thetwo

The National Socialists were, like their Italian predecessors, a basically nationalistic group that opposed Socialists and Communists. Anti-semitism was so common in Europe and America at the time that its inclusion in the party propaganda was nothing significant. If anything, the Socialists and Communists may have been more anti-Jew. The anti-semitic theme and its commonality is often overlooked by historians. Look at pre-WWII French politics and compare it to Nazi propaganda of the same period; you might be surprised. All of the "themes" the Nazis used to build up their power were used by some other party in that wild wild west era of German democracy. National identity, anti-socialism, anti-communism, anti-Jew, anti-Versailles, rebuilding Germany, rebuild the military, reassert Germany's rights in Europe. The platform wasn't all that distinct. What made them a force was a combination of factors. 1. Violence. The Nazis were thugs, the street-sweepings left after most of the trash had been cleared from the gutter. Brute force became their calling card. Many of the votes they obtained came through threat of violence or because they won credibility through violence. There is a very rare book that is the best study of the rise to power of the Nazis I've ever found. "The Nazi Seizure of Power" by William Sheridan Allen. If you can find it, it is worth your time. It examines precisely how the Nazis gained power in one mid-sized administrative-center town, through the examination of voting records, newspaper reports, criminal activities reports, and eyewitness accounts. Fascinating. 2. Money. Hitler had some powerful financial backers, in and outside Germany. Many were Jews who thought they could control him. Money talks. (Look at the current presidential campaign. A campaign for the poor and middle classes, overflowing with money, talking about redistributing wealth. Enough money will conceal of multitude of sins, including outright contradictions.) 3. Hitler. Hitler was a penny-ante hack, a nobody. By this time he probably already had syphilis. (There is very credible evidence that by late 1941 he was suffering both end stage syphilis and advanced Parkinsons.) He could rally a mob in a beer hall, note the effect of alcohol on his audience, but not much more. Then he found a personal coach who turned him into a first-rate performer. I don't recall the name anymore. This man was a magician by trade and if you look at Hitler's later speeches I think you can see the showmanship in his gestures and stance. He became a master. Put those together with a political machine and you end up with a generated crisis. Here is a link with a better summation than I could write. http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/collapse.htm FYI: SA = SturmAbteilung / / How does this lead up to the war? It is often said that the arguments Hitler used to gain power were the same ones he used to take the country to war. Reparations, war guilt, Anglo-French hypocrisy, and suchlike. While readers of these forums are probably sophisticated enough to know that these are not true, I've heard historians make the claims. Shows you what they really know. There is some truth to how much capital he personally gained from snubbing the more punitive Versailles sections, but they did not drive Germany to war. A significant difference. 1. The march to war, began in the Rheinland. This border area had been demilitarized after WWI and occupied by the French and British. The occupation ended in 1930. Hitler ordered the small, German Army to reoccupy the Rheinland in 1936. The French dithered. The British vacillated. The Poles wouldn't act unless France was actually invaded. Nothing happened. 2. Anschluss: Austria's merger into the German Reich has alternately been called a seduction and a shotgun wedding. I see it as more of the former. Those who want to dodge blame like to argue for the latter. This was part of Hitler's plan to unify the Germans. This was considered a worthy goal by Germans and by people outside Germany. Woodrow Wilson's call for self-determination of peoples had resonated all around the world. (A young Vietnamese man named Ho Chi Minh, risked his life to travel from French Indochina to travel to Paris for the Versailles peace talks and been terribly disappointed when he found out that President Wilson's proclamation did not apply to him and his people.) 3. 1938: The Sudeten Germans in the mountains of western Czechoslovakia were another group of Germans Hitler wanted to bring into the Reich. This was a tougher problem for two reasons. They were part of (a minority) of another country and there were legitimate reasons that they did not want to remain as second-class citizens of Czechoslovakia (another part of history that is overlooked is just what the legal status of the Germans were in that country). How these people came to be part of the Czechoslovakia is a parable of the Versailles conference. The leaders of the US, France, and Britain on their hands and knees over a big map of Europe with pencils in their hands. A person who stumbled into the room, seeing three backsides, stuck up into the air, might have assumed that he'd wandered into a creative hour at an insane asylum. That's how the map of Europe was redrawn when the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up. Yugoslavia and its century of problems was one of several resultant problems of letting those three men color on a map. Well, the Czechs didn't pay much attention to the German minority and when the world-wide depression hit. It hit the Germans, mostly craftsmen, hardest. They had no voice in the government and became radicalized, either Socialists of Fascists. Hitler wasn't grasping to this point. He was answering. And the French and British were trying to stave off another general war. The inter-war politics of both countries is fascinating for its complete deviation from any connection to reality, especially the French. They made two mistakes. 1. After the reoccupation of the Rheinland they had not shown any spine. 2. They didn't think about where the process would end until AFTER the deal on the Sudeten Germans was done. Almost as soon as the German army secured the Sudetenland, the wheels came off. Slovakia declared independence as a Fascist state and was absorbed by Hungary. What was left of the Czech state was simply absorbed into greater-Germany. All eyes turned to Poland where the only extant German population remained in the Free City of Danzig. The Polish Corridor is another area of pre-WWII history that has been badly blurred over by post-WWII historians. The reality was the the Germans had legitimate concerns and the Poles were acting like Commissars. It was all too well documented to dispute. This was one of the reasons, I think, the British sent so many mixed signals. Their own people on the ground were in favor of helping the Germans in the Corridor when the leadership in London was turning against Germany as a whole. Again, you would have to look at how the maps were redrawn after WWI and after the Polish-Russian war to see what became of largely German-inhabited areas and then look at how the Polish government was behaving, cutting off mail service, phones, seizing land wholesale, expelling Germans by the tens of thousands from their farms. Messy business. All of which gave Hitler the moral high ground with Germans and with others in Europe. / / So much of history has been rewritten that the essence of the time has been lost. A telling photograph summed it up very well. Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London, the day after Britain declared war on Germany. A wax figure of Hitler was being carried out the back door. It gives an idea of how popular Hitler was throughout Europe right up to the declaration of war. He was a statesman. Churchill had praised him in the mid-1930s for how he had turned the German economy around. Not that all or even most of the economic credit really belonged to Hitler. A great many people in Germany, particularly Socialists and Communists thought him a demon and the concentration camps were operating by 1935 for their benefit. But for much of the world and for many Germans, he was doing good things. By the way, the basic economic program that turned the German economy around was the same one the Socialists had put in place before he took office. He just received the credit. One thing he undeniably received the credit for and which allowed him to contemplate war, was the re-militarization in defiance of the Versailles restrictions. The limitation to 100,000 soldiers, no air force, two ships of 10,000 tons (if I remember correctly), no tanks, and no submarines, were crippling. He threw those away and expanded the army first to 600,000 men, then to 3.8 million. Much has been made of the personal oath of loyalty that Hitler required the military to swear to his person, rather than the state. I've heard some vehement arguments that the German military used this as an excuse to cover its willingness to go to war. In some cases, this was a challenge I couldn't pass up and confronted those who made the claim. My contention was simple; would a German soldier who defied Hitler's orders to fight have been any different than an American soldier, at any time in our nation's history, who was ordered to war and refused to obey?. (Depending on the inclinations of the person I was dealing with, I could try any one of several examples. They tend to get angry and confused quickly.) The point I was trying to make was that fighting for one's country wasn't tied to the person, it was tied to the country. The actual oath was irrelevant. To make the point more clearly, I ask, "If the German officers had sworn their oath to the state, do you sincerely believe, anything would have played out differently? Would they really have made different decisions and refused to obey their national command authority?" That some German officers disliked and distrusted Hitler is not valid enough by itself. The same argument can be made about Roosevelt (who had Stalin's spies on his staff), Chamberlin (who was barely