[The Plunder Option]

Snowstorm that is a great idea that JerseyJohn has but by doing so you are altering the game in favor of the Axis.What would you think would be a fair trade for that option?

Thank you, Arado, thank you, Snowstorm, and thank you, BrotherX.

I don't think there's any need to take away from this idea to balance it for play purposes with something negative to swing back to the Allies.

The point is to see how things might have been different if the Axis, specifically Nazi Germany, had a more sensible policy toward the populations it in territories it came to occupy. It has to be a positive step for the Axis, but none of these options should be used by people who want to keep the game historical -- in other words, in that context Hitler, Goering and Himmler should be allowed to go on causing their own downfall behind the front lines with inane treatment of people who at first viewed them as saviors and heroes. Nothing wrong with that; the options would be chosen to see what might have been if Hitler and his inner circle had been a little wiser.

I see various plunders within occupied Soviet territories as:

1) Military Salvage with the capture of Soviet armies, or their decimation and quick withdrawal. The same would hold when Axis forces are either captured or driven out of a province; there would always be a great deal of equipment and supplies falling into the victors hands. Rommel, for example, ran much of his desert campaign on windfalls that came into his hands by surprising overly cautious British commanders.

The amount of MPPs in the form of salvage would be proportionate with the size of the force destroyed in taking the province.

The following pure plunder options would be in addition to military salvage:

2) Harsh Plunder grabbing everything in sight and leaving the populace to eat roots and rodents while their produce and foodstores are robbed by the victorious army.

-- Bonus I'd recommend giving the victor a full year's production from that area up front.

-- Consequence In all subsequent years the province produces at half its previous level till liberated by its original owner, at which point it can be rebuilt to its full original production level. The province also becomes a heavily hostile partisan zone requiring a large garrison and maximum escort for supply convoys moving through.

3) Controlled Plunder The province yields 6 month's normal production. In following years its production level remains as it was before the invasion and partison activity, while high, does not require more than a standard garrison and only a light escort for supplies moving through.

4) No Plunder No immediate MPP gains for the conqueror. The locals are pleased. There is no partisan activity, no need for a garrison and supplies going through do not need escort (it would be assumed there would be attached security, of course, but no need to guard against large partisan activity).

5) Semi-Autonomy No immediate MPP gains for the victor but locals flock to his cause, reinforcing depleted infantry units and, in subsequent years raising units of their own to fight for the Axis cause. Production becomes higher than its original level and beginning the second year of occupation half the yield goes to Germany.

I think that would pretty well simulate what we're discussing in game terms.

[Release date?]

My main interest is posting on either history or historical what-ifs. The straight nuts and bolts threads on the games are important, but I think the hypotheticals are not only of equal value, but also make the place more interesting for people dropping by trying to decide whether or not to get involved in the community, and to buy one or more of the games.

I haven't been posting here, other than an occasional odd post, for about two years before my recent return, so I'm not going to venture a guess about these forums during that period. But I have to admit I have said, pretty often, at another website, that SC threads were too often locked when they wandered off-topic. The flip side, to be fair, is at that point we tended to be joking around about something and, in the past, I'd put up a lot of photos and cartoons, often much more than was called for, and one way or another threads that still had usefulness wound up being locked. Naturally that sort of thing varied during given years. It was at its worst in the months followed that infamous Christmas Riot. I'll stand beside Kuniworth on that point but I need to add I don't see that happening now, nor, apparently, does Kuni or anyone else.

I think the forum needs posters from one end of the spectrum to the other: those who only post about game mechanics and play issues, those who only post about historical topics, and the vast majority who fall somewhere between the two.

-- SC had something special when people like disorder, Zeries, Archibald, Ghengis of Carthage and a host of like-minded others made posting here a daily activity. Hopefully more of the old timers will come back, joined by new arrivals who also enjoy adding useful posts on a regular basis.

[I can't launch SC2]

Thank you, Hubert. I'll give it a try this morning.

-- Three years ago I ran it on an old machine that didn't have much memory; the moves seemed to last forever and I quickly soured on the game. Hopefully it will run better on this newer machine. I'm looking forward to seeing it as you'd intended it to be. :cool:

BINGO!! -- Up and running. This time I downloaded the 1.09 patch and entered the License Key with all 0 and O as zeroes, then ran it as Admin. Botted right up. Looking forward to giving it another fling.

Thanks for the solution, Hubert.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

I think you hit it on the head when you said the Cold War would have begun right then and there, and would have been a lot nastier than it was historically.

The Soviets would have come out way ahead in all of this. Assuming the US and UK were able to reach Paris at the point where the Soviets stopped at the Rhine -- a big assumption that they wouldn't have gone across the river but I figure they'd have grabbed Greece instead.

By now Germany would definitely have surrendered; if not -- does Russia continue liberating?

The Western Allies would have had France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and Italy.

In addition to the additional conquered territory, which includes all of Germany and probably Austria as well (the allies in Italy would probably have had to turn west from the Alps, for France, rather than east, toward Austria) the Soviets have probably bagged all of Germany's technology, including working versions of jet aircraft and stockpiles of V-1s and 2s along with von Braun, Heisenberg and nearly all the other scientists, and engineers such as the Hortan brothers et al.

Russia now has radar too. Unlike the shattered Germany of 1944 and 45, it is able to immediately mass produce German designed jet fighters and other weapons, and uses the near monopoly of captured technology/personnel to begin designing an early MIG in addition to its historical reverse engineering of the B-29s forced to land in Vladivostock.

And it possesses all the oil and raw materials Germany never had.

Russia has bagged maybe a million more German POWs than it did historically.

My guess is the USSR still shifts most of its army east to convieniently honor its earlier agreement to break the Japanese non-aggression pact, grabbing Manchuria and Korea. With the Cold War already started does it just plunder them and pull back, or does it keep all of both?

Definitely a different post war world -- c. mid to late-1946 -- perhaps a USSR and Soviet puppet states extending from a unified Korea in the east, to the Rhine in the west.

I don't think it would have developed into WWIII at any point. In my view it would have gone pretty much historically from that point on, but with the Soviet Union having more than it would ever have dreamt of, including ice free ports on the Baltic and the Sea of Japan.

[I can't launch SC2]

I've just installed SC-2 on this computer from a disc issued when it first came out. It won't recognize my license key. Unfortunately there are three figures in it that might be 0 or might be O. I've tried several times using variations etc & etc, and keep getting no for an answer.

I'd like to give the game another try but am very disgusted that this very, very long license key (32 figures) is fighting me at every turn. The last time I entered it was 3 years ago, on a computer I no longer own; could that be what's causing the problem?

[WWII Speculations Thread]

AZGungHo

I really don't think so. Britain was already war-weary, as evidenced by its voting Churchill out of office as soon as he started talking about preserving the empire, by force if necessary.

The United States was approaching war-weariness, and also at the end of its economic abilitity. There was massive discontent among the U. S. troops in Europe after VE Day when word began going around that they'd be going back to the USA only to be retrained for a different kind of warfare, and sent off to invade the Japanese Home Islands. I've spoken to many WWII in Europe vets and not a single one ever said he'd fight in Japan. They all had pretty much the same thing to say, [to paraphrase] 'We won our war, let the guys in the Pacific win theirs. We had the A-bomb, if we didn't use it I would have just stayed home; they couldn't arrest God knows how many millions of us!'

