A.E.B

Another interesting WWI stat is the fact that men on lookout at night in the trenchs would stand with their bodies down to the waist exposed. The reason was that the other sides MGs would have been ranged in on their stands to rake just above the parapet. Every now and then these MGs would hose the opposing trench line. If you stood with just your head exposedand were unlucky enough to get hit, you would suffer a headshot that was almost always fatal (and if not you wished it was). By standing higher you were instead hit in the arms or chest, which while still potentially fatal, had a lower level of fatality and was less disabling if you survived. The WWII ATG was hard to spot. However, the ATG's advantage in being low to the ground was also a disadvantage. ATG crews needed to be able to spot targets. Hence it was common for lanes of sight/fire to be cleared when the ATG was deployed in cover. The gun needed to traverse, so trees and shrubs had to be removed around the gun. Also, the muzzle of the barrel was also closer to the ground (particularly if dug in), so the muzzle blast would throw up dust and debris, and would also flatten out grass and ground cover. I have read that poorly combusting propellent used in the shells would also leave black marks in front of the gun, a problem if you are in snow. A.E.B

CITIDEL seems to be just the largest of a number of ill-thought out German counterattacks launched late in the War. Even after reading the thoughts of the German planners themselves, it is often hard to understand what the aim - beyond fantasies like getting to Antwerp in 1945 with the Battle of the Bulge - of these offensives were. It is almost as though the Germans were simply unwilling to await a defeat that would take years against a flexible German defense, and instead chose to waste irreplacable resources of men, material and machines for what appears to be nothing more than a temporary regaining of tactical - not strategic - inititive? I have wondered whether the complete failure of German intelligence during the war contributed to this, and that the Germans really believed that the Allies were crumbling and, given a sufficient push, could be knocked out of the war by a limited local offensive when the vast national offensives of previous years had failed. What Kursk, and the Battle of the Bulge, and the Counter attack in Hungary, and all the other little offensives mounted by the Germans achieved was to reveal what a shell the once-mighty German armies had become, and to hasten the end of the War by months, maybe years. A.E.B

Michael You don't reduce the word to meaninglessness. Rather the word now has a broader usage than just some narrow WWII definition. It is the way words work - you take a complex, technical issue that people have spent their lives researching, writing and arguing about, and sum it up with a single term that becomes the accepted usage. For another WWII example - the word Blitz used as a description of the bombing of London. There is absolutely no connection between the word 'Blitz' and its usage in this context, but for good or bad it is now referred to as the Blitz. If people wish to narrowly define a word to a specific context, that is fine. But there is no authority - not even the OED - on what constitutes correct usage of words, so such a narrow definition has no impact on broader (and by definition) less precise definitions of the same word. Take a CM term - BORG Sighting. We know what it means in context. A Trekie may well argue that we are misusing the concept of BORG because it doesn't conform to the Star Trek definition of BORG. But we all still know what it means. A.E.B

Michael If I said "The new management of my company has introduced a Blitzkrieg of changes" I suspect that most people would understand what I meant. Blitzkrieg is associated with a ruthless, relentless, driving, crush all oposition under your tracks style of doing things. When I think of Blitzkreig in think of how hapless Germany's opponents were, rather than how prepared the Germans were. A.E.B

Dodging the onset of "Britneyitis". This is a good point. Exactly how much weight does the hardcore carry in the real world of computer game sales? To move away from BFC and CMX, it was interesting to see similar claims made over another long running computer game series - the Total War franchise. Basically, like CMBO, Shogun:TW came out of left field. While by no means a perfect game, it rapidly built up a following based on word of mouth and industry reviews. When Creative Assemble announced the development of Medieval:TW, there were distinct rumblings about how "messing" with certain elements would doom the TW franchise. When the demo hit there was a muted uproar - muted due to the far smaller internet community back then - and a small self-appointed group of the hardcore declared that MTW would be a commerical disaster and that CA would be justly driven out of business by the failure to listen to them. This didn't happen. Move forward to CA announcing Rome:TW. This time the internet community and the fanbase was much larger, so the rumblings were much louder. Again people predicted that straying from the MTW path would ruin the game. When the demo hit there was an explosion of outrage over the changes that - yet again - a small self-appointed group of the hardcore - didn't like. Again it was predicted that the game would be a failure and that CA would justly die for this. Again this did not happen. All three games - Shogun, Medieval and Rome - have their flaws and none are beyond improvement. But each new addition to the TW franchise has been a success. I am sure that there were people who bought earlier TW games who didn't buy later TW games, but they were massively outweighed by both return customers and new customers. Simply put - how many of the tens of thousands of potential customers of a computer game get to see or even be influenced by the opinions of the fanbase? My guess is that potential buyers are far more influenced by past game history, reviews, word-of-mouth by other gamers, and even the attractiveness of the packaging. Another game I can think of demonstrates where the reverse happened - the hardcore broadly approved of the changes - is the Stronghold Series. Stronghold 1 was a flawed but still highly enjoyable game. Firefly listened to feed back and the proposed Stronghold 2 seemed to be what every Stronghold 1 fanboy could want. One small problem, Stronghold 2 stinks. Word of mouth and negative reviews consigned this game to the discount bin within a month of its release. So in the end CMX will be judged on its individual merits. A.E.B

