What is your best Axis strategy?

[Camicie Nere]

I found an interesting strategy for dealing with the Bolshies - quick dispatch of France, invade Baltic States immediately thereafter. Build up at least four tank groups for the invasion, placing newly-constructed ones in Riga.

Then, attack at the earliest opportunity, sending the panzers east as quickly as possible and by-passing the Red defenses. Head directly for Moscow - you can get there fairly quickly (even while maintaining integrity of supplied territory) and throw a ring of panzers around it. Since you have moved so rapidly, the Russian has not had time to build up a lot of units in the vicinity.

Here's the cool thing - if you have Moscow surrounded the Soviet takes a whopping 50% MPP hit to EVERY SINGLE RESOURCE HEX. Now he gets about 2 hundy a turn and cannot build up enough units to seriously threaten you anywhere.

So have the tanks stay put while your infantry and HQs and air units catch up while mopping up the Russian garrisons along the way. Once your support arrives, pound Moscow, take it from the West, and then take off for the east edge of the map with the tank units. You will be able to cut off the Urals from the rest of the map (maintaining the 50% hit to Soviet MPPS) and then bring up the support units to finish off Commies for good in approximately April of '41 if you are lucky.

Overly Gamey? Perhaps, but one of the main reasons why Moscow was so valuable in real life was as a result of its status as the hub of all Soviet rail communications. So a German siege would certainly played havoc with Soviet logistics.

Anyhow, I had a lot of fun knocking the Russkies out of the war this evening and thought I'd share the experience!

[Camicie Nere]

Also, to amplify on the last post, I would like to say that I think the strategy I outlined has merit in that it tracks somewhat the path that Hitler SHOULD have taken in '41.

The main structural problem with Barbarossa was that its ambitions were far in excess of the resources available. To wit, the idea of having three army groups each trying to obtain an enormous objective independent of the others was quite beyond the means of the Wehrmacht.

Alternatively, had the Germans put everything into the drive on Moscow and merely launched holding attacks in the north and south, they very well may have gotten there. Now they may have run into the problem experienced by Napoleon of a long narrow salient with vulnerable flanks, but that is neither here nor there. Apples and oranges, so to speak, in terms of the logistics involved and the fact that the Soviet rail system may have been fatally compromised with the loss of Muscovy.

This is why SC fascinates me - as a fairly serious (albeit amateur) student of WWII history, the game offers a method of testing out plausible alternative strategies that may have swung the hinge of fate in a different direction.

As a postscript, my own "ideal" real-life Barbarossa may have been a balls-out drive to the SOUTH, while mounting holding offensives along the rest of the front. Sort of a yoked-up Operation "Blue" in '41. That is actually what Stalin thought the Germans would do in '41 (hence the strong defenses opposite Army Group South.) In real life, success would have crippled the Soviet economy while giving the Germans everything they needed.

Of course Grozny is a hell of a lot farther away than Moscow and it is questionable whether the Germans could have pulled it off logistically. But therein lies the fascination of history (an, by extension, SC!) The endless parade of "what ifs."

[dasreich]

Wow, I dint think it was possible to take out the Soviets in the demo. I thought England was the limit in terms of major powers. Congrats Camicie Nere