None of them would have obeyed orders to fight the Russians, unless the Russians had attacked our troops. Patton's starting point was to create an incident with the USSR; the United States could not have begun a war with them, Congress would never have voted for it.

You can easily imagine American and British morale if either, or both, our attempts to land in France during the summer of 44 had been thrown back into the sea. The sentiment would have been to let the Russians have the whole thing, including France!

-- As far as agreements go, the British were quick enough to forget why they went to war in the first place -- whatever happened to Poland? Surely no one could say she was getting her independence back.

FDR would have been dead and Truman and the British would have cut a quick deal with Russia, who we still wanted as allies in an invasion of Manchuria, Korea, and possibly the Japanese Home Islands, if it came to that.

As far as the atom bomb went, Stalin knew about it before Truman, and he wasn't impressed. The bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki had killed about 100,000 Japanese each; compare that to Russia's losses fighting the Germans. Also, I'm sure Stalin also knew we lacked the nuclear materials needed for more than the two bombs we dropped; no more till many months later, so it comes down to the U. S. and Britain first declaring war on Russia, and then fighting the USSR -- in France, with Japan still in the war. Just can't imagine that happening.

-- Nor can I see Patton being given the green light for any of his "Make it look like they started it" ideas.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Terrific follow-up, Snowstorm.

I'm sure Germany would have come up with a lot of great wonder weapons given another six to nine months of existence, but I doubt they'd have been able to manufacture any. They had a small jet fighter, for example, that was flown at the end of the war by the Hitler Youth. It was very deadly even in the hands of outright novice pilots, and even deadlier to its own pilot. A real death trap, not because there was anything wrong with its design, but because Germany no longer had the basic components needed to make decent wood glue!

-- Presumably the Reich would have held Norway, Denmark, most of Germany, Holland, Belgium, France (prior to a successful Allied landing), Austria, parts of Czechoslovakia, and Alpine Italy throughout most of those months.

As for fuel and raw materials of every description, I don't know where they'd have gotten any of those things from after the Soviets had finished taking Poland, Hungary and the outer parts of Germany itself.

I don't believe any wonder weapon, including an A-bomb, would have saved the Nazi cause after the mindboggling losses of 1943 (Stalingrad, El Alemain, Kusrk and Tunesia, with more of the same to come in 1944 -- Army Group Kourland [44 divisions lost in Baltic States], Falaise Pocket and various city garrisons abandoned as fortresses).

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Continued from above post --

Sorry, I never did give an opinion on what I think would have happened if the Normandy landing, and it would have to be added the second attempt to land in France in July, would both have failed.

I think the United States and Britain would have transferred most of the troops who hadn't been used to Northern Italy, where the Axis lines were cracking. Or, the historical second landing near Marsielles would have been made. In either case, without an Atlantic beachead to worry about, the Germans would have sent enough troops south to contain the allies so they'd never have reached Germany before the Russians had already forced their way in. It's possible that, without the massive losses at Falais and the Bulge, and with several panzer corps freed to face the Soviets, that the Russians might have been stalled at the German/Polish border. The Anglo-American bombing campaign would have continued unabated and, after Russia took everything that was left in the Balkans, including the Hungarian oil fields after already having taken those of Rumania, that Germany, if Hitler were still running it in 1946, would have reached its absolute breaking point. The Western Allies channel landing would have succeeded in the spring of 46, salvaging France and the low countries, but the USSR would have been an even bigger post-war winner than it was historically.

I believe Stalin would have altered prior arrangements with the Russians going to the Rhine instead of the Elbe, the British and Americans accepting that in exchange for the Soviets not moving into Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Thank you, SeaMonkey, as always appreciated. :cool:

Snowstorm I think von Rundstedt had the soundest strategy, which was to have inland strongpoints instead of spreading troops along the entire coastline in massive concrete fortifications. The fortifications, instead of being along the beaches, would have been reserved for harbors. Elsewhere allied landings would be lightly opposed, the defenders falling back inland where panzer units could counter-attack beyond the range of naval guns, or at least beyond the range of accurate fire from battleships. This would also have been more flexible as there wouldn't have been an overall defensive line where a breach at one point would compromise all the rest. Rundstedt wasn't under any delussions, he didn't believe Germany could still win the war, but he hoped a hard enough resistence would at least stave off outright defeat. Of course, what he'd really wanted since mid-1943 was peace negotiations. By mid-44 he made no secret of his pessimism. In almost any other German general such an attitude would have been seen as defeatism, and he was put back into retirement, but brought back again because in late 1944 he was Germany's senior, and only undefeated, field marshal.

If the attack on Normandy would have failed I believe a landing in Brittany would have taken place in July during the next favorable tidal period. I don't think the Germans could have stopped that attack from at least getting ashore, though it could have been sealed in, at least for a while, farther up the penninsula.

Landing at the Pas de Calais was never an allied consideration as the English Channel was, incredibly, too narrow to allow the outward and inward ship traffic from Southern England to the invasion point; just not enough sea space for landings on such a massive scale, and the follow up!

Churchill was against the Normandy operation from the start; he felt the Atlantic Wall was too strong and allied troops might well end up being slaughtered on the beach, the way the Canadians had wound up at Dieppe in 1943. I remember reading how he told Field Marshal Allan Brooke his own secret plan before telling it to Eisenhower. He ran a hand along the Portuguese coastline. "Our ancient allies and fellow seafarers, the Portuguese, would welcome us ashore and embrace us in our common cause. We'd tell Franco to prove once and for all that he was with us rather than with the Huns, and together we'd race to Pyranees with our new Ibirian allies and --" and he got no farther because Allan Brooke had already stormed out of the room.

Steve Ambrose, interviewed on the History Channel, said, "We'd have dropped the A-bomb on them, that's all." I'm not so sure about that. To begin with we knew we'd only have one or two for use in 1945. One was used in the final desert test, and the other was dropped on Hiroshima. We relied on German refined material to finish the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. And that would have been it for 1945, so if we dropped our bombs on Germany (which wouldn't have been till long after the Soviets had finished over-running the Balkans and Poland and the eastern half of Germany) we wouldn't have had them for Japan. First I think Ambrose's timeline was faulty and he hadn't fully thought about what he was saying. And second, I'll never be convinced that Britain and the U. S. would have consented to dropping a radio active device on Germany. Not that it was any more lethal than our firebombings -- Curtis LeMay actually boasted later that his biggest Tokyo firestorm killed more people in a single night than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined -- and its irrational to say killing by one means is worse than by another; dead = dead.

But I don't think the western allies would have wanted scenes of radiation poisoned German civilians being shown to their own people. Part of it was outright racism, but to a larger extent it would have been, in the United States, that the Japanese were fair game because we'd made things like the Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death March, along with the earlier Rape of Nanking, major propaganda campaigns and the feeling had been deliberating nurtured that the Japanese weren't quite civilized; many said not even quite human.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Snowstorm, don't throw them out till summer; books against walls make excellent insolation.

Thank you, SeaMonkey, glad you enjoyed it. Feels good to be posting these things again.

