JerseyJohn
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Posts posted by JerseyJohn
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On -- one of the best computer features over board games. Ever try a board game with fog of war where you count on mutual honesty? It's enough to destroy one's faith in his fellow man; and oneself as well!
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Makes sense, at it's height Germany had 70,000,000 Russians in it's occupied areas (according to "Stalin, the Glasnost Revelations" Walter Lacquer). I didn't see evacuations in this sort of logistical light, but it explains much.
A Russian friend told me the civilian populations in areas occupied by the Nazis were ever after looked on with suspicion by Stalin.
Another example was surrendered soldiers who were also seen as traitors and their families held responsible. Of course, when Stalin's own son was captured he was allowed to get around all that by simply disowning him.
Does the state exist to serve the people or the people exist to serve the state?
Both dictators believed the latter, of course.
A basic difference between Hitler and Stalin in this regard is Hitler chose to exalt his own people as the priveledged superior race where Stalin, perhaps because his population was so diverse, granted them universal suffering and counted on their ability to absorb hardship and arbitrary abuse to fulfill his agendas.
In planning Barbarossa Goering made a remark to the effect of, "I shouldn't like to be a Russian!" Rather than put Germany in a war economy the nazi heirarchy chose the planned plunder of an entire nation, the calculated starvation of millions -- this is as incredible as any abuse Stalin ever committed. What gets to me is it's random idiocy; why create enemies out of people who only want to be left alone?
Can't find the deported minority you mentioned but I know who you mean, Stalin considered all of them to be traitors, even those serving in the army who had been decorated in combat. They were recalled and sent to Siberia with everyone else. No doubt someone will post their identity in a day or two.
-- Mind boggling insanity, all of it!
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Aftermath of Brest-Litovsk variation --
There's an alternate history idea I've always been interested in based on the Treaty of Brest- Litovsk. It employes the premise that Germany accepted the Allies 1918 terms and vacated Belgium and Northern France in exchange for holding onto their winnings in the East.
According to "Brest-Litovsk, The Forgotten Peace, March 1918", Wheeler-Bennett, 1938, available in Norton Library edition --
The Bolsheiviks ceded to Kaiser Germany an area consisting primarily of the Ukrain, east to, but not including, Rostov, in the center going to but not including, Kursk, and in the north and heading straight north from Mohilev to the Baltic Sea, encompassing the three Baltic States and stopping at, but not including, Lenningrad.
On the map in the book the Baltic States are referred to as Courland, implying they may or may not have been seen as a single entity.
Most other accounts are rather vague as to the ceded territory, usually saying Germany would have received an area including the Caucasus and going to the Urals, but that is obviously not the case.
Germany wisely set up puppet states (Ukrania and others) instead of ruling these areas directly. This helps explain the welcoming committees that first greeted Barbarossa's initial spearheads. Which changed after the combat troops moved on and the goonsquads arrived to rape the countryside and turn everyone into partisans.
In my scenario Stalin starts the war by invading Ukrania out of the Kursk region. Due to SC mechanics, the Axis area is set up this way: Poland has surrendered and the Baltic States are Axis allied, along with Hungary and Rumania.
The affected area of the Ukraine has it's hexes and cities colored Axis, including the Caucasus. England and France are also at war with Germany.
The Austro-Hungrian Empire is long gone, collapsed from within as it did historically and The Ottoman Empire is carved up by England and France, having been defeated in 1918, again, as happened historically.
It starts it in Sept '39 with the Allies having the initiative. Under the circumstances I'm not sure Russian partisans are justified, but they make the game more interesting so I'll probably leave them in.
Figuring how the Nazis fit in is a problem -- I rationalize it as the Kaiser's government falling during the unsettling early '20s. Perhaps, even though avoiding defeat in the war, the Old Regime could have lost popular support due to economic stress, lingering war weariness, with all those factors being enflamed by left wing revolutionists.
A brief period of upheaval with the vacuum being filled by the Nazis (hopefully a militant by not murderous or viciously rascist version) probably much earlier than 1933.
Fictionally, I'd see something like the Weimar Republic struggling to maintain order with old Fieldmarshals Hindenburg and Ludendorf as it's first and only presidents, giving way to actual history with the National Socialists placed in power to counter the communists only to pull off their own coup. In this historical setting I think it would have happened around 1925 instead of 1933.
It's interesting to speculate what they'd have been like without the Versailles Treaty to attack and without the stab-in-the-back scapegoats produced by defeat.
It very nearly occurred, or something quite similar. Germany misread it's chances after defeating Russia and opted for total victory.
A second scenario is an experiment on the premise that the Hindenburg-Ludendorff offensive succeeded before the A.E.F. arrived in force and became a factor.
Having broken through the trenches, German formations from the East, flushed with victory, overwhelm war weary and often mutinous French divisions and capture Paris in 1918. Britain and France decide to cut their losses and immediately sue for peace.
Germany returns Paris and the areas occupied in Northern France, but keeps Belgium (during the twenties absorbing Holland, somehow, to form the Low Countries territory) and remains in the French mining hex and the region to it's east.
In game terms Germany occupies the Maginot Line. presumably with all this new territory it would have fortified it's new Western border.
As in the first scenario, Germany has the Ukrainian / Baltic regions previously described with Rumania & Hungry as Axis allies.
France has a strong army with HQ and air units. Like the USSR, she is thirsting for revenge and the return of her mining region.
England must either be surrendered or on the allies, of course, but it makes sense she would have lined up against so powerful a German state.
Germany, in these scenarios, is the underdog.
Having been the victor in WW I, or at least the victor in the East holding conquered territories, she starts immediately with territory being invaded and a two front war to deal with.
The problem is play balance, there's no point stacking everything in one side's favor.
I see Germany having the most interesting situation -- it must decide which foe to counter first. France is stronger than the Soviets but can be defeated more quickly in it's smaller area. On the other hand, if too few units are sent east, Russia rolls quickly to Poland and Rumania in the opening offensives. Meanwhile, Britain is in the wings.
I leave Italy neutral but strongly pro-Axis.
The United States is also left neutral; probably it should be changed to Random after the fall of either France or Russia.
This basic situation, an immediate two front war to the east and west, is exactly what Schlieffen was planning for in the late nineteenth century.
Some interesting considerations involve tactics and weapons development during this inter-war period.
For one thing, not having been routed by massed air power and large number of tanks, Germany might not have developed the Blitzkrieg doctrine, though certainly Heinz Guderian and other visionaries would have explored it's possibilities in any case. In "Achtung-Panzer!" he traces his interest in tanks to the lost role of cavalry in WWI, and specifically it's failure to expoit the infantry's successful march through Belgium.
It might be interesting to start off with a primarily infantry war, no tank units, and only a scattering of air fleets on both sides. Everyone should have low technology.
I'd give Russia level 1 for heavy tanks, England and Germany level 1 for ground radar and naval guns, Germany level 1 for submarines and rockets and Britain level 1 for heavy bombers and sonar. Additionally, Britain and Germany would be given three free research points at the start with the USSR and France 1 apiece.
Historically both Britain and Germany were researching jet aircraft in 1939; the German program was considerably more advanced but, in their infinite wisdom, the Reich totally ignored those efforts when the shooting began. A year or two later, when interest was revived, the jet aircraft technicians and researchers had to be brought back, in many cases, from combat duty!
Possibly Germany and Britain should have jets, level 1, at least Germany, the problem being once it hits level three there the side possessing the higher technology has a huge, often decisive, edge.
