equipment tables at all in the Japanese Army. Forces in China were generally better organized than the ones in the Pacific to be fair-but the near total lack of infrastructure in that country could make it just as hard often to justify the presence of heavy equipment that couldn't be brought up ever. Again-the one exception to this seems to have been airplanes. 
Much of this is due to the peculiar manner in which Japanese troop detachments "coalesced" around charismatic and individualistic commanders who seem to have generally just grabbed whatever troops and equipment were available and carried out attacks on their own initiative. Superiors were then usually obliged to support such actions in the name of avoiding humiliation for poor discipline. There are a ridiculous number of examples all over CBI and the Pacific of Japanese Troop detachments marching off to attack or bypass enemy positions without formal orders to do so and at least at the start of the war this sort of bravado usually paid off against enemy troops who were badly led. Allied Commanders in particular invited their own destruction all the time by simply assuming Japanese forces wouldn't be able to bypass strongpoints by using the jungles to just outflank them-since Allied Commanders would never do that. It's how the British lost Malaya so fast. The Americans had minimized their own vulnerabilities to such tactics at Bataan-but not because they knew how the Japanese were conducting their attacks, more because the objective was to thwart efforts to use the Port at Manila for as long as possible by protecting Corregidor. 

I remain unconvinced that a theater of fighting predominantly set by naval objectives and starving island garrisons neutralized and bypassed without a fight will end up being very interesting for very long. 
Like the pace of fighting on Pacific Islands was generally one of two states-skirmishes between patrols, and sieges. The terrain and poor local infrastructure left virtually no avenues for the full combined arms kits to be of much use. Tanks were reduced to supporting roles in the few situations roads were the sight of actual fighting. Infantry maneuvers were frequently done with a preference for as little fighting as possible-since the jungles were far worse than the enemy was. It was seriously normal for infantry regiments to be reduced to battalions by malaria *alone*. 
One interesting exception to this is a campaign most guys seem oddly oblivious too. Japan's invasion and seizure of the Philippine Islands from the Americans in 1941-42. The fighting on Luzon involved close air support, tactical maneuver, and yes even panzer blitzing but so little is spoken of this campaign since the Americans lost. The fighting also did degenerate into a siege once Bataan came under attack-but there's just enough scope for a short CM style campaign in the early part of the campaign there and maybe also Malaya. 
If you want a CM game about the Pacific War you will-unsurprisingly- find few examples. If you want a game about *the way* fighting in the Pacific War happened there are plenty of examples actually. Radio Commander is a good one.
 

I remain unconvinced that a theater of fighting predominantly set by naval objectives and starving island garrisons neutralized and bypassed without a fight will end up being very interesting for very long. 
Like the pace of fighting on Pacific Islands was generally one of two states-skirmishes between patrols, and sieges. The terrain and poor local infrastructure left virtually no avenues for the full combined arms kits to be of much use. Tanks were reduced to supporting roles in the few situations roads were the sight of actual fighting. Infantry maneuvers were frequently done with a preference for as little fighting as possible-since the jungles were far worse than the enemy was. It was seriously normal for infantry regiments to be reduced to battalions by malaria *alone*. 
One interesting exception to this is a campaign most guys seem oddly oblivious too. Japan's invasion and seizure of the Philippine Islands from the Americans in 1941-42. The fighting on Luzon involved close air support, tactical maneuver, and yes even panzer blitzing but so little is spoken of this campaign since the Americans lost. The fighting also did degenerate into a siege once Bataan came under attack-but there's just enough scope for a short CM style campaign in the early part of the campaign there and maybe also Malaya. 
If you want a CM game about the Pacific War you will-unsurprisingly- find few examples. If you want a game about *the way* fighting in the Pacific War happened there are plenty of examples actually. Radio Commander is a good one.
 

"When its the RAF we duck, when it's the Americans everyone ducks. When it's the Luftwaffe, nobody ducks"
and
"The war will be over when Goering fits in Goebbel's trousers"
were a pair of my all time favorites. 
 