Speaking of which --

"I see tropical beaches. I see John Wayne and Ronald Reagan and James Cagney. I see a great sage named Rambo building a giant movie screen."

[WWII Speculations Thread]

"I said tell them not to buy anymore books on WWII in Europe. -- Yeah, that's right, Rambo's got the whole thing down to 70 words, end of story."

[WWII Speculations Thread]

SeaMonkey and Arado,

A lot of interesting material here.

To start, the British and French created modern Poland at Versailles in hopes it would replace Czarist Russia as their eastern ally to help contain Germany, when it inevitably managed to rebuild.

Along the way, despite their claims of self-determination for local populations (one of Wilson's ideas, but he didn't bother to follow up on its execution), the victorious allies tried, as much as possible, to cut German populations from both Germany, and their newly created tiny Austria. So Czhechoslovakia wound up with the Sudetanland, Poland wound up with Danzig and its corridor along with several smaller areas containing many Germans -- and some others containing a large Ukranian population, and Lithuania had Mamel, all of which were made up primarily of German populations. In the 1920s the Austrians wanted to be joined with Germany, but the idea became less popular after the Nazis usurped their position in the Weimar Republic and wound up taking over the government.

I'm sure both Hitler, and the majority of the German people of the 1930s, after having the various French areas returned, would have demanded the same for the parts of Central and Eastern Europe with either large German populations, or that had geographically been part of Imperial Germany prior to 1914.

Britain proposed returning the pre-war African colonies to Germany if they'd openly waive any claim to territory outside of the boundaries as they stood after the Anschluss with Austria. Hitler refused.

The stage is set.

I think Hitler's biggest diplomatic blunder was in claiming he would make no further territorial demands after the Sudetanland, and then almost immediately making new ones!

Probably the most sensible thing would have been to call a meeting of the several neighboring nations, with Britain, France and Italy invited to act in an advisory capacity, in which Germany laid out all of its remaining claims simultaneously with offers of compensation being made to the countries that were asked to cede territory. Personally I don't see how this could have had any chance for success, but perhaps it would have served to make the British and French feel better about Hitler as a man trying to find peaceful solutions. And, after diplomacy failed, he could always have gone to more direct means, and at least he'd have been able to claim he'd tried to settle things -- to undo the last wrongs inflicted upon Germany at Versailles -- but his neighbors would not cooperate. This would probably have gotten some sympathy for Germany among the British and French populations, and possibly this would have placed enough pressure on their leaders to not line up with Germany's future targets.

I don't think Hitler could have placed Poland ahead of Czheckoslovakia as (1) the Czhecks were better prepared militarily (2) gaining the Sudetanland also meant depriving potential enemies of the high ground made all the more dangerous by the building of formidable fortifications and, (3), a victory over Poland would probably meant the destruction of Poland and a common border with the USSR while Czechoslovakia, having some diplomatic ties with the Russians, remained in tack to the south with the USSR now facing Germany in the east.

Probably Hitler would have been glad to get the Polish Corridor and Danzig, along with Memel from Lithuania, before going after the Sudetanland. He'd have still had Poland as a buffer with the USSR. Of course there would have been the reverse problem as what happened historically: with Poland taken care of, would the Brits and, especially the French with their existing defensive pact with the Czhechs, have chosen not to go along with a Munich agreement after Germany had seized parts of Poland? Would it have just been Sept 1939 WWII taking place through a different, possibly worse, sequence? -- Possibly part of a deal with Poland might have been its getting part of Czhecoslovakia (as happened historically), but in this case it would have needed to be a large part of that nation, one that would be difficult to tie into a German claim for reunification with Germans who had once been part of the Austrian Empire.

Very notty situation. I think Hitler's chances would have been improved if he had a deal with Stalin where Russia would have been making numerous claims in Eastern Europe, in which case the British and French might well have seen Germany as its bulwark against Bulshevism; but I don't think Hitler ever considered that idea.

-- Getting at least some of this into the game would be incredible! :cool:

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Thank you, SeaMonkey, appreciated. :cool:

To offer opinions in a roundabout way:

Despite having made that SC-1 Z-Plan Alternative scenario, I don't believe there's much chance of doing it in peace time. The naval part of it was mainly fantasy, though several 16" guns were made, presumbably for the Hindenburg class BBs, but I think it more likely they'd have wound up on Bismark and Tirpitz, with their 15" guns being moved to Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. If not, then Hitler would have been making pretty much the same error the Kaiser made of creating a surface fleet to rival Britain at the expense of his army. Bismark and Tirpitz each took the resources of a full panzer division: how many BBs should Germany have built when each of them was going to mean not having a panzer division? They were a land power with land objectives. So I think the only likelihood of the naval Z-plan seeing the light of day was only after Germany conquered or controled nearly all of Europe east to the Urals, and had gotten peace from Britain without having drawn the U. S. into the war. At that point it would have been time for Germany to establish its presence in the Atlantic with several super battleships and five or six fleet carriers -- which would have also meant the establishment of a naval air arm (having the Luftwaffe commanding the aircraft would have been ludicrous) from scratch. In which case it would have needed Japanese advisers for both ship design and flight/tactical doctrine.

The army and air force Z-plans stood a better chance of being carried out, and I believe if a general war hadn't come about through the Poland invasion this would have been the next area Germany would have gone into. They already had a flying prototype of a jet fighter in March 1939 that was set aside for Hitler's war plans (not to surface again till it was desperately needed, and even then it was corrupted as a ground attack plane, which it was not suited for).

Regarding diplomacy, I think the main scenario should start in late 1938 with Germany not having taken, with Hungary, Poland and Rumania also grabbing chunks of, the remainder of Czechoslovakia. This can be called The Good Faith scenario, where Chamberlain is not made to look foolish over Munich and Germany has options in its future course involving Poland. Perhaps a secret deal with the USSR in which Russia applies massive pressure, then invades the eastern part of the country, and Germany enters with the pretense of being its savior. There would need to be a mechanism in the scenario editor for having multiple reactions to this sort of thing. In the sequence just mentioned I can't see either Britain or France going to war over Poland, which they have no committments with, unless it's to dow on the USSR; and then how do they react to Germany crossing the Polish frontier afterwards on the premise of creating a buffer zone in the east?

So, it's mainly up to Hubert in the creation of an extremely versatile scenario editor, one in which the player/creator would be able to do anything from the historical situation to totally a-historical ideas like making Germany and Britain allies -- as I said, this would be very a-historical, but an option I think would be necessary to make truly interesting scenarios. Which also means, of course, that Italy could be set up as a western ally, and the USSR as part of the Axis. The premise would be things such as going back, for example, and saying Britain and France do not follow the U. S. lead in condemning Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36. Going back to the early '30s would be very interesting too, but as Snowstorm pointed out earlier, most sane men would not have followed the course Hitler chose in the summer/fall of 1939, but then those same sane men would not have absorbed Austria or Czhechoslovakia earlier, so that's a trade-off.

To me the United States should have a very, very slow trigger taking it out of neutrality. As was the case historically I don't believe anything short of an attack on US territory would have led to a US declaration of war. We need to remember that prior to Pearl Harbor a U. S. gunboat was deliberately attacked and sunk by the Japanese in China, without any appreciable result, and two U. S. destroyers were sunk by U-boats while escorting ships on convoy runs and, once again, there was no public outcry to enter the war. American sentiment was, instead, that the United States Navy should not have been running its warships in war zones.

