LUCASWILLEN05

Agreed. However the Nazis did not realy win the 1933 election either. They failed to win twice albeit each time taking more seats in the Reichstadt. Andusing the strength off their bloc to sabotage and bring down the elected governments, this despite the election votes cast by the German peopleSo, like the Russians we can ask whether the German people really wanted Hitler in 1933 or whether the Nazis cheated and schemed their way into power, and they certyainly used violence and intimidation in the process. to be fair German Communsts were mosjt likely doing the same. The Nazis just turned out to be able to do it most effectively. Was this as bad as the methods used by the Blosheviks in Russia? Yes it probably was. And both GermanNazis and Soviet Communists weremore than willing to use very unplasent methods, even against each other (Stalin's purges, the Nazi purge of the Brownshirts) and against their own people including "out" groups and the general population. However there were good and honourable people on both sides and many ordinary soldiers like my relative who did not want to bwe there and only fought because they were told they had to

True. But in a vicious police state like Germany was it something that most people possessed the physical and moral courage for? There were certainly those who did have those qualities, for example the White Rose Group, certain religious and military leaders and others who did actively oppose the regime and many came to a very nasty end. Don't forget, in `1930s Germany you could be arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, tried before a People's Court 9if you were "lucky" enough to get to trial at all and sentto a concentration camp where conditions were appalling to say the least. And there probablywas some knowledge about what was happening. Mostpeople probably decided to take the safe option and do nothing and ignore what was going on. Of course, when the war ended there was at least one concentration camp where the Allies compelled the people of the nearest local townto walk through the camp and see he consequences for themselves.I have seen a photo which might have been taken of this incident and the expressions on the townspeople's faces are expressions of horror. Indeed, and it may have been this incident as well the local Burgomeister committed suicide after he had seen the camp. It is probably true that the people at least were aware and had some idea of what was happening but they might not have known the full horor of what happened. Even today we have some idea of the effects of Government Welfare reforms for example the increased reliance on food banks. Obviously this is nothing like the Holocaust but it still shows how most people are prepared to ignore very negative things happening to other people, possbly people demonised by the government as "work shy scroungers" And by he way te Nazis used very similar language about the unemployed who also often ended up in camps themselves. See under "Black Triangle". And others were forced to wear similar means of identity such as the pink triangle (homosexuals and lesbians) or the famous yellow star for the Jews. There are of course many others. Then, in Eastern Europe/Soviet Union there was the Einsatzgruppen and various other means of extermination of "undesireable Poles and Slavs. Among other groups that the Naziswere naturally going to target these would go after those such as former military officers, professionals, intellectuals and students who might lead a challenge to the new Nazi regime.

A choice of a sort, yes it couldbe argued that this was so. On the other handit can be argued that the Nazis manipulated theelectoral system and sabotaged the elected governments until they got the results they wanted. The factoors alrady discussed were cerainly contributory to the Nazi rise to power. To what exten each influenced the outcome is a matter for historcal debate and here is probably not the right place for such a debate. As for what happened after 1933 it was likely impossible to predict that what eventually did happen would happen. There were probably a handful of far sighted people who saw the threat but most did not or could not forsee the course eventstook over the next twelve years. I It certainly became clearquite quickly that certain groups such as the Jews, the disabled, trade unionists, communists, lesbians and homosexuald, hose labelled as "work shy"and so on were going to face discrrimination and persecution under the new regime and a harsh camp system was quickly established among other methods such as euthanasia for the mentally handicapped. Jews were removed from proffessional roles and so on. But could anyone in 1935 haveforseen the so called "Final Solution" tat would start beeing implemented in 1941/2? And the German people were being indoctrinated to accept this by Nazi Propagada. And, since most people werenot affected by what was happening and were doing much better (in work again with good wages, holidays, goup activites such as sports, the Htlr Youth, League of German Girls etc) why worry about what was happening to hose "out groups" and why put yourself at risk by rocking the boat and asking questions. This does not excuse the complicity of the German people in what happened bu we can understand how and why the Nazis were able to gain and hold such control right to the very end. It is indeed disturbing and such things can still happen today albeit to a lsser extent even in our own democracies. One just has to keep one['s eyes open to see how some groups are being treated and far less favourably than others even to the extent of discriminaion and perhaps low level persecution

