jacobs_ladder2

That's a good one. Hard to believe how some of these people view life, isn't it. My Grandfather was in the war for 4 years, then worked in sewers for 35. He drank four or five times a week and never missed a days work. When he retired he had 3 years worth of sick days he had never used. Some days I find it to be a pain in the ass to mow the lawn. Generation gap I suppose. Hard men or not, these guys are still subject to the forces of nature. I agree that they are probably rocky enough to try this sort of thing, but also human enough to quickly find how ridiculous it is. My point about the bridge jumping thing was to say that you need to land in just such a way to avoid injury. It is extremely easy to foul up a landing, even with a parachute and light to moderate winds, and twist an ankle. What I don't understand is your argument. I am under the impression you are trying to validate something, but I am no longer clear on what that is. No sarcasm intended, but is your point that the Russian airdrop into snow story is simply a possibility that we should accept as unlikely but not reject out of hand? If so, then we are in agreement. Jumping into water or snow at stall speeds is something I can accept as being "possible". In the case of water I can see it even being an enjoyable experience. However, doing it into snow with any kind of regularity or dependability is something I cannot accept. If it happened and these men survived, it is the kind of thing that should go in the books as freakish (like the stories of people surviving drops from altitude). I have heard stranger stories. Ever heard the one about the scuba diver they found stuck in a tree after a forest fire? Cheers Paul

What you are describing is a far cry from what would have been possible in WWII or even up until recently. We have come a long way from the original argument to arrive at modern day extreme sports. What I know is this: I have buddies who jump from a rail bridge every year as some kind of life affirmation thing. They leave their chutes almost hanging open and throw themselves off. At a hundred or so feet, if the chute doesn't open, and open fast, you splat. Most of them have broken something or ended up in the hospital even after the chute opened. Why? Usually because of a change in the wind that made it hard for them to control their landing. If you don't hit the ground moving more or less forward, you end up in bad shape. You know how many street kids go up there in Acapulco and break their knecks doing that? The tourists get to see the few guys who survive their first few jumps. They don't get to see the noobies getting pulled from the bay farther down the coast. I live in Canada, have lived pretty far north, and I have rarely seen the kind of powder being described here except for on a mountain, at high altitudes (often produced by a machine) or in a beer commercial. Snow may look white and soft and cute and cuddly, but if it is wet and has had a few hours to harden you would not want to fall into it. The fluffier the snow, the more it gets moved around by the wind. Everything ends up looking white, but the depth of the drifts can vary dramatically. In fact, without prior knowledge of the landing zone and without having the area very well marked, I find it impossible to imagine a pilot ever finding the right spot to jump. OK, maybe not instant death , but that is a moot point. The end result is so far beyond your control that it doesn't matter. In fact, unless you can reduce all of the variables down to almost zero, which is impossible, you are effectively committing suicide. No matter how good you are at falling out of an airplane, you are still spinning a roulette wheel. In other words, I agree with you, that a fall is survivable, but so are a lot of things I would not try (i.e. swimming with sharks, getting hit by lightning, playing golf with drunken Canadians, etc.) Cheers Paul p.s. That was a well-constructed post, btw. Interesting reading and some nice links.