competent), Churchill (many complaints were made about him while he was in and out of office). Officers and soldiers do not have the choice to obey or disobey. Period. They can resign (or be shot if the situation is bad enough), but if their duty calls them to serve, then splitting hairs is better left to the dilettantes. (By the way, the people who complain the most about "overly legalistic Germans" are the same people who complain the most loudly about Scapa Flow and the loyalty oath of the German military. If you find one of these people, please point this out to them and watch their blood pressure rise.) / / Was war inevitable? In my opinion no. If Hitler had not come to power and the budding German democracy had gained some strength, it might never have happened. I believe that France and Britain could have acted to help that process along. The steps taken late, led by Britain, to reduce reparations and end the occupation of the Rheinland, were steps in the right direction. Too little, too late. Democracy is a complex form of government. It has to put down deep roots in communities and institutions to function properly. Germany didn't have the chance to build them. If the victorious countries had planned for building a democracy rather than victimizing the vanquished, it might have worked out better. [Personal Aside: In an ironic twist of fate, Germany had a more dynamic political life after WWI and a less stable foundation in which it could express itself. Then after WWII, Germany had a much less varied group of political voices (almost all socialist of one kind or another it seemed) and a more stable environment in which to express them. In my opinion, it was too bad that they never had the chance for a really vigorous debate with all the voices, within a stable framework.] Proximate causes of the war in Europe: - Left over issues from WWI, but not the ones that come readily to mind. The Germans that were portioned out to Czechoslovakia and Poland. - French, Poles, Czechs behaving as if they were still living in the 1600s in the treatment of Germans and expecting the Germans to accept it quietly. - President Wilson's call for "self-determination of peoples" gave the Germans a reason to look outside their borders to help other Germans. - French and British unwillingness to act decisively. Democracies tend to produce governments and electorates that lack spines, intelligence, and willpower. - Hitler was incapable of taking advice. He was right once when others were wrong. He was right twice when others were wrong. After that, nothing else mattered. Amazingly simple psychology. I managed to get hold of notes to some meetings with him. Lengthy and detailed. He would get some facts correct then spin off into LaLa-land. I think there was a point where those around him began to wonder if they themselves were wrong, for a brief but critical period, when everything was in the balance. After all, he had been right when they'd advised him against certain actions. By the time they regained their balance, events were out of control. Hitler did want war, eventually, but not at first. He believed he was a better general than all the German General Staff Officers, with the red stripes on their trousers and "von" in front of their names. That resentment was a powerful motivator for him. Early in his career, he clearly was respectful of the Army and its leaders. Then something changed. I think it was their caution about war and how they felt it their duty to not risk the nation. Somehow this offended Hitler. He turned it into a personal crusade to show them he was more a "soldier" than they were. Petty pride at work. (If you want to look at when this change began, look at the Rheinland occupation.) Where and when war would come WAS NOT decided ahead of time. Any study of Hitler and the Third Reich must keep that in mind. It is easy to lose track of that fact. Hitler couldn't plan a keg party in a brewery. He lacked the self-discipline to think ahead. / / I've not seen evidince that the German people wanted war. Some I'm sure did in an abstract sense. There were Nazis who believed that a war to resolve the "Soviet question" was inevitable and desirable. What is often mistaken is just how conservative the basic German was. Radicalism both Socialist and Fascist was limited to groups in the largest cities. Mid-sized towns received some spillover, but that was all. Germans were personified by the farmer and farmers were conservative to the bone. They were anti-socialist, anti-fascist, Germans. No one went looking for extremists on farms. (Modern parallel: A reason American Democrats have trouble gaining traction in the middle of the country!) Farmers were practical people, who had family histories of what war meant. They didn't react quickly to fad or fashion. If you wanted a farmer to do something it had to make sense. In the German-American community Hitler's disciples had organized a "Bund" movement. This was strong and mirrored many similar programs in Germany. At the same time, within the same community of German immigrants, was an anti-Nazi movement. This group was largely made up of ex-farmers who had immigrated after WWI and were now part of the New York business community. Still German, still conservative. You could take the German off the farm, you couldn't take the values out of him. Back to Germany. If you had been able to poll Germans at the time you might have gotten the following types of answers. - Should Germany protect Germans in Poland from ethnic cleansing? Very strongly yes. - Should Germany protect Germans in Poland from ethnic cleansing, even at the risk of a European war? Yes, with some hesitancy. - Should Germany let the Poles steal land from Germans without acting to protect them? No. - Should Germany invade France or another country? No. - Should Germany be able to defend itself from attack? Yes. - Should Germany be subject to rules that do not apply to other nations? No. Did the Poles' actions to dispossess the Germans living in the corridor in the 1920s and 1930s rise to the level of what we would call ethnic cleansing? Certainly yes. Only the most extreme expressions of ethnic cleansing, mass murders and organized rapes were missing. Seizures of land and mass expulsions were common. The Poles played victim, but even British records documented what was happening. I'll bet nothing you've ever read has laid out the background. This was the story on German radio and in their newspapers. It wasn't fabricated. For all that I despise Hitler and what he represented, he had some legitimate reasons to pressure Poland. That the British observers were trying to get their own government to respond and stop the de-Germanization of the corridor was to their credit. It is an example of how thoroughly history gets written by the winners that so much has been lied about since. What the Germans did in resettling Germans into Poland, was begun by Poles. Harsh but true. Instead of seeing the path the new Germany was taking to protect Germans and responding, the Polish government increased its cleansing. Really bad move. It essentially invited Hitler to invade. The Poles would not have accepted the treatment of large number of Poles in the manner in which it was treating the Germans. Their own arrogance doomed them, then they went running to France and Britain crying for help. Their best chance to avoid war was late 1938 and early 1939 and they behaved no better than the Gestapo themselves. I can't find it in my heart to pity their leaders for their stupidity. If they had acted and restrained their own excesses, the Poles had a chance to avoid the partition of Poland called for in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. (Molotov wasn't appointed as Foreign Minister until May 1939.) It should be noted that Hitler NEVER planned ahead. Everything he did was an emotional decision, a play for the opportunities that presented or that he thought he could make happen. The invasion of Poland was not a foregone conclusion. / / Throughout Hitler's rule, there was constant agitation against him. Why did it fare so poorly? The SS couldn't possibly bring in enough "official" police to keep control of the entire population. Ah, but it didn't have to. They turned to human nature. In every neighborhood, on every block, were petty people. People who loved to tell others how to live, resented people who were different. These became the SS's eyes and ears. With that kind of coverage, dissent and agitation grew difficult indeed. If you think it can't happen here, think about it. Horror stories about "neighborhood associations" that get out of control are prime examples. (By the way, similar systems were set up in Japan, Italy, France, the Low Countries, Norway.) It works and is dirt cheap. Petty people will do anything for the thrill of power. (Another American parallel is the thought police type rule-sets that exist on many college campuses. Sensitivity codes, etc.) So it can happen here. / / It is too easy to point a finger at a person or event and proclaim, "That is the reason." Real life doesn't work that way. History is made from the real lives of its participants, regardless of what historians want us to believe. Nationalism is too often used too broadly. Whose nationalism and for what purpose. Japan's war goals might fit, but racism might work too. Nationalism doesn't fit Italy at all, unless one looks exclusively at its African territorial goals. For Germany, maybe the goal of unifying and protecting Germans fits nationalism. On the other hand, can the persecution of Germans be nationalistic goal for Czechs and Poles? What of the Nationalism of Stalin who wanted to turn Germany against the US and UK. Where does stupidity come into the equation? Pride? Arrogance? Ignorance? Personal ambition? Does nationalism rank as the first among many? Maybe? Maybe not? When it comes to Europe, how culpable were France, Britain, and Poland in causing the war? This becomes much, much harder to answer when you get back to the events of the time. You see, nationalism can be a motivator for actions or shape perspectives, but it does not operate alone.