Dodging the onset of "Britneyitis". This is a good point. Exactly how much weight does the hardcore carry in the real world of computer game sales? To move away from BFC and CMX, it was interesting to see similar claims made over another long running computer game series - the Total War franchise. Basically, like CMBO, Shogun:TW came out of left field. While by no means a perfect game, it rapidly built up a following based on word of mouth and industry reviews. When Creative Assemble announced the development of Medieval:TW, there were distinct rumblings about how "messing" with certain elements would doom the TW franchise. When the demo hit there was a muted uproar - muted due to the far smaller internet community back then - and a small self-appointed group of the hardcore declared that MTW would be a commerical disaster and that CA would be justly driven out of business by the failure to listen to them. This didn't happen. Move forward to CA announcing Rome:TW. This time the internet community and the fanbase was much larger, so the rumblings were much louder. Again people predicted that straying from the MTW path would ruin the game. When the demo hit there was an explosion of outrage over the changes that - yet again - a small self-appointed group of the hardcore - didn't like. Again it was predicted that the game would be a failure and that CA would justly die for this. Again this did not happen. All three games - Shogun, Medieval and Rome - have their flaws and none are beyond improvement. But each new addition to the TW franchise has been a success. I am sure that there were people who bought earlier TW games who didn't buy later TW games, but they were massively outweighed by both return customers and new customers. Simply put - how many of the tens of thousands of potential customers of a computer game get to see or even be influenced by the opinions of the fanbase? My guess is that potential buyers are far more influenced by past game history, reviews, word-of-mouth by other gamers, and even the attractiveness of the packaging. Another game I can think of demonstrates where the reverse happened - the hardcore broadly approved of the changes - is the Stronghold Series. Stronghold 1 was a flawed but still highly enjoyable game. Firefly listened to feed back and the proposed Stronghold 2 seemed to be what every Stronghold 1 fanboy could want. One small problem, Stronghold 2 stinks. Word of mouth and negative reviews consigned this game to the discount bin within a month of its release. So in the end CMX will be judged on its individual merits. A.E.B

Michael Regardless of how the term "Blitzkreig" came into existence, it is a word that has currency. The English language is evolving, and new terminology is created or adapted from other languages continuously. In 1940 and then 1941, the world witnessed a style of warfare that - while in no way being revolutionary - stunned the world. As a result the term "Lightning War" was created by the media to describe the impact of this unexpected disaster. The fact that the word Blitzkreig also has a flexible meaning is also not an issue: many English words have multiple possible meanings, and means change over time. Most words gain currency because both the user and the listener understand to a broad extent what the term means. For example, the term Bore as in Boring or Boredom is only several centuries old. People were bored prior to this word gaining currency, but they used a number of different words to describe it. Bore won out because it was (a) a single term, and ( a term that everyone thinks they understand, even if they actually have differing opinions on a precise meaning. So I have no problem using the term Blitzkreig. A.E.B

My guess is that - like CMBO, CMBB and CMAK - vehicles and other equipment will be hardcoded by BFC or whoever BFC extrusts. This makes sense for two reasons: 1. If there is to be a multiplayer element, it is necessary to have everyone using the same data sets, rather than one player having a BFC T34A and other the JasonC T34A with remodeled curved armour. 2. It is the research into the individual pieces of equipment and their performance on the battlefield that is the key piece of intellectual property BFC possesses: no one can make a CM clone without researching that same data. That said I hope that the system is flexible enough to take a Tank from the US Normandy module and use in in other modules. Time will tell. A.E.B

My guess is that - like CMBO, CMBB and CMAK - vehicles and other equipment will be hardcoded by BFC or whoever BFC extrusts. This makes sense for two reasons: 1. If there is to be a multiplayer element, it is necessary to have everyone using the same data sets, rather than one player having a BFC T34A and other the JasonC T34A with remodeled curved armour. 2. It is the research into the individual pieces of equipment and their performance on the battlefield that is the key piece of intellectual property BFC possesses: no one can make a CM clone without researching that same data. That said I hope that the system is flexible enough to take a Tank from the US Normandy module and use in in other modules. Time will tell. A.E.B

Guys It isn't as though BFC will be visiting each and every one of us and holding a gun to our heads while we type in our orders for CMX (unless you live near Matt, Steve or KwazyDog, in which case expect a visit). Wait for the demo and word of mouth - if CMX is bad you'll soon know. It's BFC's dime and its BFC's future, so it is in their interest to get it right. A.E.B

Guys It isn't as though BFC will be visiting each and every one of us and holding a gun to our heads while we type in our orders for CMX (unless you live near Matt, Steve or KwazyDog, in which case expect a visit). Wait for the demo and word of mouth - if CMX is bad you'll soon know. It's BFC's dime and its BFC's future, so it is in their interest to get it right. A.E.B

