Basic info on War in the West 43-45

[LiquidSky]

There is something unsettling about these what-if discussions. I mean, what date did the Germans decide that invading Britain was a possiblity? It seems to me that the date would have been July 1940. And yet, they were at war from 1939. And probably knew that war was going to be an eventual possiblity with Britain. So why does a Sealion what-if have to use this lack of preperation and then decide to invade?

Seems to me that it isnt a stretch of imagination to decide that the Germans make taking out the French then English a priority in their strategic thinking a lot earlier in history....at least in September 1939, when they where actually in war with the English. Perhaps they could have built some fast moving small craft that could reach the english coast and back during darkness. Designed aircraft that could carry torpedoes. More mines to block both end of the channel. Whatever. Even destroying the English at Dunkirk instead of letting them flee across the water.

Actually, thinking in general, the Germans have short-sightedness as a national trait. They never seem to learn (or learn only when forced to) from their mistakes. Most of their planned operations succeeded only against incompetant/unprepared enemies. Case White -- unprepared Polish defending an impossibly long front. Case Yellow -- French don't guard the natural River defense after the ardennes (although they almost made it, Guderian called crossing the Meuse a miracle). Citadel - a big failure..I mean really, ignore the million russians on the other flanks and put all your eggs in one basket? Or the Bulge? Tunisia, while Stalingrad was being waged. Or my favourite, Operation Konrad (aka kicking out not one, but two Russian fronts from Hungary).

I think the reason these ww2 games can be so much fun to play is they usually give you really good pieces (since the Germans did very well tactically) and allow us, with our hindsight and god like powers of observation and control, to not bungle along like the Germans. In other words, all the good stuff is put in the game, and the bad stuff put in our control. (and when some of this bad stuff is forced in as rules, like the blizzard effects, then listen to the screaming).

The allies, in contrast, learned from their mistakes. Followed reasonable strategic goals. Planned logistics..production. When a disaster happened, they figured out what went wrong and fixed it. ex..horrible paradrops in Sicily.. Kasserine pass battle... unworkable russian army. I mean, it took all of two days for the Russians to start planning how to rebuild their army. When a disaster happened to the Germans, they just figured out a way to blame somebody.

Hmm..this post suddenly went off on a tangent.

Another thing..the Germans outnumbered the allies at Normandy. Had the best formations and lots of them ( 9th and 10th SS, 1st and 2nd SS, Panzer Lehr, 17 SS PzGr, FJ , 12th SS,..even the 2nd and 21st panzer divs) and were still incapable of pushing the allies back let alone wiping a beachhead out.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky
There is something unsettling about these what-if discussions. I mean, what date did the Germans decide that invading Britain was a possiblity? It seems to me that the date would have been July 1940. And yet, they were at war from 1939. And probably knew that war was going to be an eventual possiblity with Britain. So why does a Sealion what-if have to use this lack of preperation and then decide to invade?

Earliest plans proposed a mid-August start, but due to unpreparedness of all 3 branches of the Wehrmacht, i.e. lack of progress in the air war, lack of transport and support by the Navy, and issues with staging and especially protecting habors and forward supply dumps from British bombing raids in case of Wehrmacht, the dates kept being continuously pushed off.
Hitler's meddling added on top, and ultimately bad weather and failure of the Luftwaffe were probably key parameters to postpone preparations by late 10/40 to spring 1941. Certainly at this time, the promises of the Wehrmacht and the Navy, each following its own "specialized landing-craft" building program, to provide sufficient means by spring made this decision seem reasonable.

