Global 1940 2nd Edition Map Analysis

[CWO Marc]

SECTION 13A:
“PRO-AXIS NEUTRAL” BLOCK: G40/2 Map Inventory

• Bulgaria

• Finland

• Iraq

[CWO Marc]

SECTION 13B:
“PRO-AXIS NEUTRAL” BLOCK: Selective Notes

• Bulgaria
  Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact in March 1941.  It participated in the German invasion of the Balkans (its main contribution being transit rights for German units moving into Yugoslavia and Greece), annexing various territories from those two countries.  It did not declare war on the USSR, but its navy was involved in a number of skirmishes with the Soviet Black Sea Fleet.

• Finland
  Finland was a co-belligerent with Germany against the USSR in what was known as the Continuation War (in reference to the Winter War of 1939-1940), reappropriating Vyborg in the process.

• Iraq
  Iraq, a former British protectorate which gained complete independence in 1932, was important to Britain as a source of oil and because of its strategic position near India.  The British tried to maintain sympathetic governments in Iraq and had a military presence there in the form of an air base.  As the result of pro-German coup under Rashid Ali in April 1941, and with the subsequent arrival of German forces, Iraq briefly had the status of a co-belligerent with Germany and Italy against the Allies.  Indian troops invaded the country in late April, and by the end of May the Rashid Ali government had capitulated.  The British forced Iraq to declare war on the Axis the following year.

[CWO Marc]

SECTION 14A:
“STRICT NEUTRAL” BLOCK: G40/2 Map Inventory

[Mongolia]

• Buyant-Uhaa
• Central Mongolia
• Dzavhan
• Olgiy
• Tsagaan-Olom
• Ulaanbaatar

[Portugal]
[Homeland Territory of Portugal]

• Portugal
  [Territories Under Portuguese Jurisdiction]
• Angola
• Portuguese Guinea
• Mozambique

[Spain]
[Homeland Territory of Spain]

• Spain
  [Territories Under Spanish Jurisdiction]

• Rio de Oro

• Afghanistan

• Argentina

• Bolivia

• Chile

• Colombia

• Ecuador

• Liberia

• Paraguay

• Peru

• Saudi Arabia

• Sierra Leone

• Sweden

• Switzerland

• Turkey

• Uruguay

• Venezuela

[CWO Marc]

SECTION 14B:
“STRICT NEUTRAL” BLOCK: Selective Notes (part 1)

Disputable map situation:
[Mongolia]

• Buyant-Uhaa
• Central Mongolia
• Dzavhan
• Olgiy
• Tsagaan-Olom
• Ulaanbaatar
  Mongolia was actually a pro-Soviet communist state, even though it was nominally neutral for most of WWII.  It had close ties to the USSR, along whose side it fought in border wars with Japan in the late 1930s and later during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945.  It served as a buffer state between the USSR and Japanese-controlled Manchuria during WWII, and provided supplies and raw materials to the Soviet military during this period.

Disputable map situation:
[Portugal]
[Homeland Territory of Portugal]

• Portugal
  [Territories Under Portuguese Jurisdiction]
• Angola
• Portuguese Guinea
• Mozambique
  Portugal was under the authoritarian rule of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar at the time of WWII, but it traditionally had close ties to Great Britain.  Although nominally neutral, it allowed the Allies to lease air bases in the Azores from 1943 onward and thus technically became a co-belligerent against the Axis.

Disputable map situation:
[Spain]
[Homeland Territory of Spain]

• Spain
  [Territories Under Spanish Jurisdiction]
• Rio de Oro
  In WWII, Spain was ruled by ultranationalist dictator Francisco Franco, who had received substantial assistance – including military support – from Germany and Italy during the Spanish Civil War which had brought him to power.  Still rebuilding from that conflict, Spain did not have the resources to join WWII on its own.  Franco implied to Hitler that Spain would enter the war on the Axis side if Germany provided it with sufficient material support, but the two of them never reached an agreement on terms and it has been suggested that Franco’s exorbitant demands were in fact intended to keep Spain out of the war.  The Franco regime showed marked Axis sympathies early in the war, and sent volunteers to fight alongside Germans against the Soviet Union in the form of the Blue Division, but declared its neutrality in July 1943 as an eventual Allied victory began to look possible.  Spain completed the removal of its troops from the Eastern Front in March 1944.