My understanding. There is a core engine that is not a stand alone game - lets call it the Real Physics Combat System (RPCS). The idea is to code games based on the RPCS engine, but with extra coding to customise it to a specific theatre/battle/operation. This game based on the RPCS engine is then in turn expanded by the addition of modules that add onto the original game. So the RPCS engine could handle any combat using gunpowder weapons and beyond (for example - just guessing). The games could cover any territory allowed by the RPCS engine: WWI, WWII, Korea, Nam, Arab v Isreali, Cold War goes hot, whatever. This game + module system is probably one of the oldest and most successful models in the gaming industry - both commerically and for a player base - with the exception of subscription online gaming. It provides a continuous stream of fresh material for the gamer and a stream of cash to pay for the game designers drug additions. To take the example Steve mentioned, CMX may be limited to Americans vs Germans in Normandy. The advantages of this are the ability to provide a far more realistic game: correct OOBs, better graphics for vehicles and infantry, terrain specifically of the type found in Normandy (ie hedgerows), correct architecture, etc. This escapes the generic terrain and buildings of the previous CM games, and provides scope to create much better maps. But every silver cloud has a black lining. BFC has to get the balance right. For the module system to work people must keep playing the game. Get it right and your sales of the original game plus the modules can continue for years, as new gamers will tend to buy the game plus some modules. Get it wrong and the market dies before you can get those modules onto the market. If the first CMX WWII game was justed limited to a couple of months of American vs German in Normandy, the question arises as to how long gamers will keep playing a limited set of battles. Or will it devolve into "same tanks, same terrain" boredom? The beauty of CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK was the ability to play a huge range of battles and operations with a large range of equipment. This kept many people playing for years, and fueled an active modder community. But BFC must have been cursing everytime the Bolli ran out that we gamers were getting such a longterm gaming experience without extra cash following into the BFC Swiss bank accounts. BFC can safely assume that those of us who liked CM will buy CMX whenever it arrives. And as I am sure BFC knows - those of us here on this forum make up only a few % of the total sales of CM in the past. The trick for BFC is to get people to buy the modules after they buy the first game. I have faith in their ability to get it right, but then the computer gaming industry has this knack of turning gold to lead. So CMX will live and die on boths its game play and its replayability - this is what will keep gamers coming back - and this is what will allow the BFC crew to keep living their accustomed lifestyle of the 17th Century European Monarch. A.E.B

My understanding. There is a core engine that is not a stand alone game - lets call it the Real Physics Combat System (RPCS). The idea is to code games based on the RPCS engine, but with extra coding to customise it to a specific theatre/battle/operation. This game based on the RPCS engine is then in turn expanded by the addition of modules that add onto the original game. So the RPCS engine could handle any combat using gunpowder weapons and beyond (for example - just guessing). The games could cover any territory allowed by the RPCS engine: WWI, WWII, Korea, Nam, Arab v Isreali, Cold War goes hot, whatever. This game + module system is probably one of the oldest and most successful models in the gaming industry - both commerically and for a player base - with the exception of subscription online gaming. It provides a continuous stream of fresh material for the gamer and a stream of cash to pay for the game designers drug additions. To take the example Steve mentioned, CMX may be limited to Americans vs Germans in Normandy. The advantages of this are the ability to provide a far more realistic game: correct OOBs, better graphics for vehicles and infantry, terrain specifically of the type found in Normandy (ie hedgerows), correct architecture, etc. This escapes the generic terrain and buildings of the previous CM games, and provides scope to create much better maps. But every silver cloud has a black lining. BFC has to get the balance right. For the module system to work people must keep playing the game. Get it right and your sales of the original game plus the modules can continue for years, as new gamers will tend to buy the game plus some modules. Get it wrong and the market dies before you can get those modules onto the market. If the first CMX WWII game was justed limited to a couple of months of American vs German in Normandy, the question arises as to how long gamers will keep playing a limited set of battles. Or will it devolve into "same tanks, same terrain" boredom? The beauty of CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK was the ability to play a huge range of battles and operations with a large range of equipment. This kept many people playing for years, and fueled an active modder community. But BFC must have been cursing everytime the Bolli ran out that we gamers were getting such a longterm gaming experience without extra cash following into the BFC Swiss bank accounts. BFC can safely assume that those of us who liked CM will buy CMX whenever it arrives. And as I am sure BFC knows - those of us here on this forum make up only a few % of the total sales of CM in the past. The trick for BFC is to get people to buy the modules after they buy the first game. I have faith in their ability to get it right, but then the computer gaming industry has this knack of turning gold to lead. So CMX will live and die on boths its game play and its replayability - this is what will keep gamers coming back - and this is what will allow the BFC crew to keep living their accustomed lifestyle of the 17th Century European Monarch. A.E.B

