tss

Fionn asked: Any dissent backed by research? Mannerheim line during early parts of Winter War. Soviets drived T-26 and T-28 tanks over Finnish wire obstacles to crush them. I don't know how good results they actually got. And sure, Finns mined the obstacles with AT mines but Soviets had more tanks than we had mines. (There was more than one case where Soviets managed to find _all_ Finnish AT mines in a minefield with their tanks). However, the situation at Summa and Taipale was very different than most battles of WWII because: 1) Finns had only few AT guns, no tanks, and very little artillery ammunition, so the Soviet tanks were practically safe as long as they didn't come to Molotov coctail range. 2) Soviet troops were poorly trained and lacked engineering specialists who could have cleared passages through wire the conventional way. Also, in the beginning of the war Soviet artillery was too inaccurate to clear the obstacles. 3) Soviets didn't mind losing a couple of tanks in the process. Actually, at Summa they crossed one AT-ditch by first driving a turretless T-26 into the ditch and driving the rest tanks over it. I'd shoot any of my Tiger commanders who tried to go OVER a roadblock instead of around it. During the encirclement battle at Raate road (January '40) the initial road blocking force had one 37 mm Bofors gun with them. The gun first surprised a couple of trucks that were bound to East. When Soviets realized that the road was blocked, they sent a detachment from the 44th division's tank batallion. The first tank to attack was a T-28. The Finnish gunners were worried because they didn't know whether their gun could penetrate the frontal armor of the brute. However, the tank commander decided to drive over the first destroyed truck, and showed the bottom of his tank to the AT gunners. The result: one destroyed T-28 and the rest attackers withdrew. - Tommi

I would think that the best static defences are those that are not even fought over because the enemy thought that it would be counterproductive to attack them. Because of this, I'd nominate the Salpa- ("bolt") line as one successful static defence. Salpa-line was built in Eastern Finland in 1940 and it was pretty well-done. It was just after the Winter War and Finns had a pretty good idea what worked and what didn't. The bunkers could withstand direct hits from super-heavy shells (200mm) and had no openings facing directly to the enemy but formed a network of interlocking fire lanes, instead. In short, it was the kind of defence line that Soviets claimed Mannerheim-line was. The line was never fought over as the Soviet attack in 1944 was stopped at VKT-line that was a little over 100 km to the East of the line. However, I think that the line was one of the reasons why Soviets finally pulled of their attack. Their attack against VKT-line had culminated and they would have to bring more troops (and strategic artillery units) before they could realistically hope to break the defence. Also, it was not realistical to hope that the initial momentus of the breakthrough would be enough to break through Salpa-line at the same time. Thus, if the Soviets wanted to crush Finland militarily, they would have to break through two fortified lines and both attacks would need heavy artillery support. As the Red Army was (arguably) the strongest military force in 1944, it certainly could have crushed Finland but, this is the crucial point, not without committing more resources to the task. The next major attack couldn't have begun before August '44 and it probably would have taken until September before Salpa-line could be breached. Stalin decided against continuing attacks against Finland because he correctly realized that crushing Finland would not help him reach his primary goal, the defeat of Germany and he decided to make an armistice with Finland, with more lenient conditions than he had offered before. - Tommi

