New WWII Movie on the Way

Too funny!  :-D

Hey Kurt have you ever been to Auschwitz, Dachau or Wewelsburg?

Narvik wrote:

On top of that, the average and casual Italian at this point had a very low morale, since they by now knew that Italy would loose, even if the Axis won the war.

That statement rings false. Germany did not have plans to enslave Italy after the war. In his writings, Hitler pointed out that if a nation wants allies, it must establish a reputation for treating its allies well. It was a logical conclusion for the leader of any nation, and I have seen no evidence to suggest Hitler had deviated from that logic.

I agree Italian morale was low. There were several reasons for that.

Mussolini seized power through military means. His views were not necessarily representative of those of most Italians. Mussolini did not build a strong relationship with the Italian people after seizing office. He had no reason to rely on the Italian people to stick with him through thick and thin. Most Italians did not believe in Mussolini’s dream of a revived Roman Empire, and thought his foreign adventures were rather pointless. Italy was unprepared for war. It lacked a strong military culture and strong military traditions. Its army was not afforded the weapons which would have been necessary to destroy Britain’s Matilda tanks. Its military leadership was lacking. It’s hard to maintain high morale when it’s obvious that your opponent has a much better sense of what he’s doing than your own military has of what it’s doing.

Note that all four problems existed before Hitler came to power in Germany. It’s not as though Mussolini’s Italy had a great military tradition, which then collapsed once Hitler and Mussolini became allies. On the contrary: Italy’s military tradition and military preparedness were greatly lacking both before and after Hitler and Mussolini became allies.

It looked like a PT-6. They must be pretty similar.

I found a hypothetical scenario that pitted the Richelieu & Jean Bart against the 11" KM battlecruisers…suprisingly it was ugly for the French.  The scenario claimed to be using the Dunkerque and Strasbourg with 13" guns, but looking “under the hood” they were actually using the Jean Bart/Richelieu and their 15" guns.  Since the editor doesn’t work for me I did text edits to put in the actual French BC’s with their appropriate arms, ammunition quantities, and hull/flotation hit points.

The French get mauled!  It isn’t even close after playing it from both sides several times.  (No wonder the designer fudged in French BB’s with BC names…it was an attempt to balance the scenario.)  The heavier armour belt/turrets of the German boats seem to handle the 13" French guns, while the fast firing 11" German guns soon take out the turrets and/or magazine of the French ships.  In about 1/4 of the engagements one of my French boats pulled a “Hood” early in the exchange from about 13,000 yards (where the Kriegsmarine ships couldn’t even identify her yet but were reliably hitting.)  Boom! went the entire magazine.

I don’t know if there is some sort of artificial difference in the 3D model, if it is a reflection of the gunnery bonus for the Germans in the game, a particular range band, or even the 5.9" secondary guns of the KM scoring (vs. 5.1" for the French), but those quad turrets and thinner belt are proving a very brittle instrument of war.

And after you knock out the French guns, the stern chase is a breeze for the Germans!

I bet, many of you are like me, I grew up reading the Bantam WWII series of books. I starting looking at the number of books produced and realized how many i have not read.

What is your favorite? I love Iron Coffins, Samurai & Company Commander.

@MrMalachiCrunch:

As a Canadian, it never felt like we were the big guy the poor little USA was hitting the back of the head with a chair.  Of course as a product of the Canadian education system I feel this way.  It was never emphasised it was a US attack on Britain as Canada didn’t exist for another 55 years.  Yeah, we all knew 1867 was our Day 1 as a country but that was merely a technicality.  Of course in the 70s Canada was a great deal more lefty and somewhat….I wouldn’t say anti-American, but perhaps a bit defensive at perceived slights by the US.  Which was weird for me as I grew up 30 KM from the US and most TV on the rabbit ears was from Buffalo NY.

Note to USA.  I can remember not too long ago being pissed about a Canadian dollar only being worth 65 cents in the US.   Now its worth 1.05 or so.  You guys are like cousins who have bad spending habits.  I like you guys but you’all need to take note that you are slipping behind the others relatively speaking.  Having them catch up is natural, starting to watch them pull up then ahead shouldn’t be so natural.

I was more referring to the British Empire as a whole as its resources were tied up elsewhere in the world. What is facinating about the war of 1812 is how quickly the 13 colonies went from being British themselves in 1776 to more or less siding with Napoleon against the British less than 40 years later. Another interesting thought it that had the French actually won the Napoleonic wars I have little doubt that the fledgling United States would of eventually come under the dominion of the French Empire.

@strategic:

I may would have been a proponent of continuing the war to Moscow to obliterate Stalin after 1945, so communism would be nothing but a fad and dead.

If I remember correctly, the USSR had something like 300 divisions in Eastern Europe at the time of the Potsdam Conference – a rather large figure compared to what the Anglo-Americans had in Western Europe.  I doubt the Americans and the British could have beaten those kinds of numbers.  I also don’t imagine that a radical move like expending one of America’s rare and priceless A-bombs on Moscow would have done anything other than get those 300 veteran Soviet divisions (who had just helped whip the Wehrmacht) really, really angry at them.  The US and the UK being democracies, they would have also found it a trifle hard to convince their war-weary voters and servicemen to start a whole new war against the country which had just helped them defeat Nazi Germany, and which was getting ready to help them finish off militarist Japan.

At any rate, if you exclude Cuba and China and North Korea, Communism today is in fact pretty much a dying fad…espcially when you consider the amount of free-market capitalism with which China has been flirting for the past decade or so.