I think we are all interested in the battles, but at what scale? I think the original poster was getting at the difficulty in blending the tactical with the operational or strategic. For example, I can play a part of the siege of Stalingrad. Say, a battle between two battalions in a small 2-4 kilometre map. In a battle of this scale I can see how individual soldiers and weapon systems make an impact on the battlefield, but remain completely ignorant of what is happening elsewhere. Higher up, let's take the regiment for example. Already we are into trouble. A single player cannot make all of the decisions that would have to be made by all of the virtual commanders. The player now requires a great deal of assistance from the AI. Not AI that plays for him or makes him a spectator, but AI that gives his units the ability to make decent decisions without constant attention. Still, at the regimental level, you start to get into things like supply, air support, coordination between large units, etc. You are still far away from understanding Stalingrad but you are getting a better picture. At the divisional level things become hard tactically, but you start to see a good chunk of the bigger picture. Here the AI will do wonders for you if it is effectively programmed. You can give orders at multiple levels and, hopefully, have them carried out by everything from a platoon to a brigade to the division itself. At this level you would not want to suffer the nightmare of doing the thinking for thousands of men. Now, finally you get into the corps level and beyond that the army level where the entire battle is played out. A good engine can allow you to get an excellent grip on the dynamics of an entire campaign or battle like Stalingrad or Kursk. Some of them will do so and still allow you the freedom to control individual companies. These games take forever, but there is a dedicated community that eats them up in the same way we do CM. The thing that is happening now is the use of more and more AI to reduce the workload of the player. In Panzer Campaigns, for example, the AI could not be relied upon to do anything except move small units from point A to point B. After several years of patches you could more or less expect a division to get itself across a map in decent order, but as soon as it got anywhere near an enemy you would have to take control. Newer engines, like Highway to the Reich or Combined Arms, allow you to give orders at different levels and reasonably expect the units to make a very good attempt at carrying them out. For example, find the best/ safest/ quickest/ stealthiest route to this point, form up and attack this objective with this casualty limit, with or without a reserve, coordinated with fire support or not, at a certain time, etc. This is a quantum leap to say the least. The player becomes more and more able to control larger and more complicated units in larger and more complicated battles, while still maintaining some connection with company and platoon level tactics. I guess I say all this because I do not see it as very far off when a game will allow a player to see a battle of division-sized elements and be able to give orders at any level, take charge when necessary, micromanage, macromanage or whatever. The player orders a regiment to dig in, a battalion to attack and then swoops down to control platoons in a key part of the battle. The technology exists to do it, but it simply has not been done yet. Combat Mission on a larger scale with more independant intelligent units. Take, for example, the game Civilization, an excellent piece of work for its time, and compare it to Hearts of Iron 2 or World at War. Simply put, there is no comparison. Hearts of Iron 2 attempts to do nothing less than the entire world during WWII. It is not perfect, but it comes damn close. If you haven't tried it, I highly reccommend it. Cheers Paul

No need to get upset. I'm sure experiments were done and that the physics you describe are workable. In fact, I am sure that if the proper equipment were designed, drops could be accomplished given decent ground. Who knows? Not I. Maybe someday we will see. I was disagreeing with others in this thread who were trying to make the argument that a human being could survive a fall, unassisted, if the plane were slow or low enough. The idea of using sleds or something similar does seem a bit far-fetched and inefficient, but could have been the subject of experimentation. Why not? People have tried far crazier ideas and sometimes they have worked. Cheers Paul p.s. The snow idea was the best one. I am still laughing at the image of dozens of men splashing into snow and stopping WWII era tanks advancing through the same deep powder.

Agreed.

I have to agree with JasonC on this one. The idea is complete insanity. Falling out of an airplane, at almost any height, is suicidal or, at the very least, a guaranteed lengthy stay in a hospital. I once saw a young lady panic and pop her reserve chute at about a hundred feet. She claimed she was heading for power lines (although there were none in the area) and tried to escape electrocution by dropping into a swamp. Before anyone could tell her different she released her main chute and dropped straight into a bog. She spent something like two years in the hospital and they still had to wheel her out. A buddy of mine stood up in the back of a jeep going about 90 km/h and released his pilot chute. He survived, thank god, but his back is still prone to crippling pain. One of our instructors had made over 2000 safe jumps when his reserve, for some reason, deployed at around 500 feet and got tangled with his main. He hit the ground probably about twice as hard as he would have in a normal military jump, broke both his ankles, and screwed up one of his knees and his back for life. I once misjudged my height and "flaired" too early. I actually rose up into the air and then crashed moving more laterally than vertically. Let me tell you, I was in no shape for anything aftwerwards and I was using a sport chute about twice the size of a military chute. Any faster and I would have been seriously injured. I really think, with all due respect, that the idea is ludicrous to the point of insanity. Even at the "low" stalling speeds quoted above, on flat soft ground, your men would be screwed. Cheers Paul [ June 12, 2005, 01:45 PM: Message edited by: jacobs_ladder2 ]

