PzKpfwIII

My earliest guess would be that using CM:C will be rather unlike any operational game that has gone before, simply because of the detail available in every ME on the map. I've played Airborne Assault and realize there is a great deal of info packed into every little counter, but my gut feeling is that CMC will still play very much differently.

One finds it hard to argue with this, so long as you are not demonizing "them"; the Nazis were, unfortunately, flesh and blood humans who loved their families, had hopes and dreams like everyone else, and who thought that taking over their neighbours and exterminating the Jews, the gypsies, the mentally infirm, the handicapped, and the elderly would bring about Utopia. I'm not sure if your objections to that are religious, or athiestically moral, (I know what mine are) and that would be besides the point anyway - but the main point here is that they felt that science, history, maybe even common sense supported what they were doing. They even expected to go down in history for it; Goering was convinced there would be statues of him in every German home. I think (or hope) that we all would have a hard time understanding how they thought that way today. But everything is relative. We rightly condemn them through our own lens, but somehow, millions of people convinced themselves and each other that what they were doing was natural and legal - or perhaps even immoral and illegal but necessary. I suppose in the latter case we have self-imposed martyrdom. ("I may go to Hell for murdering undesirables, but Germany will finally be cleansed of all its ills.") It's perverted to be sure, but not the work of beasts. Mostly right, but the demonization at the end just sounds foolish. Hitler wanted to retire to Austria after his "work" was finished, build cities, and quietly live in retirement. Or so he said. Others figure he would have got Von Braun hopping so he could send jackbooted astronauts to take over the moon. I have no insights into which he really hoped to achieve. This is all true as well; they were poorly organized (lucky for us) and criminal. Hitler may have been a "madman" but if you are speaking clinically, as in insane, he most certainly wasn't. I wouldn't defend him as being rational, I guess I wonder what your definition of "madman" is. Whatever it is, I think it's bad enough - worse really - to think that a rational human being could come to the kinds of conclusions on race and social Darwinism as he did. Take them on an individual basis though. You can't blame it all on insanity, not millions of people. Was Speer "mad"? He was brilliant. And a liar after the war. And he knowingly achieved miracles with the armaments portfolio knowing full well that he was using slave labor. I've never heard him described as "mad" though. You just dilute your statements with this. They weren't lunatics, they were thinking human beings, which makes it all much more chilling. Some would say Americans are starting to go down the same path. That doesn't frighten you? This is true and well stated. But you would deny the "fact" of an 18 year old Dutch boy volunteering for the SS as being "swept up in it." Fair position, just wondering where you draw the line. Plenty of German males enlisted before being called up - were they swept up...or were they criminals?

Prinz Eugen had some lulus in it as well; the Anti-Partisan Badge was probably not something to be proud of.

The war was over in a few days; they were occupied by Germany by that point... Incidentally, did Germany ever actually declare war on The Netherlands? In seriousness though, the war in the Soviet Union was billed as an international crusade against communism; the Dutch SS weren't fighting other Dutch soldiers, they were fighting communists. I don't want to sound like I am defending them, just offering an alternative point of view. One person killing his mother, to further that example, and asking "am I a criminal" doesn't illicit much sympathy, but an entire nation fighting to subjugate a continent and perform genocide on 10 million innocents starts to beg some bigger questions. Especially when tens of thousands of their neighbours start flocking to the colours to help. The Dutch SS formations were sizeable, but not noted for being either isolated instances or the largest examples of such; there were similar legions from across Europe. Did these thousands of men really consider themselves criminal?

I know that, and you know that, but to an eighteen year old reactionary Dutch Nazi, things probably seemed a little more ... unfocussed ... would you agree with that at least? If we can't agree on the muddle-headedness of 18 year old males as being universal, I fear we may not agree on anything. Pity, I rather liked the excellent comments you made in the CM:C forum re: reserves.

