Andreas

Oh, look. Croda is back. Shurely everything will be right now.

Wir koennen die Diskussion auch hier fortsetzen. Auf Deutsch, nicht auf Neudeutsch.

Yes! Girls in uniforms. Pizza! Beer! More girls. Raaaaaaaa.... Hmm, should this be moved to the German language forum?

Too bad they don't have a discussion area. I certainly won't give my e-mail adress to anybody who writes such an article. Dschugaschwili </font>

olli, I am shocked, I never had you down as a JU member Any other closet crypto-unionists here? I gave up reading Der Spiegel when they tried to compete with 'Focus' in 1993. Whenever I pick one up these days I note they do really well at it too.

Well, I don't think he is a professional historian, but I maybe wrong. Pretty weak excuse though.

Naah, that would be too easy.

No thoughts on the tourney, but on the DVDs, they are different. You can buy DVD players (at least in the UK) that can play all DVDs, but the standard DVD player may not be able to do that.

Gotta love Der Spiegel

Stalingrad Net says he took over on Sept. 12th, after Yeremenko dismissed Gen. Lopatin, who had built up 62nd Army, for withdrawing against orders.

Ian, that does clear it up. I would agree on the failure to integrate armour and infantry, but one could argue that was not a bug, it was a feature. By ditching the infantry and artillery, the Soviets later in the war (from the Kiev operation onwards) achieved extremely high breakthrough speeds that the Germans were simply unable to counter. Combined arms teams as forward detachments were usually quite balanced and extremely successful though. BTW - the same criticism could be applied to Patton's break-out and rush through France. Or the 21st Army Group advance across northern France. In the latter the infantry divisions were grounded to provide trucks and supply for the fast-moving armour. Does that mean the Allies in the west also did not understand combined arms warfare? When you have your enemy on the run, you don't want to bother with niceties like combined arms. You want to run riot in his retreat, and drive him before you, hear the lamentations of his women, and all that . Of course, at some point he may reorganise and your forward detachment gets a bloody nose. That is to be expected, but it is no big deal, because by then you are a couple of hundred kilometers closer to his heartland. There is a place and time for finely balanced combined arms, but it is not the fast-moving exploitation phase of an operation. Rising casualties? Well, another instance where the words 'fact' and 'Beevor' really don't go together very well. I would be hesitant to use him as a source on any operational/tactical questions relating to the war.

Kip makes a couple of good points about what happened when the Panzers stirred later in the war, and how the Red Army defeated them: The fate of Übertanks

Buttoned or not?

(Emphasis by me) This one in particular, a number of others as well [ January 26, 2003, 01:21 PM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

BUMP I entered 'A morning commute' and 'Waltzing Matilda' at the Depot, in case someone feels inclined to review them.

Borrowed it from Kip I know that is not the answer you are looking for. I don't think you can get it anywhere at the moment, except through 2nd hand sources. These are scans I made a long time back for the beta-testing/scenario design of CMBB.

Oh, and I would argue that any army that can organise its tank armies in such a way that it can undertake such operations as Vistula-Oder, Bagration, L'vov-Sandomierz, or Iassy-Kishinyev, must be doing something very right. One of the maxims of the Soviet use of extremely mobile and fast moving exploitation forces was to reach the river crossing before the defeated army in front of you. Almost invariably from 1944 onwards, they did. With catastrophic consequences for the German forces. The assertion that the Red Army did not learn how to use true combined arms throughout ww2 is one that has often been made by German generals, and is still repeated a lot today. Unfortunately it is simply not true.

Ian, I think your conclusions about the integrated use of Soviet armour do not quite stand up to historical examination From TM30-430 'Handbook of USSR Forces 1946' based on Fremde Heere Ost data collected during the war: Note that on the assault battalion level, there appears to be no armour. But: At the assault regiment level, we already see 3 Coys of tanks, and one Coy of SP guns. Plus one platoon mine-clearing tanks. On the assault division level, this increases to a regiment of heavies, a brigade of mediums, a regiment of SP and a company of mine-clearing tanks. Now this may not sound like a lot, but you have to remember that the breakthrough sector of this division is a zone about 1.5-2km wide, and 3-5km deep. I.e. it is a CM battle map. On it you would have about 4-6,000 men in either a 2-echelon or all-up formation, supported by 80-90 AFVs. I think your misconception springs from the use of tank armies, tank corps and mech corps, as relatively un-combined instruments. These were used for exploitation, where speed was more of the essence than having a nicely balanced force. The last time that was a serious drawback was during the Winter 42/43 Manstein Donbas counter-offensive. Thereafter, Soviet armour would generally just run wild in the German rear, and tear up the rear-areas. For the integrated, combined arms work though, independent formations were used, and heavily. Here is the relevant text from the book: Regarding LL equipment. The Soviets liked the Sherman, and the Valentine. They loved the trucks [ January 26, 2003, 09:48 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

Adrian, I think it is more a question of 'if they have artillery support, it would be in BN strength'. More likely they don't get any support at all But e.g. for a soviet attack outside a major breakthrough area they are likely to have no indirect support at all, but would get 76mm regimental and maybe divisional guns, as well as 45mm in direct fire support.

Hellgrün = light green Wiesengrün (and not 'Weisengrün') = meadow green (meadow = Wiese) I would expect that the latter is darker, but the Wehrmacht may well have thought differently.

Basically, the higher you go, the more unresponsive the artillery becomes. I.e. the delay increases. Manual p.131

Tigger, what exactly do you mean?

CMBB - Circus Mission - Beyond Barnum Good thing Elephants and Tigers are already in the game, shame they took the clown cars out.

Likelyhood of having an Abteilung or Battalion in support. It depends (wow, what a surprisingly relevatory answer ), I don't think there can be a hard and fast rule. In 1941 and 1942, if you are dealing with mobile/armoured operations by a German Kampfgruppe of about regimental size, you would expect it to have an Abteilung to support it, either schwer (8x150, 4x100mm K18) or normal (12x105). Because doctrine was to use these KGs in a concentrated fashion, you could expect a lot of this at the point of breakthrough. There is a strong possibility that quite a few of the guns would be used in DF mode though, especially in highly mobile operations earlier on, when ATGs were not quite up to the job. Things are different if you look at infantry divisions strung out across the frontline. Because of the rather short range of the German guns, and the long frontages that the divisions covered (up to 30+km in Army Group Centre just before Bagration), it would be difficult to make this sort of support available, because the guns needed to be strung out across the frontline too. So, for a company sized attack I doubt you would see a lot of artillery (mortars are different), especially not in a flexible manner (different if you restrict it to pre-bombardments). if you are looking at what is in effect the or one of the main efforts of a division attack, you can expect a fair bit of support, and a battalion spotter would be a good idea. I generally like the idea. It is going to make life a lot more exciting for players, because where they now may get 4 spotters, they would only have one, with the increase of risk that comes from putting all your eggs in one basket.

That way you can play TCP against another computer in your home, where PBEM is not really an issue.