No "Chew on this pineapple, Fritz!" in CMBB

[Michael Emrys]

There's no doubt that the big battles were fought in the East. It would not be a huge exaggeration IMO to say that WW II happened on the East Front and everything else was more or less a sideshow.

But the East is just too big for my taste, and too brutal as well. War is always brutal and destructive, that is its essence, but the War in the East was brutality taken to a higher power. It was pure, unadulterated ugliness. The War in the West was no tea party, but at least it is something I find comprehensible. Try as I might, I will never be able to get my mind completely around the East Front. There is much to be gained from studying it, but I will always find it repellent in the extreme.

I guess one of the reasons I am always drawn back again and again to read about the Desert War, even though comparatively little happened there, is that it is an event on a more human scale. It gives me something I can identify with...although god knows why.

Michael

[HeinzBaby]

My sentiments echo that of Kevsharr...

But Normandy was the last deciding campaign of the war. If the Wehrmacht had actually managed to achive another Dieppe, it may well of taken the Allies years to recover..freeing up units stationed in Europe to fight the Red Army to a stalemate..God help us it didn't happen.

back to CM, I love both theatres, when the rest of my family is watching the soaps, this old man can slink of for an hour or so and escape back in time to Kursk or the Bocage

[ September 16, 2003, 06:20 AM: Message edited by: HeinzBaby ]

[Horncastle]

I know this wont get implemented but in the suped up verision of CMBOII it would be nice if they had a June and July 46 era where one could fight fictious battles against the Commies in Germany. Not as a huge add on that would have a fictious campaign just the ability maybe to pit Allies against well ex-allies. Then you would have the most accurate model of what if scenarios pitting machines that never had the chance to do so against one another.

[flamingknives]

CMBO insult lines were cheesy (pineapples? WTF?!)

Pineapples would be referring to No. 36M hand grenades (Mills bombs). The cast fragmenting jacket looks like a pineapple.

In any case, when my plucky brits caught the wrong end of CM:BO's hyper-artillery I could invariably hear them cursing the 'bastards' who were inflicting the pasting.

[Friendly Fire]

But Normandy was the last deciding campaign of the war. If the Wehrmacht had actually managed to achive another Dieppe, it may well of taken the Allies years to recover..freeing up units stationed in Europe to fight the Red Army to a stalemate..God help us it didn't happen.

Actually, I believe that a more likely scenario in the case of a failed D-Day invasion is total occupation of Western Europe by Stalin. Why would he stop at Berlin?

This scenario is explored in an essay by Stephen Ambrose in this book: "What If?: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been"

A bigger nightmare than the stalemate, no?

[HeinzBaby]

Too true FF,

Zhukov did remark that the Invasion, thou well received, was 11 months before the end of a 6 year war [pure politics]...

With the capitulation of Nazi Germany, [i think it was the US ambassador to Russia], congratulating on the capture of Berlin, Stalin replied that the Tzar got to Paris [1814]

[Fortinbras]

My gigantic oversimplification of the Second World War is that three things won the war: Soviet manpower, Chinese manpower, and US industry.

I'm an American and don't mean to slight anyone, but honestly, everything in the west, and everything in the Pacific except the submarine warfare which in the end really strangled Japan, was a side show to the eastern front and the asian mainland.

[Locksley]

Although the Western front campaigns had their fair share of politics, I find the ideology and politics, Hitler versus Stalin, on the Eastern front far more interesting. Stalingrad for example, that Hitler put so much effort and focus on taking the city named after his main adversary (the outcome of which arguably turned the tide on the Eastern Front) fascinating.

However, having said that from a militaristic point of view I find the Western Front far more interesting than the East. I don't know why, maybe it's something to do with being British.

:confused:

Ta

Tom

[Grond]

I'm much more interested in the Eastern Front than the Western Front although I haven't played CMBB yet. The fact that Germany kept three fourths of its manpower on the Eastern Front shows it was where the real action was. Now if CMBB will just hurry up and get to retail.

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Grond:

I'm much more interested in the Eastern Front than the Western Front although I haven't played CMBB yet. The fact that Germany kept three fourths of its manpower on the Eastern Front shows it was where the real action was. Now if CMBB will just hurry up and get to retail.

But it kept most of it's airforce, navy and after Normandy Pz units facing West.

[Lt Belenko]

When a German tank KO's a Russian tank in CMBB the commander shouts "Gouda Shoes!" I'm not really sure what that means, but it must be some sort of German insult.

Gouda is a type of cheese. Some cheeses smell pretty bad. After a week or two in a hot tank people tend to smell pretty bad. Basically he's saying "Your shoes (feet) stink like smelly cheese" Yes, that should be interpreted as an insult.