Any Chance for a New Afrikakorps game?

[BluecherForward]

19 hours ago, Sequoia said:

It is not true. The Soviets had defeated the Germans at the end of the Stalingrad campaign at which point only a small percentage of the Lend Lease aid had arrived. Sure it helped, it helped a lot, and without Lend Lease it the would of taken the Soviets much longer to defeat Germany but it did not win the war for the Soviets.

Interesting perspective, but I'm going to go with Stalin, Krushchev, and Zhukov on this subject:

"I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war."  Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich; Khrushchev, Serge (2004). Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar, 1918-1945. Penn State Press. pp. 638–639.

Soviet Marshal G.K. Zhukov is quoted as saying: “Today [1963] some say the Allies didn’t really help us…But listen, one cannot deny that the Americans shipped over to us material without which we could not have equipped our armies held in reserve or been able to continue the war.” The Significance of the Allied Lend-Lease Program and Soviet Victory during the Second World War

"Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war," Soviet General Georgy Zhukov said after the end of WWII.

"We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? But now they make it seem as if we had an abundance of all that. Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with." https://www.rbth.com/defence/2016/03/14/lend-lease-how-american-supplies-aided-the-ussr-in-its-darkest-hour_575559

[SimpleSimon]

lol how many accounts and narratives of World War 2 do we all rattle off today uncritically as gospel when it's just Cold War posturing from both sides? The Anglo-Americans with their concepts of rule-by-consent and citizen-soldiers absolutely never would've been able to stomach the kinds of human losses the Soviet Union did. They'd've all more than likely ended up going the way the French did as a peace/collaborationist faction used the confusion and chaos to seize power, legitimately or not, and then seek terms with the Nazi thugs. The unfortunate truth was many leaders in Western Europe in 1940 were more worried about preserving their Armies than the states those Armies were responsible for protecting. Not only was there a visceral fear of a communist coup running in rear areas, but for many of Europe's old-fashioned Monarchist leaders the collapse of Democracy presented them with many opportunities to roll back the achievements in social progress and equality yielded throughout the industrial booms of the 19th century. With the Gestapo's thugs ready to assist in rounding up liberals and intellectuals. Churchill was certainly not that type of Leader, but if the situation was bad enough it just wouldn't be up to him anymore. He'd have ended up like Paul Reynaud, valiantly vowing to fight from the end in a prison cell he was thrown in by his own countrymen...

In the midst of crisis Paris and London consented to allowing their Generals to withdraw from understandably hopeless situations. This created a tendency for Generals to withdraw all the way to Paris and then keep right on withdrawing into the Loire or the Bordeaux...with fatal consequences for the Third Republic and even worse consequences for the Republic's many Jewish and minority citizens it was responsible for protecting. A year later the Soviet Union would tolerate no withdrawals, and told its Generals what to think...or else. Who's capital withstood the full weight of a Nazi onslaught in the end? Yes it led to many disasters, yes it led to much resentment between Stalinist authorities and its soldiers in the Red Army. The greatest disaster of them all however would be from a Nazi victory.

It's true that Lend-Lease aid wasn't really perceived on the battlefield until around late 1942 or so. However, the Russian narrative plays down the most important element of Lend-Lease aid which was not hardware, but food. When the invasion began the civilian economy nearly collapsed due to the loss of huge swathes farmland and food stocks. Soviet agriculture was barely out of a phase in it's history where a bad harvest might well lead to famine even if Stalinist authorities weren't actively manipulating food supplies just to punish recalcitrant Ukrainian nationalists. Soviet authorities couldn't hide when foreign made equipment was at the front, but what they did hide for years was the docks of Arkhangelsk spent their first year packed with vital food supplies and rations for soldiers and factories workers barely subsisting on watery soups and a foul tea made of pine-needles to ward off scurvy. The last functioning thread of the civilian economy in the dire year of 1941 was literally the food network and that is largely thanks to huge imports of food stocks from the Anglo-Americans. If the civilian economy collapsed then war production would collapse with it with catastrophic consequences for the war effort. 

Victory over the Fascist Menace was obtained through the collective effort of the Allied  powers and the coalition they assembled to triumph over it. Any one of them could've survived on their own, but precisely none of the Big 3 would've been able to achieve victory without the other 2. 

 

Edited February 16, 2020 by SimpleSimon

[Erwin]

Lots of good points there regarding the motivations of the rich and powerful in the west - including many/all of the monarchies.  Have noticed recently lots of Brit documentaries and TV shows about the Royal Family desperately trying to rewrite history and white out Nazi collaboration stories as well as at least one post war coup attempt vs a Labour govt. in which royal family members were involved.

