Heavy machine guns and suppressive fire

[JasonC]

The Capt wrote "I would agree with your assessment but maybe meet you half-way with a one notch tweak on motivation and then leave the rest for the player to tweak", and YankeeDog suggested that Elite or Iron difficulty levels could have the second notch.

Both amendments are friendly, I'd take that. I agree with Capt that small changes are better generally speaking, and we won't overshoot the right level of suppression with a single notch of change. And I think YankeeDog's suggestion would improve realism for those who want improved realism but segregate it enough that players who expect more robust forces could have them.

As for what is normal or feasible attacking a single platoon with HMG using an infantry company, I disagree with the statement another poster made that attacking in the open is always a last resort or desparation measure. It was an entirely normal operation of war in both world wars and every army conducted them and did so successfully. Yes they also used other arms whenever possible. But the organic support weapons of an infantry company were considered sufficient for it (though heavier support, both armor and artillery, were preferable, of course).

If there are little scraps of cover, from patches of brush and folds in the ground, patches of rocky etc; if there is some height to the grass for the approach portion - in CMx1 terms, "steppe" rather than "open'; if the attackers have their company's heavy weapons platoon with a few light mortars to put on defending HMGs, and MGs of their own to try to keep enemy squad infantry heads down some of the time at range; if the attackers then use fire and movement, not rushing, but instead building up intact attacking infantry at 250 yards or so that fires to gain fire dominance before pushing closer; if the attackers are not green and are well enough led to try to coordinate each of the above tactics correctly - then I think any infantry company could attack across open ground against defenders they outnumber 3 to 1, and expect to succeed at it.

When some of those factors are not present - no heavy weapons, no scraps of cover - I instead expect the attackers to stall for morale reasons. In real life, they would then become a target for a few defending mortars while pinned in the open, and that would push them to broken, and force them to pull back having failed. Most of the time, understand, outliers of morale excepted etc.

But it is not remotely an impossible operation for a properly handled infantry company with all its weapons, realistic terrain to work with, and proper tactics, to attack over open ground and succeed.

Would I rather put a full battalion of 105s on the defenders and walk in after a 20 minute pasting and mop up? Sure. Or advance behind a platoon of medium tanks that shoot down anything that tries to touch the infantry. But infantry was expected to be able to attack even without a lot of cover, and it regularly did so.

[The_Capt]

reverse slope is a defence against superior firepower. no such thing present on these test maps.

it was somewhat common to wait till 100 meters before opening up, because that's the kill zone for small arms fire. if the target appears at 300 meters there's not much point left to start pinning them down anymore, because they are able to lay effective fire once they regroup (and react to the situation, as you wrote). so you want to break them and rout them, not pin them.

HMGs overlooking a huge open flat field are an entirely different thing and you want to open fire before the advancing infantry can spot you. then once they have taken cover and are wondering what is hapenning, it's the time for you to drop the mortar package on them. and that breaks the advance, or at least puts half the men out of the battle.

Heh, well I failed to mention mortars on the reverse slope scenario, which is entirely effective for all the same reasons. Pinning an attacking force is never a bad thing. In the scenario I was testing we had a superior force ie US Coy versus a German platoon so for my test a reverse slope is the optimum ground not a wide open plain...in my opinion of course.

Now add wire and minefield to the scenario and we are in business!

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Heh, well I failed to mention mortars on the reverse slope scenario, which is entirely effective for all the same reasons.

naturally, but we could as well be talking about SMGs here. not very relevant for HMGs.

Pinning an attacking force is never a bad thing.

of course, but the "hold fire till 100 meters" is about opting for an ever better result -- that of breaking the attacking force. if you are just going for pinning, you are better off the further away you pin the attacking force.

In the scenario I was testing we had a superior force ie US Coy versus a German platoon so for my test a reverse slope is the optimum ground not a wide open plain...in my opinion of course.

yeah but the coy vs plt scenario is not very relevant for HMGs. the attacking coy will establish a fire superiority at under 300 meters (suppress & fix) and then will either flank or assult with elements and rout the platoon (or call support). if the defending platoon is "hidden", it makes sense to hold fire until 100 meters (very effective small arms range against upright targets) so that the attacking formation can be broken before it can establish the fire superiority and maneuver into the def positions (it also makes support calls meaningless as the coy wont be able to break into the def positions effectively any more).