JasonC You are of course viewing the entire picture backwards - starting in 1945 and working backward to 1939 to see what Germany should have done. Try viewing it forwards. The fact is that German planners in 1940 could not forsee the eventual demands of 1942. You are assuming that they should have been planning for the worst case scenario of a war of attrition in the East. But at the same time there was start of the bomber war, the battle of the Atlantic, the need to rescue Italy, Yugolsavia, Greece, Crete and North Africa. Should Germany ramp up U-boat production to starve Britain? Should they build larger bombers? The current tank forces seem adequate against the British, so are heavier tanks and bigger guns needed? How about an aircraft carrier to protect the Tirpitz? These Jet Aircraft have a lot of teething problems, should we invest the resources to make them work or build more ME109F2s? How about this nuclear thingy, should we pump resources into heavy water and try to make a theoretical bomb? With hindsite we know what Germany needed to do, but once the initial surprise wore off, Germany now had to react to its enemies moves. So why built ten new panzer divisions to invade Russia in 1940 if your planners don't think you need them? Why not build 100 U-Boats and the Graf Zeppelin instead? Or heavy bombers to level Britain? Germany had limited industrial output and limited resources. Hence what was build was what they though would win the war in 1941, not what was needed to stave of defeat in 1944. And once you commit resources to produce ceratin items, those resources are often hard to redeploy. Even factories producing one model of tank suffered delays and reduced production when switched to another model. Hence a torpedo factory could suddenly start pumping out tanks. Germany had limited industrial resources to commit, and in 1940 had to make strategic choices on where to invest those resources. You believe the Germans suffered from an excess of pride, of a stupidity born of ideology and maybe "victors syndrome". This may be true. I suspect that instead Germany did what it always did - stick to the plan and concentrate on what is needed now, not what might be needed in 1944 to fend of tanks and planes that don't exist now. German planners thought they would be choosing their estates in the Urkraine in 1943, not that they would be fighting for their lives in a war of production that they knew they couldn't win. Maybe the true visionaries of WWII were those American Army officers who pre-war realised that the coming war would be one of production, not super men and super weapons. They at least got it right. A.E.B [ June 02, 2005, 09:17 AM: Message edited by: A.E.B ]

JasonC I am NOT DEFENDING IT: don't confuse me with the German cheerleaders who cannot see beyond the big tanks and the cool uniforms. Germany lost the war the instant they started it, from the moment the first Brandenberger who failed to get the memo set foot in Poland. Germany's great achievement in WWII is that it avoided defeat for so long (although if they had given up in a similar postion to the one they were in in 1918, the war would have ended mid 1944). In WWI Germany failed to knock out France but Russia collapsed. In WWII they knocked out France but the USSR endured. WWI went for four years (ignoring the post peace chaos). WWII went for five and a half years. That was the great German achievement of WWII, to last one and a half years longer than in WWI. The only possible way the Germans could win, and the Germans knew it, was if their enemies let them win. Initially the collapse of the low countries and France made it seem possible, although even the nations like Norway could dish out the occassional bloody nose. The instance Britain refused to throw in the towel, for Germany the war was over. There is of course a political and ideological layer on top of the simple economic and military equations that many people cannot see past. Swap Turkey with Italy and in many ways WWII was WWI again with more modern weapons. Germany needed to change the equations that condemned Germany in 1914 to defeat, they tried hard but in the end they couldn't and they lost. A.E.B

Not if we come to the debate with positions that cannot be changed. Horses don't have feathers, but it now appears many later dinosaurs did, so accepted truths - even ones based on the best data available - don't necessarily stand the test of time. In 1943, 44 and 45 Germany churned out increasing numbers of planes and tanks. This was at the cost of transport, spares, recovery and service equipment, and eventual oil. Ever notice how few bulldozers the Germans or even the Russians had in WWII. You see the Americans and Brits with them. The same goes for heavy recovery material - Germans used tanks to recover tanks for the most part. This is due to production constraints - all the resources were producing tanks and planes, there was no spare capacity for bulldozers. The Germans relied on using humans to rebuild railways and roads and runways, and in many cases couldn't build new ones. The Germans weren't stupid or lazy. Any German who had lived through 1918 understood what a sustained war effort does to a nation. Germany also had many good economists who could explain that high expenditure on the military as a percentage of GDP reduces productivity over time. Politically how many Germans where willing to support Russian style sacrifices when they were winning? German had as many brilliant men working for it as it had dunderheads. German efforts to sustain the war effort in the face of every reverse until late 1944 was remarkable. But Germany was like a man trying to juggle a huge number of balls. Every time a ball was dropped, there was no time to pick it up again. Loose hundreds of transport planes on Crete - they can't be replaced. Loose all of your tractors and bulldozers, use slaves instead. Face a critical shortage of tungsten - use your machine tools till they break, then refurbish them with inferior materials and tolerate a reduction in equipment quality. Loose your surface ships in 1940, to bad, there will be no more unless it is already under construction. Germany didn't just need tanks and planes, it needed locomotives, trucks, heavy engineering equipment, rails and road beds, electrical generators, and so on. The 3,700 planes coming of the factory floor each month at peak German production illustrates this - those planes lacked spares, fuel, pilots, ground crews and maintenance equipment, and were of poor quality. Those 3,700 planes achieved little. Same story with the tanks. It was the fate of a large number of those tanks to be abandoned from lack of fuel or the inability to recover them from the battlefield. In part the German miracle in increasing output in 1943-45 also comes down to being of the defensive. An army on the defensive uses less fuel and fewer spares than the armies moving 200 km a week in 1940 and 1941. A.E.B

