Ukrainian Army Conquers Moscow

[SeaWolf_48]

Another what if scenario. What if you were running the German Wehrmacht and Leader instead of Hilter, and you listened to the high command OKW and didn't go into Russia as a Conqueror, but as a Liberator. In Russia many groups of people didn't like the Soviet government and what it had done to them. Many were looking to the Germans as liberators and were sadly let down when Germand Death Squads came to their cities to kill, Jews, Gypsies, Queers, Communists, and partisans. Hitler wanted the Ukraine for living space, so he was very quick in destroying any relationship with the Ukrainian people. What if Hilter was more patient and used the manpower of the Ukraines, Belurussians, Latvians, Luthuanians, and Estonians. They would have become willing allies to the ones who liberated them from communism.

Five new partners and countries to help destroy Ivan. Many MPP's (10 for small countries and 30 for Ukraine)and several armies to man the front lines (one per country and three for the Unkraine).

Russia would be doomed. Germany would win the war, or would she?

What do you think?

[xwormwood]

Clash of Steel had such an option: one additional German Corps for every "liberated" city. Useful option for the AI, but not for the human players (to easy).

What if ...

If Hitler would have been such a "good" leader the entire war wouldn't have happend at all.

But he wasn't. And he would surly never been.

He started the war because he wanted this "living space in the east".

Those poor russian people who offered the first german troops bread and salt had never a chance for personal freedom under german rule.

Maybe when the Entente would have started such kind of honest liberation war in 1919 or later there would have been the possibility for such a szenario.

[JerseyJohn]

SeaWolf

Excellent premise.

Yes, Germany would definitely have beaten Soviet Russia. One of the main reasons the Russians saw Germany as a liberator is because that’s exactly what they had been twenty-three years earlier. After the collapse of Czarist Russia Germany did not attempt to swallow the occupied territories, instead they created Ukrainia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia while securing Finland’s full independence. Under the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty signed with Lenin’s government, Poland was ceded to Germany and the countries named earlier were recognized as Germany Protectorates. The new Russian frontier would have run roughly south from Leningrad to the Black Sea between Minsk (Ukrainia) / Smolensk (Russia) with Kharkov part of Ukrainia and Rostov part of Russia.

Following Germany’s defeat in France the formerly independent Ukraine fought against the Soviet Union and was conquered with great loss of life and more to follow under later Soviet rule. The Ukrainian farmers were among Stalin’s worst victims in his drive to turn all of Russia’s farms into collectives.

So it was perfectly natural for the Ukrainians to see Germany as coming back to finish what it had started in 1918.

Aside from greatly increased Ukraine production and no partisan activity, Germany would have been swamped with more volunteers than it could have armed and put in uniforms. Volunteers joined the wehrmacht despite Germany’s brutality, and that was only a fraction of what might have come otherwise.

xwormwood

Yes, COS did a good job of assigning those units only in the cities that had raised significant numbers of nazi volunteers during the war.

After the First World War ended, British, American, French, Turkish, Japanese and German Free Corps troops along with The Chech Legion, all did at least some fighting against the Bolsheiviks in places as far apart as Archangel and Vladivostock. But none of it was decisive and there was little if any official policy guiding those troops. As they withdrew from the country the White Russians began a steady collapse untill finally being defeated in the twenties.

[ June 04, 2003, 05:33 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Liam]

Part of Hitler's downfall was definitely his hatred of enthnic groups and a foolish notion of Liebenstrom in Soviet/Polish/Ukrainian/Baltic Russia. The Baltic were quite Germanic peoples actually, birthplace of German Culture in many eyes. Latvia? Goth

Ukraine wanted independace and was absorbed after the so called borders were drawn up by the WW1 Victors. Perhaps that the World never contained Russian aggression gave Hitler the notion also that he could do whatever he wanted? If Germany would've played her cards right, the partisans may not have existed. In fact another 100 to 200k of support troops from this occuppied territories isn't at all an overrated #. The Fins were forced into German partnership by Russian Aggression.

That may have been enough, to push Russia further, what of Partisans appearing behind Russian lines as the Russians conquored back? How much longer would the War of dragged on if say we would have had an Albert Speer as Chancellor of Germany and peaceloving...?

[Shaka of Carthage]

If you want to see the effects of Germany entering Russia as a "liberator", simply turn off the Partisans and the Scorched Earth options.

[SeaWolf_48]

The reason for this posting is that I'm reading a book "How Hitler could have won WW2" by Bevin Alexander. One of his points is the misstreating of the Ukrainians and the power that he thru away. This seems like an option we could have just like partisans and Manchurian Troops.

Alexanders main point is that Hitler should not have attacked Russia until he took the Mediterranean and the Middle East(around '43). Bevin says that Admiral Raeder saw the plan of sending 4 Panzer Divisions to Africa to take Cairo and then move them into Iraq and Iran for the oil. From there Britian would have been extremely weakened, Greece, Yugoslavia and Turkey would have submitted to the German jackboot, and Russia would have been attacked from Iran and Poland at the same time.