[Magpie_Oz]

For historical exemples :

I saw on a documentary an old french veteran ou survived at 4 years of war.

He was in the company of the french poet Charles Péguy in august 1914.

They had to advance in then open and they did a first 100 m run. after that, according to him, half of the company was down due to MG fire. At the second run the company was defenitively stopped after only 200 M and the commander, Charles Péguy was killed.

Bit hard to use those references as tactical doctrine changes so much from WW1 to 2 to modern times.

I know of an Irish BRIGADE of 4 Battalions that was killed or wounded to a man in 200m on the Somme. Yet the British forces on the Falklands advanced over essentially featureless land against emplaced GPMG's and 50cals and sustained minimal casualties.

[gunnergoz]

If you want to compare CMBN with 1941 Eastern Front "Human Wave" scenarios, there are a few adjustments to be made:

1. the typical Soviet attack force would have been a mixture of "Green"/"Conscripts", with a lot of "poor" motivated troops;

(snip)

Not to divert the thread, but I felt I had to respond to this comment.

It is to me unfair to generalize about the Soviets by lumping them all in the "poorly motivated" category. I'd say the one consistent positive trait that many Soviet soldiers had, was probably motivation. Other things...fitness, experience, training, leadership, were often sucky, no doubt and especially in the first half of the war. But motivation was not usually their problem. If they were not fighting for each other, for the Motherland or for their families, they might be fighting for no other reason that there was no alternative, given the KGB troops right behind them.

One other thing (and just my opinion): Russians are, by and large, pretty hardy, fatalistic, pragmatic and romantic, all at the same time. The men were (and still are) expected to be manly, macho, stoic, brave and determined. Social pressures in the society to conform to these stereotypes were very strong and remain so to this day. The peasant levies of those days were used to privation and minimal resources to survive upon. All these factors made Red Army soldiers a pretty tough bunch individually, but many other factors (which I won't go into now) often badly deteriorated their collective combat efficiency.

[Sgt Joch]

Not to divert the thread, but I felt I had to respond to this comment.

It is to me unfair to generalize about the Soviets by lumping them all in the "poorly motivated" category. I'd say the one consistent positive trait that many Soviet soldiers had, was probably motivation. Other things...fitness, experience, training, leadership, were often sucky, no doubt and especially in the first half of the war. But motivation was not usually their problem. If they were not fighting for each other, for the Motherland or for their families, they might be fighting for no other reason that there was no alternative, given the KGB troops right behind them.

One other thing (and just my opinion): Russians are, by and large, pretty hardy, fatalistic, pragmatic and romantic, all at the same time. The men were (and still are) expected to be manly, macho, stoic, brave and determined. Social pressures in the society to conform to these stereotypes were very strong and remain so to this day. The peasant levies of those days were used to privation and minimal resources to survive upon. All these factors made Red Army soldiers a pretty tough bunch individually, but many other factors (which I won't go into now) often badly deteriorated their collective combat efficiency.

I have thought about this issue a lot. One problem with the WW2 Soviet Army is trying to separate the truth from the Stalinist propaganda which, to a certain extent , still lingers on.

You look at your typical Soviet soldier in 1941, 18-25, probably from a rural region; grew up under the Communist regime, learned to read and write in a soviet school; saw his parent's farm being taken away by the communists when they were forced into collective farms; lives in a "egalitarian" society where the local communist officials live in luxury while his parents often had problems feeding their children; was trained in an army with very brutal discipline where promotion is not based on skill, but on the whims of the commissar.

When he goes in battle against the very efficient German defence, he knows that the officers and commissars are far behind, the NKVD is behind him ready to shoot him on the spot if he retreats, but certain death awaits him if he charges forward, how tempting is it to just lay low and wait to see how things turn out?

We have all read stories about brave Soviet soldiers fighting to the death, but let's look at the facts: the Germans were outnumbered for much of 1941, the Soviets had generally better equipment, yet the Germans went all the way to Moscow and captured 3,500,000 prisoners, even though Stalin had ordered everyone to fight to the death and not surrender. The Germans were good, but not supermen. Everything points to your average 1941 Soviet unit as having poor training and motivation.

