Could this be a record for Pavlov?

[Scook_99]

July 23, 1942 (turn 58). I am going to see how long he lasts.

[Flaviusx]

In about a third of the game I play he actually survives. If he can make it without getting executed by July, he tends to live. (Especially since I replace him ASAP anyways. His abysmal morale rating is a deal killer for me, even if he lives. To the officer pool with you.)

[Farfarer61]

OMG I have NEVER checked or noticed the morale ratings of the leaders... doh! Thanks.

[Mehring]

Oh, you peeople are cruel, he's just a poor, shook up, misunderstood marshal. Give him half a chance and look at how his morale responds-

[ETF]

At what command level is morale the most important? Army?

[Flaviusx]

Army level, but it matters at all levels.

That's a lot of wasted promotions, Mehring -- coulda gone to a better commander.

[Speedysteve]

In my various/many games this is the worst loss/win ratio I have for Pavlov where he's still breathing:

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Army level, but it matters at all levels.

That's a lot of wasted promotions, Mehring -- coulda gone to a better commander.

Awwww. But he's so cute.

Given his political rating has no impact upon his combat abilities, only his morale was letting him down. His other stats don't look any worse to me than the average and given the shortage of quality commanders, he's not displacing any, just taking his place in the line.

It does make me wonder, though, whether the political rating system is working when he can survive and be promoted twice with so many losses.

[Panama]

Look, the guy starts the game in a pocket. It's like a duel but the other guy starts the duel with his gun up against your head. Give the poor guy a break. [8|]

The accusations against him from the Wiki:

"As the members of the anti-Soviet military conspiracy, betrayed the interests of the Motherland, violated the oath of office and damaged the combat power of the Red Army that are crimes under Articles 58-1b, 58-11 RSFSR Criminal Code...A preliminary judicial investigation and determined that the defendants Pavlov and Klimovskikh being: the first - the commander of the Western Front, and the second - the chief of staff of the same front, during the outbreak of hostilities with the German forces against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, showed cowardice, failure of power, mismanagement, allowed the collapse of command and control, surrender of weapons to the enemy without fighting, willful abandonment of military positions by the Red Army, the most disorganized defense of the country and enabled the enemy to break through the front of the Red Army.

Pavlov and his deputies were accused of "failure to perform their duties" rather than treason. On July 22, 1941 the same day the sentence was handed down, Pavlov's property was confiscated, deprived of military rank, shot and buried in a landfill near Moscow by the NKVD.

Other death penalties went down for other commanders of Western Front including chief of staff of the front major general B. E. Klimovskikh, chief communications front major-general corps AT Grigoriev, chief of artillery of the front lieutenant general of artillery A. Klich, and air force deputy chief of the Western Front (after the suicide of Major General Aviation II Kopec - Chief of the Air Force of the Western Front), Major General Aviation A. I. Tayursky. Commander of the 14th Mechanized Corps, Major-General C. I. Oborin was arrested on July 8 and shot. The commander of the 4th Army Maj. Gen. A. A. Korobkov was dismissed on July 8, arrested the next day and shot on July 22.

After Stalin's death in 1953, Pavlov and other commanders of Western Front were exonerated as lacking evidence in 1956."



That last sentence is sad. "Oh, never mind Mr. Pavlov. It was all a mistake. Get up now and go about your non life."
Stalin was the one who should have been shot and for treason. The entire debacle can be laid directly at his feet.

[ComradeP]

The Soviets can use any leader with an admin and infantry rating of 6. Pavlov isn't bad by Soviets standards, he's about average.

I'm a bit surprised that his political rating didn't improve if he was in command as long as in those screenshots, but rating increases are random and don't actually depend on what the commander did or what he's commanding.

[Flaviusx]

Panama, truthfully, I think a fair number of Soviet commanders are underrated. Pavlov, however, is rather overrated in this game. He had a bad situation, it is true, but responded badly to it. (His chief of staff, Boldin, proved far more decisive and effective. This fellow fought his way out of 2 pockets, and was instrumental in saving Tula.)

I've always thought the game underestimated Potapov, 5. Army commander down in the SW Front. All the famous tank commanders are a bit on the low side, except for perhaps Rotmistrov. (Pavel thinks he's overrated. I'm agnostic about this, but definitely think Katukov, Kravchenko and Rybalko deserve better. Vasilevsky and Chernyakovsky are also low balled imo.)

[Scook_99]

Heh, I do agree Rotmistrov is overrated, and I also agree Katukov, Kravchenko, Rybalko, Vasilevsky, and Chernyakovsky should fair better.

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

but rating increases are random and don't actually depend on what the commander did or what he's commanding.

Uh? Are you serious?

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Panama, truthfully, I think a fair number of Soviet commanders are underrated. Pavlov, however, is rather overrated in this game. He had a bad situation, it is true, but responded badly to it. (His chief of staff, Boldin, proved far more decisive and effective. This fellow fought his way out of 2 pockets, and was instrumental in saving Tula.)

I've always thought the game underestimated Potapov, 5. Army commander down in the SW Front. All the famous tank commanders are a bit on the low side, except for perhaps Rotmistrov. (Pavel thinks he's overrated. I'm agnostic about this, but definitely think Katukov, Kravchenko and Rybalko deserve better. Vasilevsky and Chernyakovsky are also low balled imo.)