It's abstracted since it's beneath the layer the game depicts. You kicked a door in that happened to be at the end of a straight well-lit hallway totally exposed to a shooter across the other end of the street etc etc. The houses are literally devoid of walls, furniture, etc. It's clearly being RNG-ed. If you don't like that this is just not the game for you. Door kickers is. Insurgency is. Call of Duty is. Your perspective is a battlefield one, not a "check those corners" one. Sorry man. 

CQB or MOUT as it otherwise known is a legitimately nightmarish experience for all forces involved. It just barely covered by the scope of the game but I remain unconvinced the results replicated by the outcome of close encounters are unrealistic or routinely incorrect. If you want depictions of close assault with higher fidelity than I suggest a game like Door Kickers or Insurgency because ASL/CM were never about that. 
This is really nebulous. It sounds to me like you're expecting an awful lot of otherwise unspecialized rifle infantry who are literally just conscripts who had a rifle pushed in their hands. Westerners seem to be so captured by the powerful imagery of SWAT and Spec Ops tactics that they think these things are universal in military forces. They are not. 
I sort of agree with this. I think the games are definitely suffering from a kind of design blandness. I think it has more to do with the scenario and campaign designers all being a relatively small crowd of guys who are willing to put the time and energy in than the games being stale per se. So there's a sort of idea-drought in the games unfortunately and this comes across as stale-game-syndrome. Yeah, I can see that. 
CM is the virtual version of the Advanced-Squad-Leader series of board games from decades ago. It is not a "video game" in the sense that many consumers might see it. If you are unwilling to adjust your perspective on this, you will probably just not enjoy CM. I don't see how that's CM's fault though or why the development team should waste time and resources on better graphical fidelity. The alternative to these games are tabletop, and in that regard CM is and will remain for the foreseeable future-utterly superior. 
Actually a pretty good point. The games could totally go for a coop option of some kind. 
If they can then why haven't they? I think the whole industry has artificially low prices for everything honestly and this coming out the backend by causing burnt-out development teams to put in minimum effort and jump between various better paying gigs all the time. This affects product quality and if you think that's something that doesn't affect you (a consumer) then look at the utter catastrophe that was AAA gaming for the year 2021. (Big name titles all roundly blasted, widespread failure to reach target sales, etc) 
They are part of the game actually, I suspect you're asking why the launch platform for aerial weapons are not depicted visually but depictions of them on map are necessary...why??? 
Given the enormous work that goes on behind the scenes in software development from texturing to modeling, etc it this is just untrue. I have no sympathy whatsoever for reasoning like this either. The whole games industry is suffering from an extremely toxic wage suppression crisis and consumers are partly to blame for it. Attempts to raise the cost of mainstream titles met with enormous hostility, workarounds such as loot boxes, pay-to-win etc failed thankfully but all of this left a legacy of mutual recrimination between consumers and developers, nonetheless. Battlefront is a small independent studio thankfully mostly outside the mechanics of the mainstream gaming market. (They are much closer to the board-gaming and tabletop market) So Battlefront gets more say about setting the prices that it thinks are fair. Given how deeply invested the entire west is in wage suppression it is probably still far too low for the labour invested since it's hard to break consumers out of the mentality they hold about pricing. That's an entirely separate topic however...

It's abstracted since it's beneath the layer the game depicts. You kicked a door in that happened to be at the end of a straight well-lit hallway totally exposed to a shooter across the other end of the street etc etc. The houses are literally devoid of walls, furniture, etc. It's clearly being RNG-ed. If you don't like that this is just not the game for you. Door kickers is. Insurgency is. Call of Duty is. Your perspective is a battlefield one, not a "check those corners" one. Sorry man. 