Snowstorm Sorry I took so long to reply to your earlier point about plunder options in Russia. I think the USSR would need to be laid out as numerous nations under the same system. As Germany conquers different areas it should have the plunder option in each of them individually: Belorussia; Ukraine; Crimea; Caucasus etc, and liberated countries such as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The better they're treated the more they'll give in return in the form of troops and resources along with the absense of partisan activity. Going for the brutal plunder option would yield a full year's total production from that territory, but would result in total partisan participation and reduced production and troop reinforcement later on. I'd go for three settings: Harsh, Partial, Friendly (no plunder other than military salvage) and Semi-Autonomy, which would give the region its own government and make it an Axis minor ally.

-- An option would be to choose an historical setting to simulate the degree of oppression carried out historically, ranging from light in places like Denmark and the Channel Islands, to draconian in places like Poland and the Ukraine with countries like France falling somewhere in the middle.

Regarding Populations: Both the German and Japanese governments operated on the basis of their own people being a master race.

For the Japanese it meant regarding subject peoples like the Koreans, Formosians (Taiwanese), Manchurians, Chinese, Phillipinos and Indonesians as various levels of lesser beings who could be dominated and controled by comparatively small numbers of Japanese second and third rate garrisons.

With Germany, Hitler felt the British provided proof of this in India, where a very small number of Englishmen controled hundreds of millions of native peoples who he regarded as a mix of marginal humans. In the Nazi view the same system would work in Europe, with its extreme model being set up in post invasion Russia, where demobilized German soldiers would be placed in charge of large tracts of land with hundreds of Slavs serving them. He drew as his examples the Ancient Roman system of making ex-legionaires manor lords and, more recently, America's 19th century southern plantations.

Blatant racism, and what we today would consider mind boggling theories of different kinds of humans -- and these views were still commonplace in the United States and other countries, even if not part of the official culture (in the U. S. look back at the way blacks were treated in the 1930s, and earlier, with that system only showing cracks in the mid-40s, and directly because of WWII; during which all of the military branches practiced segration!). So, when we talk about populations it isn't the same as the western view of populations 70 years ago. I remember being told at school (though not in texts but often by teachers) in the 1950s that our only serious enemy was Russia, because the Chinese were "backwards."

In game terms I don't think populations would be equal. The most industrialized nations had much better educated citizens than those being exploited by them. I'll stop at that point because I don't want to seem like a racist, I'm not, but I think we need to consider various nations at the time operated on significantly different levels of development.

With Britain and France there was the paradox of having huge colonial populations giving them a very great war potential. But the flip side was the more those colonial populations contributed to the effort the closer they came to independence. The British knew that very well, and also that the next major war would cause the end of the Empire. Except Winston Churchill, of course. As WWII wound down he campaigned for the preservation of the empire even if it meant fighting all over the world. And he was promptly, and rightly, voted out of office. It's unfortunate France didn't enter the postwar period with a similar realization regarding its own colonies.

-- Among westernized nations, I think, initially at least, levels of war preparedness has to be a major consideration. In 1938, for instance, the United States was totally unprepared for a war of any sort, where Germany and Japan were well along in their own preparations. That would need to be taken into consideration when talking about industrial potential and numbers of citizens.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Does this thread not bring back what was the best in our earlier SC forum years? Got to love it! ...

By Jove, I thought it reminded me of something!

... To address the population comparison in light of a short conflict, 2 years at the most, for no one can doubt that the weight of the Allies will eventually overcome the Axis, you must examine the human psyche. Think about how easily human perspective is manipulated, there were and are people on the opposite ends of the spectrum, philosophically, idealistically, and their interpretation of "reality". Compare them to a flock of sheep, sheople with the overwhelming position of numbers, but they can be misguided, only takes a few wolves to change their outlook on survival. What the wolves have to focus on is taking out the sheepdogs, for if they are successful the masses' leanings can be changed. The numbers game(population) is really about the amount of sheepdogs and the sheperds who direct them. The sheople's will is easily broken when not protected.

Interesting that the north to south Barbarossa campaign may have met with some success and I agree the main battle may have occurred in Stalingrad even with this alternative pursual. As difficult as the Volga may have been to cross, the primary error by the Germans was getting caught up in the urban fight. Obviously the Wehrmacht violated their primary strategy of bypassing large urban areas and focus on cutting them off. Of course as we know, Stalingrad turned out to be the struggle of two leaders' will, Hitler vs Stalin.

Kuni, I seem to remember reading, not professing them to be totally accurate, that the actual migration of industry to the Urals was not that significant in the early war effort and that it was a couple of years before those relocations actually made a contribution. If so, all the more reason to vanquish the Soviet Union by the end of 42 or at least render them so weak as to not be a continued apparent threat.

Yes, there's almost no doubt the great deciding battle would have taken place at Stalingrad. But the thing is, it would have been fought on different footing if the Germans had already taken Leningrad and Moscow and been able to, as you said, made the approach from both sides of the rivers Don and Volga. As we've been saying, the main German chance, regardless of whether Germany swung the Russian population over to their side (which would probably have decided things in itself) is that Germany had to defeat the USSR as quickly as possible, with as few losses as possible since only Russia gained in a war of attrition. But the way Hitler did things the whole war in the east became a bloodbath. Once Germany began fighting the historical Stalingrad in late 42, resorting to costly street fighting instead of maneuver, and Kursk in the summer of 43, again with very costly close combat, she was doomed. It was the equivalent of Grant fighting his way to Richmond almost unconcerned about casualties since he could afford them while for the Confederacy every man was irreplaceable. Same with Germany. After Stalingrad Germany was never able to catch up with its losses; and after Kursk the struggle became hopeless.

Kuni, Rommel has never been a general I'd go to extremes trying to defend. In large part he was a creation of Nazi propaganda, the swashbuckling cavalier outwitting his enemy at every turn, the common man who, through hard work, courage and devotion overcame class obstacles to become a fieldmarshal without a von in his name.

The problem was he was never trained for upper echelon command. He wasn't even trained to lead a panzer division, he was an infantryman who, between the wars, became commander of Hitler's bodyguard. No preparation at all for the tasks assigned to him starting in 1940. As commander of the Ghost Panzer Division he seemed to always be in the thick of the action and often in places particularly fatal for the ever more disorganized British and French. I remember reading a book in the very early 60s (I was in 8th grade) that was published in Britain in 1941, just before Rommel became famous in North Africa. The Six Week's War, about the 1940 French campaign. The author kept referring to "The German Rommel" to distinguish him from the Polish general with the same last name.

Even at that time the allies regarded him as a great general, it must have been even moreso in Germany where he was being made a hero of the common man. But the flip side began being told many years later, that as a panzer divison commander he often made unwise decisions which, if they turned out right seemed brilliant, but if they turned out wrong would have been disasterous. It also came out that, as he later did with the Afrika Korps, he wore out men and equipment for no apparent reason, losing much more of both than should have been necessary to achieve the aims he'd been given. His disregard for logistics didn't come back to haunt him at the time, but he certainly didn't care much about keeping in contact with supply depots.

