LongLeftFlank

Well, ditch full of roughly butchered meat I suppose... But if you're referring to units being induced by the Tac AI to enter "preferred" terrain even when they know it's been mined, you'd presumably need another set of "tags" for mines that override the terrain tags (i.e. telling the unit to avoid known mines the same way it would reroute a command to cross an unfordable water obstacle)? In reference to the "who's in charge here anyway" issue raised earlier, you might introduce the following protocols that tell the AI whether to obey the player literally or use its best judgement: RUN or ASSAULT commands mean a beeline along the exact path the player has chosen (so long as terrain is passable and morale holds). MOVE/MTCONTACT means get to the waypoint using whatever route offers fastest movement within the 20-30 meter band... i.e. you aren't expecting fire, so follow the road. ADVANCE means get to the waypoint by following (not wallowing in, as in your hedge example) whatever terrain types offer the best cover and concealment within the 20-30 meter band.

Nice discussion here, and I'm excited at the "ditch" reference (OK, OK, I'm a ditch fetishist) ... with the new 8x8 terrain, whole worlds of trench raids and infiltration attacks (think Japanese or NVA sappers) open up that really couldn't be realistically modeled in CMX1. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen requests for a "follow the road" command for vehicles, and it seems to me that a solution to this issue might help with the above command issues as well. Building on the "flags" idea above, would it be possible to embed tags in contiguous terrain features that would be preferentially followed by units in the absence of more specific countervailing orders: roads, trails, ditches/trenches, gullies/ streambeds, walls and embankments. So that way you can issue a "strategic" order with a single waypoint: ADVANCE to that farmhouse. However, the unit won't just beeline across open fields when a nice muddy ditch or a wall is available, say within 20 meters of the direct route. If time is of the essence and you do indeed want them to beeline, well then you tell them to RUN or MOVE (although they may head for the ditch on their own initiative if they think it's safer). This would mimic natural human behavior -- when it's dark follow the road, get in the ditch when you don't want to get shot, etc. without need for a more complex set of orders and waypoints. Perhaps also, you could order a unit to ADVANCE, clicking on a wall, at which time a FOLLOW command would become available whose waypoint terminus would lie somewhere along that same wall....

While I haven't seen explicit reference to this subject, I had always assumed that the primary function of sidearms, at least for officers, in European armies -- particularly the German -- was as a badge of authority rather than a combat weapon. This function might be: a. purely symbolic (i.e. the descendant of the swords which officers carried into action as late as 1900) b. actually used in delivering military justice upon (unarmed) troops, e.g. coup de grace and even summary execution. Hence, the references in some surrender discussions to "officers being allowed to retain their sidearms". c. a compact self-protective weapon useful in the kinds of paramilitary policing and colonial missions faced by pre 1940s armies.

Yeah, I didn't buy Goldhagen's core thesis either. He seems to resort to nasty stereotypes about Germans ("eliminationist" tendencies, etc.) that have some disturbing echoes of Nazi pseudo-anthropology. Upon rereading my earlier post, I realize I'm also being simplistic in characterizing the SS as some kind of Third Reich affirmative action program taking in ex-butchers' apprentices with street smarts to do Einsatzgruppe duty one day and fight Third Kharkov the next with minimal thought or reflection. There were a whole bunch of clean cut university boys in there from the comfortable classes who could recite Goethe, play Brahms and calculate gunnery tables in their heads. Kurt Waldheims. People who should have known better. What was going through their heads, I wonder, when they were told to burn families alive in their houses to save bullets? Did they have nightmares? Look forward to their own deaths in battle as a just atonement? I don't personally believe in "brainwashing" as alluded to by an earlier poster vis a vis Nanking. It's just another form of moral evasion. I believe we stay human 100% of the time, no matter what we're doing. It seems that our natural human need to belong gives us all -- no nationality, class or other human grouping is exempt -- all the tools we need to be induced into awful acts. Heidelberg education or not.