[Steiner14]

the Germans were outnumbered for much of 1941, the Soviets had generally better equipment, yet the Germans went all the way to Moscow and captured 3,500,000 prisoners, even though Stalin had ordered everyone to fight to the death and not surrender. The Germans were good, but not supermen. Everything points to your average 1941 Soviet unit as having poor training and motivation.

IMO both of you are correct.

First, the 3.5 million Soviet POWs in the first 6 weeks of Barbarossa can lead to false conclusions about the russian soldiers. I have met not a single Ostfrontkämpfer, who didn't rate the Soviet soldiers as extraordinary brave.

But the Red army from '42/'43 on was a different one than the army of '41:

In '41 the incredible initial success of the Germans was achieved, because it was lead as true Blitzkrieg and because it hit over two million of Soviet soldiers by complete surprise at the borders, while the german motorized and mechanized forces were fully intact at that time, had enough fuel to drive hundreds of kilometers into the back of the enemy, cut him off and deny any significant breakout.

Second the Soviet forces of '41 had no maps about their own country. They had millions of maps of Germany and Western Europe, but they had no clue, where they could march or move in their own country, in the case of being attacked (main doctrine: "The Red Army is an attacking army").

And, as third aspect and not less important, contrary to the propaganda, the people in the East initially were glad and thankful, that the Germans and their Alliies were about to defeat the criminal Communists.

In the case you are encircled, your commanders don't know, where they could go or what operational plan they could follow, then morale must decline quite rapidly after a few days. If additionally a political system that has never been voted or wanted by a majority of the people wants you to be a revolutionary soldier conquering Europe for the communist World Revolution and additionally this regime has been slaughtering many millions of the own people from 1917 on, the chances are rising even more, that you will not sacrifice your life in such a hopeless situation. No matter how well you are trained.

But that was '41. Stalin was clever enough to immediately recognize, that with the old doctrine he was about to lose the war very soon - or, in fact without the US-deliveries, he de facto had lost the war already. So the Reds grabbed for nationalism as their last hope: The "Great Patriotic War" was invented. Suddenly Commisars no longer were prosecuting "patriotic, reactionary elements", they suddenly held nationalistic speeches themselfes; partisan groups were ordered to capture german uniforms and to commit crimes with these german uniforms to incease the nationalistic hate against the Germans.

When this propaganda began to unfold - amplified by the big disappointment in the eastern nations, because their hope to receive national sovereignity from the Germans after being liberated from the Communists - the Soviet soldier quite quickly was turned into a nationalist defender of the "holy soil" of his "fatherland". Personally i find it very interesting to observe how quickly the Marxists abandoned their target of destruction of "reactionary principles like family, fatherland and nation" officially, as soon as their internationalistic cardhouse of multiculturalism collapsed (reminds me somehow of financing and building up political forces from another superpower and then quickly make a turn of 180 degree, if it deems appropriate and suddenly the history before never existed). But from that time on, war service in the Red Army turned into a service for the own nation, partisans suddenly were portrayed as protectors of the holy soil. The morale of the single soldier stiffened remarkably, because he was no longer defending an artificial Soviet system, but his fatherland. From then on the Soviet soldier preferred to be beaten to death in his hole, than to surrender.

But, especially after Stalingrad, when it became obvious, that the Germans and their Alliies maybe could be defeated, another aspect became very important IMO: that former POWs in German captivity were treated as traitors in the Soviet army. So on one hand the Soviet soldier knew, that the Germans maybe could lose the war, but as soon as he becomes POW, after the war he will be treated as a traitor anyway. A quite pragmatic factor why the Soviet soldier continued to fight, even if it was suicidal (this politics must be rated as equally important like the death penalty for deserting soldiers in all armies: if you fight, you have the chance to survive - but if you try to desert, you must know, you will definately not survive it).

But very soon after the war against Germany had been won, the next war, the Cold War broke out. This time with an even greater destruction potential and that the western regime was willing to use the atomic bomb, it had proven two times... Therefore it was not possible for the Bolsheviks to abandon the phrase of the Great Patriotic War again, because they strongly needed the support of occupied Eastern Germany and the eastern european nations against the western european regime. But this support could only be established, if the new nations were freely joining the sphere of the Soviet Union and if they would receive a certain amount of freedom and national souvereignity.