59 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

...barely out of a phase in it's history where a bad harvest might well lead to famine even if Stalinist authorities weren't actively manipulating food supplies just to punish recalcitrant Ukrainian nationalists.

A bit of an understatement as in "the Nazis were often quite mean and rude towards the Jews."  Millions in Ukraine died from Stalin-caused famine.  While my mother's side come from the Baltics, my father was Ukrainian and sent away by parents (he would never see again) due to the purges and starvation in Ukraine.  (Sent away to Poland unfortunately where he was in the army in 1939, escaped being killed by the Germans, captured by and escaped from the Soviets and ended up serving in the Polish Army in the west.)  Hence the reasons I feel qualified to comment on certain issues involving any of those theaters.

And so we can conclude definitively that the need and indeed demand for an Afrika Korps CM2 game is increasing.   

 

[BluecherForward]

1 hour ago, SimpleSimon said:

The Anglo-Americans with their concepts of rule-by-consent and citizen-soldiers absolutely never would've been able to stomach the kinds of human losses the Soviet Union did.

This is especially true in light of the fact that the vast majority of the losses suffered by the Soviet Union in the initial months following the onset of Barbarossa (as well as later) resulted from Stalin and his cronies gross incompetence - like "no retreat" orders in the face of the German Blitzkrieg. In fact, a strong argument can be made that the Soviet Union was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. Here is an interesting read for those interested in broadening their horizons:

Edited February 16, 2020 by BluecherForward
Soviet Tragedy

[JulianJ]

The community has already debated this in absolutely mind-boggling depth. You'll learn more about railway and truck logistics than you ever wanted to know and published military historians weigh in. Enjoy! 

 

[JulianJ]

I must say about the above debate, that it was of such high quality, with people quoting reference papers, rather than half-remembered stories from some German general's memoirs. To summarise, if your logistics organisation cannot bring what you need to fight from the railhead to the front lines, it doesn't matter how brilliant your soldiers or generals are. QED.

[BluecherForward]

1 hour ago, JulianJ said:

I must say about the above debate, that it was of such high quality, with people quoting reference papers, rather than half-remembered stories from some German general's memoirs.

Thanks - some interesting posts. Just thought it important to mention that Zhukov and Stalin both stated that Lend-Lease was essential to Soviet victory - that's enough for me.

[Sequoia]

Anyway, while I would like to see a North African Family some day myself, and I do think it would be a be and require a new Family and not just be FI add ons, I just have a feeling if there are any new Families introduced, it will be Fulda Gap '85. I just have a hunch they'd like to break some new ground. This would be after the other Families are filled out, and there's still a lot to do there.

[Aragorn2002]

11 hours ago, BluecherForward said:

Thanks - some interesting posts. Just thought it important to mention that Zhukov and Stalin both stated that Lend-Lease was essential to Soviet victory - that's enough for me.

I would like to recommend 'Myths and legends of the Eastern front, reassessing the Great Patriotic War' by Boris Sokolov. I'm not going to delve to deep into the contents, but he  has some interesting things to say about the importance of  LL ( among other things).

[BluecherForward]

4 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I would like to recommend 'Myths and legends of the Eastern front, reassessing the Great Patriotic War' by Boris Sokolov. I'm not going to delve to deep into the contents, but he  has some interesting things to say about the importance of  LL ( among other things).

Thanks Aragorn 2002,

Very interesting. Here is an excerpt from an interview Sokolov gave a Polish blog in 2014 (B.S. is Boris Sokolov):

N: Up until this day the Russian Historians use the work of Nikolai Wozniesienski called „The War Economics of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War”. It was published in 1947 – in it, the Lend-Lease was not even mentioned. It was only said, that it accounted for 4% of the total production. In the Russian textbooks it is stated, that the whole Allied help accounted for 2% of artillery, 7% of tanks, 13% of combat aircraft and only 6% in cars.Those numbers do not shock at all.

B.S: They are not true, because in the USSR the home production data was inflated. The data that showed the success of the Soviet Economy during the war and that said, that this was crucial for the victory, were just a propaganda tool to illustrate the dominance of socialism over capitalism. A lot of those lies are now deeply rooted in the war discourse. Let's take the cars (motor vehicles) as the example. If we count honestly, it turns out, that the Allied shipments accounted for not 6%, but 32% of the whole Soviet car production during the war. For the airplanes that number reached out to 25% of the whole production. Even if the numbers you gave me were true, the myth is still busted, since there is no mention of products, that were not weapons.

