JRMC1879

That was a different one

This was in a post made by Steve ... To restate the obvious, we are still a few days away from our 6 week ESTIMATED release date for Gustav so it is obviously not "pushed back". So I am wondering if the capitals are telling us something...

Erm ... 4.35pm Friday of last week. The wife said - "so you've bought another freaking game" ? "Yes dear, but its Combat Mission Gustav Line" "Thats supposed to mean something ?" "Oh c'mon ... its Combat Mission Gustav Line" "The kids have to eat you know" "We have cake - and .... its Combat Mission Gustav Line" "I sometimes think you love your games more than me" "But dear ... its Combat Mission Gustav Line" At that point I ducked as the pointy edge of the bread knife singed my ear and apologised.

What - so you seriously thought I was saying I didnt want any actual girls here ?

Jesus man ... it was a joke FFS.

Thats BS. Read his post - was that polite and respectful ?. He was wrong - and if he had posted in a different way in the first place people wouldnt have jumped on him for it. Fact is he was not only verging on abusive and insulting, but he was factually wrong - then got called on it, and should've manned up and taken the flak instead of calling people teenagers and trolls. As has been said here many many times - there are ways of asking ... I would hate it if this forum turned into a place for girls .... PS PaulT - I am a freaking Man Mountain who eats aircraft carriers for breakfast ....

Yeah - I am hoping they will appear in Arnhem - and therefore be available for use in normandy ... I am presuming if they are in arnhem - then the only thing stopping their use in normandy would be something to do with availability dates - which obviously should not stop them appearing in normandy in any case.

DUkw, DD Tanks, LVT, Buffalo ....

Which somewhat simplifies the issue doesnt it ? A server browser is fine - but there would have to be servers correct ? Hosted and run by battlefront ?

Well I would - if they allowed pre orders for download only. No doubt I will have to suffer the usual agony of those playing it first who wanted it physical.:mad:

I thought the front page had changed to Assault on Italy ....

No, what I am saying is seriously - what is so bad about this ? Click the link ... http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=109386&page=28 or this... http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=109386&page=24 Its not that I dont understand you are a wargamer - its just that I dont understand what people think is so bad about the graphics in the game. As far as all other wargames out there it is streets and shoulders above everything else. Sure if you wanted to compare it to battlefield 3 or some other equally worthless comparison then its not as good but as far as wargames go - it is exceptional.

I have never had any issues with the CM graphics - to me I dont understand what everyone complains about. You should realize that PCO has a very difficult map editor - one of the trade offs in being able to create limitless content with CM in a relatively easy way is it works that way. I cant really see the chasm like difference you refer to between CM and TOW. Beyond that - I would say if a couple of non curvy roads or rivers put you off then likely you are missing the point of the game and its not for you.

Well - two million people marched in London on one day in 2003 ? dont know about america. And beyond the fact that the politicians lied to us about the reasons for invading and they completely F******* up the aftermath of the war - I have no problem with the Iraq war so not entirely sure I see your point. Removing a tourturer of children and gasser of innocents was as much a just cause as removing hitler. If the peace had been succesful and not totally screwed up then the chorus of detractors now would have been as deafening as a mouse squeaking in an empty room. Personally - lying politicians aside - I always saw the protesters point of view as one of being more a selfish concern about the law and the treasure being spent than one of concern for fellow human beings continuing to live under a murdering sadist and a sanctions regime that did nothing to oust him but killed a lot of kids. The practice was terrible - there was nothing wrong with the principle. Cant seriously beleive you are making the comparison to be honest. Iraq was hardly a sovereign state - it was the personal fiefdom of a sadistic gangster and torturer of children, nothing more.

Here maybe not. Elsewhere it is definitely a trend I see.

And how exactly is that jingoistic ? Not sure I have heard of anything more insulting to the veterans and those who died fighting hitler. My respect for those who did is "moral superiority" ? That causes nations like germany to invade half the world and slaughter millions ? And you say you are not an apologist !! you may not see it but Personally I am "rightly" proud of those who beat germany and it is a mark of the western allies that their first concern was of re-education and not revenge - as it so easily could have been. I see nothing jingoistic in that and if there is a sense of moral superiority then it is a well deserved one. Whilst you may try to "rationalize" it I prefer to see the very real and historically documented differences between the way the german army behaved and those of the western allies. Even your point about japan only goes as far as the fighting - and was born mostly from what the japanese soldier did in reality than the soldiers gullability in accepting propoganda at face value. The inhumanity - if you can call it that - and I dont - from us soldiers in the pacific was borne from what they witnessed and not from indoctrination.

Which is entirely my point. Truly good germans who stood against hitler (and schindler was a very debatable character from that point of view) could be counted on one hand. Sure some germans did some things on a moral basis but they were miniscule to the point of irrelevance. For a people that now attempts to describe themselves as victims of hitler the most remarkable thing about wartime germany was the almost complete lack of resistance to his rule. There is a reason it was so.