So the Soviets were forced to respect national characteristics and could not revive the marxistic dogma of a One World, or World Republic, achieved with the old program of forced destruction of families and destruction of religion and cultural fundamentals. They were forced to stay "reactionary" (quite similar to the western regime, which couldn't go the route of turbo-capitalism and globalization but had to play the social card, as long as the Soviet system existed). Therefore Stalin's invention of the "Great Patriotic War" as a clever lie of people without any feelings for a fatherland has never been put into question.

[Sgt Joch]

Steiner14,

agreed there is a difference between the Soviet Army of 1941 and 1943/45.

In addition to the points you mentioned is also the fact that in 1941, officers were chosen solely on the basis of their political reliability (i.e subservience to comrade Stalin) and political commissars, who had no military training whatsoever interfered in military decisions (for example, Lev Mekhlis's role in the Kerch disaster in may '42).

The Army was completely restructured in 41-43 to remove Commissars from all military decisions and to appoint officers solely on the basis of military competence.

[gunnergoz]

I have thought about this issue a lot. One problem with the WW2 Soviet Army is trying to separate the truth from the Stalinist propaganda which, to a certain extent , still lingers on.

(snip)

When he goes in battle against the very efficient German defence, he knows that the officers and commissars are far behind, the NKVD is behind him ready to shoot him on the spot if he retreats, but certain death awaits him if he charges forward, how tempting is it to just lay low and wait to see how things turn out?(snip)

I'm not reading propaganda. I'm speaking based upon my own observations of the people. I'm admittedly no expert on Russia, having only traveled to Ukraine. But I have spent years in the company of Russians and Ukrainians, sometimes in their own land. I can tell you that this culture defies our Western attempts to put ourselves in their shoes. They were not then, and are not now, like us in the West and we underestimate them at our peril.

Their culture pressures men into taking extraordinary risks and doing sometimes foolish things to prove their manhood. It was as so then and still is now. In these countries, people watch each other closely and are quick to judge based upon what behaviors they see. They are much less interested in being "different" or "unique" than we are in the West. Conformity is bred into them if for no other reason than survival. In those times (and still today) to stand out is to risk having your head cut off. Better to conform, follow the others and die a man, than to live and be branded a coward, your family shunned (or arrested and sent to a camp) and all death benefits taken.

You use the phrase "German defence (sic)" which does not do justice to the fact that, to ordinary Soviet people of the day, the Germans were not "defenders of Germany" they were INVADERS of MOTHER RUSSIA. Right here is a source of the people's outrage which is not to be underestimated. Yes, they had been mistreated by their own political leaders and often abused and starved by the Soviet ruling elite. But in the end, when all you have is very little - your land, your kin and your soul - you fight like hell just for that.

Centuries of living in serfdom and poverty made these peoples very fatalistic and yet also resilient. Yes, also compliant and often uncomplaining (in public) too but not unthinking sheep. They had to think of their family and of their legacy; any man among them who would turn tail and run would be branded a coward for life and even assuming he survived the war, somehow, he would return home to find himself rejected by his friends and family, unable to marry and even to find work. And that is even before the KGB gets ahold of him. So, lacking alternatives, most of them fought, bravely if they could, grimly if they could not muster anything else. As my Ukrainian wife says when she faces a disagreeable task "I do it because I MUST."

So, we may agree to disagree on this, but I maintain that Soviet soldiers in this time frame had many defects, but lack of motivation to fight was hardly one of them.

[Rokko]

partisan groups were ordered to capture german uniforms and to commit crimes with these german uniforms to incease the nationalistic hate against the Germans.

I'd be careful about that. The so called "Torch-men order" is for all I know usually cited by Neo-Nazis and revisionists and no credible sources exist for it.

[LemoN]

the NKVD is behind him ready to shoot him on the spot if he retreats, but certain death awaits him if he charges forward, how tempting is it to just lay low and wait to see how things turn out?

Watch less D:EATG.

While it is true that the Soviets used blocking detatchments, those were intended and used against stray deserters, not whole units. And I highly doubt that anything as portrayed in D:EATG ever happened. Hollywood syndrome.

[gunnergoz]

D:EATG ??? Enemy at the Gates? Hollywood as source? Don't make me laugh. Or am I misunderstanding the reference?

[ChrisND]

I'd be careful about that. The so called "Torch-men order" is for all I know usually cited by Neo-Nazis and revisionists and no credible sources exist for it.

Well, considering the source of the post, I'm not surprised it was brought up.

