National Betrayals

I’m altering ILs game “Great War” (thanks you so much for posting that  grin) so that you can play it freeform.

Play the game the way it was designed and make sure you got the concepts down stone cold. Then tinker with some changing alliances. Everything was carefully balanced, so if you want this 'freeform thing" you will need to start nations with equal forces or come up with a new configuration of alliances that are balanced.

I am not sure which version of the rules you got either so that depends as well.

@Pvt.Ryan:

So has anyone on this forum heard of a national bertayal? Where one nation declares war on another when they were allies?

There were a number of countries in WWII who switched sides.  Some examples:

• During the Winter War, the Allies considered helping Finland against Russia.  When Operation Barbarossa started, however, the Finns were co-fighting alongside the Germans, while the Allies sided with Russia.

• Italy switched sides after surrendering to the Allies in 1943.  Germany responded by occupying northern Italy.

• Germany was friendly with China during the early years of Japanese territorial aggression there, but later ended up at war with China as Japan’s Axis partner.

@Pvt.Ryan:

I was aware of the first two. What I mean is have you ever heard of a nation turning on one another in mid battle of in between battles? Like I said think Star Wars

The closest real-life situation I can think of is Operation Catapult.  Britain and France were allies as late as 25 June 1940, the day the armistice between France and Germany went into effect.  Just over a week later, when France and Britain were no longer allies but weren’t at war either, the British fleet attacked the French fleet at Mers el Kebir and Oran, causing many casualties and severely straining relations between the two countries.  The French certainly felt betrayed by their former allies at the time, and to some extent have to this day never forgiven Britain for what it did.

With all due respect to George Lucas, I’ve never heard of a case of an entire country switching sides in mid-battle.  However, it’s possible that there have been cases where mercenary forces who were hired to fight for one country and who eventually found themselves on the losing side of a battle decided that switching sides would be a more profitable and healthy thing to do than to stick with their original employer.

@Pvt.Ryan:

Can you do some research for me Marc? I need to now what will happen in my game if said situation pans out.

I don’t have time to do custom research for people, particularly when it involves trying to find examples of a situation that I’m reasonably sure never happened in real history.

From your original post, it sounds like you’re aiming to insert into a First World War game a situation derived from a Star Wars movie, regardless of whether it ever had any real-life historical counterpart.  There’s nothing to prevent you from doing so.  Just treat it as an alternate-history script, and invent whatever reason you want as the justification (if you want one at all) for this event in the fictional world of the game.

If you’re making this game for you and your friends, you don’t need to justify to anyone whether there is any credible basis for such a scenario.  I once read a newspaper description (many years ago) of a gaming convention at which somebody was playing a home-made tabletop miniature game involving a force of M1 Abrams tanks fighting against some Martian war machines from the H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds.  It sounded like a lot of fun, and it was so clearly an imaginary scenario that nobody spent much time worrying about the rationale for the events in the game. (And this was long before the Tom Cruise movie which updated the WotW story to contemporary times.)

It sounds as if you’ve already decided what it is that you want to happen in your game, so my recommendation would be for you to just go ahead and do it, no matter how improbable a mid-battle national side-switch happens to be in the real world (and in the context of WWI in particular).  I think the situation basically comes down to your deciding whether you want to go for historical realism (in which case I doubt your side-switch concept can be made to work credibly) or whether you want to use your side-switch concept (in which case you can simply toss historical credibility out the window, which means that you’re free to do whatever you want).

History is REPLETE with these kinds of examples.  Mostly they are not considered on the surface however, as often they are internal.

A coup d’etat. would constitue these kinds of changes / possible betrayals.

A good look at the Chinese Civil War should be taken.

Most of the major examples I can think of - where this has happened, are medival. Or atleast pre 1500 A.D.

Also note that many indegenous groups also tend to change sides during conflicts.

Didn’t the German states allied with Napoléonic France switch sides during the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig?

This game is already made. Its called “Attack!” from Eagle Games. It was so poor that they wont re-print it. Another game with backstabbing options is Diplomacy from AH. Thats a nice game, but no dice, man.