Xenophile

I'd endorse this. Well worth reading. Excellent explanation for much of the course of the campaign over the first 18 months. Especially interesting on the early demise of the Soviet Mechanised Corps; the apparently endemic German logistic overstretch; and the impact on the development of weapons, munitions and tactics. Concise accounts of important actions - Mtensk is especially interesting.

I thought Zitadelle by Mark Healy was excellent. Seemed thorough, well-written, with enough background, detail and good maps (although no book ever has enough maps) to let me understand the battle.

Most scenarios are standalone, although as mentioned there are operations which take place on a single map but with several episodes using the same force, perhaps with reinforcements, throughout. Some designers have made sequences of linked scenarios exploring a situation over an extended timeframe. There is no 'campaign' element to the game itself. You generally start each scenario with a different force on unique terrain. It is an engrossing game, not too difficult to learn the controls, but learning to win might take time.

Sound idea. I'd buy it. Never happen. It seems such an easy idea to generate income for BFC with relatively little effort that it must have occurred to them. So it involves more effort than we imagine or it's likely to generate less income than we think or they believe they can make more money with CM:SF or they are more interested in coding an new engine than exploiting the old one. Hope I'm wrong.

(Self-confessed pragmatist, but with both moral absolutist and cultural relativist tendencies and failed hippy who perversely likes WWII Eastern Front wargames which attempt to model the historical reality but prefers playing scenarios which are designed to give both sides a chance within that limitation. Definitely not a Nazi. But prepared to play their forces in a game.)

Is it not a little hard to believe that the various cultures of pre-Columbian America incited all their European...visitors? to conquer them all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, all over both those continents? It surely couldn't be that Europeans behaved in North America as they did in South America and Australia and Africa where the native populations were similarly weakened by alien disease and outmatched in war-making? Or could we see the visitors as somehow in competition with the native population and engendering violent resistance from them? Permanent settlement is not a precondition for use of land. Forest is productive in a different way to pasture or cropland, perhaps less productive but still necessary to those who have that way of life. Does the mere fact of increased material productivity justify morally the displacement of the forest people by farmers? It helps to explain why it happens, but does it justify it, morally? Contemporary European culture has determined that capital punishment is barbaric - would the continuation of the practise in the US justify it's invasion from Europe? Is it only the military strength of the US which prevents this? Or have Europeans perhaps reached a level of civilisation (through their recent and direct experience of modern war) which understands that the cost of war is almost always outweighed by it's benefits? Or that cultural change is almost always better for the people of any culture to be adopted than imposed? I don't believe that the US is fascist - it's as democratic state as any I think (but flawed too). I do think it is hegemonistic (rather than outrightly imperialistic) and aggressive and that is why it is mistrusted, despite the undoubted good it has performed, particularly in WWII in helping defeat fascism in Europe. It is hard to reconcile the moral presentation of the US as the last best hope for mankind with the state which pursues it's own self-interest so purposefully. This is not to say that the US is any worse than almost all other states which have attained a position of material or military dominance thoughout history. In some respects it may be somewhat better than most; but in others it seems depressingly similar. [ April 13, 2006, 05:28 PM: Message edited by: Xenophile ]

Replicating some of Strachwitz's reported exploits should be a very interesting challenge for a designer. Looking forward to it. Doesn't Der Panzer Graf's first name translate to Hyacinth? Almost surreal.

I didn't even think it was possible to sit on three fences at once...

Didn't Hermann Balck have an even faster wartime rise - rifle regiment to army group commander? And was there one who ended the war in the Volkssturm?

Ouch! On another matter the thread touched on, I think the role of the USSR in WWII is simply not part of the common cultural knowledge, certainly in the UK. Even where 20th century history is taught in schools, the importance of the Nazi-Soviet conflict isn't normally recognised, let alone emphasised. It's not uncommon to realise that an intelligent, better-than-normally informed person simply has no idea of the hugely greater relative scale of the war on the other side of Europe compared to say, Italy or North Africa. Or is completely unaware of it. (I suppose 'Enemy at the Gates' may at least have widened common knowledge a little.) I'd concur with the notion that the Cold War is responsible for that ignorance and though that really isn't a barrier now, WWII is sufficiently long ago that the details(!) of it are hardly likely now to become part of common knowledge.

