2 changes

[admiralT]

1) In several books about the Stalingrad campaign their maps show several small lakes south of Stalingrad. They talk how the soviets used them to anchor their defenses.

2) I heard that originally in the sovet/german nonagression pact the germans were to get Lithuania but the soviets wanted a larger piece of Poland. When germans said no and instead gave the soviets Lithuania. Army Group North starting in Lithuania sound interesting

[jsqdcsq]

About 1: Yes, and you can see them in maps of stalingrad wargames with smaller hex-scale. But I think these lakes are just too small to make a WITE2 hex impassable.

[admiralT]

How about making 2 hexes in that area swamp hexes?

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: admiralT

How about making 2 hexes in that area swamp hexes?

presume you mean this area:



this is a Soviet 1941 map, you can get from http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/e ... m38-11.jpg





Number of small changes, you *could* make?

a) extend the canal by one more hexside, after that its prob too narrow to appear at the game scale (map is 1:100,000).
b) the hex SE of Krasnoarmeisk could be a swamp but the swampy area is a relatively small part of the hex area

I've read the same as you but I think looking at it the lakes aren't operational barriers more tactical. So in a defensive/fixed line set up very useful but no operational barrier if the Germans had committed to the south of Stalingrad?

[Hardradi]

There is an account of the German battles in this area in August 1942 in the Jason D Mark book Death of the Leaping Horsemen. They are called salt lakes. Reedy banks, thin salt crust with muddy quagmire underneath. Impassable to Panzers. The land to the east is deadpan flat. Just to the west running north-south is a balka like plateau.

[potski]

There are roads shown on the map. So not easy to pass if you can't stray far off the roads, but not impassable.

Change the terrain to swamp in one or more hex rather than clear?