If he was promoted again, and there was no reason to do so right away, it should have been to lead a panzer corps, placed on a short tether to a more experienced higher general. Instead he was sent to North Africa where, luckily, the British had just withdrawn troops for Greece and also obligingly lost their best tank general, O'Connor, to an Axis patrol --Rommel himself should have been captured on more than one occasion, the closest being when he wandered through a British field hospital shaking everyone's hand in one end and out the other, back to his captured British vehicle, where he just rode off, the Brits on guard thinking he was part of their Polish unit.

Anyway, in North Africa he benefitted from numerous British errors, many of them the same kind they themselves had taken advantage of against the Italians a year earlier. In his first offensive he ran through hundreds of miles, besieged Tobruck, and then had no idea how to actually take the place. In frustration he simply threw newly arriving German units at it in peacemeal attacks that did nothing but give him a high casualty rate. A short time later he was forced to give back everything he'd gained, except his growing reputation, falling back to his starting point in Tripolitania.

Regrouped, resupplied and reinforced he attacked again and achieved similar results, this time able to show his tactical brilliance to its best effect (again at great risks that didn't come back to burn him), taking a weakened Tobruck and, in the process, seizing enough oil and captured supplies and equipment to make a drive into Egypt appear the next logical step, especially with Malta, though not captured, at least battered into temporary ineffectiveness. There would have been a good chance of succeeding in getting to the Suez if he'd actually broken the 8th Army, or routed it, instead of just giving it a bloody nose and sending it back to prepared defenses. Here too he thought he could defeat again before it got there, but he couldn't and, in any case, the fortified positions were being manned by new arrivals, so the 8th Army became more powerful in withdrawing, while the Germans and Italians became weaker even as their supply lines stretched to the limit, and beyond. Rommel, meanwhile, showed his near contempt for logistics by having a major in charge of his supply operations.

This is pretty much the point where I was talking about Germany following the report turned in by Paulus, holding Cyrainica and switching over to a containment strategy in North Africa.

Rommel had just been promoted to Fieldmarshal. From the point of view of Nazi propaganda he couldn't be left in a defensive front, they needed more photos of Rommel leading an army from the turret of a tank, or his converted radio vehicle command car. So, there were only two choices: allow him the drive on Alexandria he was so certain would succeed, or give him a new command on a front where he could be at the head of an offensive. That would have been the Ukraine, at the head of Sixth Army.

Of course there were better choices, but there also much better choices than Paulus, who had no training at all for a field command, and no experience beyond the peacetime regimental level.

I don't agree that Paulus, once he started the drive on Stalingrad, proved to be a capable army commander. He moved too slowly, allowed defending Soviet troops to get away and take up defensive positions in Stalingrad while his own panzers were far off waiting for the nonmechanized infantry to catch up to them. I'm sure Rommel would have handled that differently. He demonstrated in North Africa that he'd become an expert in the kind of slash and flank tactis that would have bagged slow infantry columns and made it possible to occupy Stalingrad in force before it could be fortified by retreating troops who, by all rights, should have been captured before making it to the Volga. From that point I don't believe he'd have handled the main battle as Paulus did, I can't see him slavishly obeying every command from Berlin, and I definitely can't see him staying there even as the Soviet armies were crossing his flanks. He withdrew against Hitler's orders at El Alamain and, if he'd have been commanding at Stalingrad, he'd have done the same.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

A few things I was fuzzy on are beginning to make more sense now, particularly with regard to that first German winter in Russia. There's a famous quote where, when asked if it was time to bring winter clothing and equipment to the front lines in Russia Hitler said, "No, they won't be needed." That was in early September. The remark is always cited as proof that Hitler was planning on supplying his armies out of the major cities, including Leningrad and Moscow, before the weather became too severe. The problem is it doesn't reflect any change in attitude for October, November and December, as the weather situation worsened. It makes sense now that, as the armies moved farther east, supplies needed to be prioritized with fuel and ammunition being placed above winter clothing.

In 1811, Napoleon originally planned on making Smolensk the end of the 1812 campaign so he could solidify his supply line before advancing to Moscow, and then, if necessary, to St Petersburg (Leningrad) presumably to finish things. Like Hitler, and the Swedish Charles a century earlier, it never occurred to him that the Russians would simply cede space and keep fighting till the invader reached the end of his tether: Charles at Plutowa, Napoleon and Hitler at Moscow. The odd part is Napoleon said he wouldn't repeat the mistakes of Charles, and Hitler claimed he wouldn't repeat either the mistakes of Napoleon (overextending his supply line) or of the Kaiser (fighting a two front war), but both of them followed paths they knew to be overly risky.

Limited objectives for the first year would have been best for both; Napoleon in staying with his original plan, and Hitler following either the all-out North to South campaign SeaMonkey and myself discussed earlier, or one of three limited objectives for the first year, say stopping the advance on a Riga-Smolensk-Kiev-Odessa line before the rough winter set in that first year, solidifying the tracks behind their lines and being fully prepared to resume the offensive more strongly, and much earlier, in the Spring of 1942, rather than summer.

But the more I read about the historical situation the more I'm convinced that (1) Germany had no right to expect the initial success it achieved; if Stalin had allowed his generals to prepare the frontline armies they would never have collapsed so badly (2) Germany entered the campaign, as some of his generals later wrote, with too little of everything they needed, including aircraft and troops; either Hitler was taking on more than he could reasonably expect to handle, or he needed to allow the USSR another year's preparation time so he could also have that same extra time to prepare his invasion. (2) That historically Hitler's best, perhaps only, chance was to go for the quick kill. To follow the North to South plan we were discussing, taking Leningrad and then Moscow combined with a non-racist policy toward the Russian people that Arado and several of us, Kuni-Snowstorm-BrotherX-myself, were talking about, gaining full support as a liberator while undermining Stalin's regime, instead of strengthening it with his senseless persecutions.

Great points brought up by BrotherRambo, I like the way you got the Barbarossa discussion back in relation with the Mediteranean. And, of course, there was also the increasing bombing campaign from Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic, and the United States preparing to get involved with Operation Torch, though the Germans had no idea that would even be possible! -- Adding all of that to the war with Russia and by early 1942 it already seems Germany was fighting too many enemies and could no longer hope for a clear victory on any of its fronts.

As always it would be great to actually have options of this sort in a game. There would need to be some advantage, most likely additional initial plunder at the expense of ill will and increased partisan activity, in doing things the fascist way, as opposed to the friendly policy which would forego plunder in exchange for the benefits just mentioned.

-- * In an earlier post something was said about Rommel getting an additional two panzer divisions at El Alamain. I think this, paradoxically, would have made things even more difficult for him. The more troops he had, particularly mechanized, the more supplies he'd have needed. It wasn't just a question of troops and supplies being lost at sea because Maltal hadn't been taken out, it was a matter of everything then needing to moved east 1500 miles all the way from Tripoli (not the badly damaged port of Tobruck, or Benghazi) by truck across an open desert road. There was no way to prevent the RAF from decimating those supply and reinforcement columns because during the course of the campaign the Axis went from barely having air parity to the Allies having total control of the air. I think El Alamain was a fatal trap. Auchinleck realized that and began preparing the position even while he was being driven out of Cyrainica. The 8th army wasn't routed, as Rommel assumed, it conducted a hasty, but well ordered withdrawal to prepared positions at the desert's narrowest point north to south, with the Mediteranean on one flank, and the Qattarra Depression on the other and outflanking made impossible. I think the only Axis chance of winning North Africa was to simultaneously win in the Middle East, as discussed earlier, by having supported in force the Iraqii attempt to drive the British out of their country, and join the Axis.