Mammou I'll check my Library on the weekend to make sure I am not confusing German figures with Japan. This is a reasonable article, although some of the quoted texts may be questionable. Losing Air Superiority Basically the Luftwaffe suffered: 1. A lack of fuel 2. A lack of trained pilots 3. From planes like the ME109 series with narrow undercarriages 4. The need to conduct training and ferry fights at dawn and dusk, and then at night 5. Using "pep" drugs to keep exhausted pilots flying 6. Collapsing quality standards, in part caused by slave labour, and in part by using "ersatz" materials in production All this led to crashes. JasonC By the end the Germans were almost taking material out of the museums. Compared to the allies, the Germans recycled equipment that was obselete. They turned tanks into SPs, used 1940 French equipment in 1944, took Italian military hardware into their forces, used captured Russia artillery and mortars, and so on. Nothing went to waste, even if finding parts and ammunition strained a already stretched logistics system. The allies on the other hand rarely recycled obselete equipment back into the field armies, but instead replaced it with newer equipment. You didn't see BT-7s and A10 cruisers being turned into SPs and being fielded in 1944 (exceptions like the Bishop and Archer are well know because they were exceptions). And the Russians were starving before WWII as well! All the major combatants with the exception of the USA basically ran their industrial and agricultural bases into the ground during WWII. Britain was kept going by support from the USA that kept it afloat just long enough to see victory (1939-1945). Russia was ramping up its industry pre 1941, but full mobilisation came after the German invasion (1941-1945). Russia also received some support via Britain and the USA (1-5% maybe, but it helped). Germany ramped up production to full mobilisation later (1942-1945), but the cracks were already showing in 1944. So all the European powers destroyed to a large degree their industrial and agricultural bases by mobilizing for total war. The difference for the Allies was the ability to draw on external support to keep them afloat. Germany had no external suppliers in a real sense. If Germany had gone onto a total war footing in 1940, it had to win by 1942 or 1943 at the latest or it faced economic collapse. Whether it could have won is a counterfactual, as you then face the question of whether Germany had the oil, the transport, even the roads and rail lines in the USSR to support all of those extra tanks and divisions. You even face the question of whether a German push only on Moscow in 1941 could be sustained logistically, as now all supplies need to flow through one corridor rather than three (or two when you reach the Pripit Marshes). A.E.B [ June 01, 2005, 05:33 PM: Message edited by: A.E.B ]

JasonC Yes Germany could have increased its production in 1940, 1941 and 1942. But what you have to realise is that they did so in 1943 and 1944 by completely ruining the economy. Once Germany was in full war mode it lacked the resources to make other things. And I don't mean civilian cars: thinks like fertilizer and tractors for agriculture. Economically German was starting to fall apart by 1944. Germany had survived in part by (a) robbing the rest of Europe of just about everything, and ( murdering millions of people and stealing their wealth. Germany in 1944 was paying for its arms in Marks. Those Marks were paid to the workers. Thanks to rationing there was increasingly little to spent those marks on, so they went back into the Reichs bank and were used to pay for more arms. It was an extraction economy at its worst. The needs of German industry stripped Europe to the point of starvation and collapse by 1945. In the end the Germans were not only stripping the occupied territories of trucks and resources, they also took clothes and in one infamous case, toys from the Dutch to provide Xmas presents for German children, and bikes. It was an economy based on theft that was running out of things to steal. Germany overran hugely productive areas of Europe, but were unable to do more that strip existing resources as they lacked the resources to exploit it properly. That is why I can't understand the German push to the oil fields in 1942. Even if the Germans took the Caucasus it was impossible for them to get the oil back to Germany. They could deny the Russians by cutting the Volga, so why try to take what you couldn't utilise? The Germans did achieve wonders - like dismantling the French border defenses for reuse in German defenses, but the strain of supporting the war effort was almost as destructive as the bombers were. In 1944 25% of all German fighters produced crashed before they reached the operational units. Tanks left the factories, only to be stripped for parts to keep other tanks running. Every available tank and gun and plane and bullet was impressed into service. Every corner was cut. Everything was being run into the ground. It was simply unsustainable. But this comes back to the short war question. If Germany had knocked the USSR out of the war in 1941 or 1942, all of the above was unnecessary. If you think you can win quickly, why trash your own industrial and agricultural base if you don't have to. Then you have time to properly exploit the resources of captured regions, install the needed roads and railways and ports. This problem wasn't confined to Germany. England also ran its economy into the ground during the war and it too would have collapsed without outside help (Australian kept rationing until 1949, not due to shortages here but to help England). The state of England in 1945 and its weakness to my mind shows what Germany would have been like if Germany hadn't been destroyed. England had - like Germany - massively increased its military production during the war. But by 1945 things were going bad rapidly: falling coal production, clapped out factories, the agricultural sector in ruins. If Germany had ramped up production in 1940, it would have arrived at crisis point by 1944 at the latest. The Germans realised this because exactly the same thing had happen in WWI. There is no point in having armies in the field if the home front collapses from the drain of total war. A.E.B