CQB or MOUT as it otherwise known is a legitimately nightmarish experience for all forces involved. It just barely covered by the scope of the game but I remain unconvinced the results replicated by the outcome of close encounters are unrealistic or routinely incorrect. If you want depictions of close assault with higher fidelity than I suggest a game like Door Kickers or Insurgency because ASL/CM were never about that. 
This is really nebulous. It sounds to me like you're expecting an awful lot of otherwise unspecialized rifle infantry who are literally just conscripts who had a rifle pushed in their hands. Westerners seem to be so captured by the powerful imagery of SWAT and Spec Ops tactics that they think these things are universal in military forces. They are not. 
I sort of agree with this. I think the games are definitely suffering from a kind of design blandness. I think it has more to do with the scenario and campaign designers all being a relatively small crowd of guys who are willing to put the time and energy in than the games being stale per se. So there's a sort of idea-drought in the games unfortunately and this comes across as stale-game-syndrome. Yeah, I can see that. 
CM is the virtual version of the Advanced-Squad-Leader series of board games from decades ago. It is not a "video game" in the sense that many consumers might see it. If you are unwilling to adjust your perspective on this, you will probably just not enjoy CM. I don't see how that's CM's fault though or why the development team should waste time and resources on better graphical fidelity. The alternative to these games are tabletop, and in that regard CM is and will remain for the foreseeable future-utterly superior. 
Actually a pretty good point. The games could totally go for a coop option of some kind. 
If they can then why haven't they? I think the whole industry has artificially low prices for everything honestly and this coming out the backend by causing burnt-out development teams to put in minimum effort and jump between various better paying gigs all the time. This affects product quality and if you think that's something that doesn't affect you (a consumer) then look at the utter catastrophe that was AAA gaming for the year 2021. (Big name titles all roundly blasted, widespread failure to reach target sales, etc) 
They are part of the game actually, I suspect you're asking why the launch platform for aerial weapons are not depicted visually but depictions of them on map are necessary...why??? 
Given the enormous work that goes on behind the scenes in software development from texturing to modeling, etc it this is just untrue. I have no sympathy whatsoever for reasoning like this either. The whole games industry is suffering from an extremely toxic wage suppression crisis and consumers are partly to blame for it. Attempts to raise the cost of mainstream titles met with enormous hostility, workarounds such as loot boxes, pay-to-win etc failed thankfully but all of this left a legacy of mutual recrimination between consumers and developers, nonetheless. Battlefront is a small independent studio thankfully mostly outside the mechanics of the mainstream gaming market. (They are much closer to the board-gaming and tabletop market) So Battlefront gets more say about setting the prices that it thinks are fair. Given how deeply invested the entire west is in wage suppression it is probably still far too low for the labour invested since it's hard to break consumers out of the mentality they hold about pricing. That's an entirely separate topic however...

CQB or MOUT as it otherwise known is a legitimately nightmarish experience for all forces involved. It just barely covered by the scope of the game but I remain unconvinced the results replicated by the outcome of close encounters are unrealistic or routinely incorrect. If you want depictions of close assault with higher fidelity than I suggest a game like Door Kickers or Insurgency because ASL/CM were never about that. 
This is really nebulous. It sounds to me like you're expecting an awful lot of otherwise unspecialized rifle infantry who are literally just conscripts who had a rifle pushed in their hands. Westerners seem to be so captured by the powerful imagery of SWAT and Spec Ops tactics that they think these things are universal in military forces. They are not. 
I sort of agree with this. I think the games are definitely suffering from a kind of design blandness. I think it has more to do with the scenario and campaign designers all being a relatively small crowd of guys who are willing to put the time and energy in than the games being stale per se. So there's a sort of idea-drought in the games unfortunately and this comes across as stale-game-syndrome. Yeah, I can see that. 
CM is the virtual version of the Advanced-Squad-Leader series of board games from decades ago. It is not a "video game" in the sense that many consumers might see it. If you are unwilling to adjust your perspective on this, you will probably just not enjoy CM. I don't see how that's CM's fault though or why the development team should waste time and resources on better graphical fidelity. The alternative to these games are tabletop, and in that regard CM is and will remain for the foreseeable future-utterly superior. 
Actually a pretty good point. The games could totally go for a coop option of some kind. 
If they can then why haven't they? I think the whole industry has artificially low prices for everything honestly and this coming out the backend by causing burnt-out development teams to put in minimum effort and jump between various better paying gigs all the time. This affects product quality and if you think that's something that doesn't affect you (a consumer) then look at the utter catastrophe that was AAA gaming for the year 2021. (Big name titles all roundly blasted, widespread failure to reach target sales, etc) 
They are part of the game actually, I suspect you're asking why the launch platform for aerial weapons are not depicted visually but depictions of them on map are necessary...why??? 
Given the enormous work that goes on behind the scenes in software development from texturing to modeling, etc it this is just untrue. I have no sympathy whatsoever for reasoning like this either. The whole games industry is suffering from an extremely toxic wage suppression crisis and consumers are partly to blame for it. Attempts to raise the cost of mainstream titles met with enormous hostility, workarounds such as loot boxes, pay-to-win etc failed thankfully but all of this left a legacy of mutual recrimination between consumers and developers, nonetheless. Battlefront is a small independent studio thankfully mostly outside the mechanics of the mainstream gaming market. (They are much closer to the board-gaming and tabletop market) So Battlefront gets more say about setting the prices that it thinks are fair. Given how deeply invested the entire west is in wage suppression it is probably still far too low for the labour invested since it's hard to break consumers out of the mentality they hold about pricing. That's an entirely separate topic however...

