When does the USSR surrender?

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

The Russians would have NEVER surrendered. The Germans did have a surrender plan on the table. Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan. Whether the Russians would take that would be doubtful since all their industry was in the Urals.

Hitler had a final objective line, to become the East Wall, but I don't think that it was every contemplated as a position for a negotiated surrender, the Generalplan Ost that Hitler had for a subjugated Soviet Union made surrender impossible.

[Numdydar]

At some point everyone gives up. To say that the USSR would never have surrendered is unrealistic. Regardless of what was 'planned' during the real war.

There are countless countries that no longer exist due to one reason or another. And who is to say Stalin would have stayed in power if Leningrad (and should that be St. Petersburg now , Moscow, and Stalingrad had been taken? Same thing with Churchill if London and say Manchester were captured.

So there should be some 'surrender' mechanism for everyone in the game.

[Flaviusx]

Okay, they surrender when the Germans get to Sverdlovsk.

In game terms, that is never.

What folks are looking for here is some kind of traditional Moscow/Leningrad/Stalingrad surrender condition, and that traditional metric has always been wrong.

Nor is necessary to actually get a formal surrender to effectively "win" in the Eastern Front.

The way the game is presently set up the Axis can reach something like the old AA line, stop, and leave a major garrison force in place to hold their gains, but also start stripping the East of forces. The Soviets will never recover from this. They will still be in the game, and holding down substantial German forces, rather like the Chinese did with Japan, but that is it.

And this is fine. It forces the Germans to at least keep a major force in the East to occupy this vast area.

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

At some point everyone gives up. To say that the USSR would never have surrendered is unrealistic. Regardless of what was 'planned' during the real war.

There are countless countries that no longer exist due to one reason or another. And who is to say Stalin would have stayed in power if Leningrad (and should that be St. Petersburg now , Moscow, and Stalingrad had been taken? Same thing with Churchill if London and say Manchester were captured.

So there should be some 'surrender' mechanism for everyone in the game.

I think the point here is that Hitler was not going to let the Soviets surrender, his objective was annihilation. This changed after Stalingrad and realism sunk in, but after that event there was no prospect of a Soviet surrender.

Agreed on Britain, even though Churchill said no surrender, if German tanks had reached London realism would have meant surrender. The difference being that Hitler would have allowed a British surrender and would have issued terms, whilst for the British on a small island there was no vast Steppe to retreat into.

[Numdydar]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Okay, they surrender when the Germans get to Sverdlovsk.

In game terms, that is never.

What folks are looking for here is some kind of traditional Moscow/Leningrad/Stalingrad surrender condition, and that traditional metric has always been wrong.

Nor is necessary to actually get a formal surrender to effectively "win" in the Eastern Front.

The way the game is presently set up the Axis can reach something like the old AA line, stop, and leave a major garrison force in place to hold their gains, but also start stripping the East of forces. The Soviets will never recover from this. They will still be in the game, and holding down substantial German forces, rather like the Chinese did with Japan, but that is it.

And this is fine. It forces the Germans to at least keep a major force in the East to occupy this vast area.

Countries have been annihilated as well that many thought would 'never' fall. At some point, Russia and Germany would have come to terms. What those terms would have been and where the border would have been are up for debate.

So I disagree that WP 'has got it right' in regards to a Russian surrender. At some point people just see there is no reason to keep fighting so why bother. In other words their sense of self preservation outweighs their sense of national identity.

Even Japan with their 'we will never give up' attitude, which was much stronger than Russia's, surrendered without being completed conquered. I see no reason why Russia should be so different.

[Michael T]

I am not going to get in to the debate again about this. I made my feelings well known in the WITE forum. I am in the camp for surrender to be a possibility. It's a game after all, and forcing the Soviets to surrender after demolishing them (which will be rare anyhow) would be fun, and something to be worn as a badge of honour. I vote for fun in this debate. Just make it optional so like minded players can play with it. That's the best solution.

[Michael T]

I should add, that the most advanced and played board game on the matter, which still has a vibrant following (I am talking GMT's A World at War). Has sophisticated surrender rules for every belligerent bar the USA. No one complains about those rules in the board game world. I don't play WIF, but I am guessing it would have sensible surrender rules for Russia too, or at least some kind of negotiated peace rules.

[Flaviusx]

The better comparison here is with China, not Japan.

What would it take to force a Chinese surrender? The Japanese never came close to figuring that out. They took the major productive regions of China, drove deep into the interior, and the Chinese, both Nationalist and Communist, kept on trucking, despite a far more catastrophic situation than the Soviets ever faced or would have faced even if they'd lost the three major cities and the oil regions. They still had major productive capacity in Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, etc.