You're arguing semantics now; soldiers can only be considered brave when fighting for the country in which they were born? The Dutch SS volunteers felt they were doing that. The Dutch themselves admit to being one of the most reactionary nations in Europe. As for their treason, what happened to the surviving Dutch SS after the war? The answer might surprise you. The handful of English SS men were treated unevenly; ringleaders were hanged, some got off scot free (of the survivors, few were paragons of intellect). Capital crime? NATO stood for many of the same things those Dutch SS men stood for. You take issue with the fact they fought for the armed forces of a nation other than that in which they were born. Your view of all this is extremely simplistic and far too black and white.

and Both of those sentiments are offensive and stupid: there is no reason to "respect" anyone who, after his country was conquered by the Nazis, volunarily *joined* the Nazis and fought in their army, essentially in an attempt to keep Holland German. I should point out that unlike German soldier, Dutch volunteers weren't even drafted - unlike many young men, he had the choice not to fight for the Nazi regime and he went out of his way to fight for the Nazis. Who, I'll mentioned again, had conquered his own country and killed many of his fellow citizens, first during the hot part of the war and then later while fighting the resistance (although wrt resistance, there was usually some torture between the fighting and the death). The main point is not whether this guy fought in the SS, or whether his SS unit was clean (althought that's a subsidiary point). The main point is that this guy turned against his own people and joined the German army. I don't see anything worthy of respect in his actions, although I think I may understand his reason for emigrating from the netherlands. </font>

Well stated, BigDuke6.

Hopefully there will be a mechanism for "drawing front lines" that doesn't revolve around 1km square blocks - and a better system than the Operations in CMBB (though those were a better system, at least, than the ones in CMBO). Even the CMBB style front line drawing (and consequent setup areas) would be an improvement on simply carving out 1km square blocks for the sake of simplicity - but of course all these comments are made without having seen the game.

I never gave my definition of "conquer" so am at a loss to understand why you felt the need to post this. The original poster felt that "plunder" was inadequate to the task of describing completely German strategic plans for, and military operations in, the Soviet Union. You first posted that you felt it was adequate for that task, then after a brief discussion, posted that you felt it actually inadequate but was the most apt word you could think of based on your interpretation of possible words and the amount of "nobility" those words suggested. I happen to feel that - like you and Krautman - "plunder" is inadequate to singly describe what the Germans had planned. I also feel "conquer" is inadequate for that task, but then, I'm not disposed to find a single word to describe those plans and actions and feel it would be foolish to try. I also feel this entire line of conversation is irrelevant to the Battle of Kursk, for what it is worth. Apologies if I offended you in some way by questioning your understanding of the word plunder; you managed to clear up your thinking quite nicely with the next post. Your questioning of my own understanding of "conquer" was unnecessary, especially since I've still not given my definition, nor do I feel it particularly germaine either to the main post, or to this side-discussion. Can you honestly say you do? As I just stated, I think if one is inclined to try and describe it, more words would be considerably better than less words. But not in a thread about Kursk. *L* I hope this wasn't an invitation to Nazi-apologists, incidentally. Or an admission?

Incidentally, "accumulate" is an acceptable word in this case, I think it adequately describes what is taking place.

Andreas seems to be disassociating the act of plunder (technically, stealing) from the (in the case of the Germans in the USSR) associated acts of genocide, conquering territory, and germanicization. Perhaps his definition of plunder includes more than just theft. Or you and I are simply being too technical.

I think 'plunder' describes it quite well. Also check some of the detail in the plan here. All the best Andreas </font>

We were discussing CMC, not Operations, and Conditional RGs. What you're describing is similar but not directly related. JasonC's point about "reserves" is also related to Operations, though, and would be another good use of conditional reinforcements. How best to implement "reserves" will yet to be seen. Both players in a CMC campaign could conceivably prolong a campaign many times by bringing in (or having invoked) "reserves". One would probably need artificial restraints put in since the greater context (ie the entire war) would not be directly seen. Perhaps a randomization would be effective (yes, general, we would love to reinforce your division and realize it is getting trashed, but corps is up against new priorities to your south and can't release another regiment...we may be able to in two days if the situation stabilizes...)