N: Such as the famous tushonka meat preserve – the delight of the Red Army soldiers?

B.S: For example. The preserve shipments constituted 20% of the total Soviet meat production. However, the most important were the raw materials. Aviation fuel. In 1941 r. the home production covered only 4% of the needs. Allied shipments are nearly 51% of the aviation fuel used in the Great Patriotic War, nearly 53% of gun powder and explosives. Non-ferrous metals – the help from the West is nearly 82% of copper, 90% of aluminum, 75% of nickel, 50% of lead. Without those raw materials the wartime industry is flat on it's belly. Moving on: railroad tracks – 83% of wartime USSR production, tyres and rubber – 43%, and there is still things like sugar, radiostations, armor plates, lathes, medicine... To end this discussion the most vital is the fact, that the Lend-Lease shipments helped greatly to support the resistance in the hardest year - 1942, when the whole technical potential of the Red Army from before 22^nd of June 1941 ceased to exist and the evacuated factories were just beginning to return to the full capacity or were only now starting to produce new types of equipment. Without a shadow of a doubt, the USSR would have collapsed had it not been for the Lend-Lease.

https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/154367-an-interview-with-boris-sokolov/

[General Jack Ripper]

On 2/14/2020 at 7:29 PM, J Bennett said:

We need a new Barborossa mod more than Africa. Even if there had been no second front the Soviets still would have prevailed

and got to Berlin to knock out the Third Reich. As an American no amount of bias is great enough to deny this fact. The war was won in the East.

Everything else was just a sideshow.

I couldn't resist.

Sorry.

[General Jack Ripper]

21 minutes ago, BluecherForward said:

However, the most important were the raw materials. Aviation fuel. In 1941 r. the home production covered only 4% of the needs. Allied shipments are nearly 51% of the aviation fuel used in the Great Patriotic War, nearly 53% of gun powder and explosives. Non-ferrous metals – the help from the West is nearly 82% of copper, 90% of aluminum, 75% of nickel, 50% of lead. Without those raw materials the wartime industry is flat on it's belly.

It has been mentioned, occasionally, that the British would have lost the Battle of Britain without American aviation fuel.

One thing to remember is that the United States was the single largest producer of petroleum products in the world during WW2 by a HUGE (we're talking something along the lines of five or six to one) margin, and the largest producer of refined petroleum products as well, especially aviation fuel, gasoline, diesel, bunker oil, etc.

If oil was the most important operational resource, then being on America's side was the single best guarantee of operational and logistical success. You can fight without it, but you probably wouldn't win without it.

[General Jack Ripper]

Now, to the topic at hand.

I think a game focusing on the Africa Korps would be really nice.

Yep, that's about it.

[MikeyD]

I'm reminded of that maxim 'Amateurs talk tactics while professionals talk logistics'. Germany undertook its conquests under the mistaken assumption that after winning the invasion battles their wars would be over and they could get back to business-as-usual. Germany didn't even bother to place its economy on a war footing until the tide had already turned. The North Africa war is interesting because it catches Germany just as the nature of the war transitions from tactics-dominant to logistics-dominant. Germany enters NA, has some early successes, then they invade Russia and NA becomes a side-show. Germany lost the war in North Africa because it was never going to 'win' it. Rommel was never in a position to enter Cairo and take possession of the Suez canal. When Germany's dwindling resources got diverted to the Russian front it was basically game-over. Word-to-the-wise. Never go to war with other 'great powers' because their ability to sustain the effort will undo all of the  gains you hoped to achieve in starting a war in the first place.

[Bulletpoint]

46 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Never go to war with other 'great powers' because their ability to sustain the effort will undo all of the  gains you hoped to achieve in starting a war in the first place.

All wars are started with the assumption that you have a good chance of winning. It's only in hindsight we know who was right. If Russia had buckled after the losses they suffered in the first part of the war, we'd all be agreeing now that of course they would.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Bulletpoint

[Erwin]

The thing with Rommel was hat he was never supposed to take Alexandria and Cairo, just prevent an Italian debacle.  If the Brits hadn't removed most of their best forces to Greece, the "Rommel" myth would never have happened.  The story is one where the moral is be wary of early success as it can suck you into a trap/dead-end - the same moral as in the Vietnam era "We Were Soldiers and Young..."