As the U.S. doesn't start it can't be activated to benefit from any of this; otherwise it would be reasonable to give her level 1 on radar, 2 on heavy bombers, 1 on sonar and two free research points.
It seems reasonable to assume the German fleet would be fairly large and modern. I'd give it two aircraft carriers (presumably there wouldn't have been the ruinous inter-service squabbling over naval aviators vs air force pilots), two battleships and four cruisers with two U-Boats at sea and two with the Baltic Fleet.
If anyone develops these ideas I'd like to know the results.
Some useful books are:
"Germany's Aims in the First World War" -- Fritz Fischer, 1961
"The End of Austria Hungary" -- Leo Valiani, 1966
"The Defeat of Imperial Germany, 1917-1918" -- Rod Pachall, 1989
(as mentioned above) "Brest-Litovsk The Forgotten Peace March 1918" -- John W. Wheeler-Bennett, 1938
[ October 22, 2002, 04:08 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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Unless I missed it, the decisions to leave civilians unevacuated from cities like Lenningrad and Stalingrad, even though they were about to become large scale battlefields, hasn't been brought up -- the logic being soldiers would fight harder for inhabited dwellings than empty ones. It's all the more poignant in the case of Lenningrad because the probability of siege and starvation was seen even as the Germans made their way north.
An amazing thing to me is how Russians exposed to Westernization became enemies of the state; including officers returning from military missions to Germany; missions they had been sent on by the very people having them arrested! Dock workers unloading western freighters at Archangel and Murmansk, even if they never made eye contact with American or British sailors, merchant seamen, whatever -- and before the war, civilians in Vladivostok who were told to be good hosts to a visiting American cruiser.
And that reasoning didn't die with Stalin, it extended into the seventies and eighties on a lesser level when Russians, including soldiers returning from Warsaw Block assignments, were eyed with suspicion; yet Stalin was long dead and two decades had passed since Kruschev's denunciation of his methods.
Immer's last entry did a lot to put this issue, with all it's antagonisms, into perspective.
I don't think we're beating a dead horse with all this. For one thing, Hussein, more than anyone else, reminds me of Stalin. The U.S.'s handling of Iraq during the past decade and a half demonstrates that it never learned very much from dealing with Russia in the Stalin era.
From the way the U.S. has dealt with Iraq the past couple of decades it seems apparent we didn't learn very much from the Stalin era.
Seems we pretty much wait for dictators to die, then hope for the best.
As for this forum, I hate to see it turn into an open season for attacks on EB.
True, EB has expressed many views a lot of us feel hostility towards. But he's also forced us to examine our feelings about these things and express our thoughts openly -- who ever figured to be drawn into a debate on the merits of Stalin's rule of Russia? Okay, so it's not so much a debate as a seething vortex.
Then there are the many postings in this and other forums where EB is insightful and gets good discussions going on interesting topics.
Say what you will, I say, Thank you EB!
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(okay, okay, I'll leave that other alleged anecdote buried with the unresurrected Stalin --)
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New anecdote, hopefully not as lame as the last. This was from a cartoon in a Russian publication presumably from the sixties, can't pin it down more specifically as it was told to me by the same Russian emigree:
Brezshniev shows his mother his limos and drivers and the old Czarist palace he lives in and says, "Well, momma, what do you think of your son now!" She looks around apprehensively and says, "Very nice, Leonid, but how will you explain it to the communists?"
-- Which marks my official retirement from the entry ending anecdote business. --
[ October 22, 2002, 08:49 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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Extremely interesting info -- didn't know about the 19th century Prussian use of wargaming but it makes sense considering their string of decisive victories.
Real warfare and recreational wargaming do seem to be moving closer. As for the Gulf War, if anyone would have described it to me a year earlier, I'd have said they were screwy. Sure, the coalition should have won and the proportion of casualties should have been very lopsided, but the total lack of coalition casualties was truly incredible.
This is definately an extremely fertile subject -- and all this time people like us were only doing it for fun!
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Well said.
I'm bending over backwards trying to understand reasoning that is totally contrary to everything I've always believed in.
Regarding the legions of brilliant Russians who emerged under the Soviet System, those mentioned already and the long list of brilliant Russians who fled the country (Igor Stravinsky, etc.,) I can't help but think of the unlucky ones who vanished in the gulags. How could their deaths have helped the country?
Sure I feel the end result could have been achieved more quickly and with infinitely less suffering than was done under Stalin. But having said that I'd like to see if EB or anyone else can produce valid arguments to the contrary. All I can imagine is that only a cruel and ruthless dictator could have come to power at that in Russia and the alternative was a worse person than Stalin.
Lennin and Trotsky, both liberal by comparison, also resorted to what we in the West would consider cruel and extreme measures. Some historians have traced many of Stalin's policies to doctrine first stated by Lennin. Trotsky was not above mass executions and other brutal measures. Beyond that, however, I don't believe either of them would have taken those measures past the initial period of revolution. I can't imagine either the gulags or purges taking place under either of them.
But would they have maintained power with people like Stalin lurking in the shadows? I don't know, this is all only speculation. I've read a lot of Trotsky and respect him. On Lennin I'm less well informed -- most of his writings I've come across seem to deal directly with bringing him and his followers to power but there are many volumes of his writing I've never seen at all, so I can't voice an opinion. He was obviously a great leader and the right man to turn up at the right time -- Kerensky and the Duma bunch always seemed hopeless to me.
I've read a lot on Stalin's cynical ways, how the purges and forced labor amused him, how he even sent the wives of his inner circle members to the camps and thought that was funny as well.
I'm not a defender of Stalin or Stalinism -- yet it's interesting that so many Americans and Englishmen, George Bernard Shaw and others, returned from trips to Russia with the Uncle Joe image in the late thirties and during the War, when it was fashionable.
During the war Soviet victories were routinely presented as Stalin's victories. Even the final winning of the war was presented as Stalin's victory, presumably the 20 million or so who died only did so in helping him.
Even the tactics employed by the Red Army seem overly callous -- troops attacking minefields as though they were enemy positions -- were tactics like that truely necessary?
As dgaad says, EB is, no doubt, a true believer. I have no burning desire to swing him over to my viewpoint (I doubt I'd be able to), but as the only Stalinist I've yet come across I want to hear his reasoning.
None of this is intended as a put-down. EB is among the people whose views interest me most, along with the views of those who attack those views with the greatest vigour!
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An old, admittedly very corny anecdote [also in various forms with Hitler as the subject] about Stalin's resurrection by whatever Soviet Premeir happened to be in office.
. . . .
STALIN "You thawed me out, is very good."
PREMIER "Boss, you've got to help us!"
STALIN, "No, I'm happily retired now."
PREMIER, "Please Boss, we're really in trouble!"
STALIN, "Well, okay, if Mother Russia requires it I'll take my old job back, but I say right now, this time it's no more Mr Nice Guy."
-- --
My apologies, I figure this was the last time I'd get to use it -- and I'm sure you'll agree!
[ October 22, 2002, 08:15 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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Extremely interesting thoughts from all the preceding posts -- Immer's entry about Russian writers, etc. is well taken -- also, Russian composers --Shostakovitch, Prokofieff, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Katchaturian and numerous others, not to mention pre-twentieth century Tchaikovsky, Mussorsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Borodin, etc. & etc.,--combined with outstanding figures in every form of creative art and the USSRs half century domination of International Chess (before which the world champion was a Russian emigree, Alexander Alejkhin), then there's Sergei Eisenstein and countless others, making it obvious that Russia has always been the nesting place of innumerable intellectuals and people of creative genius.