Simultaneously, other occurrences may have played some role in the decisions regarding Sea Lion, too: the Germans were evaluating the option to attack Gibraltar by land from Spain (Operation Felix) since August, and Italians tried to help convincing Franco to allow Axis forces to transit, or even join the Axis. Franco declined, foremost for reasons of Spain not being economically ready and able to sustain a war (Canadian, US and British indeed provided cheap food deliveries in 41, I believe).
In autumn 40, the Italians also attempted their disastrous offensive towards Egypt, eventually leading to loosing much including the Cyrenaika. Almost concomitantly, they attacked the Greek, inducing British landings "at the soft underbelly" of Europe, and suffering a bad defeat there as well.
Both Italian disasters prompted German attention, and the early idea of sending a small Panzer or Recon formation to participate in the invasion of Egypt turned into the need to send larger formations with Rommel to North Africa to prevent the loss of Tunisia, and the risk of Vichy France, who lately had been very cooperate with the Germans, to join de Gaulle and the British. The Albania/Greece debacle forced the Germans to form and execute contingency plan "Marita" to bail out the Italians and secure the northern Mediterranean against the British (danger of bombing Ploesti). That caused a postponement of Barbarossa, initially by 3 weeks, but after also Yugoslavia surprisingly did not join the Axis despite initially positive indication, and Greece had also to be secured in its entirety, the jump-off date of Barbarossa was delayed until June.

Surprisingly, even after the early months of Barbarossa, Hilter asked the preparations for transferring armor to North Africa in 1942 and for "Felix" as well as "Sea Lion" continued. He even asked for studies for a later offensive from Baku into India! Obviously, that's how unrealistic his thinking was.

As for the game, why not sort of a "Hakku Ichu" Scenario 2 for the Germans, which could give them some extra benefits to mimic early preparation. WitW 39/40 would seem like a little futile exercise if it sort of came down to a 4 turn Polish campaign (with surprise rules), an 10 turn French scenario, and perhaps the Italian-Greek episode. I don't see harm in alternative scenarios that give the underdog some extra potential to explore "what ifs". After all, if it is not that what we do, we could as well read good books.

[Dili]

As was to be expect we will see less and less of the Mediterranean warfare. Sooner or later we will see almost nothing. Which is to be expect since they don't want to understand it.

[LiquidSky]

Only thing to understand is the axis should have stayed out of Africa. Too much effort for too little gain.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky
Only thing to understand is the axis should have stayed out of Africa. Too much effort for too little gain.

Well, the original thought from July 40 sounded reasonable, i.e. "Felix" to take Gibraltar by autumn (as well as the Canary islands, i.e. seize them, or assist/force the Portuguese to better protect them), and a simultaneous attack by something like 10 Italian Divisions against a mere 2 or 3 British (I can look up the exact numbers the Lagebericht for OKW considered) to first bring the Suez channel into Ju-87 range, and ultimately conquer Cairo and close the Mediterranean for Allied intervention.

Also the situation in the Vichy French and Italian colonies was a reason why the Germans wanted an open route to North Africa. de Gaulle was causing great stirr-ups by late 40 and early 41, and the Italians had a disaster at their hand at the horn of Africa. In neither case, naturally, the British allowed shipping of troops to subdue the uprisings, not even by their former allies. In fact, in Syria the Vichy French performed a successful offensive against British, Indian and Australian troops, and Germans tried to get Turkey to join Axis, or at least allow train traffic to support Syria.

What OKW expected in neither in Eygypt, nor in Albania/Greece, was such a disastrous showing of the Italians. The Duce requested the use of German divisions, not only because of their better equipment and training, but also as a measure to boost morale. Add the British attack on Taranto, disabling good part of the fleet, and maybe your point rings truer then ever.

Interestingly, the Germans also had a small involvement in early 41 in Iraq. It must have been just a few dozen planes, and a companies of men or so, perhaps just sort of some military advisers. I have trying to find out more about this peculiarity, but there seems to be little known about that. Anybody a good suggestion?

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky

Only thing to understand is the axis should have stayed out of Africa. Too much effort for too little gain.

Warspite1

Italy staying out of Africa was hardly going to happen - they had an Empire there!!

[Darojax]

Alright, so I've semi-read this thread. I would like to say that being a fairly experienced hex-war gamer, WitE is the best hex war game I have ever played, by far. I am not talking solely about the level of realism logistically, or any details like that, but more the general feel and joy, and playability of the game, the unit counters, and just overall a totally superb an awesome game.