Paulus, before being sent to command the 6th Army, understood all of that and put it in his report to the general staff, where he should have remained; he was an excellent staff officer but never groomed for a field command. I think it would have been better if Rommel had been placed in command of either 6th Army, or an army group when Army Group South was subdivided (another mistake but unavoidable if a drive on the Caucasus was to be made in 42) with a more defensively oriented general (such as von Arnim) being placed in command of the Afrika Korps, which would have remained in Libya, making Tobruk its new base of operations whose only objective was to keep the British from moving out of Egypt.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Snowstorm, my pleasure, glad you're enjoying the thread. Terrific topic idea and interesting points.

Kuni, Really enjoying your Eastern Front expertise.

My view. Operation Barbarossa was launched with fatal flaws from the start.

For one thing the premise was wrong, that "One good kick at the door and the whole rotten house would fall down." Between late June and early October the Russians had endured the equivalent of the Polish and French defeats several times over and were still standing. Reeling, wabbly, but still on their feet. Hitler's initial vision of three great drives had to always be combined, first into two, and then into one, all the while destroying vast pockets of Soviet troops and yet having their own forces slowed and damaged by normal combat losses, worsening weather, stiffening Soviet resistence, and sheer exhaustion. Thrown into the mix was a huge German army and air force that hadn't been properly equiped for a severe winter -- whose machines, both fighting and support, didn't even have the requisite lubricants for that climate! -- falling just short of capturing the main transportation hubs and, subsequently, forced to either fight where they were, freezing troops with heavy equipment that no longer worked, at the end of their supply line and out in the open, or withdraw and risk being routed with nothing to fall back upon except barren terrain.

Many of Hitler's generals foresaw this kind of danger but their cautions were overruled because the official position was the USSR would come crashing down before any of those factors came into play. That the initial success seemed to come so easily only added to the illusion and the subsequent winter disaster that followed. The main saving grace, ironically, was Stalin's counter errors, wasting the troops that had brought him a winter victory by pushing them too far in the counter offensive, decimating the forces that should have been in place to hold back the Axis spring 1942 offensive.

I believe the whole offensive in Russia by Germany was a mistake to begin with. It was almost exactly the same mistake made by the Japanese, who, similarly deluded by early victory, kept pushing without consolidating the vital areas they'd already conquered. In Germany's case several of those alternatives have already been discussed in this thread. What exactly was the great urgency of invading the USSR while still fighting an air, sea and naval war against the UK?

If Germany had to invade Russia I think the best plan would have been to flow with the weather patterns. To place the lowest initial priority on the southern drive, a moderate priority on the center, and to throw everything else into taking Leningrad by early Autumn. After taking Leningrad, most of Army Group North, including all of its mechanized units, should have been turned south to approach Moscow from its northeast while Army Group Center hit it from the west and south. With Moscow taken as the first snow came down, the mechanized units of both Army Group North and Center could have been directed south to either take Kiev or create the kind of huge pockets that developed historically, trapping huge numbers of Soviet infantry to become weaker during the winter while the Germans, having taken the major transportation centers of Smolensk, Riga, Leningrad and Moscow, could have regrouped, reinforced and resupplied without having to fight it out in the open, during the winter.

I see the German offensive taking its objectives from north to south with the worst weather opening up in the same direction as the key objectives are taken and secured, the front moving ever farther south with the offensive resuming in the spring to take the rest of the Ukraine, Crimea and Caucasus, as was done historically, but with a German front holding its north and center much more securely.

Moscow, to me, was the most important single objective because, looking at a map of roads and rail lines, it was the most important transportation hub in Russia. Depriving the Soviets of that hub would have had tremendous logistical consequences for the continued Russian war effort.

-- Additionally, the loss of both Leningrad and Moscow within months of the campaign's opening might well have led to Hitler's vision of the rotten Soviet structure falling in, but only after its foundations had been destroyed.

And, of course, it would have helped if the SS hadn't been allowed to run rampant behind the lines, creating a fatal partisan front behind the lines. Manstein and others warned Hitler that he was wasting their military victories with pointless brutality and racial nonsense in the rear areas.

-- A huge factor rarely discussed is that, despite this oppressive and tragic idiocy, the Wehrmacht's always depleted divisions were constantly fleshed out by hundreds of thousands of Russians, whose use was at first forbidden by Hitler so they were listed as Germans living in Russia. Without these Russian soldiers fighting for Germany the Axis defeat would have come much earlier. How many additional hundreds of thousands would have been available if Germany had passed on its untermensch occupation policies? And how many tens of thousands of those would have been taken from the very same partisans fighting behind the Axis lines?

[Questions??]

The problem, of course, is as BrotherX says in the WWII Speculations Thread (at least a post I quoted) that Hitler felt the longer he waited past 1939, the stronger his rivals would become even as Germany became weaker due to its debt and distorted economy. Hitler had to make a major move of some kind, or begin reining things in economically to pay for his military buildup to that point.

I think he could have worked his way out of it if he'd done things a bit differently, except by that time the only courses he'd consider were the ones he chose to see. The British and French would not fight over Poland because they hadn't fought over Czechoslovakia. He had to be right because he was never wrong in the past. Then, after the attack, Britain and France would agree to a negotiated peace. The didn't. So after taking France, Britain would have to agree to terms. It didn't. So he'd turn east and (through some convoluted reasoning) end the war with Britain by destroying the USSR. And when that didn't happen etc & etc, each step becoming more out of touch with reality than the previous one.

But I think July 1940 is an interesting place to look for where Germany really lost the war. At that moment it had actually won, unless it went out of its way to lose, which is exactly what Hitler proceeded to do.

Even if Britain continued to fight it could have been slowly brought to its knees by attrition; all Germany needed to do was suffer a major setback, such as its costly loss in the Battle of Britain. If instead it had increased its Uboat campain without pulling the USA into the war, Britain would have had to agree to peace terms within the year. Instead Hitler chose to do the one thing even he had always known would be a fatal mistake, get into a two front war.

The amazing part is, despite all his blundering, Germany came so close to winning.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Arado, Those two allied would have really been a strange situation, as you say. The strange part is I think if Hitler wanted it to work out it could have, at least till the mid-forties. Meanwhile there should have been some kind of plan where Stalin would move toward India with Germany/Italy (after defeating France) making control of the Middle East their main objective.

The late Steven Ambrose said something along those lines in a History Channel documentary, that if Hitler could have forgotten about his Russian obsession in 1941 he'd have seen that he already held the keys to the kingdom, which is to say the Middle East & Eastern Mediteranean, in his hands; but he refused to use them.

