@Linkon:
Based on what I have seen of A&A players actions…
1. Japan should not have honored their Russian non-aggression pact.
Japan player usu attacks the USSR in A&A.
2. Japan should have sunk the US carriers.
Another common Round 1 move.
3. Italy should have developed better fighters, bombers, and air force training.
Would have made a big difference in many battles. Aggresive Germany players will stack air power to take Africa in the game.
4. Italy should have built aircraft carriers before the war started.
Their navy was 50% disabled for years after Taranto. This cost them the Mediteranian and Africa. Having carriers, the naval command would likely find ways to utilize them, and eventually develop defences by ships and ports against aircraft.
5. Axis did not recruit Spain, Iceland, or Turkey early in the war.
Spain and Iceland offer great airbase stations to blockade convoys to GBR.
Turkey’s military could have fought to close the Suez and eventually claim the rich Saudi Oil fields.
I agree that from an AA standpoint, a lot of what the Axis did in the historical war didn’t make sense. But a lot of that didn’t represent Axis error so much as Larry Harris oversimplifying historical reality. That’s not a criticism: there is no way Larry Harris could possibly have designed a game that was both balanced and historically accurate. If he’d tried to make a game that was both those things and had the desired level of simplicity, he would have taken on an impossible task. The game he designed makes good sense, despite (or perhaps because of) its lack of historical accuracy.
In the historical war, a Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union would have been much less practical than it is in AA terms. During WWII, the Soviet Union produced over 516,000 artillery pieces, compared to about 13,000 for Japan. The Soviets produced 105,000 tanks, compared to 2,500 tanks for Japan. The latter difference was exacerbated by the fact that Soviet tanks tended to be good, solid T-34s, or even T-34-85s, as opposed to the obsolete light tanks which constituted nearly all of Japanese tank production. The Soviets also had a large population advantage, and could field a much, much larger infantry force than could either Germany or Japan. Add to this the fact the Japanese Army was already bogged down in China, Southeast Asia, Pacific islands, and elsewhere, and the potential for a serious invasion diminishes further. Even if Japan did succeed in conquering the Soviets’ Pacific coast, Japan’s very limited logistics system would have precluded much in the way of further advance.
This is not to suggest that a Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union would have been an outright impossibility, especially not in the summer of 1941. But Japan did not have the resources to take on the Soviets and the British and Americans. It was one or the other, and Japan chose the latter. This was largely because the American oil embargo forced Japan to acquire the Dutch East Indies, which meant war against Britain. Japanese leaders assumed that if they attacked Britain, the U.S. would declare war against them as well.
America’s carriers were not at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked, or else they would likely have been destroyed. Japan made several subsequent efforts to sink those carriers, including the Battle of Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway. Both battles occurred within a year of the Pearl Harbor attack.
I agree that Italy should have done many things differently. The Italian military was riddled with problems, including bad or inadequate equipment, bad leadership, poor morale, lack of military discipline, lack of preparedness, and a total inability to unite doctrine, available equipment and forces, and the other tools at its disposal to achieve a larger strategy. Britain’s ability to launch a Pearl Harbor-style surprise attack on Taranto–after the Japanese had done the same thing to the Americans–underscores the limitations of the Italian military. Italian aircraft carriers would have been useful for clearing the Eastern Mediterranean of its British naval presence, and might also have been useful in an attack on Gibraltar.
Spain in particular–or at least its dictator, Franco–wanted to remain neutral, and had zero intention of going to war on the Axis side. His supposed willingness to join the Axis was just a sham. Turkey’s leaders may also have preferred neutrality to joining the Axis, though it’s possible they may have proved more easily persuaded than Franco.
It’s hard for me to envision Iceland joining the war. One would think that Britain would have used its powerful navy to send an invasion force to conquer it. But barring that, it would at very least have imposed a naval blockade intended to starve the Icelanders into submission. What rewards could Germany offer, or threats could it make, to offset that? From Iceland’s perspective, neutrality was almost certainly the best option.
But while Iceland was almost certainly not an option for Germany, it’s possible Spain and Turkey might have been–regardless of how badly their leaders wanted to stay out of the war. Suppose Hitler had laid down the law to Franco, and had said something along the lines of, “Join the Axis or we will invade.” Suppose he’d said the same thing to Turkey’s leaders. And suppose that, as an added incentive, he’d offered Turkey’s leaders a good portion of whichever land he’d intended to conquer. (Either Britain’s possessions in the Syria/Iraq/Jordan area or Soviet Caucasus.) The time to make such threats would have been 1940, because after that the German Army was fully occupied by its Soviet counterpart.