If anyone actually attempted such a thing I'd have a hard time believing it would be any good; the Kursk salient as shown at the Wikipedia page on the battle appears to be about 200 x 200 km; that would equal 10,000 maps to be made. (I realize the argument will be made that not all of the salient saw combat forces deployed there, and in fact only small portions of territory were actually fought over, but my counter argument would be that if you can't change the historical outcome, what on earth would be the point of replaying something of this scope?) But not just made; they would need to be "tweaked" I think in order to get the flags to work correctly - as it stands now they will four to a map, 1 in each 1km square quadrant. Even if the maps were simply generic and not done from historical maps (and again, if recreating a "historical" engagement, why bother without maps), this would be a giant workload. As with the Dzerhesinsky Tractor Factory example, with 200 tanks attacking 8000 defenders, you'd have to break it up into small slices I think. Besides which, as an Army Group battle, Kursk is interesting but break it down into divisional battles. Individual panzer divisions fighting their way through mud and minefields sounds kind of ...well, boring. I think we'll need to look to creative researchers to find those interesting divisional actions (what CMC is being designed for) nestled in the "hohum" strategic battles that everyone stampedes over in their quest for a "sexy topic." Kursk may be sexy at the strategic level, but it may even prove difficult to find suitable divisional slices of it. And then we'll be surprised to find, say, that a really decent divisional action took place during the siege of Leningrad or something - with wide open flanks to maneuver around, and lots of tough choices to be made by attacker and defender both. I do hope we'll start to look past the stuff that's been done to death or on an inappropriate scale, and start to look for those hidden little Divisional battles that the mainstream historians have ignored or never knew about. I'd be interested, for example, in seeing the 101st Jäger Division's fighting in the Kuban bridgehead portrayed - this was the division that the author of Cross of Iron served in, and upon which his novel (and later, Peckinpah's movie) was based on. Rather than an assault into prepared positions in depth, it would be fascinating to play CMC as a withdrawal - basically a chase. If there is some mechanism in the game for withdrawing units through a port or railhead, so much the better. Think of the decisions you would have to make as the German, such as deciding which units to leave as a rearguard, etc. Do you send a regiment back 5 km and get them to spend 24 hours digging trenches and bunkers? What if the Russians simply bypass that hill? Or arrive before you're done digging? The Soviets would have to decide how fast and how hard to push. Sounds much more interesting than coaxing Panther tanks with engine troubles through half a dozen layers of prepared defences, which is all many divisional slices of Kursk would end up being. The final point appears self-evident only considering none of us have seen the game yet. But if CMC is being optimized for divisional forces, something on an army-group scale may be ill-considered for the same reasons divisional level battles are ill-considered in CMBB. High level considerations like strategic reserves of oil, corps level anti-aircraft assets, railroad schedules, and a host of other "data" that would be essential to the planning staff of an army or army group would not be present in CMC at all - requiring either lengthy "house rules" or else some other workaround (or simply ignoring them). Again, this may not seem to be an optimal treatment of the subject. IMO. It reminds one of Denis Leary's take on crack, a substance that CM is often, not undeservedly, compared to - "Only in America would there be someone that cocaine wasn't good enough for." I think we see that here; Germany fielded hundreds of Divisions on the Russian Front, their opponents fielded just as many; each one had their own history, I'm hoping the designers look past trying to shoehorn the well-known battles into CMC simply because they have name recognition, and go the extra mile to find those battles that will really be shown off to advantage in CMC - the Eastern Front was so much bigger than just Stalingrad/Kursk/Berlin, wasn't it? [ November 02, 2005, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: Russophile ]

So, I guess the longer we have to wait for Beta Testing to go into high gear (anyone else have an Excel spreadsheet yet in which they are tracking the date and number of posts in the Beta Forum?) and the game goes gold, I guess we are left to amuse ourselves with hypotheticals from the sublime to the ridiculous. Here's one; and like all the other wildly original suggestions cropping up, I do hope the design team and beta testers have already thoroughly considered this. But I was wondering if conditional reinforcements would be possible? I think it would be a great campaign designers tool, and can think of a couple of examples of their use. By "conditional", though, I mean reinforcements that don't come into play unless some condition is met, as set by the campaign designer. We've not yet seen this in the CM system to any real degree; so far the only condition we've been able to set is a random chance of entry. I am speaking operationally in any event, not in the tactical battles themselves. a) as an example, say that a reinforcement group of Partisans/Conscripts/Volkssturm are only activiated in a 2 km tile when enemy units attempt to enter it. This would represent hastily mobilized defence forces that will only fight when their homes are directly threatened. I'd like to see the campaign designer have control over how easy it is to "spot" these units on the operational map. to stop that well known tactic of "gamey edge hugging" - and we've seen it discussed for use in the tactical CM game though it was never implemented - how about the ability to active reinforcements only when your opponent advances along the outermost tiles of the operational map? Would simulate neighbouring formations and create some "friction" for units operating on the far boundaries. A possibility would be restricting these reinforcements to only operating on the flanking map tiles, or perhaps appaearing and disappearing as necessary? Just some more ideas while we bide our time waiting for our chance to sink our teeth into things.