[JasonC]

"morale must decline quite rapidly after a few days"

Strangely enough, morale of encircled forces tends to give out right after the artillery runs out of ammunition. Funny how that works.

As for why Russian motivation at the rank and file level increased drastically after 1941, in 1941 is still appeared possible to surrender and be taken prisoner. By 1942 is was clear to the meanest capacities that that was pretty much a death sentence, and the population as a whole knew that the Germans had not come to destroy communism but to enslave if not annihilate the entire population. Russian propaganda becomes remarkably more effective when all you need to do is say "Soldiers of the Red Army - Save Us!" over a picture of a mother and child. And everyone knows exactly what you mean.

All that said, green troops break more easily if they have never seen real combat before; nationality has nothing to do with it. Happens to green forces of Germans in rebuilt Panzer divisions led by veteran cadres in 1944. Nothing prepares anyone for the horrors of actual combat, except combat, and living through it. The reaction isn't deterministic, but a portion of all units in all armies seeing serious fire for the first time, especially in bad circumstances (which happen to all armies but disproportionately to those currently losing operationally) - will come apart.

Men who have seen the elephant always do better. How much so varies in every army, but plenty in the Russian as in others in WW II were tough as nails; tougher certainly than anyone pontificating about it here.

[Sgt Joch]

Gunnergoz,

I may have to clarify my comments. When I referred to "Stalinist propaganda", I meant the history of the Soviet Union in ww2 which until 1991, was based almost exclusively on Soviet sources which had been heavily censored by Stalin and subsequent communist administrations. It is only with the fall of the USSR, that Soviet archives have been opened up and western historians, like Glantz, have been able to get a clearer picture. However, the traditional view of the Great Patrotic War still influences the viewpoint of many western histories.

Regarding motivation, you have to make a distinction between individual and "Unit" motivation within the meaning of CMBN. If I can make a parallel with CMSF, all the authors agree that individual arab soldiers are generally brave, you had many stories in 67, 73, 82 and 91 of Arab units fighting to the last man, even against impossible odds. At the same time, you had even more stories of entire units, even divisions collapsing without a fight.

If you have units which are poorly led, where "motivation" is imposed by outside coercion and where the soldiers don't necessarily agree with the Regime, you get poorly motivated units which are fragile in a game sense, even though the soldiers in them may be individually brave.

[Sgt Joch]

Watch less D:EATG.

While it is true that the Soviets used blocking detatchments, those were intended and used against stray deserters, not whole units. And I highly doubt that anything as portrayed in D:EATG ever happened. Hollywood syndrome.

Nope, taken straight from the history books. Trotsky started it in the civil war to prevent retreats. In WW2, the NKVD patrolled all the rear areas to make sure no one retreated or deserted. Anyone who was found without valid written authorization could and often was summarily shot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_troops

I can recommend you some basic history books on the Eastern Front if you wish.

[dan/california]

http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive

He has an excellent multi hour audio history of the Ostfront that references a lot of original sources. Some of it doesn't make easy listening, #%$^^ none it does ,come to that.

[Drescher]

Interesting discussion, though it has slightly derailed over the course of the last pages.

Whats the main issue then?

What is a mg supposed to achieve, this seems to me the issue here.

People mentioned the Somme battles to give example of mgs outright stopping regimental, even division attacks. But after all this was ww1, without the quite sophisticated squad and platoon tactics, that seem to have evolved in the aftermath of ww1(and even during it).

So whoever says the model in BN is broken needs to bring evidence, best backedup by reallife experience. Has anyone tried attacking a platoon position with mgs set up along the flanks to get the most of the grazing fire effect that seems to be present in the game?

[Bigduke6]

Nope, taken straight from the history books. Trotsky started it in the civil war to prevent retreats. In WW2, the NKVD patrolled all the rear areas to make sure no one retreated or deserted. Anyone who was found without valid written authorization could and often was summarily shot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_troops

I can recommend you some basic history books on the Eastern Front if you wish.

Question of scale my boy.

Just because a few NKVD units have wide authority to define and shoot deserters, doesn't mean entire divisions of machine guns were lined up behind the rifle divisions. From what I have read the big fear among the troops was getting leave to rear for some reason and having the NKVD inspect your note from your commander, if the Chekist tears up the note you lose all right to be where you are, and he can shoot you on the spot for that.