[CWO Marc]

SECTION 14C:
“STRICT NEUTRAL” BLOCK: Selective Notes (part 2)

• Afghanistan
  Afghanistan maintained its neutrality throughout WWII.

Disputable map situation:

• Argentina
  Argentina in WWII had an appreciable Axis inclination – partly because of its large German population, partly because of its traditional rivalry with Great Britain, and partly because it was ruled by a succession of nationalist and military governments.  Balanced against these factors were internal policy disagreements as well as pressure from the US to join the Allied side.  As a result, Argentina remained nominally neutral for most of the war.  It joined the Allies in 1945.

• Bolivia
  Bolivia joined the Allies in April 1943. It was the only country to declare war in that year.

• Chile
  Chile, a country with close trading ties with Germany, initially chose to remain neutral (in contrast with many South American countries which, although technically neutral, tilted slightly towards the Allied side early in the war).  Chile only started to distance itself from the Axis powers in 1943, when it broke diplomatic relations with them.

Disputable map situation:

• Colombia
  Colombia broke diplomatic relations with the Axis powers after the attack on Pearl Harbor, provided the Allies with oil, and in November 1943 declared a “status of belligerency” against Germany after a German submarine sank a Colombian ship.  It was appreciably tilted towards the Allied side.

• Ecuador
  Ecuador was one of several South American nations to join the Allies very late in the war, in 1945.  Ecuador let the U.S. use Baltra Island for a naval base.  It was somewhat tilted towards the Allied side.

Disputable map situation:

• Liberia
  Liberia remained technically neutral until January 1944, when it declared war on Germany, but in practice it offered a great deal of aid to the Allies from an early date.  It served as an important transit point for Allied troops and supplies, and it became a valuable supplier of rubber when the Allies were cut off from other sources by the  Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia.  It was appreciably tilted towards the Allied side.

Disputable map situation:

• Paraguay
  Paraguay had a large German community and an authoritarian government which was sympathetic to the Axis powers early in the war.  It considered joining the war on the Axis side, but the US kept it neutral by providing it with aid and military hardware in 1942.  It only declared war against the Axis in 1945.  It had an appreciable Axis inclination.

[CWO Marc]

SECTION 14D:
“STRICT NEUTRAL” BLOCK: Selective Notes (part 3)

Disputable map situation:

• Peru
  Peru was one of several South American nations to join the Allies very late in the war, in 1945.  It broke off relations with the Axis in January 1942 and allowed its port city of Talara to became an American air base, and its navy patrolled the Panama Canal area.  It was appreciably tilted towards the Allied side.

Disputable map situation:

• Saudi Arabia
  Saudi Arabia broke diplomatic relations with Germany in September 1939 and with Japan in October 1941. Although officially neutral until 1945 (when it joined the Allies), it supplied the Allies with oil and it allowed the Americans to build an air base near Dhahran.  It was appreciably tilted towards the Allied side.

Disputable map situation:

• Sierra Leone
  Sierra Leone, incorrectly depicted as a neutral state on the G40/2 map, was actually a British possession from 1792 to 1961.

• Sweden
  Sweden maintained neutrality throughout WWII, though it allowed trains to travel on Swedish railroads between Germany and German-occupied Norway.

• Switzerland
  Switzerland maintained its neutrality throughout WWII.  A German invasion of Switzerland planned for 1940 never occurred; Switzerland was well prepared to defend itself militarily and its mountainous terrain would have made an invasion difficult.

• Turkey
  Turkey maintained its neutrality until 1945, when it joined the Allies.

• Uruguay
  Uruguay declared its neutrality in September 1939 and maintained it for most of the war.  It broke off relations with the Axis powers in early 1942, but it only joined the Allies in 1945.

Disputable map situation:

• Venezuela
  Venezuela broke diplomatic relations with the Axis countries after Pearl Harbor and provided the Allies with great quantities of oil, though it technically remained neutral for most of the war.

[CWO Marc]

SECTION 15:
OTHER MAP FEATURES: G40/2 Map Inventory

IMPASSABLE TERRAIN FEATURES

• Pripet Marshes

• Sahara Desert

• Himalayas
  (Named on the G40/1 map but not on the G40/2 map)

SPECIAL ACCESS ROUTES

• Panama Canal

• Suez Canal

• Burma Road
  (Named on the G40/1 map but not on the G40/2 map)

[Witt]

That made for a very informative and interesting read, Marc.
Many thanks.