It's unfortunate that we who came of age in the 50s and 60s had to have so much of our character deformed by McCarthyism and the Cold War. There must have been a similar deformity for those who grew up in the former USSR.
Personally I find Stalinism hard to take but respect EBs statements in it's defense. I also enjoy dgaad's counter strokes, hopefully EB won't be offended by the satire because it's often very amusing. The AncientOne's observation about the Five Year Plans are also insightful.
Russia, having been completely torn apart three times in the twentieth century, was not likely to be led by a Thomas Jefferson, the leader had to be someone who clubbed his way to the top and was willing to keep clubbing those behind him before they clubbed him.
Lenin, Stalin & Trotsky are all interesting and meet the basic prerequisites but, of the three, Stalin, being the least idealistic, was probably most suited to retain power the longest and to exert the greatest influence. At least it wasn't someone like Berria who might have produced an equal or greater bloodbath with no positive results.
I've been led to believe Stalin was a sociopath and the very embodiment of the Anti-Christ. Sure, he built dams and industries and subways and helped modernise Russia, but was it really necessary to do it in such a brutal, murderous fashion? Was the death of untold millions some sort of requirement?
During the seventies and eighties I had occasion to know many Russian emigres, not all of them having left the USSR for religious reasons. One of them, a noncom during WWII, was suddenly sent to a penal battalion in 1943 for reasons never disclosed! He didn't speak much about his experiences but I noticed he didn't hate Stalin, which seemed incredible to me. Perhaps he didn't associate him with it. Leaders like Hitler and Stalin always seperate themselves from misdeeds while entwining themselves in the positive results.
Did circumstances dictate method? So much blood flowed during the revolution and afterwards that it seems hard to imagine a single man could have been responsible for all of it. But then, the same can be said of Hitler and the holocaust; I doubt we'll ever fully understand either tragedy.
I think it's unlikely that Americans who lived through four decades of Cold War can ever really understand the mind-set of people raised in a Stalinist society and probably the reverse is true as well.
At least in recent decades we in the West have been recoginzing that our own leaders and polices were often something less than altruistic. Not long ago such utterances were met with remarks like "My country right or wrong" and "Better Red than Dead." The one I used to always get was "If you think it's so bad over here you oughta go live over there!" And I, truthfully, was nobody's idea of a radical.
Most of the points I was making about American and British leaders involving shady policies are today thought of as regular history.
Anyway, it's good that we're openly exchanging our thoughts and phillosophies. A few weeks ago I didn't think anyone on earth would try to justify the purges and gulags, as always, being forced to re-examine long closed viewpoints has been a very beneficial experience.
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Lady Astor to Winston Churchill, "If I were your wife that snifter would be filled with hemlock."
Churchill to Lady Astor, "Madam, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."
[ October 21, 2002, 05:21 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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EB--dgaad-- & Immer Etwas
EB) Thought I was the only one with a version of Clash that cheated! Thought it was my own paranoia, then realized the AI was doing things that were utterly impossible. Yet, as you say, it remains one of the best -- a scenario editor would be a big help. Agreed with all the things you said about the other games; what drove me nuts in Axis & Allies was the Baltic Sea being entered freely from both the Artic and North Seas -- Germany needed to conquer the world to build a navy!
dgaad) Yes, I think wargaming and serious chess involve a form of reasoning most people don't use and don't understand.
-- A tournament chess game, with clocks running, is really a trip -- you're in mazes of complexities and trees and branches of moves, if cover the same line two or three times you're dead on the clock, if you don't you're prone to oversights. If you lose you can't say you lost it in the sun or it took a bad bounce!
Unfortunately all this gets lumped up with IQ, which is a falacy. It's a form of thought but doesn't demonstrate the gamer has a greater or lesser intelligence because of it. There were numerous studies involving chess masters (most notably Sam Reshevsky and Bobby Fischer) and the results seem to say more about the person doing the testing than the person being tested. --My favorite study was written up in the late eighties and stated "An exceptional ability at chess appears to indicate the individual's capacity to excel at the game of chess." Okay, that's pretty enlightening!
Immer Etwas) Pleased to find a kindred spirit -- it will always amaze me that Avalon Hill didn't take that track when they started making computer games.
There appear to be a lot more of us wargamers than anyone in marketing imagined. As you say, a year ago it was mostly the hand-eye shoot 'em up crowd that was being catered to. The sheer volume of posting on these boards shows we have real buying power and an insatiable appetite for quality strategy / tactical games.
Agreed we finally have a game designer who's listening to our opinions. It was very discouraging to see all those shoot'em ups coming out -- I was starting to think we'd only have CIV types and variants.
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I have to say first that I enjoy SC as a game.
Since everyone's advancing thoughts on how to make it more realistic, I'll throw in some of my own --
Speaking for those who want to play against a good AI --
In DOS I liked the look and approach of HiCOM but felt it was tedius to play, slow moving, and the AI couldn't make sensible decisions. Also, there were too many "routine tasks" the human player had to perform, too many little things that had to be done every single turn -- supposedly the computer could handle most of them, but who wanted the AI's decisions!
Also in DOS, Clash of Steel flowed well and the AI put up a better fight, also it threw an occaisional surprise. There were details about CLASH I didn't care for but they were minor, the main thing I didn't like was the no stacking rule. Without stacking you suddenly have units backed up half way into a country from it's border! Also it forced many bizarre tactical decisions when units blocked each other's movement. Surely in a hex representing fifty or sixty square miles there's room for more than a single corps!
SC, as mentioned by others, is similar to Clash. Again, I think the lack of stacking is a flaw. The AI, while much better than that of other programs, seems to have some odd habits, like heavily defending Northern England and leaving the south open and London with a single corps. Why make London a sacrificial lamb?
The game tactic appears to be counterattack -- let the landing fleet assemble, then cut it to shreds with naval units brought south, etc., I don't think that has much chance of success. Especially with air fleets in Northern France.
After recovering from Dunkirk, the British were quick to defend the coastal areas along the channel coast. I think this is the only way to go. Unfortunately, if the Axis has a powerful Luftwaffe in Northern France, the defending British units will pay a heavy price, especially since it's difficult for england to match air fleets with the Axis.
Which is another point -- the game is very air oriented. Perhaps this is justified. Historically it's accurate to say the Axis dominated the first few years, when they controlled the skies and the Allies dominated the next few years, when they took over control of the skies. It was less critical on the Russian front, though even there the same premise is applicable.
If I had to choose between too much or too little air power I'd go with too much; in the end --and in too many cases before the end-- it was air power that decided campaigns and battles on both land and sea.
The immediate fulfillment of production -- I need a battleship, just plunder some small fry, pay the production cost, and your BB will magically appear next week! -- is a problem.
As is, the Axis, after taking France, can begin building a powerful fleet and, using air units along the coast and U-Boats to whittle the Royal Navy down, can dominate the sea within a fairly short time.
A production schedule would do much to prevent this. It takes a long time to build capital ships. Maybe some sort of compromise can be reached -- Germany conquers France and there are X number of keels in place in French ports set by the French Navy before it's ouster; capital ships built on them will be completed more quickly, etc.
No matter how you handle German and Italian aircraft carriers the historical purists will never be satisfied. How do either of those countries suddenly produce trained aviators and officers who know how to properly handle carriers at sea? It took twenty years for England, Japan and the United States to evolve those techniques, neither Germany nor Italy would have developed them right away.