It actually took three rounds of elections. The Nazis kept pounding a way and bringing down an elected government ((thus forcing a new election) until they had a large enough majority to legally form a government. True, in 1933 the German people did have a choice and many voted against the Nazis and for other parties thus exercising that choice. But the Nazis did everything they could to manipulate and circumvent the democraic systems and procedures finally rendering that choice meaningless and irrelevant to the outcome. And once the Nazis took power they started dismantling the Weimar Democracy, manipulatng public opinion, forming a secret police and so on. At this point any opportunity for a real choice the German people may have had was taken away from them as a direct result of those mmeasures. There were to be fair brave groups and individuals who stood aganst this, often at the greatest personal cost but the truth is the majority of the German people just stood by and let it happen or indeed went along wit it. And there were those who fully supported and participated in what was going on. Another motivation we cannot ignore is the desperate straits Germany was in in 1933. The Great Depression, near civil war on the streetas with running battles between Nazis and Communists, the harsh and humiliating treaty of Versailles including the French occupation of the Rhineland. We can well nderstand the desperation of the ordinary German facing all this and hyper inflaton of the cost of living. If people are that desperate a large number will consider voting for extremists which, in early 1930s Germany meant the Communists or the Nazis. ne wonders if someting smilar might have happened had the Communists won power in 1933. The shape of things would have been different with different victims and probably stilll a big European War. That however falls within the realm of alternative history and speculation

Nobody has a monopoly on innocence or guilt. Pretty much everyonehasfought warsof agression atne time or another and as committed some form of atrocity.in the process. Somehowever havebehaved worsethan others.

Might be true for someof the Japanese. Certainly many soldiers were perpatratorsnot victms. But the women and children cetainly can be seen as victms as can other non combatants. The same can besaid for every civillian non combatent in every country involved

Or more accurately their governments. These were totalitarian governments as we know and most people would have had little choice, often perhaps too scared to speak out. And the Soviets have to be assigned a level of responsibility having signed the Molotov - Ribbentop Pact essentially giving Hitler a free hand and carving up Poland. And the Western powers have to take a lot of the blame for their policy of appeasement pre war. Understandable as their reasons might be (nobody wanted a repeat of |WW1 the end resutt was opposite of what was intended and perhaps infinitely worse than a smaller war fought in the ealy to mid 1930s/ True the Allies were in no shape for a war but then germany, Italy andeven Japan were not in a far better state. It was the ordinary people who provided the cannon fodder and suffered under the bombing and shell fre. How many ordinarypeople on either side really waned the war their leaders told them to fight. I am sure there were quite a few who didwant the war in the Axis Powers but did everyone feel this way or were they just doing what they were told because they had to,

An inteersting analysis on the background to the ongoing, real world crisis. Hope this forthcoming game does not prove to be too prophetic. We do however seem to bre living in interesting times :eek: http://www.larouchepub.com/hzl/2013/4050merkel_ukr.html

Yes Hiroshi,a and Nagasaki were awful acts as was the fire bombing of Japanese and German cities in which both Britain and the US were involvedOn the other hands the Japanese committed many appalling acts eveyone will agree were war crimes.I don;t think any of the major belligerants came out of the war with clean hands. Some hands tough were dirtier than others. WW2, like all wars was a humen trajedy and this conflict was certainly among the worst. That perhaps wa why there were war crimes trials. However, the victors were nt in the dock themselves along with the defeated. That howevers does not exclude the victors from having to face the judgement of history.

Just a suggestion about that new CMSF. Maybe, instead of just sticking to Syria it might cover a different Middle East setting such as a wider regional war involving a ramge of nations on both sides. Syria should certainly be one of the belligerants.but I would like to see many others such as Iraq,Iran,Jordan, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, Isreal, US,various NATO countries. Who might be a belligerant is of course up to Battlefront but I will saty there are plenty of very modern MBTs available to the various nations and great scope for possible battlefield scenarios. So I would like to see BF take advantage of this to produce a whole new version of SF building on what was available in that and developing the various game improvements we have seen since. Given the developments of the Arab Spring and the potential of things going horribly wrong over the next few yars a really big regional conflict such as thesort I have hinted aat sweems like a highly plausible and challenging scenario for wargaming.