I think it would depend greatly on the kind of game that you are describing. I can only see a few ways in which smaller unit actions can really mix with large scale warfare. One would be a campaign style game (i.e. Close Combat) where the battle as a whole is somehow broken down into smaller battles and each is played out to a conclusion. Another is the tracking of a single unit or multiple units through several battles over some period of time (i.e. Panzer Leader) Or I can imagine a game played on a very large map in which the AI plays a huge role. The player can "take charge" at will and dive into a battle at the tactical level or allow the computer to resolve those which are not important. But I think therein lies the rub. When you start looking at small unit actions played out on a grand scale, you are talking about a large number of small units and, inevitably, a huge amount of "help" given to the commander by the AI. "Highway to the Reich" is a pretty good game to say the least. It covers warfare at the operational level, but breaks everything down to company-sized units. The AI is fantastic and allows the player to give out orders at higher levels or micromanage if desired. The game is a huge move in the right direction (it is not hex-based), but relies heavily on the AI to take care of the details. A game which allows the player to control individual vehicles or squads, in even as little as a regiment-sized engagement, seems to me to be a great deal of work unless the AI is sufficiently advanced to control what the player does not wish to. I am not saying it is impossible, because I believe it to be very possible, but it is going to take a bit of a leap in technology. In fact, as the power of computers increases it is more and more likely we will see more of the kind of games you are describing. I firmly agree with you that game designers are often confined to the same old styles that evolved in a time when we only had pen, paper and dice with which to resolve our differences. Hex-based games, for example, I pray will soon become a thing of the past. Cheers Paul

And here we go again... Depends on how far back you want to go. Fuller was part of the picture, but so were the Prussians in the 19th Century. So were a lot of people. Armour played a natural role because it filled the gap so clearly marked out by the ideas. Namely, it is easy to break through, but hard to follow up. Fuller, like others, quickly recognized that the tank could bridge the gap between theory and practice. Fuller was able to organize a lot of ideas and add some of his own, but he was not the end all say all in the evolution of the tactics we are discussing. He was the first to be given the opportunity to test out some of his theories, but as we all know, his attempts were corrupted by his opponents within the British Army. In any case, it is my understanding that Fuller got his inspiration from infiltration tactics used by German troops in WWI. Hart also formed part of the picture, as did Schlieffen, Moltke, Tukachevski and many others. Blitzkrieg was not just about armour. The ideas that eventually evolved into reality in 1940 came from many sources. In fact, the idea was German and most of the key players were German. Guderian, unquestionably, is the man that played the most important role in the evolution of the blitzkrieg. No amount of post-war manipulation of the facts can change that. One of the principle myths raised by this discussion is the ludicrous idea that the British were responsible for the blitzkrieg. Irrelevant. Colourful, yes. Entertaining, yes, but completely irrelevant. Not to mention the degree to which he worked to vindicate his own ideas after WWII. Like writing himself into the English version of Guderian's memoires. Hart worked overtime to inflate his own importance. In reality it is, at the very least, debatable if Guderian ever payed him any mind at all. This is better. Of all the points you have raised this is the most relevant to what we have been saying. In fact, the Polish Campaign in 1939 had little or nothing to do with the Blitzkrieg. It is yet another myth that the Poles were the victims of the first blitz. They were not. The word may have appeared after the campaign, but in fact the invasion of Poland was nothing new. Armour played an almost insignificant role in the victory. Encirclement does not, and never did, require tanks. Apparently very little, unless you believe different. This point lies on such shaky ground I wouldn't walk across it with stilts. Luckily you followed this statement with a lot of very accurate points about decisions made by Guderian in the 1940 campaign. It may not have been a "mistake" as such, but it was "plan b" as far as the German high command was concerned. The order to turn south was a substantial deviation from the previous order. It is entirely possible that the southward turn was as big a surprise for the Germans, in terms of how well it ended up working, as it was for the Russians. In fact, it is entirely possible that the Germans simply chose the path of least resistance. It is arguable that this decision, however much destruction it caused in the Ukraine, ended up costing Germany the war. Horsepoop. Loose thinking at its finest. I believe a few of us loose thinkers raised this, and many, of your points. We just did so in a way that respected the intelligence of the listener. No, but it does prompt them to make major changes in their plans like ordering panzer armies to make 90 degree turns away from their objectives. Good thing we have you to clarify it all for us. Else we might be led astray by charlatans, thieves and liars. You accuse us of loose thinking and then launch into a lengthy diatribe detailing your own take on the evolution of the blitzkrieg. Well, misinformed and misled we may be, but innocent of the same crime you are not.