Aye, Potapov. Good one.

The unfortunate thing for Pavlov is that the big guns were directed at him. There wasn't much he could do. Some of his best equiped formations were over run by the second day. He had two of the best equiped Tank Divisions in the army, 4th and 7th. Most of the tanks in the 4th ran out of fuel day one and never fired a shot. The 7th had enough fuel for one fill up per tank. The fuel depot in Bialystok got destroyed straight off and no one knew where to get more fuel. There was no AP ammo for the 76mm tank guns. The units for the 6th Mech Corp lasted about two weeks and were gone.

I think no matter who was there the outcome would be the same. I'm not saying he was an excellent commander. Probably average. He had a fair record. He certainly didn't deserve to be killed. Stalin did. He ignored everything.

When I read these forums I often wonder exactly how much the people writing in them know about the status of the Red Army on the eve of the war and the history of that force leading up to it.

BTW My favorite is Konstantin K. Rokossovskiy. He always looks like he's ready to yell at someone. [;)]

[M60A3TTS]

Yes, in some future patch I'd like to see Chernyakovsky's ratings bumped up. When you command a Soviet Front at the age of 39, you got to be pretty hot stuff.

[Flaviusx]

There are things Pavlov (and for that matter Kuznetsov up in NW Front) could have done to mitigate the surprise attack.

Firstly, not be so surprised. Kirponos, for example, kept in close touch with his border guards and was fully expecting the attack. (He risked Stalin's wrath in doing this, but got away with it.) Pavlov chose to ignore the very obvious signs of buildup and fully accepted the demented Stalinist line that this was all just provocations. In the end, this wooden adherence to Stalinist logic didn't cut ice with Stalin himself. A little creative disobedience might have saved his bacon. (This is even reflected in the game by the smaller morale hit to SW front.)

Secondly, Pavlov was fully aware of what could happen, or should have been aware, as a result of the earlier wargames held at the end of 1940. Zhukov in those wargames manhandled Pavlov in more or less the same fashion as happened later on. Pavlov made no adjustments to this. It's true that Stalin's crazy desire to occupy every nook and cranny of every salient was probably not subject to change, but Pavlov didn't even try to raise the point that the forward deployment was asking for trouble, nor work within the restrictions of said deployment to deal with a surprise attack.

Finally, Pavlov lost his nerve. He sent out a stream of phantom orders to phantom units and plainly wasn't able to cope with the chaos. Not a lot of men could have, but Front commanders aren't expected to be average men.

So I'm just not very sympathetic to the guy. He was of course executed as a scapegoat to cover up Stalin's own huge errors here, but for all of that, his performance wasn't impressive.

And Rokossovsky wasn't a screamer. (Unlike, say, Zhukov.) He was, indeed, very much an officer and a gentleman.

[Scook_99]

Rokossovsky could have been a German general. I always favor him when playing Russia. Heck, he could have been an American general too.

[randallw]

There is some belief ( read Thunder On The Dnepr ) that Pavlov's fate was sealed months before the war began.  He was put in a position to be the fall guy if the Western Front collapsed early on ( faster and rougher than Soviet hopes ).

[Panama]

They gave his Front some really 'wonderful' mech corps too. 17 Mech Corp, 7% filled. 20 Mech Corp, 9% filled. 11 Mech Corp, 30% filled. 13 Mech Corp, 29% filled. 14 Mech Corp, 46% filled. 6 Mech Corp, 99% filled!!!!! Some of the divisions had virtually no tanks, training tanks or little scout tanks. As a whole, Western Front had the worst equiped Mech Corp in the war except for the 6th which started the war in a salient with no ammo for it's 76mm tank guns and enough fuel for one day.

[ComradeP]

Uh? Are you serious?

Pavel told me that rating increases are random, although non-air leaders won't increase their air rating and non-ground leaders won't increase their infantry or mechanized ratings presumably. I've had a number of instances where corps leaders that have never led an on-map mobile unit in battle improved their mechanized rating.

-

The problem with overrated/underrated leaders comes in part from infantry/mechanized ratings above 6 being set in stone because ratings can't increase to that.

Unlike Flavio, I'm less inclined to think that Soviet leaders are underrated and am of the opinion that many are overrated in 1941 in terms of capabilities. The Wehrmacht would change very little during the war in terms of the units and organisation in corps/armies, but nobody in the Soviet armed forces in 1941 could've known what their army would look like in 1944. Nobody.

Something like tank armies were virtually a completely alien concept to the Soviets, as were armoured thrusts that had a realistic chance of making a deep penetration (which wasn't really possible with Soviet logistics in 1941 but possible later on with the mix of Soviet and various Lend Lease equipment). However, in WitE, many Soviet mechanized corps leader are just as effective when commanding a 12 division/6 corps Tank Army as they are when commanding a mechanized corps.

Of course, some German leaders also suffer from being overrated at the start of the 1941 campaign based on what they had achieved up to that point. Von Manstein, for example, was pre-Barbarossa far more involved with planning than with actually leading combat formations.