Could all the above in fact be true. There are many possible motivations such as national policy, former commanders wanting to cast their unit in the besty possible light, covering up or excusing failures for example. This is what makes history such a difficult and captivating subject to study when you garto A level, degree and beyond. You have tto assess the evidence, consider motivations and bias and make a judgement of that evidence to arrive at your own conclusions. And by the nature of its' historiography the Russian Front is one of the most difficult and controversial of subjects. Which is one of the reasons it excerts such fascination. And why it is almost impossile t come to a satifactory conclusion about who were the "goodies" and who were the "baddies" Personally I believe that it is closer to the truth to argue that niether side were the "goodies" The Axs were undoubtadly the aggressors and the Soviets were defendng their own ountry. To that extent the Soviets can claim to have beenn fighting a "Just War" of self defence. But when we consider all he atrocities committed o both sides, the variouslies, cover ups and half truths the picture becomes far kless clear and both sides lose their claim to be fighting a just war, not least because of he methods used and the atrocities both sides committed. Whch is why I have had to cnclude that, on the balance of evidence both sides were, in the final analysis "baddies"

Thatprettymuch sums it up. Russian Front historiography is full of misconceptions, excuses, obfuscatiions and outright lies.There are for example entire battes and campaigns we did not even know existed. Take the First Sovet invasion of Roumaniafor example. We knew aboutthe battle of Targul Frumos. Mentioned by Paul Carell and quite a detailed account in the history of the PanzerKorps Gross Deutschland. But very little on the wider context until Glantz produced a detailed account in Red Storm over the Balkans. But the question is why the Soviets tried to cover it up for so long. Could it be that this was not one of the Red Army's best performabceswth almost 80000 casualties incurred by 2nd Ukranian Front. Or wasthe whole thing a huge deception operation for Bagration. Most of the German Panzer strength in June 1944 was in Army Group South, not Army Group Centre. Could it be that it wasthe Soviet Spring Offensive into Roumania that convinced theGerman high command that the Soviet summer offensive for 1944 would fall there. We know as a matter ofhistorical record that the first phase, Oeration Bagration caused the destruction of Army Group Centre tearinga huge gap in the German front that requiredthe Panzer Divisions to movenorth to attempt to close that gap. But then, inAugust came the secondhammer blow, the Lvov-Sandomierz Operation that basted another hole, knocked the Roumanians out of rthe Axis, almstdid the same to Hungary and captured the vital Ploesti oilfields. And after this the Eastern Front was never entirely stable again. Could it be that the spring1944 invasio plan was in fact part of a hge strategic deception plan? After all the Red Army had done that kind of thing before on a smallr scale. Bu, if the deceptoion theory is acccurate in any way it would be hugely significant. It is possible thjat both of the above hypothesis could be true, that the Germans were the victims of a massive Soviet strategic deception but the deception required a huge cost in bood that the Soviets did not want to admit to (and there may well be other reasons as well. There is I suspect much that is still to be revealed.

So, in fact the AI is in fact perfect in its representation of the sereotypical Red Amry then? Joking aside doesn't it all come down to ho good a scenario designer is at creating AI plans for the scenario within the constraints of the currently availableAI system So, et's analyse this. We would like the AI to act more like the human beings it represents. We would like the units to act in a way that thwe real unit would and we want the system to do militarily sensible things that interact with what we are doing. Whle I daresay the AI is being improved it is probablly unrealistc of us to expect some form of Nirvana, Oh well