I'm not actually sure that the second motive is any nobler than the first. Ideals and faith can inspire us to great as well as terrible acts. On the other hand, the dark side of not letting your buddies down is "we were just following orders". To quote SLA Marshall and many others, the only motive strong enough to keep a soldier in the line risking his life under fire is comradeship. So when your commander tells your unit to go shoot those Jews, or Bosniaks, or kulaks or infidels or (insert category of human being to be exterminated here), just how easy is it to say no? And it isn't even a matter of "if I don't, I'll be next to them in the ditch". Consider this from Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners": a polizei company from Hamburg -- not SS, not even MPs, just ordinary middle-aged cops -- was deployed in 1943 to Poland to murder Jewish peasant families by shooting them in the woods (very nasty work, up close, blood-spattered and personal). The commander, an avuncular type, felt awful about the job (not that he wouldn't do it of course), and even told his men that anyone who didn't "feel up to it" could be exempt. Only one man took him up on it. And this man confessed later that he felt very guilty about refusing to help out his buddies in the difficult job. Weird, eh? But strangely familiar.... Yeah, the SS cadre drew in a lot of the narcissistic ideologues who got Nazism started in the first place. They're easy to identify as culprits, easy to blame, easy to hate. Their thought process: 1. "I have enough education to be insecure and resentful about what life has given me, so I joined this really great group, and to prove that I/we are the master race (or the beloved of Allah or whatever), we will slaughter our designated enemies like the cattle they are..." But I doubt this was the mental picture of your typical SS man, even Freiwillige. I've run across enough ideological types in government and business to know that they're mostly lousy at functioning in RL. The SS was, whatever else it was, a highly effective fighting force. I suspect that its bulge bracket -- increasing as the war went on -- tended to be big working class jocks who liked extra pay and the chance to belong to a top drawer outfit. Shooting untermenschen wasn't mentioned in the job description, and really wasn't a motivator. Kurt Hausser. That kind. Not an extremist. However, does that create a better outcome when he gets put on Sonderkommando duty? Nope. 2. The aggressive type: "Some boys in the Rollbahn got their throats cut by partisans last week in this sector. This'll teach them to think twice about messing with us." 3. The pragmatist: "Stupid bastards, why didn't they run away when we came up the road? Well, if they're that dumb, that's their problem, not mine. Sorry, nothing personal." 4. The weary veteran: "I'm tired and fed up and cold: let's just get it over with and go back to camp". OK, we all know the believers got the ball rolling. Hang 'em high. But a lot more Jews, commissars, et al, got killed by more or less mentally normal guys in categories 2 - 4. So who deserves our respect or contempt 60 years later? And faced with the same situation, would we all be that one guy out of 150 in the Polizei unit?

Just KNEW that last post would bring the SW grogs out of the woodwork. And JG, there's no need to deprecate yourself as a nerd on this board. Nobody here has any stones to throw...

Not much, since IIRC, total hits inflicted by stormtrooper infantry fire through the first three films consisted of: 1. About a squad of Leia's consular guards (who weren't much better shots themselves) 2. Leia herself (stungun hit) 3. Jawa track, including occupants. Obi Wan makes charitable commment about the "precision" of the hits, but then he's an old school swords guy. 4. Incineration of Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru and assorted moisture farm droids. 5. Ambush hit on Threepio in the cloud city. 6. Random pistol hit on speeder bike on Endor. Imperial armor didn't do much better -- a few gun positions, a generator and a couple of Rebel mini-fighters on Hoth. Oh, and a single Ewok. Guess the Rebel alliance controlled galactic supplies of optical glass or sumfink....

Ah heck, there goes my productivity for the day.... </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> |\_/| ( O o ) |###| o o X o o This is Bunny's sidecap and lapel emblem "Totie". Copy "Totie" into your signature and/or E-Bay listing to help the European courts on their way to sedition charges against you. </pre>

And in keeping with the vaguely anime / Hello Kitty appearance of the original smiley... --------- </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> (\_/) (( (-.-)>_FED===== (>_<) ^ _/ \_(---) This is Bunny's Pact Fellow Signatory, Nambu. Copy Nambu into your signature to help him on his way to East Asia Co-Prosperity for six months (twelve at most). </pre>

I hear and I obey. (has as much to do with the original topic as anything else in this thread... btw - I always take the russkies and avoid the kraut-heads whenever possible...) cheers, bruceb </font>