A related minor point nobody else seems too concerned about; if Germany goes from two or three naval units to ten or more -- how did they manage to train so many crews so quickly!
Having said all that, as stated earlier, I admit to really liking SC. It's in a mid-range somewhere with the nod toward playability and the scenario editor gives it added possibilities.
It isn't the WWII strategy game the buffs (including myself) have been waiting for, but in many ways it's a step in the right direction.
Like everyone else I look forward to the next improved effort and hope to see things like stacking, the Russian Winter, some real British activity in the Mediteranean, Strategic movement around the cape, and a production schedule.
I don't think there's any question about it's being worth the cost.
[ October 21, 2002, 12:17 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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Regarding HiCom, Clash of Steel and the ghost of strategy board games past --
The guy who never played any of the board versions missed a lot of good times -- stacking cardboard cutouts (usually three to a hex), finding ways to stick a fingernail between several stacks only to have the whole front scatter all over the place and the occaisional leaping cat landing on the gameboard, displacing dozens of pieces and expecting affection!
The best of them were from Avolon Hill -- including a very complicated game on the WW I Western Front -- unfortunately it had so many special rules it was almost unplayable. Also, like most of the others, it needed a fog of war element that was virtually impossible in a board game.
The Avalon Hill games I liked best were:
D-Day, which was the entire campaign in France on a Division level with a few odd brigade units. Also included were scores of unit counters, like HQs, that had no function in the game as originally originally designed (circa 1962) but the rules kept evolving through Avalon Hill itself so, by the late seventies, everything had a purpose and the Germans had things like V-rocket sites to induce campaigns into the low countries instesd of toward the central Rhine. A later refined version was called Fortress Europa (?) which was very similar and more detailed, it was probably very good but by then I wasn't playing board games any longer.
Stalingrad was a corps version of the Russian front that went from Barbarossa thru 1943. It was a lot of fun but, like D-Day and all the others, used a combat results table and a single die throw that made it all or nothing (actually, Def Retreat, Att Retreat, Def Eliminated, Att eliminated--varying with the odds of attack, usually from 1-3 to 6-1) you'd have a multi-hex battle going and would roll the wrong number and wham! You'd lose 3 stacks of attacking corps (9 total!) while your opponent lost nothing, what's more, his units were full stregnth and unfazed by the titanic battle they'd just fought! turn ends, downtrodden defender suddenly marches through the vacated hexes, and wins the game. And, of course, the opposite for att victories.
Along the way there was always the task of watching for intentional or unintentional rule bending by one's opponent (or oneself if oneself was philosophical enough to recognize it) -- one of the guys I played against had a tendency to interpret terrain to his optimal advantage -- a smear of jelly changed an ocean square to forest, till later on, when he needed an ocean square again and he'd say, "Hey, that's jelly!"
I thought most of the flaws could have been taken care of with computer technology. In fact, during the sixties the big fantasy was being able to play one of those games through a mainframe and have all the details cleaned up, have fatigue in units and variable stregnths through combat and marches, etc instead of the notorious Defender or Attacker elimated.
But when home computers came along, instead of turning their board games into computer games Avalon Hill started making entirely different DOS creations that I, for one, truely hated.
Among the things I didn't like about the DOS Third Reich was the way the rules hinted at how the game was supposed to be played. Hints were in there like, hey German, the computer won't defend all of the maginot line, we don't know why, but hit it in the corner! Also, on one page it actually said the Germans can't win but the thing is to see how long they could hold out, etc. -- I hated it.
Then there was the initial option of defending against Poland while invading Yugoslavia instead and hitting Poland later to make optimum use of production points; utilize flip-flops, etc. -- what drek! That was all just game mechanics, not replaying history --If Poland weren't about to be attacked it wouldn't even be in the war -- nor would England nor France and where was Yugoslavia an issue at all in Sept 1939?
It seemed to me that Third Reich was a game where play was dictated by the rules and the programmers who existed in an alternate universe. Maybe I'm being too harsh but I remember feeling disgusted that such a nicely produced project was so full of nonsense.
Hicom and Clash were different matters entirely.
First, regarding playing these things on your computer. I kept my old Windows 3.1 computer and use it now with two DOS boot disks, one for optimum play without a CD-ROM and the other with a CD-ROM. Due to memory requirements -- there are two different types in DOS -- I can't get either Clash or HICOM to run properly unless they have all the damn memory for their own uses.
Other games and programs seem to play best on Pentium II machines but not on Windows xp home edition, so I kept that machine as well and find things like Lords of the Realm run better on the recent relic than on the infinitely faster Pentium IV so instrumental in my most recent financial ruin!
In terms of actual play:
Clash of Steel is extremely similar to SC in it's play flow, complete lack of stacking, etc., but varies in a number of important aspects.
The HQ units are army groups that have a powerful attack factor in addition to the supply capability already mentioned. Italy has an army group as well but it doesn't function very well.
Tactical play is slightly different, a defending unit can be attacked by several attackers simultaneously (assaulted) in addition to being struck by any or all of them individually.
Research in Clash is generally similar to SC except units of research (lightbulbs) start out cheap (8 pts) and become progressively more expensive (something like 24 at the limit). Also, they could only be arranged in configurations of 1, 3, 6 or 10.
Movement in both HiCom and Clash are on a hex by hex basis instead of high-lighted areas; I find both systems acceptable but prefer the first, in the second you lose things like partial hexes (most noticable in North Africa!).
Other land units are armies and corps. They are similar to the ones in SC except in Clash armies are much more powerful.
All sides are limited to a small number of air units, Britain 2, Italy 2, Germany 4, Russia 3, US 3, something along those lines. Strategic bombing is done abstractly. It's possible for there to be a lull in the action where the human player has no enemy (you can defeat Britain first, then mass for an attack on Russia in the unlikely event Russia hasn't started a pre-emptive war against you) and, with no enemy, you're still being bombed by these ghost units that are operating, presumably, from outter space -- I find that absurd, of course.
All sides have a limited number of warships. Naval operations are conducted on a seperate window through a procedure I won't go into because it would take another couple of pages. The naval warfare and invasion aspect have good and bad points. Once lost, battleships, aircraft carriers and subs can not be replaced!
Production is done according to a schedule -- it takes 9 turns or 18 months to build an aircraft carrier, 7 turns or 14 months to build a battleship, 10 turns for an air fleet, etc., the quickest being a corps, which takes only two turns. Units are of varrying expense.
The United States must deploy in England through a convoy system. If England is defeated or Liverpool captured, the Unites States stays home and broods.
Turns are in phases, the number of which vary according to the time of year. Sometimes, however, there are very long winter turns and short summer turns -- go figure!
Russian winter is very important and varies in it's effect on the Axis by a unit's distance east in Russia. A very successful Barbarossa might result in units near Rostov being frozen, brittle and unsupplied when the first Russian Winter appears.
There are numerous special rules but overall the game plays well and is enjoyable whether you play the Axis or the Allies.
There is no campaign editor and the scenarios themselves have inconsistencies. For example, if you start in 1939 as the Axis you'll find it impossible to build the units in 1940 that you would have been given had you chosen the French campain. The initial scenario should have had things like Manstein's army group, Bismark BB & the paratroopers set in the production table, which is done in later scenarios.
HiCom uses a very different approach. No unit sizes as such, only quantities of unit types in the same hex. Stacking is rampant, land, sea and air units can be stacked in the same hex, etc., a system that has numerous good points and numerous bad points. More stringent stacking limits seem to force greater strategic and tactical sophistication. On the other hand, it seems weird to have units sprawled out over half a country because only one can be placed on each hex -- I'm not sure which way is better.