It seems that some of us seek perfection so much that we forget that afterall, this is not reality (fortunately) but computer games we are discussing. Also, I find it would be seriously unwise to bite the hand that feeds us, so with all due respect, I think we all seriously owe it to the game developers to treat them with utmost respect and gratitude for what they are doing, and how they are doing it; with proper manners and professionalism. Afterall, if we do not like the game they are creating, lets feel free to go off and program the thing ourselves. If we can. ^^

Personally, I am looking forward to WitW with orgasmic expectations (sorry, best description I could make). If it holds the same standard as WitE this is going to be one of the the greatest gaming experiences in my computer life (25 years or so). To the developers, I would like to say that I think it would be good to remember that all the stubborn and most of the time out of place and rude criticism that WitW sometimes have gotten in reality stems from a deep rooted love from these players to yourselves and your game-creations, and they are just so scared that the new game will not be as good as they hope/need it to be.

In any case, I want to wish good luck to the whole developer team. You are bringing quality games onto the market in a world where many of the games today are commercially motivated. It is the companies like Matrix Games that keeps the gaming world alive, and for that at least I thankyou. May WiTW be as good as I think it will be, another superb success.

Honour and Decency


// Daniel

[JSBoomer]

Gentlemen

I sorry if this question has allready been answered, however I do have a question related to the eventual Full version. Will the Germans still have historical withdrawls? Or will he be able to able to make his own decision on what forces allocated to each front?


I am very much looking forward to this game and the eventual Full version. Keep of the great work guys!

[Joel Billings]

Not sure what you mean by "full version". In War in the West 43-45 our current plan is to have an East Front box that will allow the player some limited choices regarding movement of units back and forth between east and west. Since we don't have that designed yet, we currently are using a system of withdrawals and reinforcements for the Germans similar to what we had in WitE. We hope to provide the East Front box as an optional rule, so players can decide to use it or not, but it is too early to say for sure what will happen. If by full version, you mean War in Europe, then that's still a long ways off, but in theory a German player would have control of his units, subject to certain garrison requirements (to accomodate the need to both garrision conquered territory and protect against the not totally understood Allied amphibous capability (or lack thereof). It is way to early to decide out how this will ultimately be dealt with.

[gids]

sounds great

[JSBoomer]

Thanks for the quick reply Joel, and sorry I meant War in Europe when I said full version. I didn't know that it had a name already. It certainly sounds like a dream game to me and I am sure it will be worth the wait. Thanks for the info on some your the thoughts you guys have on handling what has certainly become a very sensitive topic. I like where you guys are going with this.

I am just waiting for the fights over which each western country should have better stats than the rest as everyone knows their troops were the best it the war...

In the mean time I eagerly look forward to War in the West, I can see from your screne shots that it some time off however I think it looks very promising.

[orey22]

I can't wait for War in the West, & War in Europe! This may have been discussed somewhere, but I was curious if there's any plan to include the units that make up the divisions. In the original game ( War in the East ), you could attach Brigades / Regiments to each division, or transfer them back to HQ etc. In the Newer War in the East you just get a listing of Men, Tanks, Guns, I'd love to see the detail come back, and allow the user to construct the Division's themselves based on available Brigades / Regiments. Again, if this has been asked I apoligize. Thanks!

[ClaudeJ]

Here is something that may become useful at some point:

GoogleMaps: Belgium - 1:250,000 - 1:50,000 - 1937-44

If you do plan to include the Belgian army, I do have first hand sources about it (ie: orbat edited by the Ministry of Defence in 1940, as illustrated below, a postwar wallmap displaying the whole army's deployment down to battalion level, even company level for some light units).


(this pic actually is the Flemish speaking version one can see at the Fort Eben Emael, my version is French speaking)


By the way, you probably know this source already but if you don't, here it is:


Rhineland railways, 1944: http://pkjs.de/bahn/Kursbuch1944/Teil3/ ... nd_250.jpg
German Domestic long distance railways, 1944: http://pkjs.de/bahn/Kursbuch1944/Fernve ... Inland.jpg
German "International" railways, 1944: http://pkjs.de/bahn/Kursbuch1944/Fernve ... usland.jpg

http://pkjs.de/bahn/Kursbuch1944/Kursbuchtitel.html

Good luck with this project, It's on my wishlist already.

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: orey22

I can't wait for War in the West, & War in Europe! This may have been discussed somewhere, but I was curious if there's any plan to include the units that make up the divisions. In the original game ( War in the East ), you could attach Brigades / Regiments to each division, or transfer them back to HQ etc. In the Newer War in the East you just get a listing of Men, Tanks, Guns, I'd love to see the detail come back, and allow the user to construct the Division's themselves based on available Brigades / Regiments. Again, if this has been asked I apoligize. Thanks!

