Eastern Front Campaign for CM?

[Lee]

Yeah, Hitler knew it wasn't a good idea to fight on two fronts

and had no intention of doing so. But he figured the western

front didn't really count because what were the British going to

do, invade Europe? I don't think so. And he was right, at first.

But later on the threat did become real and he didn't beat Russia

as fast as he thought he would. So all of a sudden he finds himself

fighting a two front war. Arggh. Ended up making the mistake he

sought to avoid.

[T-34\85]

Thats what I said ... in all liklihood an eventual Soviet victory would've been inevitable.

Third Reich eventually self-destruct ... hmmm interesting. I've heard it many times that the Reich would probably not have survived after the death of their Fuhrer but perhaps you know other possible reasons ... 'Big Time Software' ?

[This message has been edited by T-34\85 (edited 04-02-2000).]

[Guest Big Time Software]

The system of government of the Third Reich was built around conflict. Even with the war and increasing decline of power the internal wars of power were in full swing. Now, imagine what would happen if the larger armed conflict (i.e. leaving out partisan activity) suddenly became a non-issue? A consolodation of power would have come sooner rather than later, and that itself could have torn apart the 3rd Reich. There is NO way that a nation as "small" as Germany could rule by force over a population base many times its size with a land area that is practically impossible to control by force with even 10 times the number of troops the German population could have provided.

The point here is that the *ONLY* way the Third Reich could have controlled all that territory for even the short term would have been through enlightened policies that would have handed quite a bit of local control back out to the various states. But this was not the way German occupation policy worked and flew in the face of the internal political structure of the 3rd Reich. So even *IF* Hitler had figured things had to change it would have involved a purge at the least.

Also, if the war was "won" the opposition to Hitler by the Army would have gone away for the most part. However, continued enforcement of occupation policies by the Army would most likely have sparked up the opposition sooner rather than later. Many of the officers that did not ACTIVELY seek to see Hitler removed would have when the excuse for excess (i.e. "we are at war") disappeared and it became clear that all the Army was doing was facilitating raping, pillaging, and murder.

Ah.. OK, sorta rambling on here. The basic reasons why the Third Reich would have fallen apart, even if it won its wars, are the same as why the Soviet Union collapsed. There is only so long you can take without giving back, and the Third Reich showed no signs of changing its ways. Doomed

Steve

[Owen]

Bteve why not pick out one paricualr battle, or perhaps two for CM2 eg KURSK and cover it in great detail. This would also allow you to make more games

[Major Tom]

Hitler never really trusted any of his "companions" to be his successor. Possibly Speer, but, he had too much of a conscience to run an Empire. Donitz was Hitlers inevitable choice, as, all the other SS and top Nazi's fled to the British and Americans. I would have to say that after the death of Hitler, through whatever cause, the most probable outcome would be a military dictatorship. If, as Steve said, there would still be a military... Plus the problem of all those brainwashed Nazi children, they might put up a fight. It is really difficult to say, but, such a system was too fragile.

The Russian system was so much more advanced, as, power was held solely by one individual who constantly spewed forth fear to even the highest ministers. Their decay was put off by 40-50 years:)

[COMMO CHIEF]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Major Tom:

Hitler never really trusted any of his "companions" to be his successor. Possibly Speer,<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

On the contrary MT.

A.Speer was the only one of the "hight command" not to recieve the death penalty from the Nuenburg trial.

This was due to the fact that possibly Speer did not totaly believe and follow the NAZI way of thinking.

Speer was the least influenced by Hitler.

Now, did hitler trust him the most?

May be............but he was definatley the most rational of the group.

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[Guest Big Time Software]

That bit can be debated. History generally has been kind to Speer, but he was in charge of employing slave labor to further the industrial capacity of the Third Reich. And without him and a few others the end might have come much sooner. HOWEVER, Speer certainly knew the game was up. But that is hardly unique in 1944/45. Most people with 1/4 of a brain knew that. Speer did act against direct Hitler orders to undermine scorched earth policies, but then again lots of people were disobeying orders because they knew the war was about to end and that the Allies were going to hold trials.