Yep, that was part of my problem for sure. The other is that it has been a while since I did my research on Soviet operational doctrine and I have forgotten a lot of its finer points. I think the Soviets had a very well-rounded idea of how things would need to go in order for them to beat their more advanced opponents. They were aware of their strengths and weaknesses and their doctrine evolved accordingly. Unfortunately, most of it was derailed by Stalin and the full frontal labotomy performed on the RKKA in the 30s. However, the foundation survived, cracks and all, and was sturdy enough to provide a base for the massive mobilization that followed. Which is not to say that Russian doctrine did not have major flaws, because it did, but it did have the total package of the three levels you describe (with a strong emphasis on the operational and less attention paid to the tactical). Russian doctrine was extremely advanced in areas that are often forgotten in discussions of this type. The best example is their ability to deceive their opponents into completely misjudging the size and makeup of their forces. Russian deception played a large role in what is often described as the "failure" of German intelligence. In fact, German intelligence did an excellent job of placing divisions and armies along the border, but was completely unaware of the second echelon forces deployed in depth to stop the inevitable breakthroughs that the Russians had always known would occur. Russian deception also played a large role in the German tendency to seriously underestimate the number of armoured formations and their strengths. And as far as mobilization is concerned, clearly the Germans were basing their decisions on incomplete information. They did suffer from arrogance, but they were not idiots and they were not all deluded racists. They believed they could win in Russia and they held that belief due to sound reasoning (unfortunately based on an incomplete picture of their enemy). I think it is important to remember that the Germans invaded Russian when the RKKA was in the midst of a massive and unprecedented transition. Stalin had finally softened his grip on the military and was allowing men like Timoshenko to get things done in a reasonable manner. That, and several other factors, more than explain the disaster they suffered in 1941. German superiority was only a small part of the picture. I agree completely. They did not think the campaign through to many of its more logical conclusions and plan for those eventualities. Then again, maybe they understood the futility of the whole situation. In other words, they knew they were fried chicken if they did not win in a matter of a few months, so why bother planning for it. Cheers Paul p.s. Doesn't Glantz have a book on Soviet Operational Art?

That was my understanding as well. I find the word blitzkrieg fairly convenient, but to each his own I guess. In response to your earlier comments on theoretical strategy...I don't know. I have such an incomplete picture of the Russian soldier that I am unable to even begin to speculate on what he might have done. My guess is that the measures you describe, at the very least, would have reduced partisan activity a considerable degree (especially in the areas you mentioned). What effect they would have had on the Soviet ability to mobilize troops and get them something to fight with, I am unsure. My feeling is that the majority of Russian troops would not have had a chance to learn of German intentions, good or bad, before finding themselves at the front lines. There would have been no way of disseminating propaganda given the paucity of technology in 1940s Russia and, in any case, I doubt that many Russian soldiers ever really understood the bigger picture anyway. People love their land, no matter how screwed up it is. That is my experience. Given the amount of bad blood between the two countries, I doubt very much that a suddenly benific German army would have been trusted. I know what you mean, but I think that the Germans could never have pulled off a nice invasion of Russia. IMO, the boat had long since sailed from that shore. BTW, in response to points raised by others, Russian doctrine was not absolute crap by any means. Their performance in the early war was not due to bad ideas, but rather poor ability to implement them. It is my feeling that Russian doctrine, once provided with the materials it needed, made German early war successes look like Romper Room. That is not to say that both sides did not learn from each other and that the Russians had farther to go, but it is to say that they did not simply copy their opponent's ideas. The Russians were behind the eight ball right from the start and had to make gigantic sacrifices to get into the driver's seat, but they did. And they did not do so by luck or some kind of masochistic love of punishment. At times, even in the early going, they were able to seriously challenge the German war machine (Smolensk, Yelnia and Mogilev to name a few places) and within a year were able to do real damage. In fact, I will go so far as to say that, German doctrine, although somewhat more refined, was simply inadequate for the Russian campaign. It worked well in France because nothing required that it explore its own limits (for any number of reasons), but it simply did not meet the grade in Russia. I think my principle objection to some of the points raised is the impression that German doctrine started out superior and ended superior, but was failed by strategic realities. In the case of the Russo-German War, I do not think this was true. Russian doctrine reflected the reality of the Russian situation in the same way that German doctrine was based on German strengths and weaknesses. The Russians, despite early setbacks, were finally able to fight the kind of war they wanted on their own terms. The Germans, on the other hand, found themselves fighting in a way they had hoped they would never have to. Cheers Paul

