You May Be A WWII Junkie

@DiegoMaxwell

Congratulations to Mr. Prewitt. It should be noted, however, that France’s highest order of merit is called the Legion of Honour (Légion d’honneur), not the Legion of Armour, and also that France doesn’t actually have knighthoods in the same sense as Britain does. “Chevalier” (knight) is indeed one of the Legion of Honour’s five levels, and the name is a holdover from the days when France still had an aristocracy, but the French nobility system went out the window with the French Revolution. I once saw a series of amusing cartoons depicting what life in France would be like today if the Bourbon monarchy hadn’t fallen, and one of them showed an irate air traveler standing at the ticket counter of “Royal Air France” and telling the ticket agent “But I’m a baron and I have a confirmed reservation!” The agent replies, “I’m sorry, sir, but the Duke of So-and-so has precedence over you, so we gave him your seat.” In fairness, the same sort of thing actually happens in real-life republican France. A few years ago, there was scandal involving one of the major D-Day anniversaries (I think it was the 50th one), when the French government contacted various hotels in Normany and appropriated some of their existing reservations so that various French officials could have rooms for the event. Some of those rooms, however, had been reserved by foreign veterans of the D-Day invasion. When the story broke on the front page of French newspapers (under such headlines as “Our Liberators Insulted!”), public opinion was outraged and the French government beat a hasty retreat. The prevailing editorial opinion over this affair was: Do this to our own citizens if you want, but don’t do this to the heroes who ended the occupation of France.

I mean according to the battle of Castle Itter, there was a SS officer that helped the allies out.

Good post. However, I would like to make a correction. During WWII, Winston Churchill (later joined by FDR) imposed a food blockade on Germany. The Hunger Plan was the Nazi government’s effort to deal with the resulting food crisis. The Hunger Plan involved the starvation of captured Soviet cities; so that the food which would otherwise have fed those cities could instead be used to prevent starvation elsewhere in the Reich.

The plan had never been to starve Soviet POWs. Those POWs were conscripted to work in German weapons factories. Everyone, from Hitler on down, recognized those POWs were an essential component of Germany’s war machine. That is why Hitler ordered the POWs to be fed.

However, the Reich lacked the manpower necessary to cordon off captured Soviet cities from the Soviet countryside. Due to the lack of that manpower, the Nazis were unable to prevent food from flowing from the captured Soviet countryside to captured Soviet cities. The Hunger Plan mostly failed: the planned starvation in captured Soviet cities mostly did not occur. That failure didn’t result in fewer deaths. Just different deaths than those the Nazi government had envisioned with their Hunger Plan. Due to the failure of the Hunger Plan, the man tasked with feeding the Soviet POWs didn’t have the food he needed to carry out the order Hitler had given to him: the order to feed the Soviet POWs. Because it was physically impossible for that man to carry out his orders, millions of Soviet POWs starved to death while in German captivity.

The Nazi leadership had deep-seated fears about Germany’s food situation. One of the reasons Hitler wanted lebensraum was so that Germany could physically feed itself, even if Britain imposed a food blockade. (As it did in WWI, and as Churchill again did in WWII.) The two most vital resources Hitler required from the western Soviet Union were food and petroleum. For Barbarossa to have been successful from the Nazi perspective, Germany needed to capture a considerable portion of Soviet oilfields, and a considerable portion of Soviet farmland.

To address your question of what Hitler should have done differently: he should have placed von Manstein in charge of Barbarossa in its entirety. Doing so would have resulted in a far greater level of success. Moscow and Leningrad almost certainly would have fallen in 1941, paving the way for additional German successes in 1942.

Thanks Marc. Exactly right. Wi try and paste and post in the right place, although I suspect Worsham will see it here.
Was at work when I posted and my head was in the wrong place, obviously.

@KurtGodel7:

@Red:

Perhaps the greatest A&A gameplay weakness is that tanks and aircraft don’t take attrition losses.  Historically, even very successful attacks severely depleted these forces.  Examples would be heavy losses in Poland and France as well as pilot/aircraft losses in several of the major early war IJN/USN encounters.Â

Aircraft were particularly prone to heavy attrition just operating.  And they were easy to target in suprise attacks at the outbreak of war.  But since the game allows them to be chosen last they don’t attrit.  Plus they can be held away from the front.  This is why the USSR’s air force is almost completely absent in the initial placement.

Perhaps the greatest A&A gameplay weakness is that tanks and aircraft don’t take attrition losses.

They do in my rules set!  8-) Every round of ground or naval combat begins with the dogfight phase. In the dogfight phase, all units present fire at their air combat values. Any hits you receive must be applied to air units. Once you have applied a single anti-air hit to one of your air units, you must apply additional hits to that same unit until it’s dead, or until combat ends. (The same is true if you apply an anti-land hit to one of your land units, an anti-naval hit to one of your ships, or an anti-sub hit to one of your submarines.)

There are other ways aircraft can be destroyed as well. In strategic bombing raids, there is one round of dogfight phase, followed by strategic bombers attacking their targets using their strategic bombing values. Strategic bombing raids do permanent damage. For every ten points of damage a production facility experiences in a strategic bombing raid, it is reduced by one level. While nations receive some money from territory income, most of their late game production will come from production facilities. A sufficiently powerful strategic bombing offensive can destroy all those facilities; as well as the underlying cities in which they would exist. The correct defense against a strategic bombing offensive is to build air superiority planes; such as piston fighters or jet fighters.

There is a second way of defending oneself from strategic bombing raids: airfield attacks. To initiate an airfield attack, send your planes to a space with enemy aircraft, and declare an airfield attack. There will be two rounds of dogfight phase. Any of your planes which survived that dogfight may launch one attack against enemy aircraft, using their land combat values.

Interesting. At one time I had an idea for a variant of A&A where unit placement was at the start of your turn and the purchase phase was at the end. The units purchased were considered “in production” and set aside until placement at the beginning of the next turn. While the units are in production the enemy can strategic bomb them before they even get deployed.

By doing this the intention was to make strategic bombing more important and more costly. The other difference was that interceptors defended at full combat value and escorts attacked at full combat value for one round. I have never play-tested this so it might be a game breaker. It seems kind of fun to me though.

As Worsham said, adding jets would have made it too easy: so many of us rank the 262 as the best of the war. He was mixing it up. Made me think a bit.

My first interest in WW2 was planes.

Thank you for your time and effort Worsham.

Wow, miss a few days drinking and dancing…well watching others dance anyways…but I digress.  We no longer have an expert on the WWII food thingee/justification whatchermacallit?

Wow mallery29. Did not know that. My knowledge of US history is pre civil war to end of the war.