On the total mobilization of the German Economy for the war effort. I have seen many people claim, not just JasonC, that if Germany had mobilised it's economy earlier, then Germany may have succeeded where it failed. Obviously having thousands of more tanks and planes and submarines would have helped, but could Germany have actually produced all of these extra weapons. Or would all of the critical shortages in strategic materials have merely been brought forward? Germany between 1936-1939 was already straining the economy with its rearmament programs. Many of the rearmament plans - Z plan for the Navy for instance - had a target date in the 1940s as the time when Germany would be ready for war. Poland revealled that the Panzer and motorised divisions were incomplete and lacking in required materials. The SS, later to get the best of everything, was forced to scrounge captured arms as the Army didn't have weapons it could (nor wanted) to spare. The attack on Poland started the clock running on the race to find enough strategic materials to keep the German war industry running. It was a race Germany started losing from day one. With Britain and France in the war, Germany was now limited to those resources that existed within her borders, or what neighbouring nations were willing to supply. Germany had iron and coal, but had server shortages of everything else. Supplies were obtained from Norway, Finland, Sweden, and German allies. But Germany was also forced to make up shortages of raw materials for allies like Italy (a strange parrallel to the drain on Germany Austria-Hungry became in WWI). Czech factories and resources stolen from Poland assisted, but Germany faced shortages that made a full scale mobilisation difficult if not impossible. Strangely it was shipments from the USSR that helped Germany support and expand its forces for the invasion of the low countries and France, and then the fighting in the Mediterranean. If the Russians had not maintained these constant shipments to Germany, Barbarossa may well have been impossible. A strange parrallel again to the support Britain and the USA gave to the USSR later in the war: a Russian lend-lease plan almost for Germany. What did Germany lack in 1940? 1. Oil: oil came from Romania and Hungry, and also from the USSR. Italy relied on Germany for its oil. 2. Rubber - only available naturally from the far east. The sythentic oil industry also produced rubber. 3. Tungsten - necessary for machine tools as well as APT. 4. Aluminium - until the invasion of France and the creation of Vichi eased this problem. 5. Tin. 6. Opium and other items needed for medical drugs. 7. Horses - Germany was reliant on the horse but all during WWII wastage was greater than reproduction. Germany also needed to feed itself - part of the rational for invading the USSR was to capture the Ukranian grain belt. The USSR also supplied Germany with grain until Barbarossa. So Germany was in a quandry. It had limited stocks of strategic resources, but full mobilisation would rapidly exhaust those stocks. Later German conquests made more materials (even forced labour) available, but during the period between the fall of Poland and the invasion of the USSR Germany faced a crippling resourses budget. It is possible that if a man like Speer was in charge then, rather than men like Goering and Todt, that Germany would have been in better shape. But I doubt it had the capacity to create and support 10-50 more divisions before Barbarossa. And late German mobilisation is partially a mirage anyway. Speer increased production in many cases by simply producing whole units - like a tank, truck or fighter plane - at the expense of producing spare parts and maintenance equipment. This lead to a percentage - increasing as the war dragged on - of German military hardware being OOS due to a lack of spares. I have pictures of German tank repair depots captured by the Russians in 1943 full of Pz IIIs and IVs all lacking road wheels after striking mines. Tanks were kept in service by cannibalising other tanks. These shortages was also the reason why Germany incorporated so much captured material into its military, a practice not copied by the allies. If you want a good idea of what Germany lacked, the cargoes carried by Submarines from Japan to Germany are a good start. These subs carried tin and opium and rubber! My view is that between 1939-1941 Germany mobilised to the extent that was prudent. Converting all those civilian factories to military production, and building new factories required resources that were in short supply. German didn't mobilise its women folk, but instead choose to utilise millions of slaves instead. Could Germany have increased its production in 1940 if it fully mobilised? Yes, but not to the degree needed to win. If the USSR had gotten spooked by a fully scale German build up and stopped the shipments, Germany was also in trouble. A.E.B

I think that the truth behind Blitzkreig, and why the Germans choose that path when every other nation - even those who experimented like the UK and the USSR - was based on what each nation saw as being necessary for a future war. Britain of course understood that - and a colonial empire required it - the navy was its main defense. As long as the British Navy was undefeated, Britain could survive any disaster that occurred on mainland Europe. The UK experimented with mobile tank and support forces in the 1920s, but financial reality forced a compromise tank corp. The navy came first. France feared a repeat of WWI and tried to build better fortifications, forgeting that the Germans had developed a counter measure to the forts of 1914 (Belguim also relied on a fort). So convinced were they that 1940 would be a repeat of 1914 that they fell into the German's trap. France also wasted resources on a navy that achieved almost nothing prior to France's surrender and the rise of Vichi. Russia was a special case. In many ways Russia, freed from a aristocratic officer corps by the mass murder of the civil war, was initially inovative and experimented with new tactical doctrines. How much the secret cooperation between the Russians and the Germans taught each other is unknown, but was probably considerable. Sadly Stalin's idea of leadership was to cut the head of any organisation that could potentially threaten his power, and the army and its innovators lost their heads. Also, the early Russian lead left them with a hugh tank corp and air fleet, but a high percentage of it was technically obsolete by 1941. Germany on the other hand decided to repeat what they had tried in WWI, only this time they would do it better. First they neutralised the USSR via diplomacy so they could deal with France without needing to face the Russians as well. They took the breakthrough plan of 1913 and updated it for armour. And, unlike 1914 when the Germans were stopped outside of Paris, this time Paris was abandoned and Germany achieved the victory denied them in 1914. But Germany had also learnt another lesson from WWI: that Germany could not sustain a long war. In 1918 the Germans were starved to capitualition without any part of Germany being occupied by foreign forces. So Germany planned for a short war based on fast moving breakthoughs by panzer and motorised units. If they planned to start another war, they had no other choice. This is why to my mind Germany never fully mobilised the war economy until 1942 when it was to late: in their hearts they realised that if it came to that, even fully mobilised Germany would most likely lose a long war. So like the high-stakes gambler Hitler was, Germany bet everything on its improved force of panzers and planes to smash the enemy before they could react. At its core Blitzkreig wasn't new: combined tank and infantry assaults supported by ground attack aircraft as mobile artillery had been tried in WWI with limited success. But now the techology had come of age. There are two ways to defeat an enemy - destroy all of its armies, or occupy all of its political and industrial centres. This fact was known ever since organised states chose to wage war on each other. It was possible to destroy army after army and still lose if you failed to occupy the enemies heart, their centre of gravity. Hannibal proved this in the Second Punic War when he destroyed several Roman armies almost to a man: he still lost as he did not take Rome, so Rome simply created more armies. The other way is to strike for the heart - the capital. The French did that under Napoleon, but the Russians simply burnt Moscow, kept their army intact, and fell on the French when winter forced the retreat. Germany understood this, and thus they planned to combine Hannibal with Napoleon, and destroy the Russian armies in the field and take the capital, all in 3-4 months. The first German plans for a theoretical invasion of Russia were actually quite accurate. However the poor Russian performance in the Winter War against Finland and the negative reports from Germans of the Russian forces in Poland fed on Nazi ideas of Racial superiority to lead to a constant downgrading of Russian capabilities. The other reason for this downgrading was that if intial German estimates were correct, then the German planners realised that they had insufficient forces to carry out the plan. So in the end German planners converted the real Russians into Russians their available forces could defeat on paper. A.E.B