Kuni, To me the Axis and Malta shows how unprepared both Italy and Germany were for a major war in 39/40 and how it affected them all through the remainder of the war. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini saw Italy in any way other than what suited their plans. If they'd looked more closely they both would have seen that all branches of the Italian military, and also Italy's manufacturing capacity, needed at least two more years of preparation before entering a major war. Perhaps Mussolini was aware of this in the beginning, when he kept waiting to see how things would unfold, but by the late Spring of 40 he decided Italy's path on the assumption that unpreparedness didn't matter because the war would end in a month or two and his gaze was already fixed on grabbing spoils as part of the winning alliance.

If Italy had been planning for seriously for a war with Britain, its first step had to be taking Malta before conducting any operations elsewhere.

-- And then there were the several Italian East African colonies, cut off and doomed in anything other than a quick Axis victory.

By the time Operation Hercules was being planned I think it's possible the war was irretrievably lost. The last chance had come and gone when Germany invaded Russia instead of exploiting the opportunities handed to him in the Middle East. There was too much of that Il Duce's sphere even at that late point in the war. It had to sound like a joke by then, with Germany already having saved Italian fiascos in Greece and North Africa. By early 1941 Germany should have been making plans that did not include having Italy working as its partner. I think that, having already turned away from Russia to put Yugoslavia and Greece under Axis control, and then having taken Crete, Hitler should have made a new agreement with Stalin, fortifying his side of Poland in exchange for the USSR DOW on UK with a campaign to take India while Germany, without Italy, sent massive support to Iraq and gained control of the Middle East. With the U. S. still neutral and no hope of a Russian front, I can't see Britain doing anything but seeking peace, or being utterly destroyed even without a direct invasion of the British Isles.

Compared to that sort of plan I think it becomes obfious that what was actually done by the Axis was just a lot of patchwork moves with much greater loss of men and material (such as the Mediteranean convoys' losses due to Malta) than were necessary.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

:cool: -- Very glad you like it. Could hardly believe that photo when it first popped up.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Continues from preceding post

-- Taken from the Questions Thread:

... as far as i know Hitler urged to start the war as soon as possible, in fact he was mad a Mussolini who brought the Munich treaty instead of War in 1938.

Each year on top of 1939 would have made germany weaker and her heighbors stronger.

And one more thing: Germany was broke, because it spend money for all those precious tanks and weapon. But this money was only printed, never earned.

Only through the plunder of her neighbors Germany was able to continue to fight.

There is a briliant campaign in Patton drives east, in which Germany had "won" the contintal war, with new borders and german fortication near the Urals. The year si 1945 (if i remember correctly).

The Allies start the game with a huge landing operation against occupied England while the Germans have ther Plan Z dream build and afloat.

Not exactly the campaing you were looking for, but at least a near miss (and believe me: a fresh and entertaining new campaign).

Sounds interesting, BrotherX.

I'd really enjoy a good scenario, or even a dedicated game with a scenario builder, where nobody has to be at war and it starts at some point prior to Sept 1939. It would be great to follow paths other than the one Hitler chose.

I agree that he wanted to fight a war in 1938, and again in 1939, it's only a matter of what war he was looking to fight. In both cases he wanted a limited conflict against an oppenent Germany would be able to crush quickly and without too much loss. He wanted to isolate a neighbor and take the opportunity to show off Germany's new fighting machine.

In a pre-war scenario I'd like Germany to be able to reduce its active army, placing a given number of divisions in a semi-active reserve role so as to get the economy on a more prosperous footing while still having all its equipment and, in case war looms, the ability to call it back into action.

I've never understood why the deal with Stalin wasn't (1) secret and (2) called for Russia to create the incident and then to invade Eastern Poland, with Germany able to invade from its side starting a few days later with the premise of helping the Poles and also creating a buffer zone between Germany and the new Soviet frontier. I don't think the USSR would have been afraid of an Anglo-French DOW on them, and if they afterwards did so against Germany they'd have been at war with both Germany and Russia. If they didn't declare war on the USSR for their initial attack, then declared war on Germany for their later invasion, they'd have appeared ludicrous to the USA, and even their own people. And, of course, it would be great to be able to have that kind of situation in a wargame, and have that kind of course of events affect the status of the participants in regard to neutrals.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Thank you, BrotherX. A voice told me, "Build it and they will come."

Speaking of which, the first ones are arriving even as I write this, yes, it's Blitzen, Thunder, Rudolph and Prancer.

Hmmm -- with riders.

"You be Marcellus. It's my turn to be Ben Hur."

-- "You were Ben Hur yesterday, it's my turn."

"Stop bikering and get your reindeer, I mean, uh, chariots lined up."

http://undergrowth.org/system/files/images/Reindeer+people.preview.jpg

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Part of a discussion about Axis taking Malta:

Did you know a huge reason Malta was not invaded in spring 1942 was that after Crete Hitler had to use his 7. Fliegerdivision to keep the russian 54th army back at the Leningrad front. So no operation hercules.

Glad you posted this, Kuni, didn't know about it. I thought the Axis set aside one German paratroop brigade, one Italian paratroop regiment and two Italian infantry divisions to be brought in by ship and aircraft as facilities were captured. The operation would certainly have had a better chance with that added Luftwaffe infantry division.

-- I think those Italian and German paratroop units, and the two Italian infantry divisions were sent to fight at El Alamein.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Awww, go ahead JerseyJohn, start the new thread.

At least we'll all be able to tell what the new thread looks like.

So will the late comers.

Posted in response -- I'm afraid I waited too long to start it.

Agreed!

...

Too late, dear friend, too late.

Hmmm, okay, Snowstorm, you convinced me. And for BrotherX, your clever ploy worked! :cool:

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Rambo I cant see either how Germany(atleast for ALONG time) would have been able to get all that oil to the refineries even if they did control the Med.It certainly take along time to setup the infrastucture to do all that.

As far as Chemical and Biological weapons go neither side(im not counting the concetration camps)used them militarily because(im guessing)that after WW1 it was considered immoral(yes I know the irony)and there are some things you just shouldnt do.Plus neither side wanted them used on eachothers civilain pop.The side that used them first would have been looked upon as a total evil villian that could never be trusted.

If Hitler wasnt willig to use them(which is VERY suprising)militarily then if the Allies fired first with them I could see it blowing up,in their face.Since both sides had them and delering the weapon accurate didnt really matter Imho it would have unleashed such destruction(much more than there already was)that it would have made no sense.

Rambo as far as tech.goes you are absoulty correct in who knows what eachside would have invented and thats precisley why imho the Americans had to get into the war as fast as they could to end it(yes I also would have done things differently but hindsight is 20/20)so Germany didnt have any chance of developing some Ultra high-tech weapons.

Arado,

In Scotland, frighteningly close to the shore, is a small island where nobody is allowed to land. It looks really innocent and peaceful (I've driven by it).It was the site of British development and testing of Anthrax as a bioweapon during WWII (the irony of the UK later invading Iraq, apparently to look for such weapons, is not lost on me).

The reasons for not using such weapons may be complex. I'd note that gas was very effective when first used in WWI (if sometimes backfiring) but became less formidable when gas masks became standard. I'd imagine in a more mobile WWII it was even less useful.

[incidentally, UK used more gas than the Germans did in WWI IIRC]

Even though there is a lot of fear and development and testing and speculation there continues to be no validation for bioweapons, even in this age of genetic modification. As terror weapons yes (e.g. the Anthrax-by-post saga) but as military weapons no.