Once Rommel had unexpected success he became a Nazi PR tool and had to live up to his own myth.  Of course that's what he wanted and believed and like all top executives, he must have had a huge ego. 

In CM1's CMAK I once spent several months making a scaled down map for an Operation covering the entire North Afrika map from El Agheila to just west of El Alamein.  (I figured once the forces got to El Alamein, it became boring.)   The map was 8Km x 4Km... 

I wanted to have areas where one would have 2Km-3Km LOS so players could use the 88mm guns the way they were supposed to be used.  The effort took hundreds of hours to get it half done and almost gave me a nervous breakdown so had to stop.  It's the reason I have so much respect for CM2 designers - as CM2 is waaay more complex to design for than CM1 was.

Looking forward to a CM2 Afrika Korps designed by talented folks who really know what they are doing.

[BluecherForward]

21 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Looking forward to a CM2 Afrika Korps designed by talented folks who really know what they are doing.

I sure hope we see it.

[danfrodo]

22 hours ago, MikeyD said:

I'm reminded of that maxim 'Amateurs talk tactics while professionals talk logistics'. Germany undertook its conquests under the mistaken assumption that after winning the invasion battles their wars would be over and they could get back to business-as-usual. Germany didn't even bother to place its economy on a war footing until the tide had already turned. The North Africa war is interesting because it catches Germany just as the nature of the war transitions from tactics-dominant to logistics-dominant. Germany enters NA, has some early successes, then they invade Russia and NA becomes a side-show. Germany lost the war in North Africa because it was never going to 'win' it. Rommel was never in a position to enter Cairo and take possession of the Suez canal. When Germany's dwindling resources got diverted to the Russian front it was basically game-over. Word-to-the-wise. Never go to war with other 'great powers' because their ability to sustain the effort will undo all of the  gains you hoped to achieve in starting a war in the first place.

Fortunately we play at the "amateur" level, dealing only w tactics.  Which is really fun.  

 

22 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

All wars are started with the assumption that you have a good chance of winning. It's only in hindsight we know who was right. If Russia had buckled after the losses they suffered in the first part of the war, we'd all be agreeing now that of course they would.

What I find interesting is that despite Stalin doing just about everything possible to lose in the first summer, the Germans were still unable to win.  Which speaks to just how much more resilient the soviet empire was than anyone expected, despite it's murderous lunatic dictator.  So while I love to "what if" to think how the Germans could have won, a more plausible "what if" is around the Soviet side:  What if Stalin had been even marginally competent and had a defense in depth and had allowed retreats?  It was too late for Stalin to undo his massacre of the officer corps, but he still could have allowed basic military common sense once he was attacked.  He could have allowed his staff time to develop proper counterattacks instead of forcing them to throw units at the Germans piecemeal, unprepared, and uncoordinated.  If he had done the most basic rational things the Germans might not have gotten much farther than Smolensk.  

So what I suggest is that it was much more likely for the Russians to have done much better than for the Germans to have done much better -- though no one at the time knew this.  

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

On 2/17/2020 at 7:27 PM, Bulletpoint said:

All wars are started with the assumption that you have a good chance of winning. It's only in hindsight we know who was right. If Russia had buckled after the losses they suffered in the first part of the war, we'd all be agreeing now that of course they would.

What I find interesting is that despite Stalin doing just about everything possible to lose in the first summer, the Germans were still unable to win.  Which speaks to just how much more resilient the soviet empire was than anyone expected, despite it's murderous lunatic dictator.  So while I love to "what if" to think how the Germans could have won, a more plausible "what if" is around the Soviet side:  What if Stalin had been even marginally competent and had a defense in depth and had allowed retreats?  It was too late for Stalin to undo his massacre of the officer corps, but he still could have allowed basic military common sense once he was attacked.  He could have allowed his staff time to develop proper counterattacks instead of forcing them to throw units at the Germans piecemeal, unprepared, and uncoordinated.  If he had done the most basic rational things the Germans might not have gotten much farther than Smolensk.  

So what I suggest is that it was much more likely for the Russians to have done much better than for the Germans to have done much better -- though no one at the time knew this.  

I'm not a conspiracy kind of guy, and I'm not a revisionist etc. But the Russian ability to turn such a crushing defeat into total victory has always seemed to me to be the strangest thing about WW2. Even after taking so many losses, the Russian army is able to reorganise, use better tactics, invent, test and mass produce new and much better tanks, and so much more.