Not saying Speer was the devil, but he certainly was no saint. And there were lots of people that were practical towards the end of the war, so he isn't alone. Did Hitler trust anybody else to succeed him? No, not even Speer. There was no clear succession to Hitler's "office" until he was ready to put a bullet in his head. Did Hitler trust Speer? I think the answer is yes, but by that time even Hitler knew all was lost.

Steve

[tss]

DEF BUNGIS wrote:

Being that the Sovets recieved most of thier supplies in the early part of the war from the US.

Ummm, no. The lend lease didn't have much effect before 1943 and by that time Germans had lost their change to win the war.

Schrullenhaft wrote:

I'm not sure what the German losses were on this front, but I'm sure it was probably at least twice the total of their losses on all other fronts combined.

According to figures that I've seen, full 80% of German KIAs died in East Front. Another figures put East Front tank losses to 70% of the total and Luftwaffe losses to 60%. (Note that Western Allies definitely shot down more fighters than Soviets, but bomber and transport losses were heavier in East. Additionally, there were more accidents in East. A Finnish fighter-ace Lauri Pekuri spend some time at a German training camp and he was told that on average 20% of Bf-109s were lost on transportation flights!)

OB&G wrote:

IIRC, the total casualties of WWII were ~55 million, and you're right, the Russians suffered ~25 million. So do the math, the Russians suffered almost 50% of the total casualties! BUT that's what you get for using wave tactics with conscript soldiers.

The current figure seems to be 27 million dead Soviets. However, out of this number 16 million were civilians and 3 million were POWS that were killed in German capture and actual combat deaths were 8 million.

Germany lost 3.2 million soldiers KIA which means 2.56 million KIA in East Front (I'm not sure whether this figure includes the 500000 who died in Soviet captivity). Based on this figure only, it would seem that the German army was 3-4 times more efficient than the Red Army.

However, if we add POWs to this figure, the picture changes:

Soviet KIA+POW: ~12 million

German KIA+POW: ~ 5 million

Even this ratio 2.4:1 is not complete, since the Germans didn't fight in East Front alone, but along with Romanians, Hungarians, and Finns:

Romanian KIA+POW: ~0.7 million (at least)

Hungarian KIA+POW: ~0.5 million (at least)

Finnish KIA+POW: ~60000

In the end, the ratio of Soviet losses : Axis losses drops down to about 2:1. Still high, but a _lot_ lower than the 10:1 that some sources (especially some memoirs of German generals) claim. I also have vague feeling that the 0.7 million Romanian losses should

be a lot bigger.

COMMO CHIEF wrote:

A.Speer was the only one of the "hight command" not to recieve the death penalty from the Nuenburg trial. This was due to the fact that possibly Speer did not totaly believe and follow the NAZI way of thinking.

I'd say that Speer was spared because he was the only Nazi leader who said "sorry" and claimed that he didn't know anything about anything.

- Tommi

[Major Tom]

Georing actually thought he was going to get away with it. Himmler tried to escape but committed suicide once caught. Speer was no saint, but, was like most Germans who supported/tolerated Hitler and the Nazi's until things went awry. I'd have to say that the majority of Germany's population merely tolerated Hitler. It is hard to actually say with any form of complete certainty.

[Fenris]

FYI, if you're interested in a little fiction read "Fatherland" by Robert Harris. Is a thriller set in 1964 in a world were Germany was successful and rules all of eastern Europe up to the Urals. The cold war is on but between the Nazi government and the western allies. The Soviets are still around, fighting it out in the mountains.

Also "SS-GB" by Len Deighton isn't too bad either. Another thriller set in an occupied UK.

Reg's

Fen

[DEF BUNGIS]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tss:

DEF BUNGIS wrote:

Being that the Sovets recieved most of thier supplies in the early part of the war from the US.

Ummm, no. The lend lease didn't have much effect before 1943 and by that time Germans had lost their change to win the war.

Tommi<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's what the soviets say.

------------------

Better to make the wrong decision than be the sorry son of a bitch to scared to make one at all

[T-34\85]

Yeah Def I'd much rather believe the Americans ...

[tss]

T-34\85 wrote:

Yeah Def I'd much rather believe the Americans ...

Now, the interesting question is: from where did the Americans get the data?