For the most part I agree with you. I'm not so certain about the motivation of the Russian soldier, but mainly because of the lack of documentation. The Russian soldier has more or less remained faceless in the West and I am not really ever convinced that he/she fought simply because of a brutal dictatorship. Not disagreeing with you. I just wonder if there isn't more to the picture. On the subject of the nature of Russia as an opponent, I will only say that they did what they had to do to survive. It was a fight to the death and Russia lived. I often think that the image garnered from the brutality of the victory over Germany has led to extrapolations concerning the nature of Russians and their ability to absorb punishment. I think they were forced into taking the extreme measures they took. Would the Americans have capitulated if the battles were fought on their soil? I do agree that any Western country would have pulled out of a war as bloody as that fought on the Eastern Front, but I do not think the issue would have been so clear cut if that same country were fighting for its very survival. Anyways, this is all off topic. I didn't mean it in a bad way. I raised the point only to say that Allies were not as prepared for war as the Germans, but that once they had woken up to reality they quickly learned to be as ruthless, or more so, than their enemies. Good point. The victory was not just about superior doctrine. I agree. However, I do believe that pre-war Russian doctrine was as good or better than any other at the time. In reality, mind you, they had few of the necessary tools to carry out the kind of grand maneuvers they envisioned, but the theory was definitely there. After they got going they were able to take combined arms warfare in another direction which was extremely effective. Or rather, in the same breath as I say Russian doctrine was not the only reason they eventually overcame the Germans, I can equally say that German doctrine was not the only reason for their early war successes. You see what I mean? Basically, I'm saying the effectiveness of the blitzkrieg has been overrated. That is the myth I meant to single out. I think the Germans placed more emphasis on quality than quantity, undoubtedly, but I am never sure about just how often that translated to battlefield technical superiority. In the early war, at least, all things being equal, German tanks could not claim to be any better than French or Russian models. The PzI and PzII were aging models by the beginning of the war and were bettered by any one of a dozen models used in other armies. Czechoslovakian models were decent enough, but suffered from many disadvantages. The PzIII and PzIV (before it was given a better gun) were good tanks, but were not markedly superior to modern Russian models and, in any case, were not yet available in large numbers. I think the reasons for the success of German armoured divisions lies with other factors centering more on support, maintenance and retrieval. I just don't see the finer points of their designs being so decisive as to produce a 6 to 1 loss ratio. Anyway, good arguments. It's an interesting topic. Cheers Paul p.s. I didn't know they had red-lit interiors so far back, btw. Interesting. Who came up with that idea? Was it the Germans?

I think he was referring to one of those canal-like features on Mars.

It's a very good thing. I just thought that you had had bad luck in the games you have tried. War in the Pacific is definitely not for everyone. Damn good game though. Unbelievable, really. Cheers Paul p.s. I agree. The CM community is hard to beat.

It's an interesting question. Simply put, I think there were those who had faith in the expanded role of armoured vehicles and those who didn't. The French and English, for example, seem to have been on the fence. They had large numbers of tanks, but tended to disperse them in an infantry support role. Germany, on the other hand, was more willing to accept or more in need of a new doctrine, but was by no means sold on the idea. Russia, due to a number of concerns, could not make up its mind on the issue until 1940. Remember they completely abolished their mechanized corps after Poland. Put better, there was a great deal of good thinking coming out of both camps in the great debate on the proper use of armour. Everyone wanted to restore mobility to the battlefield, but no one seemed to agree on how to do it. It was this debate, IMO, that led to the various myths that later surrounded the blitzkrieg. The Germans, for their part, drew on lessons from the Spanish Civil War and the mistakes of WWI, but did not always draw the same conclusions. The role of airpower, for example, became the subject of considerable debate as did the survival hopes of tanks deployed without proper infantry support. The debate is clearly visible in Russia, even after dramatic successes in 1939 and 1940. Why do I say all of this? Well, in answer to your question, I do not think that the blitz was a myth so much as it was the source of considerable tension among military thinkers of the time. It was a new form of warfare that was proved to be effective, but that everyone had to learn as they adopted it. In fact, the hesitation shown by significant numbers of commanders on all sides, became a dominant characteristic of almost the entire war. Where were the limits? I believe the myths surrounding the blitzkrieg resulted from the shock of the early German successes and immense changes in doctrine that followed. What were those myths? Namely, they were the clear superiority of German armoured vehicles, the power of the Luftwaffe, the real reasons for the early successes and the victory of German doctrine. Some of these myths have long since been dispelled. We now know that German armoured vehicles were not superior to their counterparts. Similarily, no one still believes that the Luftwaffe, or any WWII air force, was able to rain fire and death from the skies in biblical proportions. These were myths that clearly originated in the dark years of the war when military thinkers postulated wildly and almost randomly on the reasons they had been so decisively "outthought". The real reasons for the early successes, in the same manner, were not what many believed them to be. In fact, most of the misunderstood conditions which allowed Germany to run riot in Western Europe (i.e. better infrastructure, better intelligence, shorter supply lines, etc.) were absent in Russia and therefore became the first cracks in the armour of a doctrine pushed to its absolute limits by overzealous leaders. Lastly, the victory of German doctrine. Clearly, German usage of new technologies proved decisive in the early part of the war, but was it really the better thinking? I do not think so. I see the success of the blitzkrieg being as much a result of the failures of the Allies as the successes of the Germans. The French and English plan for the defense of Western Europe was flawed, but was not a clear invitation for disaster. Russia was criminally unpreprared for war and the Americans were locked in their strange brand of isolationism. Once these powers were up and running, it was really no contest. German doctrine, tactically sound up to a point, was strategically incomplete. It did not take into account realities which were all too plausible and crumbled accordingly. In short, I believe the great myth of the blitzkrieg is that it worked. IMO, it did not work. In fact it only resulted in a few early victories (the biggest of which, France, was never assured) followed by years of defensive battles ending in the utter defeat of its originators. Cheers Paul