Scott, I remembered two nights ago that I had not posted my promised reply to the other half of your question. Nationalism as a cause for WWII. I had written it about a week after my short WWI post and then set it aside to edit after about a week, then forgot about it. Here it is. It is long and may not be what you wanted, but I went for thorough, as I would if I were answering SeaMonkey or Arado. Enjoy. If I were to list nationalism among the causes for WWII, I would prefer to call it "belated nationalism." For all three Axis countries, nationhood and national identity came quite late and they had their own reasons to either resent or fear what would happen if they lost what little they had gained. If nothing else nationalistic ideas formed a backdrop or framework against which other problems, concepts, ideas, challenges, and perspectives were viewed. The common theme of many posts has been that greed drives wars. Then the comment was made that no rational person choses to go to war. I must differ with both. Pride has more to do with going to war than greed and nearly all those who have made the decisions to go to war have been profoundly sane. They have been selfish, self-serving, egotistical, arrogant, venal, bastards, but sane. World War II, overlaps two very bloody preexisting conflicts. One was not quite ended and one was only just starting to heat up. To Western historians, both have become afterthoughts. These were the Russian revolution (and then forced collectivization) and the Chinese civil war. We know the Russian civil war had been won by the communists, so how can I say that it wasn't ended? Because the revolution was killing the nation's citizens still. The massive famine in the early twenties, the purges, the gulag, then Stalin's massive purge of his own officer corps (Hitler had a hand in kicking that off by the way.). Stalin was killing off socialists and communists and not just from his own country. If foreign leaders happened to be in the Soviet Union at the wrong time, they died too. The body count is often vastly underestimated. Then China was tearing itself apart. What foreigners had done for centuries and the Chinese had often done to themselves, on and off for two milenia, division and exploitation, was coming to an end. China was waking up. Two powers, the communists and Kuomintang were vying for dominance in a bid to unify China. Even without a Japanese invasion the death toll was going to dwarf anything WWII was going to produce. The world is never at peace. Enter three latecomers onto the world stage, Japan, Italy, Germany. Each with its own fears and goals. / / Japan was unique in the group. Homogeneous in population, it had one culture. Its cultural view was that anyone from another culture was "jama gedo" unruly heathens. This was a pervasive view that any non-Japanese was not human. Japanese were superior in every way. Almost in a yin/yang relationship, the Japanese felt a terrifying inferiority. They were petrified of the fate that had befallen China at the hands of the Europeans and very late, the Americans, as its coastal areas were divided up and it lost sovereignty over its own domains. The Japanese had been passionate about not becoming another China, hence the rapid, frenetic pace of their technological evolution once Commodore Perry "convinced" them that isolation was no longer a tenable policy. Some of the cultural conflicts are accurately portrayed in the movie, "The Last Samurai." At the time this transformation started, the samurai were a caste of warriors who no longer fought. They were courtiers who wore rouge on their faces, wrote poetry, and hadn't had much of a place in society for a long time. With the Meiji restoration (beginning 1868), the emperor began to transform the country by bringing in "best-in-class" advisors from different nations around the world and Japanese scholars and officers were sent abroad to further their educations. Everything changed, but for that there were prices to be paid. Japan became a predator in order to avoid becoming prey. They turned on China. During WWI, they astutely joined the Allies in hopes of being rewarded with Pacific possessions and were not disappointed. The constitution, Western style, passed in late 1880's, could not hold up under pressure. There was too much divisiveness among the top ministers and when the economic crises hit in the 1920's, there was a need for more active leadership. I feel that I must point out a common complaint by the Japanese that the League of Nations and the US of the period were racist in their policies. At no point have I ever encountered a Japanese document or history that acknowledged the rabid racism inherent in Japanese culture at the time (and today). This is a continuation of the "definition solely through use" of the words like "racism." In the 1920s and 1930s the military was taking over more and more power. Military in this sense means the Japanese Army. They didn't do this alone or unaided. Buddhists religious leaders were their major supporters and without their help could not have taken power. Buddhism had been the main-stream faith of Japan prior to the Meiji restoration, but suffered a setback at that time. It rebounded when the Buddhists attached themselves to the Emperor's person. Thereby, the Emperor's success became the Buddhist's success. It was the driving force of the Buddhists that made so much of what followed possible. The suppression of the media, crack down on the universities, professors, and all dissent, the wholesale revision of Bushido into a perverse sickness. Nationalism was the rallying cry, but the underlying motivations were racial superiority, hate, and religious zealotry. (I've written, in several other posts about Japan and the death of Japanese democracy so I'll end the discussion on Japan here.) / / Italy, like Germany unified very late. It was in central Europe and had been divided and redivided all too often in its history. At the time of Mussolini's rise to power, there was a King of Italy and he had significant moral and legal authority. King Victor Emanuel III's decisions have come in for much debate. Getting Italians to agree on anything is like herding cats. It will be noisy, painful, and still won't accomplish much. Italy, like Germany, was rocked with dissension after WWI. The high casualties of the war (even though Italy had been on the winning side) had left deep scars, then the raucous political environment had been made more vicious by the entry of socialists and communists into the fray. Things were turning ugly. The fascists, and Italy's were the the first, were a combination of nationalists, blue-collar workers, bare-knuckle boxers, and street thugs. Their style of politics was designed to combat the direct threat to the nation that the communist revolution posed. They were prepared to meet the socialists and communists in the streets and pay blood for blood. It will seem harsh, but it was genuinely necessary. There is a tendency in the modern academic community to "undersell" (understate" the strength of the socialist/communist movement and how violent (especially the communist factions) were. Another habit is to lump the socialists and communists into one monolithic group; they usually