City Anti-Partisan Garrisons

[JerseyJohn]

Some interesting ideas have come up in the Army/Corps discussion. Among which was the idea of ersatz garrison units that wouldn't count as corps.

My suggestion would be assigning each conquered city a garrison with a small defensive value and a big anti-partisan value. The city itself would be treated as an unmovable military unit by the conquerer, the garrison wouldn't be a unit, but a value.

They wouldn't hinder a regular unit being placed in the city. In combat the garrison's small combat factor would be added to that units defensive total.

Upon liberating the city, the original owner has the city as it was originally and can't assign his own garrison.

Garrisons can only be built in areas that generate partisan activity and would cost half as much as a regular corps. There is no limit on their number as they can only be created in ungarrisoned cities, can't be moved, and can only hold one per city in partisan territory only.

[Lars]

That would be the easiest solution, to just make it a city upgrade ala AA. Strong enough to keep the partisans out but weak enough to fall to an attacker might be the tricky bit. Would also have to rebalance the game to remove some Corps.

[Panzerkeil]

Good point, Lars. The Germans had to siphon off a lot of front line personnel to keep their lines of communication open. It's hard to translate that to the abstract way in which this game represents such things.

[Desert Dave]

Would also have to rebalance the game to remove some Corps.

Yep, Lars, force-pool limits

Are included... for a reason.

O/W some marauding Nation might

Be able to muster - much MORE forces

Than was the case historically.

Say, GErmany as marauder, for example.

Too many units and they could make

That WW-I sort of "toe-to-toe"

Trench warfare there in Russia,

Which would get us into a different

Schematic altogether.

(... and many complained about WRT SC-1)

Though, you could very well re-place an existing

Unit with a "garrison type,"

But then,

As we can appreciate,

Other units should be REDUCED

In order to keep "force-pool"

In effect, and realistic

Insofar as what military man-power

Was actually available

For each Nation re-presented.

As is, we don't model EVERY unit

Nor ALL of the possible military,

Or quasi-militia forces.

We, rather, Hubert has, however, kept

The RELATIVE and comparative strengths

Of each Nation's forces

Fairly accurate, IMHO.

**Of course, any modders who disagree

Can always add specific units

To any OOB's - as they please. :cool:

[JerseyJohn]

Lars,

I like that idea, no need to build a special unit as it would function through the city itself. Perhaps it's effective anti-partisan radius increasing with it's assigned strength.

DD,

The OOB is accurate, but then it's made inaccurate by the need to keep so many frontline units in rear areas on anti partisan duty.

I don't think the anti-partisan units would have shown up as order of battle units. In the Balkans, for example, Axis Yugoslavians fought r Yugoslavian partisans. The same was true in Russia and also in France, where troops were drawn from within the local population to serve under the occupying Axis.

Frontline, mainly SS, units, were usually pulled from the front to fight partisans only after an area had been weakly garrisoned and local bands were able to finally combine and become a real military threat.

Also, WWI type trench lines shouldn't be a problem. There were no fewer troops fighting in WWII, the static lines were avoided (usually) by the advent of armor and air power, which even in their primitive forms were breaking trench warfare toward the end of WWI.

[Retributar]

From memory i recollect,...that 'Yugoslavia' tied down around 300,000 German troop's throughout the war!.

[JerseyJohn]

Yes. It was actually a war within the war. But without Yugoslavs fighting Yugoslavs, the number would have been much higher. Perhaps doubled.

I've found good books on most aspects of the war in Europe, but have yet to find one that covers this aspect of it.

In making the BBC documentary, The World At War, the producer says in his DVD commentary, that not being able to adequately cover WWII in Poland and Yugoslavia -- post German invasions -- was his greatest regret. But, with the resources available they did the best they were able.

Another consideration was to get the project underway as quickly as possible because each passing day saw more of the key figures dying of old age. As it is, the series has numerous great intreviews from people like Albert Speer, Adolph Galland, and numerous Allied and Axis generals, statesmen and admirals.

Okay, sorry about the plug for one of my all time favorite historical documentaries.

[carverrt]

I am not sure about this idea.

In this game partisans help recreate the historical operational threat of direct attacks and the strategic problem of pulling combat forces away from the front.

Partisans seem to work as-is.

Robert

[JerseyJohn]

Well, except -- going by SC-1 -- I always felt the number of units needed for the rear areas was a bit excessive.

I suggested in SC-1 that, instead of the swamp/mountain/forest idea, the rule be that each city must contain a corps or other Axis unit. An ungarrisoned city will have a partisan appear either within it, or nearby.

I'd have included Warsaw, Paris, London and Madrid (if conquered), along with all the USSR cities and Riga.

I think the partisans in the mountains idea woks better in Yugoslavia, where 3 corps are required to keep them under control. This is similar to the historical situation.

[carverrt]

JerseyJohn,

Historically, how many men did the Axis have in areas of Western Russia to control the partisan activity?