I also understand that notes from the commander permitting trips to the rear was a relatively recent development, as in the Tsarist army there weren't enough literate military police to enforce a pass system, and no I am not making that up.

Russian rifle units from what I can tell advanced in the open against heavy machine gun fire in the early war for several reasons, first of all because that's how they had been trained, second because their officers knew no better or even if they did they didn't feel like risking their own necks trying new tactics, because of poor intelligence, and because their society prepared them "better" for accepting the risk of walking into machine gun fire backed with efficient indirect.

You go a little down the historical road, and the stories about the MG units behind the lines waiting to gun down the cowardly pretty much disappear. Right about the same time the Red Army decided that no, there could be a party official with each unit but the commander was the commander and the commissar couldn't second-guess him. Which of course was a step towards the Reds figuring out that if you organize things right along a Front the width of a continent, you can convert 2-1 overall odds in your favor to 10 - 1 in the sectors you want to hit, and the Germans will never realize it was concentration of force not overwhelming numbers that did it. But I digress.

On the interesting subject of machine guns, I wonder if part of the issue here is too much return fire from the platoon coming back at the MG? Perhaps there are modifiers for "fire from different directions at me" and "multiple shooters aiming at me", and these are having too much influence on the MG's effectiveness. In other words, maybe the return fire is overly suppressive?

I agree that a main issue here is simply the infantry is not falling apart at about 20 - 40 per cent casualties, you would expect morale to fail at that point in the real deal but in the game it's not particularly a stopper.

But the thing is, we all remember those WW2 Rand studies right, where we found out that artillery inflicts about 80 per cent of the casualties and something like 3 out of ever 4 infantrymen never fires his weapon?

What about the game? How many infantrymen are firing THEIR weapons? Is it "too many"? If it is all of them or even most of them, perhaps that's too much to expect for a generic platoon facing an MMG in open terrain. If there are 30 regular infantrymen, average leadership, does it really make sense that pretty much all of them are banging away at the machine gun from time to time? Should we be asking, where are the guys that should be cowering/suddenly afflicted by the runs/criminally insubordinate/inspired by a looting opportunity in the opposite direction the moment they realized the platoon is supposed to advance across that open ground and an MMG is covering it?

I am not criticizing the game, really, as it tries to model the fighting that takes place. The thing is, war lots of times is soldiers avoiding fighting, and the more dangerous the war the more it happens.

It's sort of a chicken/egg issue here, because if the platoon started going to bits at say 15 per cent casualties then you'd get the same result. But if we are talking about modeling the advance of an infantry platoon over relatively open ground, and are trying to decide what is "realistic", then in a 30 man platoon with average leadership you are going to get shirkers, and it might well include NCOs and the officers. Real deal, that would reduce return fire available to suppress the MMG.

No idea how to model it.

[gunnergoz]

Gunnergoz,

(snip)

If you have units which are poorly led, where "motivation" is imposed by outside coercion and where the soldiers don't necessarily agree with the Regime, you get poorly motivated units which are fragile in a game sense, even though the soldiers in them may be individually brave.

Thanks for the clarification, I appreciate it. At the same time you and I may be looking at the term "motivation" differently, even in game terms.

I use it to mean the amount of personal commitment in each soldier to carry out orders he is given. This in game terms affects how soldiers in a team or squad regard one another and how they tend to behave when things go sideways.

Factors like outside coercion, political disaffection, and poor leadership can definitely influence overall morale, but they do not necessarily impair a soldier's sense of duty and obligation to fight for whatever he values most. As a Soviet citizen I might detest the commissars, fear the KGB, remember with hatred the purges and the artificial famines - but in the end, I will be most influenced by friends and family and my concern to preserve them and to maintain my image with them. That is a cultural issue that might vary with another society. In this respect, the Russians seem more Asian than European, IMO.

Whether or not they are intrinsically brave or craven, scared or fearless, dashing or sullen, soldiers at some point have to decide whether they are going to get out of their foxhole and move forward to do what they have been told to do. Soldiers who are poorly motivated take a lot longer (if at all) to decide to follow orders than those who are more committed (motivated) towards a goal. I would argue that most soldiers, being only human, equally value their lives, but some place an even higher value on other factors, which may lead them to overcome fear and hesitation.