I'm amazed that Ilya Ehrenburg didn't broadcast an agitprop version of this story featuring the Stakhanovite field kitchen heroically ramming the "Tiger", coating all its optics with borscht and jamming the tracks with turnip rinds... P.S. When I played SL as a teenager, my kid brother would occasionally participate in the game with a single Brumbaer with which he'd basically attempt to reduce as many unoccupied buildings to rubble/fire as possible while the combat swirled around him (inasmuch as a game that allowed about one scenario turn to transpire in a single afternoon play session might be said to "swirl"... In fact, the outcome of most scenarios was resolved by our cats trashing the board. Vae victis).

... And let's not forget Speedy Meyer leading his Panthers around Norrey on his BMW. The master of do it yourself recce (and a right bastard, as any Canadian vet will tell you, but I digress).

I always liked Prokofiev's "Battle on the Ice" from Eisentstein's Alexander Nevski myself... (Peregrinus expectavi pedes meos in cymbalis). And "On the Field of the Dead" from the same work is one of most beautiful arias of all time... ("I'll not marry a handsome man") In a different genre, if I'm attacking with my SS kampfgruppe, I favor Rammstein or a similar German industrial track, cranked up over the nebelwerfers.

Great thread here. I've enjoyed reading it. In RL, I work in supply chain management for heavy manufacturing and what you're describing about key logistical breakdowns occurring in the "last mile" rings very true to me. As does the issue of out-of-touch upper management issuing irrelevant, dogmatic and sometimes draconian instructions to line managers who are too busy fighting fires and can't/don't know how to address the problems up the chain.

Sorry to cut in on the escalating flame war here, but I've just finished two QBs vs the AI featuring the much propagandized "animal killer" tactics. In each scenario my 1943 vintage SU-122/152 platoon playing defense in flat farmland with veteran crews got easily slaughtered by 75mm longs... IVG's and StuGs. Every SU was abandoned after at most 3 hits on their frontal armor at over 300-500m range (except for 1 which got killed by arty). They knocked out a few enemy AFV, but definitely got the worst of it. Maybe I'm just projecting old ASL misinformation here, but I always thought the Zvierboys had thicker frontal armor than that. Is there a spall /flaking problem being modeled here or what? I did a search of the boards and nothing showed up. I might try it again with the '44 ASU heavies, but I'm concluding that my animal killers are sheep in wolf's clothing...

That reminds me of an anecdote from the autobiography of General Grigorenko (the Pioneer who blew up Minsk cathedral for Stalin and later became a dissident). In Hungary he ran across a sniper who had a distinct preference for shooting the enemy in the legs rather than killing them outright.

"After consulting with multiple specialists, Michael Jackson decides the Diana Ross look is getting a bit stale..."

(Five minutes prior to photo). Hauptsturmfuhrer Bedivere: "Now if we built this large wooden badger...." Peenemunde, 1945. With the situation now desperate and materiel critically short, the Wunderwaffen program tries everything to deny the Oder crossings to the Russians. Ah, I got a dozen of 'em....

"When I said daylight Panzer movement is a lightning rod for American air attacks, I didn't mean literally!" "Sehr gut, that cable ought to hold well enough. Now Willi, should we first grease the Herr Reichsmarshall before winching him through the driver's hatch, hein?"

Since we're giving free rein to our wish lists, as a kid, I always liked the MacGowan art on the original SL infantry counters showing the little figures advancing like actual combat soldiers (heads ducked, etc.) or lying around on the ground when "Broke 7". This really helped visually confirm that SL was a lot different from previous big unit wargames... that it was all about individual men fightin' and dyin'. No idea what this does to the polygons, but purely from an aesthetic POV, I'd wish that CM2 infantry showed a slightly more realistic combat "body language", at least when executing "advance" or "assault" commands, as opposed to their current "Redcoats at Bunker Hill" stances. This might also help modders with some of the problems they've had with hats and heads. But then again, maybe not. I shall defer to the experts and enjoy whatever comes.

