SirOscar

CRODA WROTE "Kennedy had a lot of things going for him and a bright future which may well have had direct impacts on our lives." YES you are RIGHT, it did impact our lives! It changed history, many people belive Viet Nam would not of happened or happened much differently had he lived. However how does knowing NOW that more then one person was involved, change these facts one tiny bit? How would knowing that Booth did not kill Lincoln change your live or anyone else???? I do belive in the traditions of our country and justice. Even if it was more then a whacked person(geee look at all the school shootings lately, those students could not just be whacked there had to be a conspiracy) who did it, that there was some grand power grab, if you think think you or any of us will EVER know the truth of such a thing then I want whatever you are smoking!

Croda Ok so the CIA bumped him off, or the mob or Castro or the KGB, how does that change anything in your life or for that matter anyones? When you become powerful in anything in life, bizz, government the local golf club etc you take on the risk that someone will want to take your power from you. Now there are lots of ways to take that power and murder is one of the ways, this has been true throughout history and it will never change. So someone or some group killed him, he still lost his power and his life, its a sad thing but its true and knowing that one person or many killed him does not change a thing.

Sighhhhhhhhh This proves NOTHING!!! You know that MANY people belive that Lincoln was not killed by Booth. The beauty of a conspiracy theory is that there is NO way to "prove" them wrong, it's just so hard to prove a negative. Besides, who cares?!!!!!!!!

For the sake of argument lets say that without Russian snipers the Germans would of won the battle of Stalingrad ( I don't belive this for a second, there just would of been more Germans to die as POW's) My question becomes, Is not CM2 to based on small unit combat on the EASTERN FRONT, not on the entire battle of Stalingrad? Even if you could make a argument for the importance of snipers at Stalingrad, unless you can make the same argument apply for the entire Eastern front then it's a mute point. Because of limited resources, playability and other factors, not all heroics and great battles will be able to be covered in one game. Personally my idea of a true sniper, like the one mentioned in 'Enemy at the gates' is so far removed from the scope of CM that you would really need an entire new game to do it justice.

I agree with the idea that collisions are not very "real" in game now. However "if you build it they will come" What I mean by this is, if you model collision damage you will just turn CM into a demolition derby, you can count on people with gun damage, no AP ammo etc using this as a NORMAL tactic, now maybe it was a normal day to day thing in Russia( I bet it was a lot more rare then some are saying here) but in ETO I just don't think it was very often done. I can hear the cries of "GAMEY" now. Geeee just put the wrong force structure together in a QB and you get blasted, just imagine if you started running over everything in sight and DON'T tell me that people would NOT abuse this, I have played games with people all my life and when it comes down to being gamey or winning many if not most will be gamey.

WRG Lots have changed since the demo, I belive that they have made it much harder to hit the slits. As for crews, well this has been discussed a bit over on the main board, the conclusion is that for various reasons such as, abandoned equipment is damaged, the crews mental state etc. that the crews are not aloud to re-arm. The best thing to do is exit them off the board or if under fire get them some place safe. By the way you would get a really much better response from people who know better over on the general board.

Bullethead Wrote "Did Ambrose define what "non-battle casualties" were? Nope unfortunately he did not, since the non-battle casualties were so high, I like you assumed battle fatigue was included in the non-battle stats. However he really kept going over and over the poor general health of the American army in the winter of 44/45 due to Bradley's and Ike's belive that the war would be over before winter, they had plenty of winter gear but they were all sitting at the docks, they were having such a problems with getting supplies to to the front lines that they thought it would be a waste to bring up gear that would "not be needed" Also you have to consider that many of the non-battle casualties were repeats, guys could get minor wounds or trench foot etc many times, where as the battle casualties often meant death, capture or war ending injuries. In any case the numbers still blow me away, and some divisions actually had upwards of %250 replacement rates from D-Day to end of war, I just never realized how bad things were for the America GI in ETO. Sorry for getting so off topic but it looks like this thread has broken down anyway. I will keep a lookout for post by you, your arguments tend to be very logical and you seem to be able to discuss them without upsetting people, a very nice skill.

Pillar Sorry I did not mean to offend but now I am totally lost on what point it is that you are trying to make. I came into this late and most likely I am missing entirely what you are trying to get at. However it was not I that started being malevolent. I stated I thought you were wrong in your ideas and you slammed me for not reading your posts then challenged me to quote you, so I did. Anyway back to the points that you made, the end of the quote I used from you was "The maneuverist however, is concenred with the destruction of the enemy king ONLY." Notice how only is in all caps, how did I miss the point? I also think that your mentor of Maneuverist ideas, Leonhard, is way off base with his analogy, to compare chess to real combat is like using night as an analogy for day. There is just no comparison, not only is the ALL important "fog of war" missing from chess but there is a clear cut object, the king, there are hard and fast rules, heck I could go on and on about the differences. By the way I have never heard of this Leonhard, what is his background? Does he have any first hand experience? If not then I would tend to hold the views of someone who has "been there, done that" like Bullethead in a little higher esteem. Once again I do NOT want to get into personal battle over this, it gets us nowhere, if you want to argue the merits of ideas then great I am all for that, that's how I find out, more times then not that I am full of it. ADDED he he he I just noticed this thread put me over the top, I am now an official member yeaaaaaaaaaa!!!! [This message has been edited by SirOscar (edited 02-22-2001).]