North of Leningrad? No Germans troops there... I mean the whole strecth of front from the Gulf of Finland to Arctic Sea. If so don't forget that the terrain in front of Murmansk and in that general area was very unfavourable to the attacker I don't forget. Soviets didn't endanger their front there when they stripped the forces. Especially when Finns had decided against any offensive actions. However, this also holds for the other direction. Germans could have transferred at least 30000 men to other fronts without endangering their own position. They didn't. In most books I've read it was stated that, by the beginning of Operation Zitadelle(summer 43), the Soviets had a numerical superiority of 6:1 in men(along the entire front and including operational reserves), Like I said, the overwhelming Soviet numerical superiority is a persistant myth. An incorrect figure is an incorrect figure no matter how many books have it. I just dug out Krivosheev's book to check the figures. Actually, I noticed that I gave the wrong number for Soviet military losses since the correct number would have been 10 million, including the 4 million POWs. Here are the average monthly strenghts of the Red Army during the war (the data is taken from actual reports by the units. It may or may not be accurate, but it is the same data that Stavka used to base decisions on): 1941: 3024900 men 1942: 5313600 men 1943: 6389200 men 1944: 6550000 men 1945: 6330880 men I seriously doubt that Germans had only 1 million men prior to Kursk. In any case, you have to also count Finnish, Rumanian, and Hungarian armies to the Axis total before counting the odds. And then how come the Soviets lost so many men if their numerical advantage was so small? Most of Soviet losses happened in 1941-42. In the six first months of the war Soviets lost 1/3 of their total irrecoverable losses (KIA, MIA) of the war. Those losses were truly horrible. Above I mentioned that Soviets had on average 3 million men in arms at any time in 1941. During that year, they lost almost 3 million KIA and POW and 1.3 million WIA. This means that they had 140% casualties in the first six months of the war. This explains why Germans managed to have a numerical superiority at the front in 1941: they started with a superiority and they destroyed Soviet units as soon as they were formed. A total of some 6 million men went through Soviet ranks that year, but only 3 million were in arms at one time. Here comes the tabulated losses of the Red Arm per year: 1941: 2993803 KIA/MIA 1314291 WIA 1942: 2993536 KIA/MIA 4087265 WIA 1943: 1977127 KIA/MIA 5506520 WIA 1944: 1412335 KIA/MIA 5090869 WIA 1945: 631633 KIA/MIA 2191748 WIA Tot: 10008434 KIA/MIA 18190693 WIA I personally think that the 1941 figure is quite inaccurate as July '41 was so total catastrophe to Soviets that accurate casualty reports were not possible. (The figure is also suspiciously close to '42 figure). - Tommi

I think that German brutality was worse because it was an official policy sanctioned by the government. Hitler issued an order stating that no German soldier would be punished for any crime committed against civilians in the East Front. Hitler organized special units with the sole purpose of killing all undesirables in the conquered areas. Soviet brutality was on more individual level and the crimes were not ordered from above. Sure, there were commanders who looked the other way when their subordinates started "having fun", but others took active measures to prevent them. In 1945, over 10000 Soviet soldiers were executed for raping and pillaging. Not a single German was court-martialled for that. In the end, some 18 million Soviet civilians were killed compared with less than 2 million dead German civilians. I would say that most soldiers on both sides were decent men and only a minority committed atrocities. The difference was that a German could do pretty much anything without having to fear punishment while a Soviet soldier risked his life doing them. Sure, many or most Soviet offenders got away with no punishments. Men like Alexandr Smirnov are still respected war heroes. (Smirnov led an attack against a Finnish village killing all inhabitants and claimed in his report that he had destroyed a major German supply base and killed 30 soldiers. In reality, there was only one soldier in the village and he was on a leave from the front). - Tommi

And, the 5 Million remaining POW's liberated by the Russians were all imprisoned and died there considered to be traitors for surrendering. That is another popular legend. First, there were only a total of 4.5 million Soviet POWs and about 3 million of them died. That leaves 1.5 million liberated POWs. Second, not all were sent to Siberia. A large number was, that is true. I think that the current figures are in few hundreds of thousands, about 10-20% of the total. The convicted ones mostly got either 15+10 or 25+10 year sentences (the first figure is the years in camp and the second figure the years without civil rights). Third, not all those sent to Siberia or beyond died there, though most did. I recall seeing a figure that a healthy person had a 1/3 chance of surviving a 15-year term. (I'd roughly extrapolate this to 1/6 chance to survive a 25-year term. Of course, one has to remember that German held POWs were definitely not healthy.) There were some POW groups that were dealt with particularly heavy hand. For example, of the 750 POWs that Finns took during Winter War, only one was not sent Siberia, and that happened by accident. (It seems that the judge lost his papers and didn't dare to report it. He then sent the former POW away quietly and pretended that he hadn't even existed.) -Tommi