hated each other, passionately. Mussolini's thugs, there's no other word for them, contributed to the disorder. When the king allowed them to take power he was making a dangerous move. Some thought he had lost his mind. Others thought he was making a bid for stability, because whatever else Mussolini's fascists represented, they could bring order out of the chaos and keep the left-wing radicals in check. I tend to favor the latter theory. Economically, Italy was barely functional and it would have been better off if it had been able to sit on the sidelines of the war. Mussolini diverted vast sums to build a modern navy for Italy. Many countries did the same. He didn't put much effort into the quality of the men manning that navy. Likewise he didn't pay any attention to the pathetic quality of the army. Much attention has been paid to the equipment with which Italy fought. I focus on the leadership. The officer corps of the Italian army was arrogant, over-bred, aristocratic, under-trained, and unwilling to lead. When Rommel finally replaced them with German sergeants he found that Italian soldiers could fight as well as Germans. Italian industry was so pathetic that even when the Germans gave them vast quantities of vitally needed strategic materials, they couldn't make use of them. Mussolini and his bureaucrats constantly bombarded Hitler with demands for more and more war materials, copper, iron, rubber, petroleum products, steel, you name it. When the Italians surrendered to the Allies and the Germans seized northern Italy, they conducted an inventory and found a six-month stockpile of raw materials. A massive windfall for Germany's war economy. Why did Italy join the war? Stupidity, pure and simple. Not ego, national pride, treaty obligations, even the very real national imperial goals for Africa. / / Germany was a wreck after WWI. So much focus is put on Germany during the depression. To fully understand post-WWI Germany, an observer must look earlier. The German mind was forged in century upon century of hardship, cruelty, starvation, rape, pillage, destitution, and victimization. Seeing an "alles in ordnung" German today is seeing the genetic and cultural descendant of the survivors. There were periods of cannibalism in German history. Times when twenty percent or thirty percent of the population was wiped out not by disease, but by foreign armies and starvation. Forget the holocaust. Germans lived a national nightmare that became part of their soul. There is a hardness there. A need to prove they won't be doormats for Europe's powers anymore. They know their enemies, Poles, Russians, Austro-Hungarians, Italians, Catholics, Spaniards, Dutch, English, Swedes, French. Always the French. It there is any group the Germans distrusted most it was the French. And with the most cause. The French passed themselves off as the most civilized of Europeans, but the Germans knew them as rapists and murders. Overlords without conscience or mercy. Capable of telling and selling any lie. In the last two years of WWI, the German economy fell apart. Every civilian was on short rations. The British, French, and Americans didn't endure anything like it. The cause of the suffering was, in part simple, American neutrality wasn't "neutral." Oh, the United States under Woodrow Wilson proclaimed neutrality and freedom of the seas, but they didn't really mean it. If they had, then America's war industries, farmers, and their leaders would have insisted that the U.S. Navy force the British to end their blockade of the German coast and allow them to trade with Germany. But they hadn't. Neutrality meant that even before the Lusitania (which was carrying war materials) and before the US entered the war with a formal declaration of hostilities against the German military, it had already declared war on the German people. Germans were going hungry. When a major German attack managed to penetrate the Allied lines in France it would fall apart when hungry German troops found French or British supply dumps and began gorging themselves. Then the communist revolution hit Germany in its pride. The High Seas Fleet mutinied. This shocked Germany. When the Armistice was declared for the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, German forces were still fighting on foreign soil. The fleet still afloat (if no longer loyal). Germans were hungry, but were asking, "What is going on?" Then the news of the Treaty of Versailles reached Germany. Almost immediately followed by news that the fleet interned at Scapa Flow had scuttled and that German sailors were being machine gunned in the water. Demobilized soldiers came home. No jobs. Little food. Few answers. Demobilizing an army is a difficult job in the best of times, in this case it added tinder onto already volatile mix of fuels. Socialist and communist agitators were striving for power. A massive vacuum of power at the top with the abdication of the Kaiser. Loss of confidence in the military after the fleet mutiny. Germans were trying to ask and answer questions of importance. (What happened to lead them into the war? Why did we lose the war? Did we lose the war, after all? What is our place in Europe?) Germany was now a democracy without any democratic traditions. The most organized, best financed, and most vocal of the new political parties were the socialists and communists. They scared the pants off of just about everyone else. The Socialists and Communists hated each other, to cap of the confusion. Into this mix comes news of the reparations and the "war guilt clause." The French were doing "it" to Germany again. This was the Thirty Years War all over again. Germany was defenseless, paying France for the privilege of not being invaded, and Germany had to accept the blame for the entire war. The French couldn't have designed a better, pure punitive action and the English and Americans couldn't have been more stupid in allowing it. Oh, and part of Germany was occupied by foreign troops, including the hated French. As for the scuttling at Scapa Flow. The French and British liked to climb on the moral high ground and claim that the Germans had behaved illegally in scuttling their ships. Most historian concur with this assessment. I do not. In this, I like to let the Royal Navy admiral commanding at Scapa Flow, at the time, speak for me. His was the assessment of one professional commenting on the professionalism of others. My quote may not be exact, but it will be close. "We'd have done the same, if it had been us." The ships had not been turned over yet to the Allies, the Germans were still in possession of the ships, and the professional judgment of the world's preeminent navy was that the Germans had done the "professional" thing. Enough said. Germany was as unstable, politically, economically, and socially in the immediate post-war years as a house of cards in a windstorm. Nothing could be expected to strike more directly at the German psyche than such universal disorder. There were several attempts to seize power in local areas or in Berlin. None amounted to anything. Hitler's later attempt to seize control in Munich was just one in the background noise of a democratic system looking for balance points in the absence of traditions.