I think the Germans, like the Japanese, could've crippled their larger opponent, but yet find themselves far short of ending the war.

In this circumstance, the Soviets would be bailed out by the Western allies, which is what happened with Japan and China, too. And the game does allow for this to happen, which is the correct design.

If you take the Soviets off the map by some traditional gaming metric, that's a gift to the Germans they never would've had in real life. They would've been stuck leaving major portions of the military holding down their conquests and keeping rump USSR at bay, just as Japan had to with China.

[AlbertN]

Let's flip the coin around.

Besides the 'surrender', would a game have a sense in its continuation, if the Soviets were cast into the Urals here?

In some games, the Soviets still retain a kicking force (read, World in Flames. Soviets in the Urals can come back nicely late on).

But here Soviets do not really have a huge off map production or the like.

I just believe the perspective is - if Soviets are down to their knees, has the game a mean to be continued? Can the Western Allies of their own crush the Axis? [Talking of in-game terms. Historically, on the paper sure USA could crush anything. If they were ready to pay the toll that's another story. It's widely known how Churchill for instance dreaded the continental war until they were super ready to tackle the Germans with overwhelming forces]

[MOS96B2P]

If the PTO is added to this game then I assume the eastern part of the Soviet Union will also be on the map. So the thinking about the best way to handle a Soviet surrender (or no surrender) will also have to consider the entire USSR depicted on the map.

[AlvaroSousa]

I am reading all this BTW

[Numdydar]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

The better comparison here is with China, not Japan.

What would it take to force a Chinese surrender? The Japanese never came close to figuring that out. They took the major productive regions of China, drove deep into the interior, and the Chinese, both Nationalist and Communist, kept on trucking, despite a far more catastrophic situation than the Soviets ever faced or would have faced even if they'd lost the three major cities and the oil regions. They still had major productive capacity in Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, etc.

I think the Germans, like the Japanese, could've crippled their larger opponent, but yet find themselves far short of ending the war.

In this circumstance, the Soviets would be bailed out by the Western allies, which is what happened with Japan and China, too. And the game does allow for this to happen, which is the correct design.

If you take the Soviets off the map by some traditional gaming metric, that's a gift to the Germans they never would've had in real life. They would've been stuck leaving major portions of the military holding down their conquests and keeping rump USSR at bay, just as Japan had to with China.

The issue would have been manpower with Russia. If they were pushed that far back, 70% or more of their population would have been under Germany control. So all the material in the world does not matter if you have too few people to use it. So the Allies sending lots of 'stuff' to the Russians would not have done much without the men/women to use it.

Also there are not a lot of good routes going West to East out of the Urals. The Germans could have easily fortified those areas and sent 20-30% of their troops from the East to fight elsewhere. Along with the bulk of their aircraft.

The real question though is when would Stalin been deposed? As that would have a major impact on surrender as well. I am not well versed in that aspect of Russian history, but I would guess that the loss of at least Moscow and Stalingrad would have done it.

Some combination of morale, lack of manpower, and captured territory should cause any country to surrender.

If the UK and Russia surrendered, Germany did not get too involved with helping Japan out so the US could still cause them to surrender, then the I bet the US would have even made peace with Germany. But now we are really going deep into 'what if' lol.

[Fintilgin]

It's important to remember when saying Russia would never surrender that Germany FAILED. Barbarossa failed. Case Blue failed.

They never took Moscow, nor Leningrad, nor Stalingrad, nor Baku/the oil.

Thankfully we'll never know what would have happened if some of those had fallen, particularly Moscow in 1941. The Soviet government was not a magically entity immune to collapse and protected by historical inevitability.

[wosung]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

The Russians would have NEVER surrendered. The Germans did have a surrender plan on the table. Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan.

No. The German A-A Plan was not at all a surrender plan.

It was a hypothetical line drawn to enable Nazi Germany to
1. protect Greater Germany from air attacks from the East.
2. destroy the Soviet industrial areas further eastward by aerial bombardment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-A_line

This means even in case the Germans would reach the AA line, they didn't expect the war against the Soviets to be over.

What Hitler made absolutely clear that Barbarossa was not to be a normal war, like the ones fought in Western Europe. Normal wars were supposed to end with some sort of capitulation or peace talks. Not this one. There simple were no plans for a Soviet capitulation. Barbarossa entailed the Commissar Order, the refusal to accept a capitulation of Leningrad, the no-surrender order to Paulus & to the 6th Army, the starvation policy of the Generalplan Ost. It was all about annihilation and perpetual struggle.