Some authors (e.g. Solzhenitsyn) claim that even the Politbyro didn't get accurate production figures and they certainly didn't tell the figures they got to the rest of the world.

I have hard time believing that American spies could somehow get accurate Soviet production figures so any work that is based on purely Western sources is inherently inaccurate.

I don't claim that Cold War -era Soviet sources are any more accurate since the Soviets had then political reasons to publish falsified data.

I would say that new Russian sources (post '91) can contain the best data because the authors may have had access to previously closed archives.

I once read a claim on Usenet that some new source had established that the total amount of material received by lend-lease was 4% of Soviet GNP. As I don't know who had reached that figure and I consider Usenet to be quite unreliable source, I can't say anything about validity of that claim.

Yesterday I tried to search the Internet to find a year-by-year account of the amount of lend-lease but I couldn't find any. However, I found an article that stated that 60% of lend-lease was transported via the Pacific route and that the route was opened in June '42. That leaves 40% to other routes.

I made some back-of-the-envelope calculations based on the following assumptions:

1) The lend-lease transports start on July '41 and continue until April '44.

2) The monthly averages remained constant during the whole time period (this assumption is most certainly false, but I think it overestimates the first months most and thus it errs on the "conservative" direction). So the 60% Pacific lend-lease was distributed evenly for 33 months and the rest 40% was distributed evenly for 45 months.

3) The turning point (after which Germans had no change of winning the war) happened when the Soviet counterattack begun at Stalingrad in November '42. (This is also debatable).

Using these assumptions, I got the figure that at most 21% of lend-lease was delivered before the turning point. (.4/45)*16 + (.6/33) *4

This figure is supported by data on www.uboat.net that shows that only approximately one fifth of the ships on Murmansk convoys were sent before December '42.

I find it really really hard to believe that the one fifth of the total lend-lease was most of Soviet supplies in the early part of the war as was claimed by DEF BUNGIS. After all, the lend-lease to SU was a quite small portion of the total USA production. If the Soviets could stop Germans by relying mostly on it, why the Western Allies couldn't kick Germans out of France by end of 1942?

- Tommi

[Major Tom]

Actually, the Russians benefitted from Lend Lease, as, they were able to get any sort of war material for free. They didn't have to build it, or even transport it over, it was like Christmas, even though some of the gifts did suck...

Many thousands of men died to transport these important war goods over to Russia. Their impact may not have been to give Russia all of the necessary means to fight a war, but, it really did aid Russia.

Even Hurricane II's added to the strength of the Red Air Force. Hundreds of Allied aircraft were sent to Russia, not just obsolete ones. Britain was willing to send 500 Hurricanes and a thousand tanks to Russia instead of sending them to the Pacific in late 1941. To say that lend lease was negligable is wrong. To say that it was critical to Russia surviving or winning the war is also wrong. Lend lease allowed for Russia to turn the tide faster then they would have been able to without Allied aid.

The Trucks are the most important commodity sent over to Russia. 10 trucks sent over were more important than 20 tanks. Russia had a horrible supply system, still relying on horse transport. The Allied mechanized the Russian army. Without Allied aid, the Russians probably could not have reached Berlin until 1946-47, or later.

[tss]

Aargh. I managed to destroy my reply and I don't want to type it again, so this is an abringed summary.

To say that lend lease was negligable is wrong

Yes. That's why I'm not saying that.

- Tommi

[DEF BUNGIS]

OK, don't bite my head off.

I don't post with history books sitting in front of me.

But getting back to the subject, the real war against germany IS being represented

Right now.

That's why they are doing the eastren front second.

Oh, and all that lend lease stuff........

You can pay me back any time, cash, check or charge.

------------------

Better to make the wrong decision than be the sorry son of a bitch to scared to make one at all

[DEF BUNGIS]

Hmmm....double post.

wonder how that happened?

[This message has been edited by DEF BUNGIS (edited 04-05-2000).]

[killmore]

The real war was on eastern front. Most of german units fought on eastern front. But it is not popular with a lot gamers because they don't have much understanding/info about it.

East front turns a lot of them off.

US education does not encourages learning about it. (Just like communist east european education was not teaching about west front)