But doing this 3 on 1 by the Axis on the USSR, means the rest of the Allied major powers are free to do whatever they like. China can't do much but it can be annoying to the Japanese. If Germany has knocked out France before attacking the USSR, Free France can do even less. But the Commonwealth can make life painful and short for the Italians if there is no opposition in the Med. And if Japan is all tangled up in brown and yellow (the USSR and China colors), then Hello Mister Green! in the Pacific.ORIGINAL: Ur_Vile_WEdge
Dogpiling the USSR is a time honored strategy, although the core of it isn't the Japanese attack on the Soviets (which at best, is a distraction), the real meat of it is this:
As mentioned above, you can't move all your units at once. You're usually concentrating on one broad arm of your forces, like your land units or your naval units, and the other arms can only make limited, if any moves that impulse.
So when you're doing the big brawl in the east, Germany has something of a conundrum. You want to advance, so that means land actions, but you kind of need the air support to make your attacks work, and your best planes all have tiny ranges. The Soviets are often retreating just out of your air cover, which forces you to move up to them, then waste an impulse doing an air rebasing everyone, or trying to move your planes up incrementally with the moves you get on your land action and leaving yourself open somewhere.
So the trick is: Germany lends lots and lots of money to the Italians. They build up a lot of fighters and land bombers. They're not quite as good as what the Germans have, but they can be good enough. Germany always calls a land, and Italy almost always calls an air. Germans move up, Italian fighters cover the advance constantly. It can get pretty ugly.
Time and effort spent on A means less time and effort on B. It's a delicate balance and the better players almost always win.