There's a scene in Band of Brothers where Lieutenant Spears, who is notoriously impervious to visible signs of fear, comments to the effect while another officer still hopes to live through the war, Spears already considers himself a casualty, so he finds he can do things on the battlefield that self-preservation might prevent in others. He has conceded his combat death is all but guaranteed and this frees him from the paralysis that comes with fearing for his life. That is something akin to the "fatalism" that I have observed in many people from Russia and Ukraine. Life is short, you only have today, preserve and defend your family the best you can and hope they remember you as an honorable man...that's how many of them see things still.

All I'm saying is that a given population's degree of fatalism and acceptance of the likelihood of death is going to influence the way they fight. WW2 Americans, Germans, Russians, Japanese, Italians and so on...all these cultures had different cultural starting points with respect to how a soldier looked upon the tension between duty and self-preservation. Every man was different, but he was a product in the end of a culture that inculcated certain values in him that ultimately affected his behavior when under extreme stress of combat. So be a man be individually brave or not, he and his comrades in arms likely shared a number of beliefs that affected their unit performance and these shared beliefs could at times overcome individual shortcomings.

Generalizations are of course a very crude measure of reality, but we all know something of stereotypes and such that each combatant nation had of themselves and of the other side: Americans were reluctant to face direct fire, supposedly, while Germans had an extreme sense of duty and did so without hesitation, while Russians were herded like sheep until they overwhelmed the enemy with their masses. Some of these stereotypes were occasionally true, but hardly were they uniformly in evidence. But this is only a game and we pretty much have to use anecdotal evidence when hard data is lacking, as it is when measuring an intangible element like "motivation."

In the end it is a subjective decision what motivation level to assign to a given force. We have historical results to guide us (i.e. we now now who broke and who kept going) so that can be useful. What is less useful is assuming that the other guy is just like you, when we, today are not much like our grandfathers, let alone know much about the other guy's grandfather.

My sense is that wartime Soviet soldiers were on the whole very well motivated to do their duty. They were let down by leadership and circumstance, to be sure, but they seldom just packed up and surrendered without a fight...not on a tactical and individual level at least. Exceptions happened of course since people vary and ethnic groups in the Soviet Union had varying cultures and degrees of loyalty to the regime.

I just finished reading a book about Stalin's "court" and it was very descriptive of Stalin's disdain for his son who was captured by the Germans - Stalin pretty clearly would have preferred that his son died on the battlefield than allow himself to be captured. When the son was reported to have died during an escape attempt, Stalin was somewhat mollified for it showed everyone that his son was at least attempting to resist his captors. What was less forgivable was that he had allowed himself to be taken alive in the first place.

So I assume that you and I could create two scenarios about the exact same situation, units and weapons (say on the Eastern front) and they could well be very different to play out and experience because we each have different subjective opinions about where our pixeltruppen's motivation lies. Nothing wrong with that.

Thanks for bearing with me and getting this far (assuming you have!) It is obviously a subject dear to my heart. If that affects my perspective, well, so be it.

[Steiner14]

By 1942 is was clear to the meanest capacities that that was pretty much a death sentence, and the population as a whole knew that the Germans had not come to destroy communism but to enslave if not annihilate the entire population.

Reminds me of one of my history schoolbooks, where there is written, that the Germans liquidated polish officers at Katyn. I'm sure in a few decades this will be a precious document about anti german hate propaganda in the western regime. Or the story under tears about "Iraqi soldiers throwing babies on the floor", while a few years later Iraq even was having weapons of mass destruction like secretary of defense (sic!) Powell at the UNO explained while 90% of the world accepted this obvious lie and while the western regimes were applauding.

It's always the same BS from those who use uranium depleted ammunition today, or from those that threw atomic bombs on civilian cities, or those who continue to rob the resources from all over the world by establishing their monetary ponzi-scheme.

Because your "knowledge" seems to be based mostly on, hm, one sided "information" i want to present you an interesting fact, that immediately should give you a better understanding about the relation between the german soldiers and the population in the Soviet Union: The Germans were that evil, that the Bolsheviks had to threaten their own people with most severe punishments, if they were helping the Germans in any form. There are countless accounts of women, that nevertheless shared the last bread of their family with the asking german soldier. My grandfather told me, that they even had to pay, if they wanted something to eat from the Russians.