Robert

[JerseyJohn]

RobertC,

Offhand, I don't know. Don't really feel like looking it up but I'm sure it would have varied greatly between 41 and 43. Also, it would be impossible, in my opinion, to find out how many were Germans and how many weren't.

My reasoning, though, is that (in SC-1, not sure about SC-2) if there are 20 or so Soviet cities, and they're garrisoned by 20 corps, that comes to 1,000,000 men! I think that would be a very realistic figure. If you've got twenty cities, and need another seven or eight garrison corps, that brings it closer to 2,000,000 occupation troops, which I think is definitely high.

Can the Germans even build 20 corps in SC-2? I haven't noticed yet, but I think it would be a close call.

[Retributar]

GERMAN OCCUPATION IN YUGOSLAVIA: Revealing Information!.

http://reference.allrefer.com/country-guide-study/yugoslavia/yugoslavia171.html

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) under Tito also refused to accept defeat. It remained inactive, however, until Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

With approximately 80,000 fighters, the Partisans fought occupying forces, collaborators such as the Ustase (see Glossary) in Croatia, and their political opponents, the Cetnici. By the end of 1942, the Partisans had grown to 150,000 troops organized into two corps, three divisions, thirty-one brigades, and thirty-eight detachments. Axis occupation forces launched several major offensives to destroy the Partisans, but they failed in each case. Although the Partisans liberated some areas of the country, they generally avoided major engagements with superior forces.

Yugoslavia became an unanticipated theater of war for the Axis. Large German forces were forced to remain there to protect lines of supply to Greece and North Africa during the critical year of 1942. Nearly 600,000 Axis troops, thirty-eight divisions in all, were needed to control the country and thus were unavailable as reinforcements for the pivotal battles of El Alamein and Stalingrad. The occupation of Yugoslavia drained significant Axis manpower and resources from other theaters over a long period of time. Partisan pressure was a factor in Italy's withdrawal from the war in September 1943. When Italy's twenty divisions left Yugoslav territory, Germany had to commit even greater numbers of soldiers to maintain its position there. At maximum strength the German occupying army included twenty-six divisions.

By late 1943, the Partisans began to resemble a regular army. With captured or abandoned Italian arms, they armed 300,000 combatants in eight corps and twenty-six divisions. At the end of 1943, virtually all Allied military assistance was transferred from the Cetnici to the Partisans, whose operations had the potential of hastening the defeat of Germany. From then until the end of the war, the Partisans received over 100 tanks, 300 field guns, 2,000 mortars, 13,000 machine guns, and 130,000 rifles from Great Britain and the United States. The Soviet Union provided even larger numbers of guns, mortars, and machine guns.

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

AFTERMATH:

Yugoslavia suffered 1.7 million dead during the war, out of a total population of 15 million. Of these, over 300,000 were killed in action. Another 400,000 were wounded. Yugoslav sources claimed that the Partisans inflicted over 450,000 enemy casualties. The amount of Ustase and Cetnik casualties in that total is unknown.

[ May 03, 2006, 02:42 PM: Message edited by: Retributar ]

[Panzerkeil]

Here is a quotation from "Russia at War 1941-45" by Vladimir Karpov, 1987, The Vendome Press, ISBN 0-85656-077-2, page 139:

"That year, 1942, the Wehrmacht was forced to divert up to 24 divisions of its regular army to fight the partisans. But it was in the summer of 1943 that the movement had the greatest success. As the Soviet Army launched its counter-offensive with the Battle of Kursk, resistance groups mounted a concerted effort to destroy Wehrmacht communications and supply lines."

"There were more than 250,000 fighters in the Partisan units by 1944. The biggest group in Belorussia, consisting of over 150,000 men, worked closely with the Red Army throughout the year. When the drive to liberate Belorussia began, they blew up more than 60,000 railway trucks, paralysing all German attempts to bring up reserves. They entered the capital of Belorussia - Minsk - together with the regular army. Minsk had been one of the first big cities to be occupied. From the outset, the Germans were given no peace. Oberst E. Westphal wrote to his brother at the front on 5th august, 1943: "Here in Minsk we hear booming every day and at night there's firing just like in the trenches. Sometimes guns fire, or perhaps it's the damned mines. There are plenty of them here. The power station was blown up and we had no electricity for a week. On Sunday a car blew up by the officers' club and a locomotive by the water-tower. Many Germans have been shot in the streets from behind corners. I'm cracking up."

"In his semi-official history of the partisan movement B.S. Telpukhovsky claims that in three years [1941-4] the partisans of Belorussia accounted for 500,000 enemy soldiers, including 47 generals and Hitler's Reichkommissar Wilhelm Kube, who was killed by a time-bomb placed in his bed by his Belorussian mistress. In the Ukraine, according to Telpukhovsky, the partisans killed 460,000 Germans, wrecked or seriously damaged 5,000 railway engines, 50,000 railway trucks and 15,000 motor vehicles."

Now, even if we take into account the known penchant for Soviet writers to exaggerate, the partisans exacted a terrible toll of the German occupiers. Aside from the material losses was the hard-to-calculate but not insignificant erosion of morale of the men at the front, many of whom may not have had leave since entering Russia. The partisans attacked any target and showed little mercy. They even derailed hospital trains behind the lines and poured kerosene on the wounded and set them alight, such was their hatred for the German invader.