Indeed. Some (much?) of what the Stalnist Soviet historians write is utter rubbish. A case in point is a certain Soviet historian who wrote a book covering the last 6 months of the war. Lots of refererences to how "the heroic representitives of The People (read small clique of communiststs who were anything but heroic or representitive) heroicly (really?) assisted (did they?) the Red Army to drive out the hated Germans and install (the Red Army did it for them under Stalin's orders) a People's Government (Soviet Client State ruled by members of said small clique of communists selected by Stalin) who ruled wisely for the benefit of the people (oh yeah? So how was it they required communist police staesthat were only overthrown in 1989?) But before we conclude that Soviet era historians were all bad let us consider historians such asPaul Carell (he was a 3rd Reich popaganda writer during WW2 as I understand it) How the Wehrmach fought so bravely against the odds. Would have won against that faceless hordeof Slavic Bolshevik Untermensch too had it not been for all those stupidf Fuhrer Orders and if there had beed a few more Tigers and Panthers. Then there are the Cold War era Western hisorians. Take the accounts of the famous tank battle at Prokhorovka for example. Following the official Soviet lineabout ow II SS Panzer Korps had all those Tigers and Panthers (wwhich modern historians such as George Nipe have shown that they acually did not have - no Panthers and about 40 Tigers in the whole Korps not all of which were actually runners on the day) and how 5th Guards Tank Army thrashed and almost destroyed II SS Panzer Korps on that battlefield. In fact as Nipe and Glanz (and others) have shown that is based on a Soviet era lie. Turns out this may have originated with Rotmistrov himself who had to explain why he had effectively immolated his command (5th GTA) without being relieved of command (and quite possibly executed on Stalin's orders) So he toldStalin that the SS had all those Tigerws and Panthers. And it was convenient for Soviet propaganda to use that "nterpretation" of the battle. So why wasn't this debunked after Stalin's death. The answer to this can be given in two words. Nikita Khruschev/ He was the commissar with the Voronezh Front under whose command 5GTA came a couple of days before Prokorovka. By the late 1950s of course Khruschev was First Secretaryy of the Communist Party and, to say th least it would be hugely embarrassing if the truth about Prokorovka came out, particularly so if Khruschev's true role in all of this were to become public knowledge. We still don't know exactly what was said but it seems Nikita pressured commanders into launching 5h GTA attack and wanted it done quickly. The truth of the matter seems to be that 5tth GTA didd indeed stop the SS for a crucial day while Sovuiet reinforcements moved into place but destroyed itself in the process. However, there are still many Western historians who repeat the old Soviet era mantra and ignore the research of modern historians who have examined both the Soviet archives and the SS records which are available in the US on microfilm and have been available for many years had certain historians taken the trouble to go and look instead of assuming that source was poor due to their belief thatthe official Soviet version was the historical truth (and therefore that the SS records were Nazi propaganda - in fact those records were the official militay records from the time used for military purposes - not useful if he records did not represent the true state of the IISS Panzer Korps)

It shows there were good men who suffered terribly, no doubt on both sides.The fact is they were fighting for an evil cause, not because they wanted to but because they had to. Those men would have suffered just as much as anyone else. Possibly more so given the horriffic nture of warfare on the Russian Front. We can condemn both the Nazis and the Soviets as evl causes and rightly so. But behind that is he story of millions of human beings most of whom were ordinary, decent men forced into a horrible situation. We would do well to remember that it might not be so black and white as "good" ans "evil" There are shades of grey and the stories of human beings like my relative who was a good and decent man even though he had effectively been coerced into fightingfor an evil cause (the Nazis) due to time and place of birth. I certainly never heard him express any liking for the jnazis and I think he even hated them for what they had done. Perhaps having a relative who was actually there as he was gives me another perspective on this part of WW2 history.

I don't think anyone s saying that and there were no doubt many good me on both sides who were told to be there by their national leaders. One of my father's ssters on the Swiss side of the family married a German who had fought on the Russian Front. As far as I know he was just an ordinary infantryman in an ordinary infantry dvision. He did not like to talk about his expreiences. Whern I was about 10 I asked him abot his experiences. All he would do is tell me the above and that he was wounded by a hand grenade. He showed me the scar. And that wasit. It was only when I was older and read more abot the Russian Front including Guy Sager's Forgotten Soldier that I even began to understand why he felt that way. It would be fair to say that hundreds of thousands of those who survived on both sides who felt like these. Those few still alive on both sidesmost likely still do feel like that. They were fighting for evil, totalitarian regimes but the vast majority very likely did not really want to be there and probably hated what they had to do. So the Eastern Front is probably a far more difficult subject than Normandy or Italy. Having said that most who fought there or in any other place were only there because they were told to be, not because they wanted to be there. Something we might want to remember and to respect. And that goesfor almost any soldier on any battlefield in any theatre of war. Apart from that let's just enjoy the intellectual challenge of the wargame but, as we do, to think sometimes of the real human beings our graphical icons actually represent.

Yes that does work. Kind of. But a 2|D graphical map screen would allow you to view the situation as a whole more easily, at least to the level of current knowledge of the battlefield situation. How easy it would be for Battlefront to produce such a map screen situation overview ias another matter though it wpould be nice to have.

Would be nice if the repository was better organised eg into mods, scenarios and campaigns so you can more easily find what you want. For some CM games the repository has become something of a dog's breakfast with everything jumbled up together. It really needs tidying up!