[Fintilgin]

ORIGINAL: wosung

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

The Russians would have NEVER surrendered. The Germans did have a surrender plan on the table. Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan.

No. The German A-A Plan was not at all a surrender plan.

It was a hypothetical line drawn to enable Nazi Germany to
1. protect Greater Germany from air attacks from the East.
2. destroy the Soviet industrial areas further eastward by aerial bombardment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-A_line

This means even in case the Germans would reach the AA line, they didn't expect the war against the Soviets to be over.

What Hitler made absolutely clear that Barbarossa was not to be a normal war, like the ones fought in Western Europe. Normal wars were supposed to end with some sort of capitulation or peace talks. Not this one. Barbarossa entailed the Commissar Order, the refusal to accept a capitulation of Leningrad, the no-surrender order to Paulus & to the 6th Army, the starvation policy of the Generalplan Ost. It was all about annihilation and perpetual struggle.

Hitler said a lot of melodramatic crap though. If taking, say, Leningrad and Moscow in 1941 had resulted in Stalin getting purged and a semi-collapse of the Soviet government who know what might have happened?

If Case Blue had been more successful, Baku seized and Stalingrad held, then who knows what might have happened? After three years of increasingly brutal war who knows? Formal peace with a secret plan for Germany to lick its wounds and polish off the gutted remains of Russia five years down the line?

There also comes the point where the Russian government would no longer be capable of meaningful resistance. In my game I had control of basically every Russian city and resource by late 1942. They may have well have surrendered because they're totally occupied and have no chance of coming back.

At the end of the day it's a game too. My gut feeling is that the Soviets should be more prone to collapse early on. Let's be real... if I own Leningrad/Moscow/Stalingrad/Baku by late 1942... the game is OVER. The Allies are not launching a successful Overlord 70% of the German army is planted in France. Why drag it out? A human Allied player would concede at that point. Honestly I feel like if the Germans have collapsed Russia and there are no Allied units in France/Italy/Germany the game (vs the allied AI) should end in Sudden Death Victory (with the option to keep playing and mop up).

Similarly, if Russia is on the ropes, Western Allied successes (breaching Fortress Europa) should boost their will to keep fighting.

[Numdydar]

+1 ^ This

[wosung]

ORIGINAL: Fintilgin

Hitler said a lot of melodramatic crap though. If taking, say, Leningrad and Moscow in 1941 had resulted in Stalin getting purged and a semi-collapse of the Soviet government who know what might have happened?

If Case Blue had been more successful, Baku seized and Stalingrad held, then who knows what might have happened? After three years of increasingly brutal war who knows? Formal peace with a secret plan for Germany to lick its wounds and polish off the gutted remains of Russia five years down the line?

There also comes the point where the Russian government would no longer be capable of meaningful resistance. In my game I had control of basically every Russian city and resource by late 1942. They may have well have surrendered because they're totally occupied and have no chance of coming back.

At the end of the day it's a game too. My gut feeling is that the Soviets should be more prone to collapse early on. Let's be real... if I own Leningrad/Moscow/Stalingrad/Baku by late 1942... the game is OVER. The Allies are not launching a successful Overlord 70% of the German army is planted in France. Why drag it out? A human Allied player would concede at that point. Honestly I feel like if the Germans have collapsed Russia and there are no Allied units in France/Italy/Germany the game (vs the allied AI) should end in Sudden Death Victory (with the option to keep playing and mop up).

Similarly, if Russia is on the ropes, Western Allied successes (breaching Fortress Europa) should boost their will to keep fighting.

Ok, you haven't any hint about German plannings for a Soviet capitulation. Just your gut feeling.

[Fintilgin]

ORIGINAL: wosung

Ok, you haven't any hint about German plannings for a Soviet capitulation. Just your gut feeling.

If we went solely by 'German Plans' and 'Things Hitler said' then the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact never would have happened, Sea Lion would have been launched, no German soldier would have ever retreated, etc etc. LOL.

If the Germans had had much greater the historic successes against the Soviets, to the point Stalin was deposed and the upper leadership was desperate for peace, BUT Germany had also been bled white by years of brutal war and was facing invasion from the West, it's absolutely plausible that Hitler might have pulled another Molotov-Ribbentrop style pact and signed something that in his mind was a temporary peace (for 5-10 years).

Historic Soviets were in no mood for a peace once they started winning, but if they'd been largely crushed we're looking at a counterfactual situation where 'what Hitler fantasized about in 1940' isn't necessarily relevant.

Edit: the idea of Germany fighting an endless generational war against the slavic hordes beyond the urals is lurid comic book melodrama. At some point, with enough German success they would have dictated a peace. They failed, thankfully, so it was Russia who dictated it.