ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Okay -- just for the sake of argument, we can grant that it works for 'Soviet Union 1941.' However, many, many scenarios do not have 'army-sized' units.
Think of Pearl Harbor. Was it just Kimmel and Short that were disordered? Or was it the whole thing - the planes parked wingtip-to-wingtip, the BBs lined up side-by-side without torpedo nets, the lack of CAP, and the men expecting nothing more than a peaceful Sunday morning? Their poor performance that day wasn't due to their proficiency. It was due to shock. It actually affects combat strength. Barbarossa was similar. It took time for the shock of the invasion to wear off - at all levels.
Shock would work well for Pearl Harbor; it doesn't follow that it describes what happened during Barbarossa.
For one thing, it wasn't a matter of units losing their ability to fight equally under all conditions, nor was it a matter of their being equally incapable of receiving and executing all types of orders at all times.
I just don't see the effects of shock as being particularly descriptive of what was taking place. It's like if you tried to model the recent economic collapse by assuming it had effects similar to that of a giant earthquake. Well, no doubt you could come up with a magnitude figure that would yield a similar net loss of wealth. However, the 'earthquake' paradigm wouldn't thereby become a particularly accurate description of what happened.
And even here, I would argue that those armies would do far better defending a fixed locality than they would if constantly forced to redeploy, etc. In other words, whilst one 1941-2 German might be worth ten 1941-2 Russians in mobile combat, that ratio would fall to something far less impressive if it was a matter of a struggle over a fixed point (see 'what went wrong at Stalingrad'). Does your scenario reflect that, or does it simply manage to work in spite of not reflecting that?
The Soviets are better equipped and organized for defense than offense. That doesn't change the reality that any early defense would be affected by the mass disorder the campaign started out with.
Like at Brest-Litovsk? In general, the Russians remained handicapped in certain specific types of situations right through 1944. In others, they were often formidable opponents right from the start.
As to disorder being less of a problem with small units, one can form a properly trained battalion far more quickly than one can form a properly formed division. Indeed, the most common flaw of poorly trained armies is their inability to maneuver and fight in large formations. A battalion occupies perhaps a square kilometer or two, and you can always send a runner to find out what is going on or where B Coy got to. This doesn't work when it's a division spread out over twenty kilometers. Then one has to have subordinate commanders who clearly understand the plan and know what to do when things go askew, communications that don't break down, etc.
Even at that level you have the issue of meddling. The division commander doesn't just issue orders to his regimental commanders and leave it to them. He micromanages the companies and even lower, sometimes overruling the orders of his subordinates. So his disorder can infect even the lowest organizations.
So? This isn't the dominant mechanism. The fact remains that the smaller the unit, the less liable it is to command and control problems. It is a repeatedly observed fact that the less well-trained an army, the greater difficulty it has in coordinating large-scale operations.
Now, for sure, there are some C&C situations that aren't truely the product of shock, and may need something else. You mentioned the British C&C. That was more of a cronic problem than due to a disruption of any sort. There is a wishlist item for an event effect that causes the C&C penalties of shock without the combat strength effects. But that wasn't the case for Barbarossa - they were shocked.
The effect of what you are pleased to call the 'shock' was far greater in the area of command and control than in actual combat performance. I believe I've noted some of the more glaring shortcomings.
To be brief, the problem wasn't that Battalion x couldn't fight. It is that Battalion x would either not get the word, get the word but the word would be to move somewhere already occupied by the Germans, or get the word and the word would be to repeat an utterly futile attack.
Negative shock above all affects combat ability. It can occasionally immobilize formations for a turn, but it certainly won't make them go off and do something actively stupid.
The Russian problem in 1941 was just the opposite. Their combat methods were also lacking, but their main problem was that their units generally were doing something that made little sense given an accurate understanding of the situation.
Now, it may well be impossible to simulate this. However, this does not make negative shock a good simulation of what was going on -- any more than one can accurately describe what most Americans are experiencing economically at the moment by describing events as a nation-wide 8.3 earthquake. No one's house has fallen down -- and Russian units weren't moving about intelligently but fighting badly. More the exact opposite.