Basically, high explosives are easier to target and deadlier. In WWI gas lead to breakthroughs but so did massed artillery, mining, well trained shock troops and tanks. I think generals like the latter four methods as they were more subject to command and control.....

Colin I I also think what would scare people with these Chem.or Bilogical weapons(check out what the Japs did with their Bio.weapons experiments at Mukkden)is the not knowing part of why people are dying.If you dont know whats causing death you tend to get even more scared.

I hope you are right in that there NEVER comes a reason to validate the use of Bio.chemical or Nukes.

-----------

Added Here:

During the 1930s there was a lot of fear of gas weapons being dropped on cities by bombers. Prewar estimates of civilian casualties in London during the opening of a war with Germany ranged in the hundreds of thousands; the big concern of pre-war planning was the dispossal of civilian corpses quickly enough to prevent an explosion of the rat population and resulting epidemics. A good, though extremely antiquated film version of these views can be seen in the British movie, Things To Come -- c1936, based on a story by H. G. Wells that incorporates a modern Hundred Years War breaking out in 1930s Europe.

SeaMonkey if the Germans had actually been able to K.O.Russia and England because of America not getting directly involved(I know it would have been REAL tough)then would Germany really need all that oil right away?There would be no need for a huge armed force.All efforts would go into tech.to make the world a better place(ha ha).

Rambo I can no doubt see why you wouldnt want American blood spilt for European stupidity,I just think its better to confront your enemy from a great position of strength than let your Allies(I use the term loosly for Russia)get picked off one by one.

Added Here:

As I wrote earlier, it was as important to deprive Britain of the Middle East oil as it was to secure it for the Axis. I don't agree at all that getting it back to Germany and Italy would have presented any great problems; there were existing rail lines running through from Iraq to Istanbul, and I believe trains at the time were ferried across the Bosporus between the Europeean and Asiatic parts of Turkey.

I agree that, with all of those objectives achieved Germany would not have needed a huge armed force, only enough to occupy Europe, which in many areas could have been done by Axis allies. Alledgedly Hitler felt that way too, and his next step would have been in putting together a Blue Ocean Navy from all the resources he'd captured -- which would have included numerous unfinished warships sitting on slipways in France and other nations.

-- Regarding the Russo-German war, I don't think Germany could have carried it beyond the Urals. At that point they'd have had too much to occupy already, and beyond the mountains, east, would have been too much empty space with no way to establish a good supply line. The Russians in Asia would have had a field day cutting advanced German units off and destroying them. It would have been Crassius and the Parthians over and over and over again.

[WWII Speculations Thread]

Speculation on Axis helping Iraq in ousting British control:

Rambo Germany wouldnt have to take the Med.If Russia went downthen they would just come around the other way and if you recall the people of the Mid-East were none to fond of the Brits and would have done everything in their power to help the Germans.

As far as getting the oil to Germany just truck it through to Turkey(yes I realise how hard that would be) and you could then build more refineries in Romania etc.You wouldnt have to send all the oil to Germany.Actually how much oil would Germany need?If the Axis had defeated Russia and England they wouldnt need such a huge army anymore.

Do you think the Americans could build a bomber that could fly from America to Germany and back before Germany had enough Rockets to start firing first?

I just think if the Amis.hadnt got directly involved when they did it would have meant the oveall loss of ALOT more lives(including Americans)Like you said,who cares if its a soldier that dies or a civilian.

Adding my own view:

I agree with Arado. The best selling book in Iraq at the time was Mein Kampf. Hitler made a huge blunder in not helping that country to oust the Brits. He could also have sent aid earlier than the actual uprising but he kept telling his inner circle that the Middle East fell within Il Duce's sphere. A ridiculous position to take at that point in the war. With Iraq in the Axis and Rommel taking Tobruk almost simultaneously the British, aside from the Iraqi oil, would have been a very desperate strategic situation. All the Iraquis needed was a little air support; even ME 110s, next to useless against the Hurricanes and Spitfires, might have won air supremacy against the training models Britain had on its airfield in Iraq.

I have to agree with BrotherRambo that Rommel couldn't have forced his way through to Alexandria and the Suez Canal. That was also the opinion of Paulus, who was sent to do an evaluation of the theater after the fall of Tobruk. Paulus advised the Axis should hold Libya but not try to take Egypt. But this was too tame for Rommel who wouldn't even allow Kesselring to take Malta, convincing Hitler to cancel the operation (he was against such battles in any case after Crete) and send those troops (including a German paratroop brigade and an Italian paratroop regiment) to his command instead, with a green light for the push into Egypt.

Probably, instead of sending Paulus to the Sixth Army, Hitler should have sent Rommel to Russia and placed Paulus in command of the Africa Corps. Russia, aside from the genocide which I'm sure he'd have kept under control in his command, was well suited to Rommel's skills while Paulus, in a defensive posture in Libya, could have eased into his first field command instead of being dropped totally without experience into the most important offensive taking place at the time. -- My only guess is Hitler would probably have deemed command of Sixth Army to be a sort of demotion for Rommel, who was promoting to fieldmarshal.

JJR Continues:

It's not that the Germans couldn't have pulled of an end run to the Middle East + Coup D' Tau with some local governments. I just don't see Gerry setting up a 3000+ mile long supply line of oil without the Allies dusting it off the map with bombers/fighters. So what's the point trying to take the oil fields of the Middle East if you can't ship it home.

I'm really surprised that neither side didn't invent "Mustard Gas" bombs to drop from planes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_gas_in_World_War_I

30 years previously, since WW-1, scientists could have improved on this nasty stuff

Adding more viewpoints:

It isn't so much Germany getting the oil as it is depriving it to the British. The Royal Navy in the Eastern Mediteranean/Red Sea Persian Gulf relied on that oil; it was the original reason Churchill in ~1920 pushed for the creation of a nation of Iraq, and also forced the conversion of the Royal Navy from coal to oil.

Additionally, it might have pulled Iran and Turkey into, or at least closer to, the Axis. This would have blocked one of the support routes to the USSR through Southern Russia.

And gaining access to all that oil wouldn't have hurt either. Probably the Royal Navy would have been forced to either leave the Eastern Mediteranean, or curtail its operations there, and the Middle Eastern oil could have been brought to Germany through Turkey-Bulgaria-Rumania-Hungary.

Getting Turkey to join the Axis would have been a big feather in the Fuherer's Cap.

Wow, I'm ready for a game...

Added here:

I don't think it was mentioned that at the time Iraq was rising against the British, Rommel was making his second campaign into Cyraenica, and taking Tobruk. I can't help but think even a little more German aid to Iraq, especially if sent when it was first requested, would have led to Britain being pushed out of the country, and having an untenable situation in North Africa -- sizable troops would have had to have been sent to try and retake Iraq, the whole point of fighting in Egypt was mainly to keep the Middle Eastern oil in British hands, with the Suez Canal being second in importance. So, even if a large detatchment from 8th Army succeeded in regaining control of Iraq, I think it would have weakened the position at El Alemain enough to enable Rommel to push the Britsh back to the Sainai, accomplishing his original objective of establishing a new lifeline via Crete to Alexandria. And from there the next battle, centering on the Sainai Penninsula, would have been against a weakened British force having a hostile Iraq at its back.