In HiCom diplomacy is a factor (if you choose the option) and an Axis player can go from start to finish without ever actually going to war! Instead of fighting you can do your best to gain allies -- it's comparatively easy to get the USSR into the Axis and impossible to win over British or French sympathies. This makes for some interesting situations.
During the first few turns Poland can be invaded and the Ribbentrop treaty envoked where the country is split, etc.. This leads immediately to war with England and France and almost assures Spain's avoidence of joining the Axis later on. If the Axis invades Poland after December '39 it does so alone, gains the entire country after victory, doesn't cede the three (yes, in HiCom even places like Latvia and Luxemburg are distinct entities!)Baltic States to Russia, but still automatically fights Britain and France. Additionally, the USSR might join the allies.
The USSR is a special case because, if attacked without a declaration of war it's units have much less efficiency for the first seven months, after which they are at their normal levels. Which means, as the Axis, you don't want to have Russia declare war on you, in which case they are at full stregnth right from the start. A nice touch, in my humble opinion.
Countries can either be attacked to initiate war, in which case they usually start out surprised and diminished, or you can declare war on them, in which case they start out full stregnth. Declaring war is useful against the United States for those rare moments where things are just going along so smoothly that you simply have to get the world's strongest industrial nation on the other side -- just joking, of course. I have no idea why anyone would ever want to declare war instead simply attacking and getting an advantage.
Diplomatically you can put varying amounts of funds into getting a country into your camp -- some swing one way and some the other. Only Switzerland maintains true neutrality. It isn't unusual, for example, to see Spain join the Allies. A careless Axis player can even lose the loyalty of Rumania and Hungry if he doesn't actively seek their allegience.
There are too many special rules to go into; there's a merchant marine board that some would like and others would hate--I happen to like it.
other rules make the game more or less realistic and would be great if the AI were able to deal with even the basic complexities of play.
The game manual is redundant and far too long.
Combat as a combined arms operation can become complicated when attempting to use air units affectively. There are fighters, bombers and strategic bombers, on the ground there are infantry, marines, paratroopers, mechanized infantry and armored units -- also rockets and A-bombs if your research gets you there.
A nice touch is the way each unit type is affected by different terrain hexes; for example, armor is a terror on clear terrain but out of it's element in cities, which is why it pays to combine armored units with mechanized infantry which are better against air attack and takes advantage of different defensive rules.
There are many problems with HiCom. As mentioned by another contributor, the system itslef is too complicated for the computer to handle. A lot of tactical and strategic decision making is involved and the AI is not up to it. For example, with London about to fall the AI will launch a pea-brained campaign to take Bergen, Norway!
On a play basis, I found it possible with the initial units to successfully invade Poland and France at the same. The trick is skirting the Maginot line by traipsing through Luxemburg and rolling the French units through a flank attack -- an attack through the Low Countries isn't needed. The flaw, of course, is that Germany has enough troops on both it's east\west borders to do something like this.
As in Clash of Steel, units are produced on a schedule. Unlike Clash you can't see it, but there is a button during the production phase that allows veiwing of units under production; it doesn't take as long to make them, but there is strategic planning involved -- for example, in the opening months Germany has to decide whether he wants to use his shipbuilding capabilities for longterm units such as capital ships or short term, such as transports or merchant marines, etc..
At the start of war the Axis has to find a safe haven for it's merchant marine or they are immediately lost. Realistically they should be placed in the Baltic, but if the whim strikes you can fly your freightors to the Black Sea if you choose, or the Red Sea if you prefer that color, then relocate them some other time. In other words, you can put your merchant marine just about anywhere you want, which shouldn't be, but it isn't normally a big issue.
With the passage of time the units of non-hostile nations become upgraded, so a minor country attacked in late 43 will give greater resistance that it would have in early 1940. This is a good idea as it creates a sense of urgency for the aggressor state.
Meanwhile, as weapons improve with research existing units remain the same as they were. Only newly built units take advantage of new developments. This is a flaw, there should be an option to expend some funds and upgrade all your existing units, as is done in Clash of Steel. In SC the unit wide upgrade is automatic, even for ships at sea!
Research includes rockets and A-bombs. The economy must also be reinvested in and watched, and there are glitches in economies of conquered nations. For example, France, England and Russia, when conquered, gradually diminish in economic production till they're on a par with Denmark. Maybe that's realistic, I don't know, if it isn't a mistake it might represent what remains after corrupt nazi officials have finished with their personal plundering.
As mentioned a few times before, the AI has problems dueing it's part in all facets of the game. Also, I find it plays very slowly and requires a great deal of time and patience.
Both those DOS games are worth looking into, even now, as there are areas in each not covered in SC.
I think SC is a reasonable compromise between all the game systems so far produced. It isn't the ultimate word on the subject, but then I doubt we're going to see that for a very long time. A windows version of HiCom might come closer, supposedly it's been in the works, if so I'd hope it isn't just a windows adaptation but a truly revised version of a game with great potential and some very good ideas.
Hopefully, as SC evolves (to incorporate things like the Russian Winter!) it will encompass new aspects of realism. Meanwhile it's fun and, somehow, gets reasonably good historical results.
-- Regarding the topic of board games, does anyone remember Simulations Publications? They used to publish war games on paper maps. You could subscribe to them and receive a magazine each month with a complete and usually very good game inside.
They were in business from '71 or '72 thru the late eighties, perhaps not that long. The monthly magazine would have very interesting articles on the topic covered by the game.
They had one game, for example, with a map of the Ardennes and two campaigns; Guderian 1940 and the Battle of the Bulge. Another of their games had a large map of Central Europe and, with the pieces depicting infantry, cavalry & generals, had scenarios for all of Napoleon's campaigns from Austerlitz through 1809 -- I think it was called "Le Grande Armee."
With all these hundreds, perhaps thousands of excellent cardboard and paper games (Avalon Hill by itself must have had hundreds going back to the late fifties) you'd think there'd be some programming group that would gather them up and convert them, almost literally, into pc versions incorporating improvements such as fog of war, specific casualties instead a combat results tabe, etc.. and, of course, an AI player.
It seems improbable the original game designers would ask for too much compensation when their creations, at present, exist only in the memories of senile codgers like myself.
Also, I keep wondering if a computer version of Simulations Publications would be feasable. Wouldn't a new game each month with an electronic magazine as described above be interesting? As I remember it, Simulations Publications was also pretty economical.
It's highpoint came in '73 when they put out an Israel vs Egypt & Middle East game and a short time later war broke out -- the actual event was decided by a stranded Egyptian amphibeous operation on the Sainai, and was a prophetic main scenario of the game!
[ October 20, 2002, 07:08 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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dgaad, as usual thanks for the info -- I was going nuts trying to remember which colony it was and hadn't gotten around to looking it up.
Haven't found much of any real use on Italy in the war but two books I like are (1) "Hitler's Italian Allies" by MacGregor Knox and (2) an older book from the sixties about the Ethiopian invasion "The Civilizing Mission" by A.J. Barker.
For me Mussolini and his bunch are the '62 Mets of WW II. Other nations fared just as badly, were crushed and conquered, but none of them went about it with such chest pounding and bombastics only to be decked by every little guy they tried to bully. There's something about them that's unique in all of history!
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I don't think this game can accurately depict the sort of strategic bombing the U.S. & British conducted over Germany and, to a lesser degree, France.
There are interesting points on both sides of the effectiveness issue.