The assault on the Dzherezinsky Tractor Works alone involved some 200 German tanks, with the 37th Guards Division suffering 5000 casualties of a complement of 8000 men (including non-combatants not depicted in CM). This was a small portion of the battle, but probably occurred within the space occupied by just a couple of CMC tiles. Unit densities would be impossibly high in such a case. It's a shame that Operations in CMBB didn't allow for more flexibility, but CMC might be a way to alleviate that. If they can get the initial set up zones to correspond to "front lines" in an improved way over CMBB Operations, it would be optimal. If we will be restricted to one-km-square setup zones for each battle, it will be an understandable simplification, but not a great way of simulating the situation in places like Stalingrad. Simulating the entire battle within just the city limits would be a daunting task, but given enough players...sort of like WWII Online, you would need literally dozens of players on each side. May be an eventual step in CM's evolution though.

Bender and Law have a detailed list - the order of battle as of 1 Mar 1943 included 10 Pz Div 21 Pz Div 334 Inf Div Div von Manteuffel 19 and 20 FlaK Div Armee direkt unterstellt (including Tiger battalion 501) KG Buhse KG Schmid as well as Italian units

Here's one. During the first week of the Lvov-Sandomirz operation, 1st Ukrainian Front shifted its forces and rammed two Tank Armies through a narrow breakthrough zone called the Kotlov corridor. The Germans attempted to hit the front end of the breakthrough with the greater part of a Panzer Korps (I forget which one, it can be looked up) but this counterattack failed because Sturmovik aircraft from 2nd Air Army intercepted the German armored blow. This was supposedly the first time the Soviets turned back a German counterattack with aircraft alone. </font>

That's an excellent point; kind of ties in with my response to MHofbauer really.

Surrendered troops being returned is a bad idea. I have a hard time believing that prisoner exchanges were done all that often, given the track record of brutality on both sides regarding treatment of captured soldiers. More importantly, infantry battalions only held their prisoners temporarily, they were evacuated as swiftly as wounded soldiers were far up the chain of command - infantry battalions and even regiments had no facilities for permanently keeping prisoners of war in any numbers and the division is the first level at which sizeable military police units are found. Finally, why bog the game down with statistics on prisoners, and moreover, what mechanics would you use for the actual exchange? Sounds like a lot of "chrome" for no real benefit, even if such things had been done routinely, which they weren't. If this was really going to be included, the next step would of course to calcuate how many Soviet POWs were really defectors, and then calculate the number of freshly-minted Hilfswilligen in the German rear echelons...

Medium bombers seem to have been relatively more rare in the Luftwaffe and Red Air Force than in the USAAF and RAF, and I would suggest that their tactical use was almost unheard of. Even in the west, tactical use of medium and heavy bombers was a rarity, and on those rare occasions they were employed, the results were not good; the short bombing incidents during COBRA and TOTALIZE are well known. Can you think of a specific incident on the Eastern Front in which medium bombers were used tactically to good effect? By tactically I mean used against troop concentrations or staging areas in direct support of an operation, as opposed to bridges, railyards, etc.

Not to mention the Training and Replacement Battalion of one of the SS panzer divisions - which would have been an interesting mix in themselves of cadre, convalescents, and recruits.

Motherland was in the news a few years ago because - like the war memorials of many nations - it had started to deteriorate and was in need of refurbishment. It must be awe inspiring to see it in person. Good find john_d - I've never seen the Pavlov's House photos before.

But neither the handling of enemy prisoners, nor conduct in enemy hands, has anything to do with instruction in "how to surrender" which is the point I was trying to make. Apologies if I was in some way unclear. Naturally soldiers would be instructed in the treatment of enemy POWs, and their responsibilities as prisoners themselves would be a routine subject to be covered during their training. If, however, you can point to a manual or even a recollection of a German (or Russian) soldier being instructed in the best way to physically surrender themselves to the enemy, I would be quite interested in reading that. As for my comments about company-sized surrenders, my exact words were "an organized surrender by a company commander without a fight would seem on the face of it to be something of a fantasy." If you overcome your laziness or someone else can provide a quote, it would be of interest. Going beyond the face of things, I could imagine such surrenders being arranged in the Stalingrad pocket, for example, as conditions deteriorated, or indeed as part of the overall capitulation. Word would spread slowly throughout the pocket that a cease fire had been arranged and individual companies would make their local arrangements, but I was thinking more along the lines of the original example - ie a single company surrounded and cut off from a division otherwise still fighting effectively. Perhaps I had tunnel vision by that presumption?