Interesting idea. 3221

Not really. Far more damage was being done by the balloons being released that were travelling in the jet stream and igniting forest fires throughout the North American west. News reports were suppressed. Damage was substantial, but not econimically significant. At best a few escort vessels and patrol aircraft would have been used off the NA coast. No real diversion of assets considering how much the US had to play with. The use of units preparing for deployment would have been easy without requiring the diversion of men and material from more critical requirements.

SeaMonkey, That's the most appropriate proposal so far. Do you have anything in mind?

I can't see that there was a way for them to win. In game terms holding out past the historical surrender date would be a good design goal. If they wanted to win, their best bet was to never engage the US. Roosevelt was unable to drag the country into war on his own and the Japanese had a free hand until they took an overt act to change that. Somewhere I made a post about "inevitability" and how both the Germans and Japanese fell victim to it. Let me find the link. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84045&highlight=inevitability For this to be built into a game, you have to suspend disbelief. The Japanese of the period have to be something other than the Japanese of the period, to pull this off. I put in some possible options for how it might be designed in to a world scenario. This was harder for the German side, but in fairness, I thought I should make the effort there too. In my opinion, the Japanese had no real option leading to a "win-type" situation. The Germans had one "win-type" situation if they could have invaded Great Britain (low probability, but possible) and NOT done something stupid like ticking off the Soviet Union. Just my opinions of course. As far as the Cold War scenario, I haven't seen anyone else propose that one and I think that one is original to me. Trying to find the "winning" scenario for both Axis powers has consumed untold man-hours and has produced some very strange ideas. Few have been practical. Once the cultures and economics come in to play, little wiggle room is left.

I've posted on the general topics of what would have been likely outcomes for both theaters before. I found the Pacific one here. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=83586&highlight=thetwo I couldn't find the Eurpoean post so I'll repost it. I agree that Churchill would have chosen to move to Canada. I think few would doubt that. He would be in a populous English speaking country with large natural resources. This would keep him close to Roosevelt too. What would happen then is more interesting. Please bear with me. Some will be aware (others may not) that Churchill did contemplate surrender as a possibility at one point, because of the food shortages in the UK caused by U-boats. This burden weighed heavily on him in early and mid-1942. He was waiting and hoping and worrying. The turn around in the U-boat war in that July saved Britain. This is significant in several respects. - Great Britain was a net importer of food. A surrendered UK would still have to import food to feed the population. Continuation of hostilities would make this unlikely. The three breadbasket countries at the time were Canada, the United States, and Argentina. Transport would be necessarily by sea and would require the consent and cooperation of the German leadership. Any other option would lead to widespread famine in the British Isles in a matter of weeks. No British government could have fled and then allowed that to happen. - Germany was itself short of food as early as March 1940. I am referring to a remembered reference to a diary entry that wheat flour was being replaced with potato flour at that time. Any importation of food to the UK could be diverted to other locations, essentially ending food embargoes on Germany and Italy. - If you do a quick internet search on Spain's role in the war, you are likely to come up with reference to how the UK and US used petroleum imports as leverage to keep Franco from aiding the Axis. My own research has led me to the conclusion that this is a prettied up version of history. Spain at the time was also a net importer of food. Actually, Spain was importing food rather heavily and Churchill had threatened Spain with the same fate that his on country faced, famine. My guess is, that if the British Isles surrendered, the resultant food imports would allow Spain more freedom of action. (Or the Germans more freedom to deal with Spanish needs.) - An interesting remaining question then is the fate of overseas forces. Germany would certainly want Gibraltar, Malta, and British withdrawal from the Middle East. The Germans would not be in a position to demand that those forces actually withdrew to a certain place. There is a limit to how far you can push the threat of starvation. You either can starve a populace or you can't. The Royal Navy would have probably withdrawn to Canada and the US as would most of the land units. The surrender of the British Isles would have been a gaping wound to the English speaking world, but there is very little that could have been done about it considering the food problem. (You get perhaps 350,000 British military personnel world-wide stranded while their families are home and hungry. Nasty scenario.) I think the war with the West would have to come to a frustrating end. A Cold War situation would have developed. After all, we were shipping food to the Soviet Union during that “conflict.” / / I would see that Cold War scenario suiting Stalin just fine. He would have loved seeing his Main Adversary (US and UK jointly) humbled and fully engaged. (I don't see that a Sealion had a great chance of success however.) If I were to design a world scenario, I would build the Axis and Allied victory conditions around time limits. Can the Axis hold on to the historical surrender dates or not. That provides a solid design criteria as well; a goal for the designer to achieve. The closer both sides come to meeting that date, the better the players will likely come to be satisfied with the overall effort. That is my guess.

I make it just more than 3,900 Japanese pilots and aircraft lost for 49 ships sunk. (Some numbers go well over 7,000 which I find a stretch.) Others damaged (three or four times number sunk if I remember right). A ship's survivability was related to its size as one might expect. A list of the sunk ships can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze. This list compares well with my memories of when I researched US naval ship losses in the Ships and Aircraft of the US Fleet, 1945 edition, many years ago. You will see there are no major combatants on the list. Of course, many more ships were damaged and among them were major fleet units of the Allied navies. Sinkings as a percentage of sorties yields 1.2% for 100% losses for the attackers. The resources consumed to combat the threat were vast as would the repair chain on Allied ships over a prolonged campaign. One item of note is the number of Japanese pilots killed is only about 20-25% smaller than the number of Allied sailors killed. The Allied wounded approximately equaled the number killed. The campaign was cut short on the orders of the Emperor after the surrender and the kamikaze units rebelled. We can safely assume that the attacks would have continued as long as aircraft were available. The success of the campaign would likely have suffered over time from increased interdiction from carrier aircraft and land-based aircraft once the invasion gained a foothold. Night combat operations were increasingly common among American naval aviation and some land-based long-range Army Air Corps units. These would have been well suited to attacking Kamikaze staging airfields before they could launch. The Wiki page uses some numbers referred to by footnote [19] that don't seem to add up very well and the footnote did not come up as valid for me. I am inclined to think the reference, from a US Air Force page might have a somewhat interesting history behind it as it looks to be intended to support a certain point of view. (One of the things I don't like about Wiki pages is how unreliable and erratic the data and conclusions can be. In this case, Gordon's numbers are quite good and well supported, then the Air Force quote that doesn't balance well with the Japanese numbers before it and Gordon's data after.)

production queue?

Al, When I did my mod, I came to the conclussion that there was an underlying logic to the AI that attacks the nearest cities. I believe you have seen this in action.

There is a tendency among historians to think that what happens more recently is more significant. This is foolish. With the exception of a more or less unified Germany and newer technology, if you squint and change the dates on the diplomatic correspondence the build up to WWI might have been occurring in any of several different centuries. European power politics. You can see the same dynamics on any middle school playground. Bullies, egos, dominance games, gossip, sniping, posturing, lying, awkward seduction, even more awkward alliances, long-term feuds, short-term cooperation. Long on hormones, short on brains. The people with more money stand out. The people with less money hope they don't get stepped on. After a year passes (in school) or a generation (two decades in Europe) the cycle repeats with slight variations on the themes.

Nicely written Arado. I've dealth with the scott's question so many times my tendency is to cut to the chase. There was much more behind the tensions and animosities and jealosies between the powers.