A lot of German manpower was tied up in anti-aircraft activity, a documentary a few months back put the figure at a million men manning AA guns. It's hard to assess this in real terms as most of them were undoubtedly Hitler Youth and returned wounded veterans or 4-Fs; but that's still a lot of manpower.
Conversely, bomber units themselves tied up a lot of manpower and materials, it's a hard call.
It's also a hard call from a morale point of view. Twenty and thirty years ago historians always cited how the Britons weathered the Blitz and the Vietnamese endured American bombing, etc. and usually claimed it hardened a nation's determination and made them fight harder. I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now. Most people will fight on and endure if their country is at war, but I can't see how it helps to have your population sleeping with bombs crashing around them and having soldiers on leave see their home and even their entire home town in ruins, not to mention dead relatives and friends!
It also tied up major Luftwaffe formations. In it's later stages Luftwaffe losses against the raids were ruinous.
There's the what if about German Jets -- had Jet Fighters been up and running in '43, etc., and of course it would have been like the early days of "Mig Alley" only seven years early. The U.S. had no jet technology and Britain's was in it's infancy, so that possibility would most likely have kept strategic bombers out of the skies altoghther -- but, of course, Hitler wanted the Jets produced in a ground attack function, setting jet fighter production back an entire year or so!
After all that I guess I should state an opinion.
Yes, I think the strategic bombing campaign was an unqualified success. I think it greatly reduced both production and morale and, even if the mass carpet bombings had only a random destructive effect while still causing irreplacable losses to the Luftwaffe, that alone would have been enough.
Both Albert Speer and Adof Galland seemed impressed by it and Speer said a few more massive Firestorms like the one on Hamburg would have brought Germany to it's knees.
I know Germany still had considerable war production even during the strategic bombing -- imagine what it would have been with factories that were more than piles of rubble? Germany had to resort to contrived methods like dividing production among numerous scattered small shops instead of centralizing it -- how could that have been seen constructively?
Add to all that the disruption of the rail and communications network mentioned by other respondants. As Carl v-M' pointed out, it even effected tactical operations as troops had to be kept nearer the anticipated landed areas and were unable to move in daylight, etc..
When America used it's B-17s directly against troops they seem to have been very effective -- St. Lo is a prime -- maybe the only -- example.
Stray bombs killed American troops ending attempts to coordinate heavy bombers with ground troops, but that was an American perspective, other countries would have ignored friendly fire casualties as long as the bombing achieved it's main purpose, which it did in spades.
Anyway, as I said before, I think most of this falls beyond the game's intention.
It's a good game, a lot of fun, but not one that can be seen as an accurate historic simulation --which is not meant as a putdown, I like SC a lot the way it is now.
I mean, doesn't it feel odd to imagine calling your production people in and saying, "We need a few battleships and an aircraft carrier, here's the magic production points, get on it and have those ships ready next week!"
A WWII game that satisfies all of us would probably be unplayable!
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"We are on the march!"
Mussolini announcing his Greek campaign to Hitler.
[ October 19, 2002, 10:13 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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re -- dgaad & oil + EB & staging areas
I haven't seen any game yet that treats oil as something that must be put in ships/vehicles before they can run. It's always just treated as a quantitative commodity. Agreed that it should be more vital, then everyone's strategy would have to be altered. Also, Hitler's obsession with southern Russia and the Caucausus over his general's concern for taking Moscow would make more sense.
A true look at oil would also have a more realistic effect on naval tactics. As you state, one of the reasons for Italy's naval inactivity was it's lack of fuel -- also spare parts and all forms of supplies in general! At one point an Italian battleship left port, lost a screw and was out of action indefinately.
Regarding oil, I read somewhere that Germany went through the war -- after attacking Russia --using something like half the oil per year consumed by peacetime England!
The Blue Water Navy continues to be interesting. I understand what you're saying about keels having already been laid in France and Italy -- were they from pre-war projects? If so they must have been designed for ships carrying 14" and 15" guns. What I'm wondering about is when such a fleet -- including trained crews -- would have been operational and whether or not some way would have been found to get past Goering and train large numbers of aviators.
My guess would have been that, by war's end, Georing would have lost much of his influence over the military. After Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and Stalingrad he delegated most of the real decision making to Milch and others. Also, Hitler doesn't seem to have sought his advice very often after 1943.
EB discussed the topic of an Axis invasion of the U.S. and how it would use a staging area. I think the northern posts we've been mentioning, Azores-Iceland & Greenland, while they would have been great for winning the Battle of the Atlantic, could not have served as a staging area. For one thing it would difficult to develop adequate facilities at those sites, and for another they would be too disrupted by sever weather and probably useless during the winter.
A victorious, post war Reich would probably do best to turn south and, as in classic RISK, seek a West Africa to Brazil connection. Historically Brazil tied in with the U.S. but I think they'd have just as easily swung in the opposite direction under different circumstances. Additionally, there's Argentina and various other South American nations that would certainly have gone pro-Reich.
Economically, a swing of exports from South America to a unified Europe would have filled in the list of raw materials not found on the continent -- rubber, etc..
The question now becomes how close, geographically, could they realistically have come to the U. S. borders without provoking an immediate war. I think we're all agreed they wouldn't have been allowed to occupy Canada; on the assumption they could have done it in the first place we figure the United States would finally have mobilized and driven Germany out -- with such a long and probably indefensible supply line troops stationed there would have been in the same position as the Italian army in Ethiopia or Germany's own African garrisons during WW I -- doomed to surrender.
All of which leaves somewhere south. The Carribean? Mexico? So the route would finally be West Africa - Brazil - Carribean and from there it's hard to say.
If all this setting the stage were being done during a period of peace, presumably being used to finish and man the Blue Water Navy, what would the United States have been doing? Surely, after defeating Japan and watching Germany conquer all of Europe thru the Urals, Scandanavia and at least the northern two thirds of Africa, the United States would not have gone back into an isolation mode!
[ October 19, 2002, 02:14 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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[ October 19, 2002, 01:19 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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[ October 19, 2002, 01:30 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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AncientOne -- Agreed, Switzerland was always worried about an Italian invasion.
I get a laugh at the image of old Benito sauntering in to Hitler's HQ to make a personal surprise announcement, "Fuhrer, We are on the march!" heralding his "invasion" of Greece.
Meanwhile, it was the start of the rainy season in abyssmal terrain with an army in Albania that had actually been weakened to mislead Allied intelligence (like that mattered to the Greeks!) -- Add to which the fact that Hitler was at that very moment trying to form a series of Balkan alliances, including Greece and Yugoslavia, to cover his rear while he struck at Russia. I imagine him bent over a map cringing with Mussolini making his bombastic statement in the doorway.
I believe there was a single Italian victory against the British in East Africa, they overran a small Red Sea British holding and captured a British Camel unit en masse, much to Churchill's humiliation. Naturally, the whole Italian East African colony was doomed since they could never be resupplied while Britain held the Suez.
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Agreed fully with the original point that seperate Soviet and Anglo/American play would be best and more historical.
At various times during the Russian campaign there were thoughts of either a cease fire or an outright peace -- Stalin did not want to be bound by the Churchill/Roosevelt position of going for total victory.
It would probably be very hard to incorporate any of that in the game, however.
Were it possible for the USSR to have a seperate peace treaty, should it then go to neutral or random? After Hitler's breaking of the ten year non-aggresion pact I doubt either side would have taken peace treaties very seriously.