It might be helpful to have a situational awareness overview screen facility showing the locations of your platoons and companies by trrop type and curretly known enemy positions. This would make situational awareness regarding the overall battlefield situation mucjh easier at a glance.

We can give the oviets credid for defending their country agains Nai agression and, yes, to that extent we can call them the good guys. But beyond that it has been argued that a just war must also be waged in a just (ie as humanely as possible according to the various internationa conventions) and, on that score the Soviets failed badly. However, given what the Germans had done the desire for revenge was an understandable one and it is probably unreasonable to expect every Red Army soldier to refrain from acting on this by killing German POWs or looting/rapng German civillians at the end of the war. Tghere is no way we can condon the actions of the Red Army in 1945 but the actions of the Germans in the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1944 were at least as bad. By these criteria I don't think either side deserves the label of goood guys. Then again the Western Allies also sometimes committed what we would call war cimes so it could be argued, with some justification that nobody came out of WW2 with clean hands. There were however some who were darker than others even in the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. However a wargaming site is probably not the place for a continued, in depth depate about the ethics of the conflict so perhaps we might want to wind this discussion up fairly soon. Just a suggestion

Both sides were pretty appalling. Both certainly killed prisoners, brutalised civillians and so on. This brutality went on right from the start in one form or another. That does not mean every single soldier who fought on the Rusian Front was a bad man. Many, probably mosty were ordinary, decent human beings in a bad situation and many were brutalised by their experiences and what they saw. In the case of the Russian Front I don't think we can view either sdes as being the good guys. Both sides were representitive to totalitarian regiemes and the brutality of the fighting was far worse than anything seen on the Western Front

I Seconded. Also battles like Ipoly, Komariom and the elimination of the Gran bridgehead descibed in Days of Battle. I gather there are at least two more books due later in the year covering operations in Hungary The sword behind the Shield: a combat history of the German efforts to relieve Budapst Operation Konrad I, Ii and III NorbertSzamverber Tomb of the Panzerwaffe: Th defeat of Sixth SS Panzer Army in Hungary 1945 Alexi Isaev. However bothare to be published by Helion who seem to have a bad habit of letting publishing deadlines slip. Ver badly in many cases so we may not see the above books in spring/early summer as currently advertised on Amazon.

I don't see the Turks being involved n his one. Poland yes. Germany, Roumania, Hungary and Britain possible. France and maybe some of the smaller Western and Southern European nations (Italy, Holland, Belgium) might be persuaded depending on circumstancwes. The Baltic states mighr be invaded bty Russia or Belorussia at some stage in this warr but their armed foprces are tiny to say the least. So I casn see BF doing orbats for some of the larger Eastern European states (such as Poland,Hungary and Roumania) the Ukraine, probably the UK and Germany, possibly France, Holland or the Netherlands. US, Ukraine, Belorussia and Russia I would expect to be included from the start.with some/all of the above in expansions.

Don't forget we can have heavy armour coming from various European members such as Germany, Poland, the UK. Add to that the Ukranian army of course. The US will probably still have a lot of equipment in storage rather like the old REFORGER sites. If so then it qwould be possible to fly the manpower over as was planned back in thwe 1980s, If this is indeed rthe case the US would not needto spend months building up a corps or mult corps force. Having said that with the current US army we are looking at a maximum of five or six divisions plus he NATO European forces, probably includingg te Polish and perhaps orther Easterh European contingents. Add to that the Ukranian army. Havingsaid that it would be the Europeans who would have to hold rthe line in the oeniing battles prior to the US arrival whch might still require several weeks.

I see no reason an EF game would not sell at least as well as Normandy. At least n miniatures wargaming the Russian Front is hugely popular. I don't think wo families of games would be needed to cover 1944 - 5 though. As Market Garden has shown it should be practicable to model the different architectures involved. So BF should be able to produce modules covering Roumania/Hungary, Poland and Germany itself. And I am sure that simply adding new formations such as Volksgrenadiers will present very few problems for them. And we already know from CMFI that they can support winter warfare. The current plan of Russian Front 1941 - 2 (Barbarossa), 1942 - 3 (Case Blau to 3rd Kharkov), 1943 - 4 (Kursk, the Dneper Line and the First Soviet invasion of Roumania) and the 1944 - 5 (Bagaration) family seems as sensible an approach as any