Not true in 1914, nor in 1918 when mobile warfare was conducted without the need to cross the trenches of no mans land. The speed = cavalry is a myth - infantry will march at a speed equal to cavalry over a period of days: cavalry is only faster over short distances. The problem was the speed of advance vs. the speed of the defenders reaction. German plans in both 1914 and 1917/18 were designed to outspeed the French and British reaction, but they were not able to maintain the speed in the face of blocking forces and hence stalemate ensured. Which proves my point. In the time it takes an enemy to decide to retreat, the breakthough will be far to the enemy's rear. And yes it is possible to retreat fast if you just run for it, the trick is to take all your heavy weapons and supplies with you. As for reserves, you (a) must have them, and (b)they mustn't be within reach of the breakthough forces before they can be organised. Otherwise you get a collapse of Army Group Centre situation where your reserves are virtually forced to fight their way off the railheads. But they didn't have the whole package, nor did they carry out the exercises needed to operate these forces enmass. The British and the French couldn't coordinate their tank forces to cut off Rommel's panzers, the Russians with a few exceptions used their tanks in an uncoordinated fashion in 1941. It isn't just having the tanks that counts, it is using them as a cooridinated mass on the battlefield. The Germans invested heavily in mobile warfare, even down to tailoring the airforce for tactical support. Other nations built battleships and aircraft carriers, four engined bombers, and other items Germany couldn't avoid on top of the panzer divisions. The whole German strategy was to win and win quickly. Given that the Germans could not occupy London, nor Moscow, nor Washington, it was a strategy that was doomed to fail. I am not saying the German's could have won in Russia. Simply looking at a map of Europe shows the difference in distance between the German border and Paris and the 1941 German/Polish frontier and Moscow. The Germans error was to try the same tactics in Russia that had won them France: ignoring the inadequqte roads and railways it was obvious that Russia would require a number of seperate breakthough attacks, each followed by pauses to resupply and reinforce the spearheads. The difference was that it took 35 days to reach Paris, but after 164 days the Germans were still 35 miles outside of Moscow. All of France was occupied except Vichi, only a fraction of Russia was occupied. It is interesting to note that in many ways Fuller's dreams only became reality in 1991, when fully mechanised US, British and French forces carved through a numerically superior enemy dug in in-depth in Iraq. With complete control of the air, and everything on wheels or tracks, the Coaliton forces raced passed Iraqi units incapable of moving or retreating in order. If the order to stop wasn't given, Coalition forces would have beaten retreating republican guard units to Bagdad. Those few days of operations in desert storm probably used as much fuel and ammo as the Germans had available in 1941. I agree totally on Nam: it was the NVA that did the majority of the fighting in the South, with the VC being used mostly to police the civilian population and for point-sapper attacks. After Tet the VC almost ceased to exist. The ARVN fell because in the end they couldn't support the forces needed to defend themselves once US support evaporated, while the North was still receiving supplies from the competing communist blocks. In the end it was tanks and infantry back by artillery that broke the ARVN defenses, and the speed of the advance coupled with the short distances meant that the ARVN had neither time nor room nor the resources to recover. A.E.B