I'd be surprised if this happens, Orey, in that it expands the OOB work by about 700% and wasn't adopted in WitE.

I'd probably appreciate the ability to break down Tank formations into constituent formations (Eg Infantry and armour regiments) since the Germans committed large numbers of Panzer Divisions to the campaign in the west, and they often fought on the front line rather than as a mobile reserve. In these circumstances, being able to Garrison Caen (for example) with a Pzgr Regiment rather than a mixed Tank/infantry Kampfgruppe where the tanks are immediately vulnerable would be appreciated.

Outside of that, I'm happy with the stock way of handling constituent regiments.

Regards,
john.

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky

Only thing to understand is the axis should have stayed out of Africa. Too much effort for too little gain.

I disagree. Without the Tunisian bridgehead, the Allies would be capable of trouble anywhere on the southern flank several months earlier than they were.

An unfettered buildup of forces in North Africa rather than Torch, Alamein and Tunis might have allowed the Allies to land somewhere in the southern mainland from early 1943. If the landings in Sicily put paid to Kursk, what would a landing in Italy, southern France or (even worse) the Balkans have done in the first three months of 1943 as Army Group South attempted to prevent a complete collapse of its position?

Tunisograd and Stalingrad allowed the Germans the time to stabilise an almost hopeless position in the east.

Regards,
ID

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



There is something unsettling about these what-if discussions. I mean, what date did the Germans decide that invading Britain was a possiblity? It seems to me that the date would have been July 1940. And yet, they were at war from 1939. And probably knew that war was going to be an eventual possiblity with Britain. So why does a Sealion what-if have to use this lack of preperation and then decide to invade?

Because your alternative posits that the Reich began actively switching war production and priorities for the next war before the current one had even been won.

Put another way. With invasion of Britain a fear (if not actually realistic) and lots of strategic committments in the far east and Africa draining resources, would you have expected the British to prioritise landing craft production in 1940/41 ready for Overlord, which they knew would be required at some point?

The Germans were attempting to build a maritime capability, but it was still 5-10 years off.

Seems to me that it isnt a stretch of imagination to decide that the Germans make taking out the French then English a priority in their strategic thinking a lot earlier in history....at least in September 1939, when they where actually in war with the English. Perhaps they could have built some fast moving small craft that could reach the english coast and back during darkness.

They did, they were called E-Boats, but unless your only interest was taking and holding (for all of an hour) the Portable tourist toilets on the beaches, then they weren't an operational solution to the conundrum of invading Britain.

Designed aircraft that could carry torpedoes. More mines to block both end of the channel.

They had no real need for one, and the other is a risky strategy. Britain had plenty of minesweepers.

Whatever. Even destroying the English at Dunkirk instead of letting them flee across the water.

I've long been surprised there isn't an alternate campaign in WitE that allocates extra resources to Germany on the basis that The British were trapped at Dunkirk and made a separate peace. Churchill's position if the field Army had been captured was by no means completely secure. This is the only plausible alternate history scenario I could envisage.

Actually, thinking in general, the Germans have short-sightedness as a national trait. They never seem to learn (or learn only when forced to) from their mistakes. Most of their planned operations succeeded only against incompetant/unprepared enemies.

Case White -- unprepared Polish defending an impossibly long front.

Well, this is one of those times when you realise history and war fighting is not a map exercise. The Poles were deployed as they were because they didn't want to concede hundreds of square miles and hundreds of thousands of civilians to the enemy. It was Munich, not their deployment, which ultimately undid the Poles. Besides, German performance in this conflict was not great. Contrary to...

They never seem to learn (or learn only when forced to) from their mistakes

...they instituted a general lessons learned and subsequent Army wide training program to correct whet they felt were the highlighted deficiencies of the Polich campaign.

Case Yellow -- French don't guard the natural River defense after the ardennes (although they almost made it, Guderian called crossing the Meuse a miracle).