[General Veers]

Excellent work CWO Marc, very well done. Gives food for thought regarding the status of Commonwealth Dominions, China as well as South American and Middle Eastern neutrals. One thing with Saudi Arabia is the map territory includes the British protectorate of Aden, which would then become part of Yemen.

[CWO Marc]

@General:

Excellent work CWO Marc, very well done. Gives food for thought regarding the status of Commonwealth Dominions, China as well as South American and Middle Eastern neutrals. One thing with Saudi Arabia is the map territory includes the British protectorate of Aden, which would then become part of Yemen.

Thanks.  Yes, I aimed to keep it a straight description of the political status of the various territories as they actually existed at the time and of whether they corresponded correctly with what’s shown on the map.  In the cases where the correspondence was arguable (or even flat-out wrong), I indicated this in the list so that people could make up their own minds about whether they might want to adjust their map accordingly, and/or perhaps make use of this information to see what credible possibilities might have existed for revised power blocks in the game.  I found various clear-cut cases plus quite a few borderline ones too, but in all cases I labeled them as “disputable” to underline the fact that they could be argued one way or the other.  The borderline cases in particular potentially have a lot of flexibility for creative use, since they offer room for interpretation.

One amusing thing that emerged when I looked at South America was to see that (with only one or two exceptions) the countries with pro-Axis sentiments acted like true neutrals, while the countries with true neutral sentiments acted like pro-Allied ones.  In other words, they all of them pretty much thought in one way and acted in another way.  I suspect that they all realized that it would be unwise to have a wartime position which flatly contradicted the position of the major power in their hemisphere, the US – so they all compromised, and the US went along with the compromises.  The Americans would have wanted all of them to follow the example of Mexico and Brazil (both of which not only declared war on the Axis but also sent men to fight overseas), but obviously this wasn’t achievable in every case.  So in the case of states which could possibly have joined the war on the Axis side, the US considered it acceptable for them to act like neutrals; in the case of states which wanted to be neutral, the US considered it acceptable for them to take this position on paper but to act in ways which supported the American war effort.

Regarding Saudi Arabia, I left out Aden/Yemen because it’s not depicted on the map as a named territory.  The game map omits lots of territories, and it would have complicated matters enormously for me to account for places like Goa, East Timor, Saint Pierre & Miquelon, and French Somaliland/Djibouti (though I did make a passing reference to Macao).

[Chris_Henry]

@CWO:

• Greater Southern Germany
  The area labeled “Greater Southern Germany” on the game map corresponds essentially to Austria and Czechoslovakia.  Austria was annexed by Germany in March 1938.  The Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia was annexed by Germany in September 1938; most of the rest of the country (except for some territorial adjustments such as the creation of the Slovak Republic and the transfer of South Dobrudja to Bulgaria) was annexed by Germany in March 1939.

Another little fun fact about this was that Poland actually got a small piece of the Czech pie as well, annexing a few majority-Polish-speaking areas at the time of the partition.

Another one was that Burma had a puppet government set up by Japan and had an army, the Burma National Army, that actually assisted the Japanese limitedly for a time, until they realized that Japan had no real intentions of honoring Burma as an independent nation.

Just some extra tidbits  :-). Very nice outline of everything, I enjoyed this!

[CWO Marc]

@Chris_Henry:

Another little fun fact about this was that Poland actually got a small piece of the Czech pie as well, annexing a few majority-Polish-speaking areas at the time of the partition.

Another one was that Burma had a puppet government set up by Japan and had an army, the Burma National Army, that actually assisted the Japanese limitedly for a time, until they realized that Japan had no real intentions of honoring Burma as an independent nation.

Thanks for that interesting bit about Poland, which I hadn’t heard of, and about the Burmese puppet regime.  There were quite a few odd clients states on the Axis side – some well-known (like Vichy France), some less so (like Manchukuo, which will be familiar to folks who’ve seen the film The Last Emperor), and some downright obscure (like the Government of National Salvation, or the Mengjiang, or the Azad Hind).  That last one was particularly bizarre: it was a kind of “government-in-exile-in-reverse,” a Japanese-supported, Singapore-based group which aspired to be the next government of India once the current government of India (which, inconveniently for Azad Hind, was still firmly located in – and in control of – India) had been overthrown.  Rather than “Axis Minors” (a term well suited to countries like Romania), I’d categorize those assorted micro-clients as “Axis Weirdos.”  But who knows…if you put them all together, they might add up to an interesting third-rate new collective player power under some kind of house rule.