Nationalism in WWI and WWII. You didn't go for a small question. I'll start with WWI, if you don't mind and it might be a day or two before I can get to WWII (It is much more complicated).. I have a professor friend who says that nationalism has killed more people than religion. I happen to think he is wildly mistaken. This same friend is a Francophile and Germanophobe. If you don't know the terms, the first means he loves the French and the second that he hates the Germans. This is common among historians. In fact, it is so common that it has been reflected in how much of European history has been written for centuries. If you haven't been introduced to an author named Eric Flint, I think you might find a couple of his books interesting. He writes science fiction and recently alternative history. Now why would I bring him up in a serious discussion of the world wars? Because he has accomplished something that has defied the efforts of historians, made European history accessible. I'll explain. One of the deep seated causes of WWI, although you won't find it in any discussion of the war, was that Germany and the German psyche was forged through more than five centuries of misery, hardship, and suffering. If you've read any military histories of Europe you've certainly come across the term, "North European Plain" at least once. This is a descriptor of the terrain of northern Germany which makes it the natural battleground for larger, more powerful enemies to the east and west. What the term disguises is that those same enemies didn't simply fight there. They had interests in destabilizing the entire region and keeping it that way. Germany as a concept didn't even exist until the 19th century. Of all the large political and military entities that surrounded, fought over and through, meddled in, tampered with, stole from, slaughtered the people of, and dominated Germany, the French were the worst. Germans were sub-humans and were kept that way. The early European history books were written by, surprise, French authors. These were the basis for the first English-language histories. None of the real histories made it to America except in the bitter stories of immigrants. What Eric Flint has done is to write modern fiction that brings the Thirty Years War to the masses. If you want to see Germany in that time read "1632" and "1633" and you'll get a very readable glimpse of that hell. This is what forged the Germany of the 19th and 20th centuries. It made the Prussians. Flint talks about some of the horrors but doesn't go into the depth of them. A couple things that anyone who has eaten German food should recognize are the strong smells and the prevalence of sour tastes. Germans ate rotted and spoiled food (when they had any food) for so long that aspects of this became part of their cultural tradition. Or such is my theory. To continue this theme for a moment, Bismarck did not unify the Germans as some history texts claim. Hitler did that. Even then the individual states had their own unique flavor and traditions that it is hard for Americans to understand. These were, and to an extent remain, a holdover from the divisive past when foreign powers paid the hundreds of local princes, dukes, counts, to keep a constant state of low-grade tension and animosity going even when war wasn't running loose across the countryside. (Note: If you want to get an understanding something of an understanding of how the French came to be what we see today, I suggest you do some research into the last Islamic invasion of Europe, 1683, if I have the year right. Battle of Vienna. All the European powers assembled to defend the city, except the French. The French, under Louis XIV, pleaded neutrality then did all in his power to undermine the alliance alliance (helping the Turks). Interesting tale.) / / A few years back there was a weighty tome that claimed to answer the question, "Why World War I happened?". This huge book could be boiled down to two ideas, the naval arms race and the Germans did it. I thought the book was a farce. The British and French diplomats would have told him that in 1914. Do I concur? No. There was more than enough stupidity to go around, but the points that I think are most important, the ones that I think tipped the balance, seem to be the ones that the historians overlook or don't want to write about. Historians, in my opinion, either go for answers that are too easy (to suit their prejudices) or go for answers that are too strange. They don't look at the human motivators and how human organizations work. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it! Here are what I think were the key factors leading up the fateful moment of Archduke Ferdinand's assassination. 1. The British and French tended to look down their noses at the Germans. Even with the British royal family being more German than British (ironic) there was a definite and pronounced arrogance in all dealings with the Germans. Germans were coarse, foul, ate disgusting food, and German was such a harsh language, don't you know. 2. The Germans, also the Japanese, were late-comers to the world stage and wanted their chance at empire (colonies). This was more important to the Japanese, in my opinion, than the Germans, but it was a factor in the decision making of both. 3. The Kaiser had been pushing to modernize German as fast and fully as possible. How fast this was accomplished is still recognized in our history texts. To do this he had to borrow heavily. How heavily? In a strange twist of fate, he had the authority to spend money, but not to generate money. He could not tax. In the years after 1915 the bills were going to come due and the bills could not be paid. I wish I could remember the terminology for how this was structured. 4. The British citizen sees himself as a citizen of Europe and yet separate and better than a European. That little strip of water makes him distinct and the affairs of Europe are not his concern unless and until he chooses to intervene and then his European inferiors had best listen well. This strange dichotomy carries over into British foreign policy. When I've gone back to look at the diplomatic correspondence leading up to the war, it is very strange. It looked like the British were wholly unconcerned and sending mixed signals to both the French and the Germans until after the point of no return. Then and only then did they act decisively. (Same behavior as they displayed leading up to WWII.) So look at these four items and you can see the human element in all four of them. It's easy to see how they would influence the actors toward certain decisions. If you want me to point to one or two smoking guns, I'd point to 3 and 4, above. The Kaiser had crushing debts that could not be repaid and for all their arrogance, the British couldn't find their backsides with both hands, a flashlight, and a compass when it came to diplomacy.

Racist is a word that carries a freight-load of meaning and is ill equipped to do so by design. Maybe "prevailing views" would be better? I don't think anyone here wants to get into a discussion of Japanese versus American "racism" and their relative expressions. The "cataclysmic conclusion" (nice turn of phrase by the way) was what the Japanese militarists had been aiming for since the early twenties. Track through the death of Japanese democracy, the demise of the free press, the overhaul and corruption of the Bushido code. In my readings about early Samurai, there was brutality, but the total self-annihilation was not present. This was a new, twisted, sick element. (I posted once about this. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=83129&highlight=bushido. So it wasn't an American interpretation of Bushido. It was a Japanese distortion of Bushido then expressed through actions. Substantial difference.) There was a revulsion among Americans who fought the Japanese. They had to fight them on their terms or they couldn't fight them at all. There wasn't a way around it. I don't know if you've had the chance to hear some of the WWII Pacific vets talk about their experiences rather than reading them out of books. For the American or Australian veterans, it was difficult to talk about. Even so, there is no mistaking they were shaken by what was required. Their core values remained intact, hence the personal turmoil. Much of this was caused by how many casualties the Allies took when trying to root out Japanese holdouts or when surrendered prisoners blew themselves up killing their captors. These kinds of things were so far outside Western cultural experiences that they left deep trauma behind. After a while filling every hole in the ground with kerosene and popping grenades became commonplace. As did distrust of surrendering Japanese. How many buddies had to die or have their arms blown off before it became rational to act prudently? It still required behaviors that were culturally unacceptable. That's part of what PTSD is about. An often unreported aspect of the island hopping campaign was the number of suicides among Allied soldiers. There were others who just disappeared into the jungle and were never seen again. I remember one account of a Marine who took off all his clothes and ran into the jungle. For a few weeks he reappeared in the distance, once in a while, then disappeared. The psychological toll was as bad or worse than the physical. SeaMonkey, I am not sure I can use the word "detestable" or some of the other value-laden (and somewhat ill-defined) words. I can say I regret perhaps, but in no way do I minimize the need for the actions taken. The world was much better off with men of good conscience winning than men of no conscience. Men of good conscience will choose to live with their demons. Men of no conscience become demons. / / The following is included for those who don't know the backstory on Bushido in WWII. I've provided it because it may sound as if I've been talking around the subject. If you try to do an Internet search for Bushido in WWII you won't find much. The Japanese are very much of one mind about hiding (or not recognizing) the past. There are some good English language books on the death of Japanese democracy, but I'd have to dig through boxes to look for a bibliography. There is a nice, fairly recent book that can take you a long way toward understanding how some of the propaganda worked and how Bushido morphed. Zen at War, by Brian Victoria, 1997. Very very solid and scary. It resonates well with today's nut cases and how they motivate the masses to wanton violence. Victoria called the process, "the samuriazation of the nation." Brutality was ritualized and became a sacred religious act. Suppressing dissent whether in the media or in the universities was required for good Buddhists. Buddhism, Bushido, and the Emperor's Law became one and inseparable. This message was heard from the radios, on street corners, in schools, in military training, in the markets, and from the military equivalent of chaplains. If you want to know the proper method for beheading Chinese, go to the chaplain, he'll tell you. It became not only the province of soldiers to die for the Emperor, but of the nation. The disgrace of defeat similarly was expanded to encompass civilians. / / I did find one Internet reference by a Japanese author. The article itself is rather arcane about the history of the samurai. I've included the relevant quote. http://samurai-archives.com/hrj.html "The samurai Tokugawa Bakufu arguably held back progress for Japan for 264 years, with it’s Sakoku (Closed/Chained country) foreign affairs, which isolated Japan for two centuries. 17 This not only made the Japanese a xenophobic people, but also held them back from attaining further technological advancements. It allowed Japan to develop a sense of national superiority, and eventually led to the misapplication and propaganda of Bushido in World War II. 18 Quite unlike the nihon-to (Japanese sword), Bushido, Kokutai, Sakoku, and other ideas were double-edged swords, with the power to bring about change as well as great harm, not only to the Japanese themselves, but others around them. It even can cause cultural shock amongst the Japanese. Mishima Yukio, (Sun and Steel, The Sound of Waves), a popular writer who committed seppuku in the early 70’s after storming a police station’s commandant’s office, wrote often of Bushido and the ideas of being a warrior. That, along with the distortions of World War II, made the rich military tradition of Japan a taboo topic for discussion for nearly half a century." by Inoue Kazuki