I don't know enough to properly judge Bartov's thesis on the nature of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. It does seem that that conflict was on a more vicious level than those against other enemies. My reading of him was that he believed that the German Army's complicity and involvement in the general atrocity of the war in the Soviet Union had been overshadowed by the attention paid to the specifically Nazi organisations. Perhaps he tries to swing opinion too far that way. (From my intermittent reading here, I really hadn't held you to be in any way sympathetic to the Nazis, nor do I now. I just thought your view of Bartov was expressed more vehemently than seemed warranted.)

I'm not certain what point Michael is making here. It surely can't be that the German Army actually carried out their moral responsibilities to Soviet prisoners of war, or that they made proper provision for the civilian population they controlled, or that they didn't massacre many of those civilians as 'reprisals' or simply call them partisans and massacre them anyway. They didn't steal or destroy their food or shelter as a matter of policy? It is not to excuse the crimes of the Soviet state against their own people to accuse the German Army of at best, indifference to the deaths of millions of civilians and culpability in more deliberate exterminations. So what is the point - that Bartov may exaggerate what they did? How many demons are on the head of the pin?

Isn't the best early Soviet AT weapon the Ampulomets - at least in CMBB, if not historically? I've had Pz IVs die against them. Hard to spot, much better range than other infantry AT weapons and they scare the pants off German infantry, too.

I think it's apparent that the problems of the British automotive (and other) industry at the time were with the management culture, not the engineers. While I may not completely agree with Corelli Barnett's analysis in 'The Audit of War', it's hard to argue with his facts. (As for rivets being popular - rivets were easier. Cast or welded construction was better.)

I had the distinct impression that, at least in the early war, British tanks were notoriously unreliable. And pretty ill-designed too. Bolted or riveted amour? Didn't the heavily armoured Matilda have two engines? What was wrong with putting in one more powerful engine? And why did the British make such great use of the Sherman if their own tanks were up to much? But if your contention that national tank design reflects national car design is correct, then that would explain the fact that people making cars in the UK these days mostly work for companies with Japanese (and German) names... There may well have been a continuity of mediocrity.

That didn't prevent Germans from, say, creating a Slovak (slavic) proxy. The same in Yugoslavia. Divide and rule. [/QB]

Was Hitler's motivation for invading the Soviet Union not primarily the creation of a genuinely imperial Germany? To annex territories and resources which he believed would ensure Germany Great Power status in perpetuity? And this while destroying the ideological enemy of the Bolshevik state and subjugating the supposedly racially inferior Slavs? It would have rum counter to much of the meaning of the Eastern campaign to genuinely promote Ukrainian or any other nationalism in the struggle against the Soviet Union. The point was not to liberate these peoples but to replace Soviet rule with Nazi rule. And the model for their administration of the conquered Soviet territories was the brutality of the German occupation of Poland, not their relatively light administration of France and the other occupied Western European states. That the people of the conquered territories might easily have become German allies if they had been given even a little motivation by the Nazis may be be true, and that perhaps a war of liberation rather than conquest might have been a more winnable one - but that ran counter to the Nazi philosopy of race. Rather the Slavs were to become the uneducated serfs and helots for the Nazi Empire and their resources were to secure German economoc Autarky. (As an ideology founded on the error of racial superiority, it seems appropriate that that error itself helped lead to Nazism's downfall. I believe that it is a recent historical tragedy beyond any other that it succeeded at all and cost so much.)

I think that this is a great idea for reducing the artificiality of the map edges. Might not always be appropriate for a given scenario, but one way of approaching the problem.

Changes 1. Make map edges less attractive. Absurdly wide maps relative to the size of the forces might be enough, but failing that, model some larger possibility of danger from outside the map edge to elements close to it. 2. Line-of-sight aid. Overlay indicating the exact scope of a selected unit would be good (although might reduce player involvement). Even increasing the contrast between terrain at different heights would help though. 3. On-map visual indicator of the status of elements during the orders phase. It's a pain to me in larger fights to have to check every non-sneaking unit to see which have taken fire. Make it switchable for those who don't want it. 4. AI. Make it better at it's best certainly - but allow it more variability, both in the level of tactical skill it displays and the tactical approach it can take (passive/aggressive, dispersed/concentrated). I'm sure this is not easy to do. 5. More unknowns. The defender surely ought to have more terrain knowledge than the attacker in most cases? Troop quality - aren't the reactions of men under fire unpredictable, even units which have seen action? Aren't weapons, particularly innovative ones, less than reliable? (I love the anecdote where a panzer crewman, startled by a shouted command, breaks the handle of his vision block dust-wiper, obscuring his vision, who then jumps out of the vehicle...is this really modelled by 'bogged'?)