When I forwarded this joke to a friend of mine in France, he sadly replied that he had actually heard all of those lines more or less echoed in the French intellectual press. In this version, Eisenhower knew quite well because of ULTRA that the German army in France was a skeleton force of Polish levies and stomach battalions (And those Hitlerjugend kids were, well, just cute little freckled towheads). Nevertheless, the Yanks deliberately blasted the living hell out of France in stereotypical bigmouth cowboy fashion because (yes, why else did Americans do ANYTHING between the end of the New Deal and the election of Jimmy Carter) because (all together now) they wanted to intimidate the Russians (who BTW are the "true" liberators of France because they had beaten the Wehrmacht unaided by that time in spite of capitalist Anglo-Saxon perfidy). Oh, and it appears that in addition to wholescale flattening of French cities, our GIs raped French women by the thousand both during and after the war. (This also appears to be a major driver of American policy, from the Founding Fathers onward). I don't make 'em up folks, I just read 'em....

This possibly belongs on the political flame wars board down below, but since it's likely to tickle the irony bone of the historically aware regardless of political outlook, and also concerns D-Day, I'll risk slapping it up here for the amusement of the kameraden. However, if it gets summarily moved by the Feldpolizei, I take no offense. Best regards, jac > > (This is what you might hear if today's media reported on D-Day at > > Normandy...) > > > > June 6, 1944. -NORMANDY- Three hundred French civilians were killed and > > thousands more wounded today in the first hours of America's invasion of > > continental Europe. Casualties were heaviest among women and children. > > Most of the French casualties were the result of artillery fire from > > American ships attempting to knock out German fortifications prior to > > the landing of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops. > > > > Reports from a makeshift hospital in the French town of St. Mere Eglise > > said the carnage was far worse than the French had anticipated and > > reaction against the American invasion was running high. "We are dying > > for no reason," said a Frenchman speaking on condition of anonymity. > > "Americans can't even shoot straight. I never thought I'd say this, but > > life was better under Adolph Hitler." > > > > The invasion also caused severe environmental damage. American troops, > > tanks, trucks and machinery destroyed miles of pristine shoreline and > > thousands of acres of ecologically sensitive wetlands. It was believed > > that the habitat of the spineless French crab was completely wiped out, > > threatening the species with extinction. > > A representative! of Gree npeace said his organization, which had tried to > > stall the invasion for over a year, was appalled at the destruction, but > > not surprised.. "This is just another example of how the military > > destroys the environment without a second thought, " said Christine > > Moanmore. "And it's all about corporate greed." > > Contacted at his Manhattan condo, a member of the French > > government-in-exile who abandoned Paris when Hitler invaded said the > > invasion was based solely on American financial interests. "Everyone > > knows the President Roosevelt has ties to big beer," said Pierre LeWimp. > > "Once the German beer industry is conquered, Roosevelt's beer cronies > > will control the world market and make a fortune." > > > > Administration supporters said America's aggressive actions were based > > in part on the assertions of controversial scientist Albert Einstein, > > who sent a letter to Roosevelt speculating that the Germans were > > developing a secret weapon, a so-called "atomic bomb." Such a weapon > > could produce casualties on a scale never seen before and cause > > environmental damage that could last for thousands of years. Hitler has > > denied having such a weapon and international inspectors were unable to > > locate such weapons even after spending two long weekends in Germany. > > Shortly after the invasion began reports surfaced that German prisoners > > had been abused by Americans. Mistreatment of Jews by Germans at > > so-called "concentration camps" has been rumored but so far, remains > > unproven. > > > > Several thousand Americans died during the first hours of the invasion > > and French officials are concerned that uncollected corpses pose a > > public health risk. "The Americans should have planned for this in > > advance,! " they s aid. "It's their mess and we don't intend to clean it > > up."

Interesting! I recall reading a very engaging and authentic long short story by C.S. Forester of "Hornblower" fame) called "If Hitler Had Invaded England", which posits a German landing at Rye. The tale had some very interesting moments, including the assassination of Rommel by an elderly Boer War pensioner and the Lidice treatment being meted out to an English village in reprisal.

Oh, and I just ordered the book...

Could you give me your "top 10 fave" list of these first hand histories -- ETO ground war (I've got MacDonald and Sajer). Many thanks.