Its got nothing to do with de humanizing germans - they succeeded at that quite well enough on their own by their actions and more importantly the scale of them. Its simply about the original question with regard to films and sympathizing with the plight of the german soldier from the basis of what they were fighting for. Read or watch most memoirs from the german soldiers point of view there is an acceptance that they bought into hitlers view of untermenschen and jews and that was a feature of their war - ie it was idealogical in a way the western allies werent and why they accepted the atrocities around them and participated in them. There is never any attempt to say they understood at the time what they were fighting for was wrong - it is always the reasoning thet they were duped into believing they were right. And whilst all armies have their "bandits" nothing approaches the scale of how the germans behaved in every country they invaded. To empathize with the german soldier as much as an allied one from any point of view does not show more humanity but a profoundly innacurate view of the differences in the motivations for fighting the war and what they were prepared to do in the war. Had Hitler beaten the russians and british and america sat in their own continent and he ruled over europe for the last 70 years what fundamentally would have happened in germany - mass revolt on moral grounds ? How would he be viewed today in germany had he been successful instead of leading the country to destruction ? Read any detailed study on the Nazi state and you will quickly see how dependent it was on the support of the people. And how careful it was to keep it. The fact is whilst some in germany saw him for what he was - after the victories in europe the streets were filled with people who genuinely believed he was making germany what it should be irrespective of how he was doing it. The german people were complicit in what he did they were not victims. The western allies did not treat the germans badly at all when they occupied their country. And that represents a fundamental difference in ethics and the people of the uk and us from those in russia and germany during the war and how they fought it. your arguments to me just smack of apologist reasoning for a scale of involvement and complicity that goes well beyond a Mai Lai or more usual war atrocities. Hitlers fundamental view was that germany was due greatness and conquest and fundamentally whilst he was successful most germans had no problem with it or how he went about it.

Its funny how perceptions are different. I have read ordinary men a couple of times. Probably one of the most difficult reads there is with some of the descriptions. I seriously took a completely different meaning from what he wrote in that book and it was so much an illustration for me as to how much ordinary germans bought into the whole superiority thing. I didnt take at all he was suggesting peer pressure was what drove those men to do the things they did - quite the opposite in fact. Indeed it was for me all about the title - and how ordinary men put in the right situation will willingly commit barbarous acts with the knowledge they act with impunity. If anything ordinary mens most powerful point was the Lack of an adequete explanation as to why they did what they did and if anything he argues against peer pressure as an explanation. To me that was the salient point of the book. The salutory lesson from the book is that most of us would like to think that any "ordinary" man would find something in himself when standing face to face with a ten year old hes about to put a bullet in the back of their head but even with the exit routes they had available, which didnt require any particular courage, they didnt.

Well, taking your example of the execution unit ... if you read widely on the subject you will find that much research has found that there was very little, if any, peer presure to be part of such units and official sanctions for refusing duty in those units virtually non existant. Again, it is revisionist history that suggests there was some kind of coercion and convenient for modern germany to forward that myth. The simple fact is - an awful lot of contempary germans believed in what hitler was saying and the majority of soldiers didnt find great moral objections to what they were doing. The german army simply wouldnt have fought as well as it did and for as long if they didnt. If germans turned against hitler it was when he began to lose the war not through any moral objections to what he was doing. I am not sure where self righteousness comes into it - the western allies spent huge amounts of blood and treasure freeing europe from hitler and largely handed back those countries to democratic governments. And to me it is the role of the german people and forces and their complicity in hitlers rise to power and the war which is distorted these days not the other way round.

Its got nothing to do with nationalism or culture or heritage or for that matter open mindedness. Talking from a military rather than civilian point of view I am not sure where my empathy for german soldiers would come from considering what even the most reluctant of them were fighting for. I am not one of those who subscribe to the revisionist present day german view of things that they were as much helpless victims of hitler as anyone else - and especially not where their military were concerned - and that includes down to the level of ordinary soldiers. Its simply the fact that I feel more for a US soldier fighting for freedom in the ardennes than a german soldier fighting to facilitate opression and genocide. I am not sure where that "empathy" you refer to would come from in that respect. Those are just facts of history and not something a film is going to change and certainly not one that would distort facts of history to such an extent that it even had a chance to do so.

Yes - enemy at the gates was truly awful. Stalingrad was better - if you are comparing the two - but still a pretty dire movie. The biggest problem a war film from the german pont of view faces is the attempt to elicit any sympathy for any of the german characters which for most watching will utterly fail. Unless you are german of course. Der untergang was the best german war film I have seen - but thats largely because it didnt rely on any emotional attachment to characters - it was more just a documentation of history. Band of Brothers worked so well not only because of the superb battle scenes but because people we cared about were heading into them. It would likely be a cold day in hell before I felt the same for a german character as I did for an american or british one.

I agree with all this but of course the primary reason the germans never invaded or even attempted one was that Hitler had little to no interest in doing so. Whatever the logistics - had he had that desire it would have happened in one form or another. His decision to invade Russia was a far greater mistake than not invading the UK and cost infinitely more casualties than even a failed german invasion of britain would have yielded.

Jeez .. thats great - I had not heard of this. Been looking for something like it for yonks. Thanks. There was also a great windows program I found years ago called SMA (Strategic Military Analysis) - you could load a background image and even define a full order of battle. What you could also then do is record the positions of various units at different times then play it back as a kind of overall view. It also had layers of hierarchy so on selecting would only show those units at that level (eg corps). It had a few issues as it was unfinished but largely it worked. Lost the original files and now cant find it anywhere.