ianc wrote: The Few vs. the Many It is a quite persistent myth that Soviets won because they had large (about 10-fold) superiority in manpower. The truth, however, is that from beginning of July '41 to December '41 _GERMANS_ had numerical superiority at front. Yes, the total number of Red Army soldiers was bigger in '41, but at any single time point Germans had more men available than Soviets as Soviets didn't have time to concentrate the reinforcements. In December '41 the Red Army finally got its act together and managed to achieve operational superiority of 3:2. That is, for each two Germans at front, there were three Soviets. This ratio remained more or less constant until late '44 when Soviets achieved 2:1 superiority. (Note that during the Stalingrad battle Germans had 2:1 superiority in the city itself). Even though the total operational superiority was not too great, Soviets were really good in concentrating forces. They would strip men from large sections of front to achieve 10:1 or higher odds at the spearpoint of the attack. So, in the most parts of the front Soviets had clear numerical disadvantage, but they enough men where the important battles were fought. For example, during most of the war there were only 150000 Soviets facing 350000 Finns and 100000 Germans North of Leningrad. Civilization (?!) vs. Barbarism? I'd be interested to know which one was which. In my terms both sides were pretty barbaric, with Germans being worse. - Tommi

Soviet losses: 29 MILLION!!!!! That is the TOTAL number of Soviet deaths, including some 18 million civilians. The number of military deaths is somewhere near 11 million and even from that number 3 million were killed in German POW camps. Mattias wrote: Imagine the suffering of us Swedish wargamers! We haven’'t had a war for almost 200 years! Not a soul in sight to relate to! And the last wars weren't very good at that coming to think of it! And most of those (later) wars were fought using mostly Finnish troops... (War of the Hats 1741-43, Gustav's War 1788-90, and Finland's War 1808-09). Even before, Finns formed some 1/3 of troops in Swedish army while Finland's population was 1/6 of the combined Sweden-Finland. The only notable exception was the latter part of the 30-Year War when some 2/3 of Swedish army was composed of German and Scottish mercenaries. - Tommi

Yeah, I kinda figured that would be a big hit on most CPUs... Not most, but _all_. Suppose that there are 50 units on both sides and they walk around for one turn, each leaving tracks in, say, ten different locations. Then, there would be 2*50*500 = 50000 LOS checks in the next turn. In a couple of turns this would lead to _enormous_ number of LOS checks. I would like this feature also very much, but I seriously doubt that we will ever see it, unless some pretty ingenious method to resolve the checks is devised. (I have a vision of a large-scale forest battle: on one side, an elite company that has been on a mission behind enemy lines and is now on way to home. On other side, a batallion or two of normal infantry trying to catch and destroy the raiders. The map would be as large as technically possible (some 20 km x 20 km would be nice) and contain woods, lakes, marshes, and cliffs. (Note: these kinds of battles happened in Karelia)). - Tommi

What about those coutries that fought on both sides of the war? For example, the battle of Suursaari would make a nice CM scenario (German amphibious assalt against Finns, with Soviets throwing some Sturmoviks into the fray). And yes, the number of interesting battles between Finns and Germans as well as Rumanian-German and Italian-German battles is so low that there are a lot of more important issues to spend programming time on. - Tommi

Nice story, but just an urban legend. See: http://www.urbanlegends.com/medical/bullet_impregnation.html - Tommi

PanzerLeader wrote: There were cases of Polish cavalry charging german Panzers becasue they thought the Grmans used dummie-tanks, made of wood!! Nope. Not a single documented case. It's a popular legend, though. - Tommi

Ha! and these knuckle heads were already selling it. Hey, the one who sells it is not a fool but the one who buys it. (Supposing that the seller knows some cheap but good lawyers). - Tommi

WW2 and modern MBTs can be locked down such that no-one can get inside unless they have an oxy-acetylene torch or some such device. And there are also stories that sometimes in the early war hatches of Soviet tanks were locked from outside... - Tommi