[Chris_Henry]

No problem, it seemed a bit relevant given the post.  :-)

I agree, you could go on and on about all the little “allies” and “governments”. Certainly of note is how many of them were British colonial possessions taking the opportunity for a nationalistic stance.

[Wolfshanze]

Coming from your link regarding neutral rules (or the lack there-of) in 1942 SE… I see your political arguments, but what are the gameplay ramifications in-game?

I’m seeking reasonable neutral country rules that might be adaptable to the 1942 SE experience… because even A&A Classic had neutral army rules (lame as they were)… I don’t consider the “Neutral countries are to be considered like the Himalayas as far as gameplay is concerned” approach of 1941/1942 to be good solutions.

[CWO Marc]

@Wolfshanze:

Coming from your link regarding neutral rules (or the lack there-of) in 1942 SE… I see your political arguments, but what are the gameplay ramifications in-game?

I didn’t have any specific ramifications in mind because the map analysis wasn’t designed to propose any house rules.  It was merely intended to serve as a general reference source for house rules designers, to be used in whole or in part as they see fit.  Originally I designed it just for my own satisfaction, because I was irked by some of the inaccuracies of the G40 map and I wanted to do a detailed inventory of exactly what was right and what was wrong about it.  I posted the information here in case it was useful to anyone else.

[KaLeu]

Thanks for this comprehensive review. Some issues that annoy me on the map are:

• the area marked “United Kingdom” actually consists of England and Wales, while in reality, Scotland and Northern Ireland are also part of the UK
• “France” being used for only one part of that country
• “Russia” as the name of the area around Moscow: this may have been correct in medieval times, but Russia is of course much bigger
• “Holland/Belgium”: Holland is not a country, but two of the 12 (during WWII: 11) provinces of the Netherlands, and doesn’t even border Belgium, so a real “Holland/Belgium” area would look quite odd

[CWO Marc]

@Herr:

Some issues that annoy me on the map are:

Yes, I find those kinds of things annoying too.  I understand that from a practical point of view any game map of this type requires the simplification of a geographically complex world, but on the other hand there’s no reason why these simplifications couldn’t be more consistent.  In the 1941 map, for example, China is divided into three regions: Coastal China (fair enough), Northwestern China (also fair enough) and Szechwan (which doesn’t fit the pattern of the other two regions).  “Southwestern China” would have fit the pattern and would have made geographic sense, but “Szechwan” does neither of those things.  In real life, Szechwan corresponds to about one-twentieth of China’s total land area, not one-third.

[simon33]

@Herr:

Thanks for this comprehensive review. Some issues that annoy me on the map are:

• the area marked “United Kingdom” actually consists of England and Wales, while in reality, Scotland and Northern Ireland are also part of the UK
• “France” being used for only one part of that country
• “Russia” as the name of the area around Moscow: this may have been correct in medieval times, but Russia is of course much bigger
• “Holland/Belgium”: Holland is not a country, but two of the 12 (during WWII: 11) provinces of the Netherlands, and doesn’t even border Belgium, so a real “Holland/Belgium” area would look quite odd

Yeah, why not:
Britain, Southern Britain or even England & Wales!
Central France
Central Russia

• Never heard this one before! “Low countries” would probably do.

[General Veers]

One little quirk that bugs me sometimes is the unlabeled island of Corsica that is lumped with Sardinia. The island remained a part of Vichy France until an Italian invasion in late 1942. I know the Tyrrhenian Sea (SZ 95) is crowded enough already but Corsica could have been made its own territory that belongs to France. Since there is no complex Vichy political relationship to deal with the island could actually be a useful landing point for a UK assault in the 1st round (for example the Gibraltar fighter can participate without the need for a carrier). It also forces Italy to deal with another thorn before it can expand further south; I wonder if this played a role in abstracting it as a part of Sardinia.

[simon33]

Perhaps they didn’t want the effect on the game that would have.