The Axis command would also be more realistic if divided. Mussolini saw himself as conducting a seperate war from Germany in which Italy took the Riviera, Yugoslavia, Greece, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and the Sudan. His grand design remained unspoiled by any hint of Italian victories anywhere!
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An early 1940 evaluation regarding Italy's possible entry into the war:
"If they remain neutral we'll need one infantry division to watch the Alps; if they join Briton we'll need two divisions to hold the Alps; if they join us we'll need twelve divisions to hold Italy."
-- Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt
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Indeed -- Hitler loved thinking big -- gigantic battleships, gigantic tanks, etc -- and I'm agreed entirely on the "Blue Water Navy" entry.
I'm not certain how much of it would have been built as planned in the Axis controled Europe of 1945 or '46.
If all other things proceeded historically, the fate of Japan's 18" 65,000 ton battleships, both sunk by carrier aircraft, would not have been lost on German naval thinkers. And of course the Japanese did it first against Prince of Wales and Repulse. Likewise, Bismark and Tirpitz were themselves done in by aircraft etc & etc, so it would have been painfully apparent that BBs were very vulnerable to air attack and no longer the prime capital ship.
The Blue Water plans cited had BBs of 100,000 tons with 20" & 22" main armament (the 16" Hindenburg class [never actually built] were already becoming too small in post war plans!].
I believe Hitler would have understood the shift away from battleships and begun building aircraft carriers -- my guess is they'd have been mammoths.
The stumbling block was the Luftwaffe. Petty rivalries before the war had blocked the kriegsmarine's plans for the carrier Graf Zeppelin -- Goering wouldn't train navy aviators nor transfer his own pilots for carrier duty, etc. At one point an idiotic idea was dropped that the ships would be controlled by the navy but the pilots and planes had to be Luftwaffe -- what fun that would have been ("Attack!" -- "No, the Reichsmarschal is out hunting and only HE can issue the order!")
With all that infighting no German aviators were being trained and no German cruiser captains were learning how to aircraft carriers. I doubt these skills and new doctrine could have been learned overnight, and they definitely could not have been learned in action! -- perhaps British and Frenchmen (France also had carriers, though not on the scale of England, the U.S. or Japan) might have helped train Germans, or escaped Japanese -- I'm assuming Japan lost while Germany won. And after all that, would they make the same mistake Japan made and train their aviators in small elite groups -- deadly in combat but irreplacable when the war starts.
In any event there would most certainly have been a powerful German ocean fleet. If it was first started in '45, at three years per battleship and two per aircraft carrier, '48 seems the earliest year it becomes operational.
We have to also remember Hitler's Z-plan from before the war. It looked formidable on paper but since the war many economists believe Germany, within it's 1939 borders, could not have completed the project. Which might explain the sudden attack on Poland at a time when he was telling all his aids and Mussolini that war would not come before 1941 at the earliest.
There's another factor, of course. The Axis wins the war in Europe, but how much long does it take to rebuild the ruined continent? Beyond doubt the Nazis wouldn't have done it compassionately, it would have been battleships before butter, but rebuilding ruins is, if anything, more difficult for a brutal slave state than it is for a free society.
But that's all way off in the Twilight zone.
Very glad the Blue Navy entry was made -- great food for thought.
Also, I like the suggestion about a potential scenario but it goes beyond the limits of this particular set-up. If we're talking post war Axis victory with aggressions against the Western Hemisphere a revised map would need to be drawn with it's eastern border going something like (north to south) Bergen to Bay of Biscay to Gibralta with all of England in the picture and ending; to the west it should extend a little beyond the Mississippi. It would probably have to be abstracted if the Gulf of Mexico were included -- I'm not sure it would include both, The Gulf and The Great Lakes, St. Lawrence, etc. --
In terms of units Germany would have a huge lead in jet aircraft and rocket technology but the United States would have the A-Bomb. How would the U.S. use it? One thing is certain, based on the Bikini Atol tests, American planners were already thinking in terms of destroying approaching task forces with a quick Fat Man or Little Boy strike!
If there's allowance for a period of peace and Germany takes possession of the Congo with it's uranium, which it most certainly would have, then it's reasonable to assume an Axis A-bomb would have been developed, perhaps helped by information given by Soviet agents in exchange for -- what? -- assuming a defeated U.S.S.R. still existed east of the Urals what would it's relationship have been with other countries? Presumably it would have kept Manchuria and Korea in the east -- no doubt Stalin would have blamed his defeat on America's inability to tie Germann down on a second front.
Also, how much patience would Hitler have exhibited, approaching 60 and probably very ill -- would he have ranted about Americans being a breed of mongrels, who needs a large fleet, just land a few storm troopers at Coney Island and they'll kick in the whole rotten structure, etc?
It's all anyone's guess.
Anyway, enjoying all this and hope it keeps going till the subject is exhausted.
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"Everyone writes on the walls, but me."
-- from a wall in Pompeii.
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Getting back to Jolly's original remarks -- shouldn't something be said about the initial order of battle leaving HALF a country totally undefended? I can't imagine places like Palermo, Taronto and Genoa [or whatever their names are in this particular game] not being garrisoned even in peace time. Mussolini was dillusional, inept and guilty of numerous other misdemeanors, but one of his weaknesses was not placing too much trust in his fellow man! He covered his bases, even it was with poorly trained and ill led troops wearing cardboard boots bearing hopelessly inferrior arms!
Anyway, I think comments regarding obvious mistakes are always in order -- the game is very good as it is but can be improved by correcting oversights.
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"They say it all evens up in the long run, but who the hell can run that long?"
-- from an NFL veteran, unfortunately I forgot which one but Aristotle probably said it too.
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Thanks for all the interest and feedback -- even the antagonistic side is enjoyable.
1) Yes, the best thing is for the Axis to simply NOT invade Canada because it's primarily a game possibility and not an historical feasability. But, as one response mentioned, the same can be said of early Allied landings on undefended Sicily and Southern Italy -- only a game possibility, it couldn't have been done historically (for one thing, Southern Italy WAS defended and, for another, after landing there would have been no way to supply troops while Italy still held Libya and had a reasonably intack fleet.) That being said, there's no harm in exploring such possibilities even if only for our own amusement. When looking for a real degree of historic legitimacy I do not launch a German invasion of Canada!
2) When Germany is in the chips I send four armies and an expendable HQ, one of the six's; if they're really rolling in resources I send two aircraft carriers screened by U-Boats. The aircraft carriers soften the defending corps and it falls right away. After the landing I transport the whole bunch immediately to join in the invasion of England, which has already begun as the original North Sea distraction. When I do this America is set at neutral; I set it on RANDOM after leaving Canada and the U.S. comes into the war right away. At that point it's easy to finish off Britain and build up along the Soviet border. The U.S.S.R. has been on RANDOM all along but it's usually a long time before it prepares for war.
Once Manchester falls the U.S. retakes Canada (but leaves Germany with the mine and half the country's MPPs!) and sits passively within it's own borders.
If Canada is garrisoned by Germany -- the observation about this is totally correct, Germany has to either leave the invasion force or transport enough corps to cover the beaches and an airfleet needs to be built on the site --the U.S. explores a little but doesn't invade. To avoid that I leave the place open as I can't imagine the United States not liberating the place as it's #1 priority.
3) Agreed about it's being a mixed proposition; the Axis never gets back what it invested to capture the place and it's MPPs are not vital to the UK; at the point where it's reduced to Manchester it's beyond help, neither 20 MPPs nor 20 million will help when the only square it holds is Manchester itself.