The Finnish tactics during Winter War was to use a two-man tank destroyer team. One man had demolition charges and the other had Molotov coctails. The demolition man would throw his weapon first and after the explosion had either knocked the tank out or immobilized it, the other would set the stopped tank to fire. The Soviets started to use metal nets on top of their tanks to cause Molotov coctails to bounce off. The response was to put some barbed wire on the bottle so that it would stick to the net and then to break the bottle somehow. - Tommi

I'm sorry Fionn, but I have found some other uses for crew : 1) fire pistols to the nearest ennemy if in range, this is enough to catch attention of an ennemy bazooka team ; 2) run wild in the open to the objective, this magnet all mg in the world and allow u to make the real move with the real squad untouch When playing operations those tactics mean that you are sacrificing your future tank support for simple diversions. IIRC, if your tank crew survives the battle, there's a change that it will be given a replacement tank in the next combat. If it dies, well, say a final goodbye to your armored support. Also, I think that sacrificing tank crews gives the enemy a hefty victory point bonus. - Tommi

The end didn't quite feel right though. For the entire crew and the submarine to be annihilated just at the very end, when they were returning in triumph...just didn't feel right. It's the canonical end for German war movies, just like a heroic struggle against superior enemy is the canonical end for Hollywood war movies. Does anyone know of _any_ German war movie (excepting those made by Nazis) that doesn't end with deaths of the main characters? All that I have seen end in that way (All Quiet in Western Front, Stalingrad, Das Boot, Des Teufels General, and the one about Hans-Jochen Marseille). - Tommi

but how much play balance is there in german tanks over running Polish Cavalry units? Given that Polish Cavalry units had relatively abundant supply of anti-tank rifles that could penetrate just about any German tank of the period, I fail to see why they would be any more vulnerable than, say, American infantry of 1944. I know that the legend of Poles lancers charging tanks is deeply rooted in the common picture of WWII but it is still only a legend and it never happened. It is most probably based on an occurrence where Poles charged German supply column and were in process of destroying it when a section of German armored cars arrived the scene. The Poles quickly retreated but lost some of their numbers to MG fire. The next day some Italian war correspondents visited the site and their German guide said something like: "this is what happens when you fight tanks with cavalry" and the reporters took it to mean that they had charged tanks. No, this is truly the most interesting part of the war. Well, I personally prefer Ostfront 1944, but YMMV. - Tommi

PanzerLeader wrote: tss, I may have the answer though I'm not sure. Could it be "tullee"? A near miss. "Tullee" is definitely a very rare form and I personally wouldn't use it in everyday speech. I have no idea what would be the correct English grammatical term for the form, but it means: "is probably coming". The incorrect word was "tuulle". It sounds like a valid Finnish word but actually it has no meaning. (At least, not any that I know about, it is possible that the word means something in some dialect). - Tommi

Including three types of MG 34 weapons and some MG 15's are not that big a deal. Well, as just about each German unit has at least one machine gun, adding a new MG type essentially doubles the number of German infantry units. - Tommi

Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Oh no, how could we then disambiguate between words: "tule", "tulee", "tuule", "tuulee", "tuulle", "tullee", and "tuullee"? Note: all but one of the above words are grammatically correct Finnish words that each have a different meaning. Ten points to the one who can spot the incorrect word. (The last word in the series, "tulle", is so un-Finnish that I didn't include it in the list since it would have been too easy to spot..) In languages such as Polish, Russian, Greek every letter (or 2 letter combination) has a sound associated with it. In these languages you can read any word correctly by sounding the letters out. That holds for Finnish too and it is a very nice property a language can have. Of course, pronouncing the Finnish sounds corrctly seem to be quite difficult to foreigners, but at least they usually pronounce them consistently wrong. (To the day I have met only one foreigner that I didn't immedietely recognize as a non-native speaker by his accent, and he was a professional actor that had been in Finland for about a decade). Of course, this holds also to the other direction and I usually can identify Finns who speak English with no problems. - Tommi

After reading the "First impressions" article, I'd say that all similarities with the board game will be purely coincidental. - Tommi