We talk so much about the shortcomings of the German tanks, but the Russian ones must have also struggled with bad transmissions, engine failure and so much more. People say the German logistics broke down when lines of supply stretched all the way to Moscow, yet when the Russians counterattacked and pushed the Germans back through hundreds of kilometres of wasted countryside, they seemingly had no problems providing troops with fuel, ammo, food, etc.

[BluecherForward]

2 hours ago, danfrodo said:

So what I suggest is that it was much more likely for the Russians to have done much better than for the Germans to have done much better -- though no one at the time knew this.  

You raise some good points, but I think that if the Nazis had begun the invasion in May - as originally planned - and not had to have bailed out Mussolini in the Balkans and Africa - it would have been lights out for the Soviet Union. Good thing for all of us that Adolf had a strange attachment to Il Duce...

Edited February 18, 2020 by BluecherForward
Il Duce

[Bulletpoint]

11 minutes ago, BluecherForward said:

it would have been lights out for the Soviet Union. Good thing for all of us that Adolf had a strange attachment to Il Duce...

It might have been better in the long run if the Soviet system had been seen off in WW2. But that's of course speculation.

[Erwin]

17 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

when the Russians counterattacked and pushed the Germans back through hundreds of kilometres of wasted countryside, they seemingly had no problems providing troops with fuel, ammo, food, etc.

Thanks to all those extra trucks etc from the US.

Germany was never prepared for any long wars, always expected to blitz their way to victory in the few weeks or months at most.  Rommel in North Africa is another example - early brilliance and aggressive speed, but not having the supply chain to maintain the momentum or for extended ops.  

The early seesaw operations that bounced between El Agheila and east of Tobruk and back again is what makes the Afrika Korps game so fascinating (and different) from the grueling, grinding down of CMBN and steamroller of CMRT.

[DougPhresh]

On 2/16/2020 at 11:28 AM, BluecherForward said:

 In fact, a strong argument can be made that the Soviet Union was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish.

That'll happen when you have to fight for survival from the very beginning and find fascists and capitalists arrayed against you from within and without. Haiti has had a similar experience - It's hard to have a stable and prosperous society when you have a giant target on your back. Cuba survived when all of the socialist governments in South America that tolerated liberalism within their borders and didn't militarize their societies fell to coups and the USSR outlived the other socialist governments that were crushed in 1918-20. 

31 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

It might have been better in the long run if the Soviet system had been seen off in WW2. But that's of course speculation.

There's not much to speculate about. The alternative was not only the complete eradication of the European Jewry, but also most of the people of Eastern Europe as well.

This is wandering a long way from Afrika Korps but I think the tide is beginning to turn against Cold War historiography and apologia for White Terror.

[Aragorn2002]

3 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Thanks to all those extra trucks etc from the US.

Germany was never prepared for any long wars, always expected to blitz their way to victory in the few weeks or months at most.  Rommel in North Africa is another example - early brilliance and aggressive speed, but not having the supply chain to maintain the momentum or for extended ops.  

The early seesaw operations that bounced between El Agheila and east of Tobruk and back again is what makes the Afrika Korps game so fascinating (and different) from the grueling, grinding down of CMBN and steamroller of CMRT.

Germany wasn't prepared for war at all. It's ability to wage war in 1939 was far less than it had been in 1914. One of the best books about how the Germans were more or less forced into war is 'The war that had many fathers' by Schultze-Rhonhof. The decision to attack Poland (don't forget: agreed upon by both Hitler and Stalin and launched by the Wehrmacht and the Red Army and reason for Britain and Paris to declare war on the Germans, but strangely enough NOT on the Soviets) was basically a sound one from the German point of view, since  Poland was a very agressive (and btw anti-semitic!) state in the 1930s, which had also profited from the Czech collapse and quickly had annexed Czech territory, a fact completly ignored by history. For the Germans it was the only way to break the iron ring around Germany, which was deliberately and for that very purpose forged at Versailles. The Germans never believed they would get away with an endless series of limited Blitzkrieg, but it was all they were capable of in 1939-1940. 

[Bulletpoint]

5 minutes ago, DougPhresh said:

47 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

It might have been better in the long run if the Soviet system had been seen off in WW2. But that's of course speculation.

There's not much to speculate about. The alternative was not only the complete eradication of the European Jewry, but also most of the people of Eastern Europe as well.

This is wandering a long way from Afrika Korps but I think the tide is beginning to turn against Cold War historiography and apologia for White Terror.

Maybe I should have made clear in my post that I am not apologetic about any of those two regimes. My speculation was that the Nazis would have lost the war anyway, even if they had managed to break the Soviets first.