I don't think the kamikazis had a direct impact on the decision to use the atomic bombs. In my opinion, the proximate causes of the decisions were two-fold. 1. The well-known tenacious defenses of all islands in the cross-Pacific campaign. Estimates of American casualties if the Japanese home islands kept being adjusted upward. 2. In a purely American or western response to the horrendous civilian casualties the Okinawans suffered in that campaign. I've never seen an actual estimate of what the American military estimated the Japanese civilian death toll to be if the home islands had to be captured. Remember, the decision rested with only one person and his personal values were involved in the decsion. We were already embarked upon a campaign of terror bombing (fire bombing) with vociferous, some might say rabid advocates circulating around the president. Then, newsreels from some Pacific islands unashamedly showed the suicides of Japanese civilians hurling themselves off cliffs as American forces neared them, then the bodies piled up on the rocks. Then the hundreds of thousands of Okinawans killed. Truman was confronted with the reality of the bomb cold. He had had no time to prepare himself over time. Stalin knew more about the bomb project than our new president did. With his western values engaged and projections of American casualties climbing with each estimate I think he made the right and only call he could make, being who he was. He was no saint. (He was about as dirty a machine politician as you could have found for the time, but that is another discussion. You could research the role and relationships of machine judges in organized crime in pre-WWII Missouri for more information.) Your last question, I think answers itself, SeaMonkey. Truman would have found the question much harder to answer if the circumstances had been different. Roosevelt would not.

SeaMonkey, You are discussing two different scenarios. 1. Invasion in progress with ships and landing craft caught between deep water and the shore. In this case a battleship group, with escorts, could wreak enormous damage with two caveats. A. Persistence: Could the battleship task force remain in possession of the battle area long enough to deny reinforcements for a period of days? B. In that kind of close in fight, even light combat units pack substantial punch and the stakes escalate fast. Battleships are not built for this kind of fight with multiple targets at close range. Even their secondary batteries can have trouble. Defenders reach a "desperation or panic threshold" very quickly and unusual tactics will be tried. Ramming, loading landing craft with explosives, torpedo attacks launched in a cluttered environment might not be detected until too late. This is a dirty battle area. Without doubt they could do serious damage to the shipping. Their main batteries will have trouble depressing sufficiently to engage nearer targets; an oft overlooked reality in battleship wargaming. If the battle were confused enough, the battleships can lose their escorts in short order too. Friendly fire, at night, was not unheardof in the Gudalcanal engagements. 2. Bombardment of shore installations and troops who have had the even smallest time to dig in is difficult. (Infantry under fire are HIGHLY motivated diggers.) Oh, the act of shelling is easy, but accomplishing anything is hard. A 14" shell may weigh 1500lbs or so and a pair of battleships can throw several hundred as a simple exercise of the guns. Actual results except against the flimsiest of fixed installations would have been pure luck. The bombardment of Henderson Field was a known location with the goals of cratering the airfield, destroying and damaging aircraft, destroying supplies (POL especially). Aircraft can be replaced or repaired. Engineers can repair airfields. Supplies can be replaced unless area denial (of the battle area) can be assured or at least contested vigorously. This can be extrapolated to other bombardment situations where tens of thousands of tons of munitions were used on a single target for no real effect. (Air and sea bombardment Pacific, Atlantic, and Med.) There is a good reason the basic, cheap entrenching tool is the most effective defensive tool a soldier or marine can possess besides his rifle. So, to answer your question, it was a raid and that was the intent. The Japanese were looking for a short-term benefit from the action. Denial of the full benefits of the airfield's functionality to the Americans for a few days, maybe a week if they were lucky. To put this in perspective, the American Navy was short carriers and there was an aversion to pushing carriers too far forward. This set the stage for the many "gun battles" in the waters around Guadalcanal. (Also the reason for much Marine resentment of the Navy that lingered for years.) / / You asked what would have happened had the Japanese gotten into the landing areas at Leyte. I can give my thoughts. These will be based on the assumption that the four surviving battleships who turned north after the destruction of Taffy 3, continued the attack. In my opinion the southern group was too weak to be a threat. (By the way, I consider this the first suicide mission of the Japanese battleships, rather than the Yamato mission.) With that assumption, here goes. As the Japanese ships closed, their progress would have been reported and the landing ships would have been pulled south. Landing operations would have been suspended, at least in the most threatened areas. These landings might have been postponed or diverted to new beaches to the south. I am not familiar enough with the operations to comment further on this. I do think at least some landings would have continued as long as possible. All of the landings had their own escorts. Minesweepers, subchasers, frigates, destroyers, CVE's (escort carriers) providing close air support, and these assets would have been thrown into stopping, delaying, or diverting the oncoming force, much as happened. Bottom line, there were still smaller combatants intermixed with the landing forces. In this case, at the point the northern force retired, they had only been engaged by one of the immediate covering forces. Taffy 2 and Taffy 1 were till moving to battle area. Taffy 3 had sunk two Japanese cruisers and inflicted damage disproportionate to their tonnage. We can expect that the other groups would have performed as respectably. In this kind of knife fight battleships were at a disadvantage. Their big guns can destroy a target they can hit, but hitting a DD or DDE moving laterally at a distance of a few miles is hard with big guns. Then add the continual maneuvers to dodge torpedoes and possible torpedoes and the strain on the crews grows. Let's assume the four battleships make it to the landing areas, but that their last two escorts, both cruisers, have either been sunk along the way or turned back due to battle damage. Many transport ships have fled (most especially the troop transports). Some remain and you shoot up what you can see. No problem there. Your heavy shells may even pass through them before detonating if you still have armor piercing rounds available. Shelling of visible and very large stockpiles on shore yield very satisfactory secondary explosions and fires. You've probably set the Allies back a week or two in their local build up. But probably no more than that. Morale impact would have been more significant than the material losses. Now, can you get out? Do you have ammunition? How many of your battleships still have fire direction centers that were not wrecked by all the incoming rounds and bombs that could not penetrate the armor belts of your ships? How many of your battleships are taking on water? How long until the American carriers get you into range?