OKW asked General Von Thoma to study the scenario and he came back with the same conclusion, send four Panzer Divisions, however he didn't see the big plan as well as Admiral Raeder, so he didn't stress the importance. It's ironic that later Rommel in 1941 asked Hilter for , you guested it, 4 Panzer Divisions. Hitler was only centered in on attacking Russia first, that's all he could see, and he only sent Rommel 1 1/2 Panzer Div (the 21st Panzer Div and the 5th Light which became the 15th Panzer Div. later).

Try it in SC and you win every time!

The Ukrainian scenario is another big misstake that Hitler made, easy to recreate in SC.

Not done with the book yet, so I'll probibly have more later.

[ June 05, 2003, 12:26 AM: Message edited by: SeaWolf_48 ]

[oliva2003]

Hi for everybody.

Iam new in this forum( I began to play Strategic Command 2 months ago and I could not stop!).

This question is for the user xwormwood:

Have you the game "Clash of steel"? When Can I get it? I have tried from some URL, but the game dont works.

If anyone of you want to play with a spanish boy any scenario by TCP/IP, please reply me.

Thanks. Bye

Eugenio, Madrid, Spain

[Shaka of Carthage]

SeaWolf_48

I have the same book. Also The Moscow Option by David Downing. They are both interesting reads, but be careful in drawing definitive conclusions from what is written. But it is fun to try out what they are suggesting in SC.

[xwormwood]

oliva 2003

First: COS is a DOS game which needs lots of free high memory (600 KB or more, when i remember correct).

Download should be here:

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=203

[Konstantin V. Kotelnikov]

A very interesting premise indeed. I believe that if Germany would have went into the Soviet Union as liberators instead of conquerors the USSR would have collapsed.

Could it have happened? Not a chance. Nazi doctorine preached that the Slav was untermensch and deserved an Aryan master. That russia would be lebensraum for the Germanic master race. Hitler outlined it in Mein Kampf. A sudden 180 degree shift in Nazi Policy would not have occured without tearing rifts in the German goverment. The rift would not have effected the Army but the Political Machine. A political machine that was evil to the core, a machine that allowed Goring and Himmler their own personal armies outside of the Wehrmacht.

They would have been better off to go into the Baltic states & Ukraine and set up puppet governments like they did in Slovakia. Granted we see it for what it was today, but back then they might have fooled the population long enough to defeat the Soviet Union. Then they would have been free to crush any popular uprising.

The Ukraine had always longed to be independant, and it had partisan groups that fought the germans and groups that fought the russians. And more times than not those two groups fought each other.

Once the einsatz battalions (death squads) moved in they lost any popular support they had gained. There is only so many slave labour deportations and reprisals against civilians that they were willing to endure.

Basically the native populations chose the lesser of two evils. Some argue which of the two was a greater evil, but history and ones moral beliefs will always fuel the arguement there.

[U-107]

The funny thing about WW2 sims is that if you were given a scenario starting in 1941 that asked you to re-arrainge the army groups as you saw fit, and you did so using the plans of the major generals rather than hitler, and go for a more concentrated assault and didn't make the stupid blunders which slowed down the advance on hitlers orders (IE the thousand mile drive of the two center tank armies) you'd probably win the soviet union hands down if they followed the same general stratigy, if not even a superior one.

[Liam]

I dunno about that, U-107

The Russians were willing to pay the #s game

Who knows how many they'd of lost to ensure those

two key cities didn't fall

did the Germans have it in them to kill them all?

[BuddyLee]

It MAY have worked for the Germans had they kept the SS and their police forces from devastating those areas.

In the book Barbarossa, by Alan Clark, he cites numerous examples of the problems between the Wermacht and the SS. In many of those examples the Wermacht moved in, secured the areas, and proceeded onward to destroy the Russian forces. They cared little for nazi doctrine, but cared a great deal about destroying what they knew could be a very strong Russian army if it got a chance to catch its breath.

Then the SS or einstatzgruppen (sorry about the spelling) would come in and terorize the population, causing numerous partisan groups to flare up, damaging the supply of the forward armies.

Very interesting to think the "what if's?" here.

[U-107]

Well, even with the plan as it had stood, the German army could have taken moscow before the winter set in, except hitler was more concerned with the POW numbers-but the surrounded pockets of demoralised, starving men with little ammo could have been held by small holding forces while the main bulk of German forces sped onwards to Moscow, and no matter how many peasents grabbed up by the soviets were put in their way, they would have won-even in the historical scenario my Great Uncle sat in a bus station just a few miles from the kremlin ("the bus naver came", as he ofton said...) so imagine what they could have done without the winter setting in when they first began the assault?

[SeaWolf_48]

The great thing about a game like SC is that you can set up the scenario if the tools are given to you. I wish that the tools for this Ukraine Scenario were given to us too see the results!

I have already tried the suggestion by Bevin Alexander about not attacking Russia until the Med and Iraq is taken, and Russia is destroyed every time. Just set the Russian option to neutral.

Again, the more options the better for Historic recreations......