4)Especially agreed about the whole thing being offbeat and screwy. I did it originally because I was fighting Russia and the U.S.A. (which was doing nothing at all as England had already fallen!) and happened to notice Canada was still in the war. On a lark I sent a small invasion force and was able to take her, which is what first started all this insanity.
5)In real geography a Canadian invasion via the United States seems fairly straightforward, especially considering the overwhelming force the U. S. would have (of course such an attack is unlikely -- see movie "Canadian Bacon" starring Alan Alda and John Candy for the definitive examination of the subject). But to invade it (especially in early forties terms) from it's eastern coastline would REALLY be an adventure! A very small invasion force would have needed to seize the St. Lawrence Seaway, secure it's harbors, then trek 3,000 miles west through extremely rough terrain, fighting both Canadians and their horrible weather -- I'd give anything to hear F.D.R's speaches while all this was taking place.
No offense intended to the Canadians with my weather remark -- of course you don't think your weather is horrible, after all, it isn't actually the Arctic -- at least not a lot of it!
My thanks to everyone who's found an interest in all this. When first posting the topic I assumed it would be a minor curiosity and languish in well deserved obscurity.
By the way, I completely agree with the people who say we shouldn't play this option -- I just wanted to note it's possibility.
I think it's interesting to explore unintended and unlikely strategies because, if nothing else, perhaps there actually was some possibility of an Axis move on North America?
I think it would have come via Iceland and Greenland. Prior to throwing away the Bismark, Germany could have secured a precarious supply route for reasonably sized garrisons on those locations. Once airbases had been established the Lufwaffe the hold would no longer have been precarious at all. Germany would have controled the North Atlantic -- it isn't too far fetched to say U-Boats based at Iceland and Greenland, with air and surface support, would have easily WON the Battle of the Atlantic!
From there, who knows? The Axis would have possessed a staging area for further westward moves. -- Would they actually have done it?
Germany would have needed to take them before those places were garrisoned by the the United States, which came in to relieve the British.
None of this gets much coverage in history books, but the United States and Britain obviously realized the strategic importance of those places. I recall it being mentioned once in the "Why We Fight" wartime morale builder series -- the narrator (Walter Houston) says something about denying Greenland's turpentine and other vital resources to Axis industry -- yeah, right!
You all have quotes, so here's mine -- Grant, when leaving office after his second term fiasco was asked if he hated his enemies. He sighed and shook his head slowly, "My enemies, no, just my friends -- my Goddam friends."
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Points well taken and agreed on.
The Canadian/North America entry was posted as an observation and nothing more. Naturally a human player should be able to stop a German trans-Atlantic expedition.
The AI usually has a battle ship or two in the vicinity but I've found four U-boats to be an adequate screening force for the transports.
Despite their poor reputation, U-boats are an effective and economic answer to the Royal Navy and it's French remnants. They have to be used in fleets (Wolf Packs?). Three or four of them adjacent to each other become very effective.
Against the AI, the Canada operation succeeds when the Royal Navy is distracted. A massive bombing campaign against Southern England and moving a few naval units from the Baltic to the North Sea usually does the trick. The AI responds in force, as it should and as most humans would, though perhaps not to the same extent.
Personally I can't imagine a German invasion of Canada succeeding historically. One thing is certain, United States isolationism would have vanished and there would have been direct and immediate U.S. intervention under the Monroe Doctrine -- a bit unfair, considering Canada was providing men and material for a war in Europe --perhaps Washington would have pressured Canada to withdraw from the war while Germany withdrew its troops from North America. I don't know about anyone else, but I find even that scenario to be quite interesting.
There were plans for a post war German Atlantic fleet to include numerous large battleships and aircraft carriers. But I think the idea was to control Africa and South America and not to attempt a trans-Atlantic invasion of the United States. During the course of the war Germany became ever more interested in actually controling former Dutch and Belgian colonies, especially the Congo, specifically for it's uranium deposits.
A transatlantic invasion of North America, even without other fronts and even with a powerful navy, would have posed incredible logistical problems. Conversely, it's difficult to imagine something like the Normandy invasion without the British Isles as a supply base.
It might even have been impossible for the United States to supply an army in France directly out of American ports -- it would have been counter attacked savagely and I doubt a three thousand mile life-line could have replaced losses and kept the force supplied.
Then there's the matter of air support for the landing and protection of the lifeline against German naval units (presumably quite strong after conquering Britain) based in England.
The whole trans Atlantic topic is far fetched from either Axis or Allied perspective.
Even the comparatively small Operation Torch involved enormous difficulties, logistically, which was why it's seperated components took so much time reaching Tunisia -- they had a bare minimum of supplies! First the men were landed, then it was anyone's guess about a supply line!
Additionally, Torch sapped so much escort support from the convoys that Britain nearly went under from catastrophic shipping losses.
A German army in Canada would have faced far more impossible logistics.
But, regardless of it's historical feasability, I believe oceanic operations present an interesting variant.
The English Channel remark was not intended as a put down of German abilities. I think Germany could actually have invaded England after the fall of France, but not by gathering canal barges and converting them to landing craft.
Beyond a doubt the Luftwaffe could have wrested complete air superiority over southeastern England. Assuming they had a large enough force of paratroopers, an airborne operation could have been conducted in force probably in the Dover region.
After seizing the airfields regular infantry could have been flown in, the Luftwaffe would have established air strips within the beachhead as it expanded and, the Royal Navy being unable to intervene (if they would have they'd have been sunk by Germany's land based air fleets). Once a functional harbor had been taken (and there are no shortage of them on England's Channel coastline) troops and supplies would have crossed the channel on seized freighters, sizable German army formations would have been established, and Britain would have fallen.
I'm sure many others have had the same idea before I ever thought of it -- of course, at that particular moment, the last thing Hitler wanted was, or thought he'd have to do, was continue to fight Britain, which in itself explains why nothing along those lines were done.
Also, in 1940 airborne tactics weren't seen as a stand alone operation. The operation just presented, however, is very similar to the German campaign on Crete. Ironically, there were far more British troops defending Crete in '41 than there would have been defending Dover in '40! By 1943 I doubt either side would have hesitated to conduct a similar invasion under the same circumstances.
In the actual event Britain had time to prepare defenses and, by the time Sea Lion was being discussed, the opportunity for an airborne operation had probably passed. I believe the Summer of 1940 was the only time, historically, that it could have succeeded.
Hans -- I wish you a fine holiday and appreciate your offer. Aside from being a coward, I'm stuck working oppressively long shifts and am only able to play against the AI during erratic spare moments; an actual series of play sessions would result in my divorce! But the offer is greatly appreciated and at a future date, if still open, I'd greatly enjoy it.
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After taking France, Germany can build some naval units in the Bay of Biscay and use them to cover a transatlantic invasion of Canada--the opposition is usually a single corps.
Regarding the U.S.A., if Germany conquers England America remains defensively on it's side of the Atlantic. An "Operation Torch" move at either occupied England or France would be interesting in such circumstances while Germany is off ravishing the USSR. The U.S. will ambphibiously liberate Canada unless the Axis has posted units along all the coastal squares.
I have mixed feeling about Germany being able to conduct an invasion across the Atlantic -- they couldn't even conduct one across the English Channel, which is a bit smaller on most maps. On the other hand, it adds an interesting concept but one that is difficult to imagine.
AAR _ The Longest 6.2 Years.
in Strategic Command 1
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Incredible -- love the parts about Churchill and the Italians having Mirage Jets -- !
Looking forward to the exciting conclusion.