Pillar You slammed me for not reading what you wrote, ok try this, YOU wrote, quote "One analogy which Leonhard uses in his book "The Art of Maneuver" is the game of chess. The attritionist chess player makes his decisions based on exchange with enemy peices. He sacrifices a rook to kill a queen, a pawn to kill a bishop, etc. He wins the game by destroying the other players forces at an exchange favourable to himself, until eventually he has such superiority as to make the taking of the king an easy, secondary chore. The maneuverist however, is concenred with the destruction of the enemy king ONLY." Hummmmmmmmmmmm sure seems like you are saying that I do not have to worry about killing off enemy forces as long I "Maneuver" correctly, in fact I can "win" the war while taking more substantial loses then my enemy, I can even be in a very terrible tactical situation, at the end, as long as I take that "KEY" objective. Sorry what other conclusion can I take from YOUR comments.

Bullethead Sorry to get into this late I have been reading this entire thread just this morning. Anyway I agree with you %100 on most of what you are saying, it seems to me that what Pillar and Henri are trying to argue is " If you take our Maneuver theory and use it right you don't have to fire a single bullet to win, you win just because of your brilliant maneuvers" I think this is total hog wash. You can NOT separate maneuver and attrition(NO matter how you define attrition) in warfare, they just go hand in hand. However I think I have to point out what I think is a glaring error on your part. You stated "To me, attrition mostly means fighting, but this is from the POV of an observation of cause and effect. Sure, you have some "attrition" just by moving units around due to breakdowns, stragglers, etc., but these causes are insignificant compared casualties inflicted by fire and the losses (in personnel, equipment, supplies, morale, cohesion, organization, control, territory, you name it) sustained in running away from fire" Also "I think it's safe to use the terms "fighting" and "attrition" interchangeably" The reason this seems so untrue to me is just last night I finished reading Citizen Soldiers by Stephen E. Ambrose(very good book by the way, I highly recommend it) I always knew that non battle field attrition in WWII was bad but there was a table in the book that STUNNED me. It was a table listing all the U.S. Infantry Divisions in EOT WWII, what was amazing about the table was he broke down casualties by battle and non-battle causalities, most divisions had close to equal amounts of causalities and in fact some had more. Example 36th inf division, 227 days on the line 11,238 battle causalities 14,919 non-battle causalities. 45th inf division, 230 days on the line, 10,458 battle casualties, 15,991 non-battle causalities. This chart just blew me away. By the way I served in the U.S. Army from 73 to 78 with 4 years in Europe, I was in the first all volunteer basic training company after Nam( back when I was considered a war mongering baby killer for joing up) After the Gulf War I can remember being so amazed at the light casualties the U.S. forces took, had the army of my time just took part in a "live fire" exercise of that size we would of had more causalities just from screw ups. Whenever I get a chance I like to tell those Gulf War Vets G R E A T job!!!!!!!!!!!

CavScout Yep, very correct and there was a strong sentiment in the U.S. that Europe had it's war and the U.S. had it's against Japan, anti war feelings were VERY strong in the U.S. and even after Pearl Harbor there were many against involvement in Europe. Then that crazy paper hanger did the the pro European war crowd a favor and declared war on the U.S. adding to a long list of DUMB things an ex corporal could do. However jasoncawley@ameritech.net may not be to far off since the Japanese mostly likely assumed( or were reassured by Hitler himself) that if the U.S. entered the war it would be in Europe as well.

Jasper WROTE "Like Gettysburg, in the American Civil War. What if the south had won? The war over? Hardly. The south either declares their raid a success and go back home to prepare for siege, or press until and get stomped in some other battle in the north." I can't disagree more, had Lee pulled off a victory at Gettysburg or even by passed the battle and headed into D.C. which was like 30 miles down the road, the war might of ended right then and there. You are totally over looking the political situation of the time, before Gettysburg the North was getting it's butt kicked on a regular basis and there were MANY in the North who were already calling for an end to the war, had Lee been able to take or siege D.C. I think it HIGHLY likely that the war would of been over.

Croda said "Easy, Joe, or his daddy will buy you out and sell you as bait to Polynesian fishermen." Thanks man, best laugh I have had this week, I needed it. Hey guys this jerk is just trying to yank all your chains and it's working, just totally ignore the troll and belive me, he will go the way of the Dodo bird. [This message has been edited by SirOscar (edited 02-21-2001).]

Just read "Enemy at the Gates" GREAT book, some one here posted about the upcoming movie and I had to go buy the book. Anyway Chuikov, Gen Vassili Placed in charge of the Sixty-Second Army Sept 11 1942. Main job was to hold Stalingrad at all cost. After Stalingrad the Sixty-Second Army was renamed the Eighth Guards and Chuikov lead them in glorious victory in Berlin in May of 45. Later became commander of all Russian forces in postwar period. In 1969 he flew to Washington to represent Russia at Eisenhowers funeral. Reported to spend most of his retirement years in a Dacha outside Moscow. This guy was something else if you consider he survived the political postwar battles.

Iskander What I want to know is more info on that book behind you. Who publishes it etc?