Rape was punished with death in the enslaving, annihlating german army - while Ilja Ehrenburg, writing for the Soviet "liberating ally", was officially demanding from the Soviet soldiers to rape german women.

If an objective observer looks the facts of both sides, not just what one side tries to present as truth about the other side, he also will be able to understand, why more than 10%(!) of all soldiers on the German side were volunteers of the Soviet nations which were - according to the primitive hate-propaganda you are believing in - about to be enslaved, no, even to be annihilated... We need the most severe words for propaganda, don't we?

Luckily the big problem for propaganda is, that it doesn't fit to the facts of reality, because only the truth fits (if you eliminate all impossibilities, then the result is the truth, no matter how improbable it seems). Therefore it is important for the perpetrators of propaganda, that certain facts are withheld from overall knowledge or free public or scientific discussion. And here lies the weak spot of all lies: search, find and identify the withheld or unknown facts and you will be able to get a much better impression of the overall picture.

Furthermore fact is, that the Germans have avoided to accept eastern volunteers for a long time. If they would have accepted the volunteers earlier, even more, probably much more, would have joined the german side. Not bad for an enslaving or even annihilating army, isn't it?

Too bad, that swinging the Nazi-cudgel can not beat the hard facts...

ps: i suggest you take a look how Ukrainians "celebrate" the victory of the Red Army as liberator over the denounced "enslavers". Then you should easily be able to recognize the big discrepancy between the official version and how badly it fits into historic facts. Could be a good starting point not to believe everything the MSM tells...

[Sgt Joch]

I just finished reading a book about Stalin's "court"

The one by Montefiore, the court of the Red Tsar? excellent book, I read it a few years ago, it goes a lot to explaining Stalin's actions and the brutality of the Great purges

Another good book is "Stalin" by Robert Service. He had access to the secret communist party archives and came up with lots of interesting info. I read his book on "Lenin" a few months back.

When you read the real story of Communist Party rule in Russia in 1917-53, you realize that in many ways they were worse than the Nazis.

[gunnergoz]

(snip)

ps: i suggest you take a look how Ukrainians "celebrate" the victory of the Red Army as liberator over the denounced "enslavers". Then you should easily be able to recognize the big discrepancy between the official version and how badly it fits into historic facts. Could be a good starting point not to believe everything the MSM tells...

That's funny, when I was there recently, I saw newly-wed Ukrainian couples still in their wedding clothes laying flowers on the local community WW2 war shrine. That is still a fresh memory in their minds. And my Ukrainian mother in law, who'd been a forced laborer for the Germans as a teenaged girl, still cannot listen to their language without flinching.

Yes, some Soviet communities (particularly in Eastern Ukraine) welcomed the Germans at first. Some people even fought for the invading Germans later, that is true - but not with much "motivation" as even this game shows. But the 90% (which you yourself concede did not go turncoat), had very good reason to resist the Germans body and soul. Germany invaded Russia, or did you conveniently forget that? Was Germany there to "liberate" the locals? I think not. You speak of propaganda but what I hear coming from you is the rankest sort of the same.

Spend some time with people in their own land and get to know them real well, before you make comments like that.

(As for the rest of the forum, I apologize for my contribution towards hijacking this thread and I hereby conclude my comments on the issue.)

[JasonC]

Steiner14 - Your stale Nazi propaganda is just that. Hitler intended a war of extermination in the east, he said so, he issued the orders authorizing every individual German soldier to commit murder in the east with impunity, and a generation of historians have established the guilt of the ordinary Heer in such matters, let alone the dedicated murderers of the rear echelons. The Germans murdered several percent of the population of the Ukraine stealing their food at gunpoint, renewing that people's suffering at Soviet hands. Russians who viewed the war as one of survival against the most appalling uncivilized butchers since Tamerlane were entirely correct, and none of it can be whitewashed away.

[ChrisND]

Reminds me of one of my history schoolbooks, where there is written, that the Germans liquidated polish officers at Katyn. I'm sure in a few decades this will be a precious document about anti german hate propaganda in the western regime. Or the story under tears about "Iraqi soldiers throwing babies on the floor", while a few years later Iraq even was having weapons of mass destruction like secretary of defense (sic!) Powell at the UNO explained while 90% of the world accepted this obvious lie and while the western regimes were applauding.

I seem to remember you being warned about this Nazi-apologist crap before, on pain of banning. Do you want to leave this place?