Russia was a graveyard for the Wehrmacht and the partisans haunted the soldiers day and night. They never felt safe when behind the lines; often they felt safer at the front than in the rear. They could never be fully exterminated and seemed to always pop up again when the units that hunted them moved on. Their operations were more significant than their numbers may have indicated, one million or so according to Karpov.

Having to keep a number of corps sized units in cities to combat them is not unrealistic at all. [Of course, in my opinion.]

P.S. I really recommend this book to those interested in the Russian war. It has about 300 black and white photos, well taken and including some of partisan operations. It tells the story from the personal perspective; a worthy addition to anybody's library of WW2 books.

[ May 03, 2006, 02:55 PM: Message edited by: Panzerkiel ]

[Panzerkeil]

Yugoslavia has the distinction, I believe, of being the only self-liberated country in WW2. Good information, Retributar, and relevant.

[JerseyJohn]

Retributar

Thanks for the great information. Really enjoyed it.

An Unanticipated Theatre of the War is pretty much what I meant earlier, when I called the place a War within the war.

Thirty-eight Axis divisions, twenty of them Italian. It would be interesting to know how much of the remainder were German because Bulgaria's only committment to the war was in Yugoslavia and Greece.

From Sept 1943 on, with Italy's withdrawl from the war, Germany had to commit 26 of it's own divisions to the place. Over a quarter of a million troops!

Sounds like Yugoslavia was to Hitler what Spain was to Napoleon.

In SC-1, the country can be controlled by three corps, and a fourth in Sofia (controlling a pair of Yugo mountain hexes) = 4 corps = 200,000 men.

Looks like the Axis, at least in SC-1, gets off pretty lightly in Yugoslavia.

[Retributar]

WOW!!!... Panzerkiel ... your and my post's shock me!!!...how could the German's have managed in WW2 with this type of Partisan opposition?.

I for one!, would like to have the option of having situations like 'Yugoslavia' Partisans etc, to be enabled in SC2!...Much more Wicked and Harsher than it is currently emulated!.

These situation's would make,_taking over 'Russia' a great deal of work and expense!.

[ May 03, 2006, 02:54 PM: Message edited by: Retributar ]

[Panzerkeil]

As it should be!

[JerseyJohn]

Panzerkiel

The idea of keeping the occupation troops in the city is an abstract way of not having them at the front, that's all. It doesn't mean they all sit in town and control things from afar, only that they're centered in the major cities.

Okay, so in light of this information, do we say "The hell with it, Barbarossa was doomed from the start?"

I think, clearly, Germany's best chance in the USSR was during the first year and a half, not just because of the Russians in front of them, but because of the Deathshead behind them, turning the whole country into a hotbed of partisan activity.

I agree that by mid-1943 the Partisan situation in the USSR was all but out of control for the Germans. After Kursk, it wasn't just a withdrawal; many German units had to fight their way through the partisans in order to get out of Russia.

No model I can imagine would realistically reflect the situation. We should understand, of course, that the Germans brought almost all of this upon themselves with their hideous occupation of people who at first welcomed them.

Same with Yugoslavia regarding the game model. It's hard to imagine a way of putting so many Axis troops in the place and still having so much partisan activity. For one thing, the partisan and Axis corps would be sitting astride each other with the partisans coming back again after being put out of commission.

While I feel the Russian (and Polish) partisan situation was, historically, avoidable by the Axis, I'm not at all familiar with Yugoslavia. Was the motivation purely nationalism, or were the Germans as stupidly oppressive in that country as they were in Russia?

[Panzerkeil]

Don't worry, I got that point. Much of this game is an abstraction, out of necessity. Otherwise we'd be pushing around a whole lot more of little counters.

[JerseyJohn]

Exactly. After a while, when there's too much micromanagement, it turns into an upaid job.

[jon_j_rambo]

Camp Rambo officially salutes the Warsaw Ghetto.

[JerseyJohn]

Brother Rambo,

I was thinking earlier about that, about how difficult it would be to simulate the Warsaw Ghetto of 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. That was why I suggested adding Warsaw as one of the cities that should be garrisoned to prvent partisans.

For all I know, the cities I suggessted, Warsaw, London, Paris and Madrid, may already be partisan areas in SC-2, haven't gotten very far into the game yet.

[Blashy]

I think the current setup is fine, use Corps.

It drains manpower from the Axis and that was one of their issues.

[Cheese Panzer]

Originally posted by Retributar:

WOW!!!... Panzerkiel ... your and my post's shock me!!!...how could the German's have managed in WW2 with this type of Partisan opposition?.

Well, they DID lose after all . . .

[Lars]

Well, to give the devil his due, Hitler had Yugo safely out of the war until the coup happened. Even then, the new government said it would honor the Tripartitate Pact. Was a war that was never supposed to happen.

So maybe we should get a popup option.