Wehrmacht, SS and Waffen SS Troops.

[Rouge]

Hitlers army was comprised of 3 main troop bodies, is there any suggestions on how to exploit these?

Wehrmacht: German regular army.

SS: Hitlers security rear-ecolon troops.

Waffen SS: Frontline combat arm of SS.

[I/O Error]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the term Wehrmacht encompass all land based forces, while the real term for "regular german army" was Heer? (Wouldn't surprise me if I'm mistaken, but live and learn)

But anyway. There are no such distinctions drawn in Strategic Command, that at least is clear.

[Rouge]

But what are your thoughts on making a distiction in the next patch?

[Briggs]

I usualy end up renaming unit to SS units.

For instance, some unit that gets a ton of experience in Poland and France and Russia will be my 1st SS. I leave them in the back to plug holes or breakthrough in places or whatnot.

[I/O Error]

Originally posted by Rouge:

But what are your thoughts on making a distiction in the next patch?

Although my prejudices tend to idolize the mission-oriented nature of the Waffen SS, I don't think such distinctions would make too much sense in a game of such scale. I mean, the smallest ground unit we see is an entire Army CORPS, three whole divisions with all their support equipment and logisitical train. (or more!)

I suppose you could make SS units in a mod by giving them a point of added experience or something, but that's about as close as we can get. You can't assign them special equipment, for instance, beause technology advances are global.

[JerseyJohn]

Early in the war, when they were a relatively small force, the Waffen SS probably was an elite outfit, but their very fanatacism always resulted in high casualties, units often losing the very troops that gave credence to an elite status.

As more units were organized it grew larger too quickly and was unable to maintain it's former standards of training. It became proportionately less elite and in the summer of 1943 many of it's best remaining troops were lost at Kursk.

From that point on it was distinguished primarily for it's ruthlessness and the extreme party fanatisisim of many of it's troops, but not necessarily because it fought better than the regular army units.

As the war dragged on Himmler had a tendancy to make party hacks SS officers to ensure his units would recieve the best equipment and first choice of available manpower, making it's divisions more up to stregnth than the regular army's.

It was very late in the war when the Waffen-SS organized itself into large formations. This was deliberate, the Junker officer corps tolerated seperate divisions, but had no desire to see SS corps in their armies.

After July '44, when Hitler openly distrusted the regular army and it's officers, it was open season for Himmler to expand the SS as much as he wanted, and he did. However, by doing so the units contained troops who were rushed through taining and, though the SS still tended to draw the most fanatical, an ever growing percentage were being drawn -- often actually drafted!-- from France and the Baltic countries. Few of them held any real loyalty to the Reich (though there were exceptions) and were not usually of higher fighting quality than regular army conscripts of that time -- a former Waffen SS man I knew was Finnish, but I don't know how he entered the organization.

By the Ardennes Offensive there were SS Panzer Armies, but it was too late to have much meaning and such units were short on tanks and panzer grenediers and big on regular infantry.

Some historians have gone to great legnths to distinguish the Waffen-SS from the SS guards at the concentration camps and execution squads, but on the drop of a hat the Waffen-SS was more than willing to conduct slaughter for it's own sake, and often they'd drop their own hat.

The Second SS Panzer Division ("Das Reich") was particularly famous for it's attrocities in Russia and France, much more so than for anything it accomplished in battle.

At war's end the Soviets wanted to execute every SS-man as a member of a criminal and murdering organization. A bit extreme but understandable considering many of their activities.

I agree with the already stated opinion that nothing would be gained by making them a seperate category.