The French did guard it. Two of the crossings Guderian tried all but failed IIRC. The French also had opportunities to defeat the crossing by counterattack when XXI Corp arrived on the flank. The fact was the Germans were bolder and moved more quickly and with better fighting power than the French did.

Citadel - a big failure..I mean really, ignore the million russians on the other flanks and put all your eggs in one basket?

I suppose my first response re questions of Citadel is what else was there to do? You can't divorce the eastern front from the rest of the war, even if most histories tend to be campaign ones that focus on a very narrow portion of the front or timeframe. In the Spring of 1943, an Army that viewed the offensive as the only valid method of war looked for something to do in the east. They knew the Allies would attempt a landing in the west in 1943 at some point draining off armour and respources, so what was there to do whilst they were still strong enough to do something?

The only alternatives to Kursk (Manstein's mobile warfare proposals, the so called backhands) were all predicated on the Soviets breaking through operationally in one sector it seems to me. Kursk was not that draining a battle for the Germans, so look what happens afterwards. A massive assault on Orel north of the Kursk Bulge. The Germans make a fighting withdrawal but it takes most of AGC's formations to prevent collapse.

A massive assault along the Mius in the deep south Manstein manouvres his mobile forces to contain it and throw it back, and as he is in the process of doing so, out pops a million man assault (Rumantsiev) south of the old Kursk salient and into Kharkov. Any backhand blow in 1943 trapping the Soviets against the Mius (one of Manstein's schemes) would have failed when Rumantsiev exploded to the north of it, an offensive effectively into the rear area of any drive south from the region of Kharkov to the Sea of Azov.

Kursk is not an indictment of poor German war making, but an indictment of Germany's strategic and operational position in the summer of 1943.

Or the Bulge?

Again, this was an offensive alternative that offered a 5% chance of success. Had it succeeded, it would have dramatically eased the pressure in the west for 12 months. Sitting tight and allowing the Western and Eastern Allies the right to strike with massive airpower and firepower when they chose offered no prospects of success.

Tunisia, while Stalingrad was being waged.

The Tunisian campaign was necessary to buy time for Rommel. It also bought several months for Italy. You could argue the Germans should have evacuated the bridgehead once Rommel was safely back behind the Mareth line, but the Kasserine operations demonstrated that the Germans retained at least the hope of holding their own in the theatre in the short term.

Or my favourite, Operation Konrad (aka kicking out not one, but two Russian fronts from Hungary).

It's all deck chair shuffling by this stage. War is essnetially a boxing match without a set number of rounds. In those circumstances, the poorer pugilisit is always going to either give up, or attempt to land a knock out blow. The Germans weren't going to surrender, so Konrad et al was all they had left.

The allies, in contrast, learned from their mistakes. Followed reasonable strategic goals. Planned logistics..production. When a disaster happened, they figured out what went wrong and fixed it. ex..horrible paradrops in Sicily..

They weren't much better at Salerno. In Normandy, the two American divisions were scatted and had only a small effect on future operations. At Arnhem, the Allies dropped three divisions and the operation effectively failed.

Kasserine pass battle...

Only NGF saved American troops on sicily and at Salerno and arguably Anzio.

Another thing..the Germans outnumbered the allies at Normandy. Had the best formations and lots of them ( 9th and 10th SS, 1st and 2nd SS, Panzer Lehr, 17 SS PzGr, FJ , 12th SS,..even the 2nd and 21st panzer divs) and were still incapable of pushing the allies back let alone wiping a beachhead out.

Most of the formations arrived late in the battle so I don't think the Germans ever did win the battle of the build up. Additionally, in the face of Allied air supremacy and 15 inch NGF, they did about as well as they could have expected.

Regards,
ID.

[JSBoomer]

So... When does War in the West get its own forum???

[elmo3]

I'm sure it will be a while. The game is in early alpha right now.

[sven6345789]

How do amphibious invasions work?

Can you invade whenever and whereever you want to?

[Oliver Heindorf]

I am looking forward to this game. I remember Western Front from SSI, a good game. A few things were handled quite well. You could almost invade where you want to, you were not taught by the timetable by history, East Front was handled with a pool of forces dumped into a HQ and done with it and so on.

I hope some of these thoughts from 20+ years ago are still used, esp. the feautre to land almost everywhere and when.

Definitly a strong buy here.