I wonder to what extent simple psychology made the Germans attempt Zitadelle? They had invaded the Soviet Union expecting quick victory and found that it was much stronger and more resilient than they had believed. If they were incapable of achieving even the limited offensive aims of Zitadelle, didn't the conclusion follow inevitably that their nation was bound for defeat? How difficult would it have been to accept that?

I can't really accept the basis of the speculation - what different circumstance would allow the possibility of the Germans winning at Kursk? Even had they somehow hacked their way across the salient, surely there was no possibility of inflicting more damage to the Soviet forces than they themselves would have suffered? Winning operationally would probably have left them in a worse strategic imbalance. From a purely military perspective, the Germans might have been better adopting the Soviet approach - await the enemy offensive, defeat it, then move on to the offensive. The problem with this approach is also on the strategic level. The Soviet forces are getting stronger the longer they wait, while the US and UK are increasingly threatening in the west. The Germans themselves seem to have seen the operation at Kursk as essentially defensive and in effect acknowledged that they could not force a strategic defeat on the Soviet Union in the near term. Nevertheless assuming Guderian's doubts sway Hitler (because it is fun to speculate) and the Germans adopt a defensive posture what might have happened? Although the weight of the German preparations for Kursk have drawn much of the Soviet forces south, the Soviets have the strength to use much the approach they used once the Germans did break off at Kursk. The disparity in armour is not as great but even if the Germans can hold and even roll back two breakthroughs, the third will surely force them to give ground. Maybe the outcome might have been somewhat less unfavourable than they in fact suffered but I doubt the course of the war would have been much changed. I'd prefer a speculation on how different things might have been if Paulus had held much of his armoured and motorised forces out of Stalingrad as a mobile reserve, or if Guderian's forces hadn't been used to help surround the Soviets around Kiev, but attempted to continue towards Moscow. Or even if those forces had done *anything* in July instead of wasting time trying not to move south?

I know this thread happened a long time ago but I'm not sure that anyone can compare with Marshal Budenny. Paulus only lost a maximum of 200,000 men. Budenny seems to have lost over half a million around Kiev in 1941. Agreed that he was operating under restrictions from Moscow and that no-one in the Soviet command expected Guderian to be diverted from Moscow, but the accounts I've read put him at best amongst the most incompetent commanders of all time. It almost seems that if the Germans had let him he would have put even more forces into the encirclement.

Methinks The Graeme refers to the Battle of Beda Fomm - the culmination of something Wavell ordered as 5-day raid and O'Connor turned into the rout of the Italians in North Africa. Before he could finish the Italians in North Africa, O'Connor had his troops taken away to be wasted in the futility of the Greek debacle, then Hitler sent Rommel to rescue Mussolini's Empire and tie down the British. O'Connor had the bad luck to be captured on his return to the theatre as an advisor and the British lost their best and most experienced desert commander. O'Connor against Rommel would have been an interesting contest! Beda Fomm would certainly make an interesting battle or operation. Early equipment and a small mechanised, professional force in a defensive position trying to block the retreat of a much larger army. Sidi Rezegh is one battle I'd expect to see with the game, maybe as an operation.

All conventional warfare is concerned with supply, but it's less obvious at the tactical level CM models than at higher levels. At this tactical level you are concerned with carrying out a mission - defending positions or capturing positions - not ensuring that your forces can resupply (although this can be modelled by requiring flags to be held in your rear or start areas). The assumption must be that the ground concerned will affect your or your enemy's supply at a higher level (since this is usually the most efficient method of defeating your opponent). At CM's level of modelling, all the tactical elements of geography which apply to Normandy or the Eastern Front apply equally in North Africa. Just as most CM:BB scenarios have less cover than CM:BO scenarios do, I imagine CM:AK will have less still, emphasizing the importance of relative elevation of ground. With luck, designers of battles for CM:AK will also better model the attempts commanders in every theatre made to enhance defensive postions by use of passive obstacles - particularly extensive minefields and anti-tank ditches. In short, I don't worry that in North Africa I will be faced with turns of manouvreing to gain an advantage - that's a theatre or operational command decision - in North Africa, I expect to meet the enemy and to have to defeat them.

I really, really don't like to whinge, but as a long suffering CDV European, I feel...even more annoyed than I already was. Not blaming anyone in particular but still... really annoyed.