Dandelion, I truly appreciate the information. Rest assured I will put it good use. And speaking of the USNA, no boycott. The people I talked to (Leo Niehorster, Cristopher Awender, David Glantz, etc.) all pointed me to people who pointed me to the archives in Germany. No one has mentioned an American source outside of Nafziger (who, ironically, also reccommended the Bundesarchive). In all fairness, though, I have yet to be overly impressed by ANY of the more "accessible" sources I have purchased, new or old world. Hence my efforts to go straight to original documents. Why rely on others' interpretations? BTW, German is fairly straightforward. Remember where the word Anglosaxon comes from. Now the real problem is becoming the excellent new Russian sources that are only published in the cyrillic alphabet. These are a huge pain in the you know what to, one, find, and two, understand. After trying to wrap my head around Russian grammar, German is a pleasure. BTW, how is Panzertruppen by Jentz? BFC sells it and it seems to be highly reccommended by Stone & Stone. Any reviews? Cheers Paul

BTW, has anyone ever ordered from the Bundesarchive? That's my next stop. Paul

Wow. A resounding defeat for the Nafziger camp. That's around $50 I will now put to better use. Thanks guys. Any word on where Tessin can be purchased? I have checked with a few places and come up with nothing. Cheers Paul

No, it does not round off to any significant degree. You can run tests to see how accurate it is. In fact, I believe it takes into account a few other factors that vary widely (i.e. slope, angle of impact, type of armour, etc.) Pretty impressive really. Cheers Paul

Sounds like a few people in here know there way around a map. Any chance of being able to hunt down a period topo map for the Smolensk, Belarus area? Also, what is map mission? Kip, thank you for the link to the Ukraine map. I have been working on an OoB for the various battles in the Crimea in 41 and 42 and was having a bit of trouble finding maps from the period. Cheers Paul

Pick up Niehorster's two volumns on 1941 then Niehorster </font>

What kind of prices are we talking about here? Also, I am really only in need of the data from 1941 so what should I look for? Isn't Tessin in German? Cheers Paul

Hello Would anybody out there have picked up George Nafziger's organizational study of the Waffen-SS while it was still in print? There is a copy of it for sale on amazon for a little over a hundred dollars (vastly inflated price) and I am debating the intelligence of the purchase. If anybody has any idea where I can get the same kind of information concerning SS formations near the beginning of Barbarossa, I would love to hear about it. Leo Niehorster is preparing to publish another of his books, but that might not be for a few months. Any suggestions? Cheers Paul

Have you played Uncommon Valor or War in the Pacific from Matrix Games?

You're pulling my leg, right?

I like Glantz quite a bit. I think he is the best source we have right now (along with Zaloga). I emailed Glantz a month or two ago to ask him about this or that division and he mentioned that he was working on a massive book (800 or so pages I think) covering Barbarossa (in extreme detail) up to the 42 counteroffensive. That, needless to say, will be a worthwile book to have. I should have put a smily face after Manstein's book. I enjoy it immensely, but it is a bit whimsical in places. Cheers Paul