Issue I see is improper use of the TRP mechanic. Scenario designers tend to reserve them for defense and rarely distribute any to offense. In reality it should be the other way around. The attacker has initiative so fires have been planned and missions readied ahead of time. It's the defender who needs to prepare for impromptu or "emergency" fire missions on unregistered/unobserved sectors of front. Artillery in defense has a much harder job than artillery in the offense-where planning and initiative yield the greatest benefit of that arm's reach. 

The most devastating consequence of which was the shutdown of the Luftwaffe's aerial reconnaissance. Photo recon was about the only reliable source of military intelligence the Wehrmacht possessed (The Abwehr was a useless organization) and it's loss left the Germans blind to the buildup of operations as large as Bagration. People on the other side of the world knew where the Russians were going by word of mouth alone-but a combination of blindness and Hitlerian denial naturally meant the German Army didn't. 
 
 

Are we even playing the same game? The Browning .50cal is utterly brutal toward the enormous number of paper-armored German recon cars and half tracks they've got tons of. 
Murphy didn't kill anything bigger than a man with that Browning. He fought extremely hard and by all accounts did something very heroic and selfless in the face of a terrifying situation. The overpowering imagery and depictions of his fight are universally illustrating events which Did Not Happen Like That and paint an embellished idea of the battle obviously to sell war bonds and support Hawk policies post war. 
Incidentally, it was not even the first time Murphy did something worth earning a Medal of Honor for. The man's entire career was an insane defiance of death and odds and it left him by the way - with no shortage of emotional and drug problems after the war. He clearly felt that his life and exploits had been violated to some degree by a system with an ulterior motive. That's a far more interesting discussion to me than "oh if only CM would model the special AP incendiary round I read about on wikipedia". 
 

Close call between Shock Force 2 and Fortress Italy. Both of them have really broad kinds of situation and the scenarios are constructed that felt more intuitive than usual rather than relying on scripting of some kind. 

Are we even playing the same game? The Browning .50cal is utterly brutal toward the enormous number of paper-armored German recon cars and half tracks they've got tons of. 
Murphy didn't kill anything bigger than a man with that Browning. He fought extremely hard and by all accounts did something very heroic and selfless in the face of a terrifying situation. The overpowering imagery and depictions of his fight are universally illustrating events which Did Not Happen Like That and paint an embellished idea of the battle obviously to sell war bonds and support Hawk policies post war. 
Incidentally, it was not even the first time Murphy did something worth earning a Medal of Honor for. The man's entire career was an insane defiance of death and odds and it left him by the way - with no shortage of emotional and drug problems after the war. He clearly felt that his life and exploits had been violated to some degree by a system with an ulterior motive. That's a far more interesting discussion to me than "oh if only CM would model the special AP incendiary round I read about on wikipedia". 
 