I suppose it depends on whether you are refering to Blitzkreig on a tactical or strategic level. At its base the concept of breakthrough warfare is as old as fixed defensive lines. Every General worth their salt knew that the key to breaking up a defensive line was to concentrate overwhelming force at a given point, and once the tip of the assault was through the lines to continue through into the rear areas. If the remainder of the defensive line stayed put, then it could be encircled and struck from all directions. But the same token the methods of combating a successful breakthrough were also understood: you need reserves to counter-atttack, or you could squeeze the breakthough and prevent further forces from reinforcing those units already through the line, in effect allowing the spearhead of the breakthough to surround itself. This is tactical level breakthough warfare. On a strategic level the aim of breakthough warfare is to repeat the tactical on a grand scale. This time the aim is to pass through national defensive lines with the aim of seizing strategic centres and also encircling enemy forces (or at least force a hasty retreat). All powers attempted such grand breakthoughs in WWI, but what was lacking was speed - speed to allow the successful attacker to outrun the ability of the defender to move their forces to counter the breakthough. Until tanks arrived, the defender using their shortened lines of communications could always outrun the attacker - hence all breakthoughs tended to be limited. What the tank and mechanised transport coupled into mobile formations allowed was the attacker to move at a speed equal to or superior to the defender. Hence once a breakthough was achieved, the defender was unable to retreat fast enough to reform anything beyond a new ad-hoc defensive line. But these new mechanised forces had a weakness: the inability of non-mechanised forces - including logistics - to keep up. Hence the extent of the breakthough was limited by the fuel in the mobile units fueltanks. The over great weakness was a lack of infantry and heavy support. These new mobile spearheads lacked the internal capability to deal with forces defending urban areas. All this was understood by the major powers before WWII. Most nations armies had experimented with mobile armoured formations, all with the exception of Germany (and Germany itself was on the point of disbanding its panzer units on several occassions) abandoned these units, either due to cost or a conservative reaction (like the liquidation of progressive officers in the USSR). That was the rub for most: cost. These new armoured spearheads comsumed resources that would have supported several infantry divisions at least. The Great Depression convinced most powers that the forces needed to carry out Fuller's plans were unaffordable. Also, such units were offensive by design, and nations who intended to defend from fixed lines were not interested in expensive offensive weapons. So in 1939 only Germany - who was heading for financial ruin if the war was delayed - had the elements needed to conduct what was dubbed Blitzkreig. Germany planned to be the agressor, and it needed to win quickly, so the cost of the panzer divisions was deemed justified. But the cost of supporting the mechanised units meant that the rest of the army walked or rode horses. The reason Poland, France and the Low Countries fell to Blitzkrieg was the inability to move quicker than the attacking forces, and the inability to exploit the pauses forced on the attacker by the need for the spearhead units to wait for supplies and infantry to catch up. Western Europe lacked the space to trade space for time. In Russia the Blitzkreig was in fact a series of small breakthoughs, with pauses of sometimes weeks in between pushes. The Russians had space to trade for time, and they were able to exploit the pauses in the German advance to move factories back east, and fortify positions like Kiev and various other defensive lines. A.E.B

Re the Diesel question. I don't know if you can back date this to 1940, but a friend of mine is a chemical engineer working for a oil refiner. According to him, different types of oil have different chemical properties re the hydrocarbon chains they contain, and that different oils are best suited to producing certain fuel types (based on output efficiency and waste). Australian oil is apparently better suited to petrol production, so we import oil to make diesel from. Burnei light crude by comparison is almost fuel oil without any refining, hence Japanese ships in WWII apparently burnt it straight. European oil from Romania and Hungry is meant to be best suited for making petrol. You can of course make the full range of distalites out of any oil, but that usually requires chemical imputs. Germans in WWII still had to add an octane booster to their petrol, a naptha compound alot like moth balls. As to the Blitz myth, the myth evolved because it was used against nations who lacked the space to withstand a 500 mile breakthrough. Basically, most nations possess a military reserve of untapped manpower and industrial output which can, given time, be converted into forces in the field. The best way to defeat an enemy quickly is to overrun these reserves before an enemy has a chance to use them. Germany's victims in 1939 & 1940 fell so quickly because German breakthroughs not only surrounded their existing forces, but also overran those cities and regions where the resources to sustain ongoing military resistance were located. For example French forces in the South fought well even after Paris fell, but they were rapidly draining a now fixed pool of ammo, spare parts and manpower. Vietnam is a good example. The fact that the USA and its allies declined to invade the North meant that the resources required for a long war - namely manpower - were left in the North's hands. The Germans failed in WWII as soon as they encountered an enemy where they couldn't quickly take that enemy's reserves - firstly Britain itself, then in North Africa, and then in Russia - as this allowed that enemy time to fully mobilise. By the same token Germany was only defeated once the allies had occupied most of its territory and by doing so removed any remaining manpower or resources from the German military. So German success was based on (a) concentration of force to achieve breakthroughs in depth, ( enemies lacking the forces, will or coordination to constrict or cut off the spearhead of the breakthrough, and © the ability to quickly occupy the enemy's population and industrial heartlands. They couldn't reach London nor Cairo, nor despite overruning a fair percentage of the Russian heartland, could they reach the people, mines and factories beyond the proposed stopline in Soviet Asia. A.E.B

They regenerate: close enough. A.E.B

Wasn't USSR military doctrine at that time predicated on the idea that the Red Army should always fight on the offensive? If the forward Corps of the Red Army in Poland and the Ukraine were deployed to facilitate an offensive, this in part could explain the poor showing on the defense. Getting attacked when you are forming for your own attack is often disasterous. If Red Army logistics were deployed forward, then the inital German breakthroughs may well have overrun a large % of materials in the first few days. Being deployed forward without defenses in depth also made it difficult for the Red Army to stage a controlled withdrawal as they were withdrawing onto nothing (most retreating armies gain an advantage by shortening their line of supply as they fall back). As a result German supply problems caused by the speed of advance coupled with an inadequate logistical system from day 1 were initially balanced out by equal or greater supply problems befalling the Red Army. Only once the Red Army fell back on major supply hubs like Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev did Red Army supply problems ease, which in turn highlighted the growing German supply problems at that time. Regards A.E.B [ March 10, 2005, 11:01 PM: Message edited by: A.E.B ]