Brian Rock wrote: If you really need to clear buildings with vehicles then send in one packing a *big* gun - an M7 Priest with its 105mm howitzer works in treat in direct fire. Or use the Soviet method of bringing 122mm and 152mm howitzers to fire direct fire... Iggi wrote: That may sound logical for a wargame but I highly doubt that in such a real life situation a commander wound tell his troops to not worry about the TIGER TANK 200 meters in front of them that is adjusting his fire to kill you while your laddies play on the shooting range and take popshots at the next available infantry squad. Well, exactly that happened in numerous battles during the Winter War. The Finnish infantrymen were facing combined (though poorly coordinated) attacks of infantry and tanks without having AT guns. The Finns then had to concentrate on killing the infantry and hoping that either the tanks will turn back when the supporting infantry is gone or that close defence patrols could destroy them using demolition charges and Molotov coctails. Admidtedly Finns were facing T-26s and T-28s and not Tigers but from the infantryman's point of view the differences are pretty much academic. In fact, in certain situations T-28 would be more deadly because of its two MG-turrets (this advantage over Tiger is partly negated because a Tiger crew had much better visibility). - Tommi

Aargh. I managed to destroy my reply and I don't want to type it again, so this is an abringed summary. To say that lend lease was negligable is wrong Yes. That's why I'm not saying that. - Tommi

T-34\85 wrote: Yeah Def I'd much rather believe the Americans ... Now, the interesting question is: from where did the Americans get the data? Some authors (e.g. Solzhenitsyn) claim that even the Politbyro didn't get accurate production figures and they certainly didn't tell the figures they got to the rest of the world. I have hard time believing that American spies could somehow get accurate Soviet production figures so any work that is based on purely Western sources is inherently inaccurate. I don't claim that Cold War -era Soviet sources are any more accurate since the Soviets had then political reasons to publish falsified data. I would say that new Russian sources (post '91) can contain the best data because the authors may have had access to previously closed archives. I once read a claim on Usenet that some new source had established that the total amount of material received by lend-lease was 4% of Soviet GNP. As I don't know who had reached that figure and I consider Usenet to be quite unreliable source, I can't say anything about validity of that claim. Yesterday I tried to search the Internet to find a year-by-year account of the amount of lend-lease but I couldn't find any. However, I found an article that stated that 60% of lend-lease was transported via the Pacific route and that the route was opened in June '42. That leaves 40% to other routes. I made some back-of-the-envelope calculations based on the following assumptions: 1) The lend-lease transports start on July '41 and continue until April '44. 2) The monthly averages remained constant during the whole time period (this assumption is most certainly false, but I think it overestimates the first months most and thus it errs on the "conservative" direction). So the 60% Pacific lend-lease was distributed evenly for 33 months and the rest 40% was distributed evenly for 45 months. 3) The turning point (after which Germans had no change of winning the war) happened when the Soviet counterattack begun at Stalingrad in November '42. (This is also debatable). Using these assumptions, I got the figure that at most 21% of lend-lease was delivered before the turning point. (.4/45)*16 + (.6/33) *4 This figure is supported by data on www.uboat.net that shows that only approximately one fifth of the ships on Murmansk convoys were sent before December '42. I find it really really hard to believe that the one fifth of the total lend-lease was most of Soviet supplies in the early part of the war as was claimed by DEF BUNGIS. After all, the lend-lease to SU was a quite small portion of the total USA production. If the Soviets could stop Germans by relying mostly on it, why the Western Allies couldn't kick Germans out of France by end of 1942? - Tommi

Simon Fox wrote: Click on the CMHQ link, go away, set up a few PCR's, discuss some technical problems with a student, come back 10min later, still loading, go away,........ I resolved the problem by disabling the banner ads the hard way. Now _nothing_ will come to my host from Dserver01.iencentral.com. Ever. I'm using Linux and I added the line 127.0.0.1 Dserver01.iencentral.com to my /etc/hosts. (To those of you who don't speak unix, that line means that my machine thinks that it is the ad server itself and it doesn't actually load anything.) I think you can do a similar trick also on Windows but I don't know details. - Tommi