Are we even playing the same game? The Browning .50cal is utterly brutal toward the enormous number of paper-armored German recon cars and half tracks they've got tons of. 
Murphy didn't kill anything bigger than a man with that Browning. He fought extremely hard and by all accounts did something very heroic and selfless in the face of a terrifying situation. The overpowering imagery and depictions of his fight are universally illustrating events which Did Not Happen Like That and paint an embellished idea of the battle obviously to sell war bonds and support Hawk policies post war. 
Incidentally, it was not even the first time Murphy did something worth earning a Medal of Honor for. The man's entire career was an insane defiance of death and odds and it left him by the way - with no shortage of emotional and drug problems after the war. He clearly felt that his life and exploits had been violated to some degree by a system with an ulterior motive. That's a far more interesting discussion to me than "oh if only CM would model the special AP incendiary round I read about on wikipedia". 
 

Barbarossa's win conditions were more reasonable than Russian and some Western Historians have summarized, however the greatest irony of them all is that as long as the Nazis were in charge-the plan was unlikely to succeed. (This is not to say that a hands off approach toward OKW as claimed by German Generals after the war would've enabled victory.) In spite of all of the dehumanizing rhetoric, death squads, and starvation policies some one million Ukrainians, Balts, Latvians, etc still turned up at German recruitment posts to fight for the Wehrmacht. This number potentially could've been much higher had the Nazis not fired up everyone in Germany on their dehumanizing race rhetoric-but it's hard to tell. The Wehrmacht did not outnumber the Red Army overall-but they did possess a temporary numerial and material advantage over the Red Army contingents in Belorussia and Ukraine during most of the invasion. This is a big reason why the Nazis were so unmotivated to recruit anyone. Even through the Red Army was proving larger and more formidable than planned-there was still little discernable reason to foresee catastrophe. 
One thing is certain, Stalin's decision not to abandon the Kremlin and Moscow was probably the single most important move in the Soviet's defense of the city. The decision fight on-ruthlessly-probably saved the entire Union and it just goes to show how flimsy the whole plan for Barbarossa was and how fragile the entire German War Effort was if Just Anyone happened to decide to fight to the end rather than just give in that the entire invasion could be derailed. Forcyzk was pretty livid that Polish Leaders conspired to simply abandon their country when faced by invasion-because the Army was clearly quite willing to fight to the end and who knows what the consequences of that might've been if they hadn't just surrendered? Victory most certainly not but the whole war would've looked a lot different if the Germans had emerged from Poland without their precious myth of invincibility. Look what the consequences of Red Army troops fighting down to the last foxhole had on all of Barbarossa and Nazi Germany in the end...
Just look at what Mers El Kebir did for the British in the long run. No single event turned around public attitudes and ended the mythology of Defeated Britain faster than blowing up the Navy of their former Ally. For all their bluster-the Nazis and their grip on power was quite fragile-and they depended considerably upon the flimsy willpower or even sympathy of their enemies to enable quick victory and subsequent plunder. When they ran into a bunch of other authoritarians who were far more serious about maintaining their Authority With a Capital A than just robbing people in their country like most European Dictatorships and running away...they couldn't really win. The Soviet regime was bloody awful but when faced with annihilation they made the correct choice. When we run out of tanks go to the cannon. When we run out of cannon go to the guns. When we run out of guns go to the bayonet. When we run out of bayonets go to your fists. Return with your shield or upon it as the Greeks used to say...
 