Thanks for the reply Hubert. This came up in an e-mail game with Nupremal. It might be easier if I try to recreate it in a hotseat game so you can see it from both sides. I'll see what I can do and let you know.

Retributar, I had done some research on the Franklin earlier this year and found the following. These are the citations for the two Medals of Honor awarded to crewmen on the USS Franklin. The ship's story stands out in many ways. It survived. The number and extent of casualties. The unrelenting toil involved in saving the ship. http://www.medalofhonor.com/JosephOCallahan.htm http://www.medalofhonor.com/DonaldGary.htm

For the first time I feel like I've encountered something that is either not functioning as intended or is amiss in the game. Ports and ships. Situation: A ship in port for side 1 and a ship from side 2 tries to pass by on its turn. If the ship in port was not previously spotted, the new contact initiates combat. The ship in port brings with it the bonuses from the port and in the game where this came up this was huge. I tried this three times and the net effect was two previously undamaged ships sunk and one damaged ship sunk. Half damage on the moving ship's turn and on the subsequent player 1 turn, each ship was sunk. This was a total of 6 attacks for player 1 and he took no damage on the "surprise" encounters and only risked damage on the attacks out of the port. On this scale, how can ships carry the port defense ratings into combat with them? How would they manage to do this and pull off "surprise" attacks? Again, on this scale, how can ports leap out to engage passing ships? I say this because if they can't, then the ships in them should be exposed to damage. The scale of the tiles in the game are large, we've had posts on this already. It seems that ships should be able to pass an enemy occupied port without having to be engaged by any ships that are anchored within. They are anchored or berthed after all. If the opposing player wants to gain the benefit of taking those ships into combat he should have to do so and not be able to stealthily carry the port defenses 20, 50, or 100 miles out to sea, set up his ambush and pounce, and not put his ships at risk. If an attacker wishes to attack the ships within the harbor, then the port defenses come into play, that is their purpose. Is it possible to consider turning off the zone of control of ships in port?

Hubert, I think that would have the desired effect.

Soviet artillery Arado, these are the best I've been able to come up with. 1. If rockets/kamikazes are in the game, restrict the Soviets to tech two in the technology and use this as a replacement for artillery. Since these can't respond with defensive fires, they would only be effective in trying to beat down one German unit. This would take them out of a tactical role and place them into an operational role or something similar. The three square range at tech level two would not be a drawback, per se, because they can't support defensively and might actually benefit in support of a breakthrough by allowing more room for attacking units. A bit of a stretch, but not one that overbalances. The research investment to get to level two would also push the cost a little to replicate the investment in tubes. 2. If unit upgrades are used, allow Soviets one additional point of upgrades. This might backfire. German artillery was fewer in number of tubes and stretched more thinly over later in the war, but much more effective. U.S. artillery was numerous and well-supplied and late in the war had VT fuses and was better used than Soviet artillery.

An oft overlooked factor is relative cost per round. In my attempts to engage flyers on this topic, they clam up. Artillery is dirt cheap. Even in WWII, the cost per round fired was staggeringly in favor of artillery. If anyone has ever come across a financial analysis I would love to see it. Arado and I've talked back and forth a few times. Interdiction of supply was air power's best point, the "reach factor." The unpredictability point is nice and I appreciated that it was brought up in modern terms. It doesn't have to be air power. It seems in every war there is something that will get under a soldier's skin and cause that extra degree of nervousness. Let's not forget that Allied troops preferred dealing with their own organic artillery when in the attack. It was easier to call off than air attacks. Friendly fire sucks. Extra motivation to push the aircraft out a little bit farther.

A book that looks good, I don't have it yet. Hopefully soon. The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea, by James Campbell. Crown Publishers

Atago, I have two suggestions for you, that might increase your fun value from what you've already mentioned. For your Britain and France versus the Soviet Union scenario, it isn't all that much of a stretch. Consider the following. Hitler plays brinksmanship and baits the Soviets with Poland. He never invades, gives up his demands for the Polish corridor. Stalin is furious, stomps around. In the end he decides to bite of the eastern half of Poland anyway, leaving the western half as a rump-Poland, a buffer between himself and Germany. Stalin dares the British and French to act. After all their posturing, do they follow through now that the "bad guy" is Stalin and not Hitler? Any war will have to allow for Germany as as an ally, or they can't get at Stalin. Surely, the British General Staff would be warning Chamberlain that before any British force could arrive in the remains of the Polish state, the Soviets could occupy it. Then what? What happens if the Soviets invade Germany? Interesting and plausible scenario. Concerning and kinder and gentler Nazi Party. It boggles the mind. If you are going to go that way, there are more "realities" that offer room for consideration. For example, Soviet penal battalions. These consisted mostly of "politicals" who were kept unarmed until right before assaults, at which time they were armed and pointed at the Germans. Regular Soviet troops were behind them and would shoot them if they retreated. The Germans slaughtered well over one million of these men. If, on the other hand, the Germans were to let them through their lines, then open fire on the regulars, the would get one million well-motivated, former Russian soldiers. Another possibility, is that if you are going to postulate that the Commissar order was never issued and that the mass executions don't happen, and that you can still maintain some kind of order without them, then some communities will likely be more helpful than others. Also, there would probably be less partisan activity sabotaging rear areas. In the Army, I once worked with the son of a former Russian soldier, not ethnic Russian, who then defected to the Germans, fought for them, then emmigrated to South America after the war. Quite a story. There are possibilities, but the suspension of disbelief gets thick. Have fun with it, that's what it's there for.

Arado, I am considering your question. Give me a day or two to think. I'll get back to you. We may be approaching the limits of what the simulation can handle before we change the nature of the simulation, if you know what I mean. I will post here with a fuller response.