Barbarossa's win conditions were more reasonable than Russian and some Western Historians have summarized, however the greatest irony of them all is that as long as the Nazis were in charge-the plan was unlikely to succeed. (This is not to say that a hands off approach toward OKW as claimed by German Generals after the war would've enabled victory.) In spite of all of the dehumanizing rhetoric, death squads, and starvation policies some one million Ukrainians, Balts, Latvians, etc still turned up at German recruitment posts to fight for the Wehrmacht. This number potentially could've been much higher had the Nazis not fired up everyone in Germany on their dehumanizing race rhetoric-but it's hard to tell. The Wehrmacht did not outnumber the Red Army overall-but they did possess a temporary numerial and material advantage over the Red Army contingents in Belorussia and Ukraine during most of the invasion. This is a big reason why the Nazis were so unmotivated to recruit anyone. Even through the Red Army was proving larger and more formidable than planned-there was still little discernable reason to foresee catastrophe. 
One thing is certain, Stalin's decision not to abandon the Kremlin and Moscow was probably the single most important move in the Soviet's defense of the city. The decision fight on-ruthlessly-probably saved the entire Union and it just goes to show how flimsy the whole plan for Barbarossa was and how fragile the entire German War Effort was if Just Anyone happened to decide to fight to the end rather than just give in that the entire invasion could be derailed. Forcyzk was pretty livid that Polish Leaders conspired to simply abandon their country when faced by invasion-because the Army was clearly quite willing to fight to the end and who knows what the consequences of that might've been if they hadn't just surrendered? Victory most certainly not but the whole war would've looked a lot different if the Germans had emerged from Poland without their precious myth of invincibility. Look what the consequences of Red Army troops fighting down to the last foxhole had on all of Barbarossa and Nazi Germany in the end...
Just look at what Mers El Kebir did for the British in the long run. No single event turned around public attitudes and ended the mythology of Defeated Britain faster than blowing up the Navy of their former Ally. For all their bluster-the Nazis and their grip on power was quite fragile-and they depended considerably upon the flimsy willpower or even sympathy of their enemies to enable quick victory and subsequent plunder. When they ran into a bunch of other authoritarians who were far more serious about maintaining their Authority With a Capital A than just robbing people in their country like most European Dictatorships and running away...they couldn't really win. The Soviet regime was bloody awful but when faced with annihilation they made the correct choice. When we run out of tanks go to the cannon. When we run out of cannon go to the guns. When we run out of guns go to the bayonet. When we run out of bayonets go to your fists. Return with your shield or upon it as the Greeks used to say...
 

Barbarossa's win conditions were more reasonable than Russian and some Western Historians have summarized, however the greatest irony of them all is that as long as the Nazis were in charge-the plan was unlikely to succeed. (This is not to say that a hands off approach toward OKW as claimed by German Generals after the war would've enabled victory.) In spite of all of the dehumanizing rhetoric, death squads, and starvation policies some one million Ukrainians, Balts, Latvians, etc still turned up at German recruitment posts to fight for the Wehrmacht. This number potentially could've been much higher had the Nazis not fired up everyone in Germany on their dehumanizing race rhetoric-but it's hard to tell. The Wehrmacht did not outnumber the Red Army overall-but they did possess a temporary numerial and material advantage over the Red Army contingents in Belorussia and Ukraine during most of the invasion. This is a big reason why the Nazis were so unmotivated to recruit anyone. Even through the Red Army was proving larger and more formidable than planned-there was still little discernable reason to foresee catastrophe. 
One thing is certain, Stalin's decision not to abandon the Kremlin and Moscow was probably the single most important move in the Soviet's defense of the city. The decision fight on-ruthlessly-probably saved the entire Union and it just goes to show how flimsy the whole plan for Barbarossa was and how fragile the entire German War Effort was if Just Anyone happened to decide to fight to the end rather than just give in that the entire invasion could be derailed. Forcyzk was pretty livid that Polish Leaders conspired to simply abandon their country when faced by invasion-because the Army was clearly quite willing to fight to the end and who knows what the consequences of that might've been if they hadn't just surrendered? Victory most certainly not but the whole war would've looked a lot different if the Germans had emerged from Poland without their precious myth of invincibility. Look what the consequences of Red Army troops fighting down to the last foxhole had on all of Barbarossa and Nazi Germany in the end...
Just look at what Mers El Kebir did for the British in the long run. No single event turned around public attitudes and ended the mythology of Defeated Britain faster than blowing up the Navy of their former Ally. For all their bluster-the Nazis and their grip on power was quite fragile-and they depended considerably upon the flimsy willpower or even sympathy of their enemies to enable quick victory and subsequent plunder. When they ran into a bunch of other authoritarians who were far more serious about maintaining their Authority With a Capital A than just robbing people in their country like most European Dictatorships and running away...they couldn't really win. The Soviet regime was bloody awful but when faced with annihilation they made the correct choice. When we run out of tanks go to the cannon. When we run out of cannon go to the guns. When we run out of guns go to the bayonet. When we run out of bayonets go to your fists. Return with your shield or upon it as the Greeks used to say...