Good afternoon. I'm playing a large 1941 campaign in the No Early End version, and it's currently March 1, 1942. The Soviet offensive has largely stalled, although the Russians are still putting pressure on me in the fields near Kursk and Orel. The Russians have 5.3 million men on the map, while I have 4.5 million (and another 200,000 men in the form of panzer divisions are on their way from France). As for the situation on the map: I took and have held Leningrad; the Russians pushed me back from Moscow to Rzhev (unlike real history, the front line there is straight, without a salient); they've also approached Kaluga and will likely liberate it soon; in the south, the Soviets continue to advance on Orel and Kursk; further south, I've held the eastern bank of the Donets River (opposite Kharkov) and in the Donbas (not counting Lugansk/Voroshilovgrad); Rostov, unfortunately, I failed to take in '41, and I stopped on the Mius River. I'm starting to think about the summer campaign of '42, and I have absolutely no idea what I should do. As far as I understand, oil and fuel don't play any role in this game, and considering that logistics in the Caucasus would be absolutely terrible, advancing on Baku would be suicide. Stalingrad as an objective gives me nothing except an extended front and logistical problems. Advancing on Moscow head-on... well, in theory it's possible, but the Soviet player isn't stupid, and there are bound to be prepared fortifications in the dense forests, so a frontal assault on Moscow will most likely lead nowhere (as would an attempt to take it in a pincer). Hence the question: what factors should I pay attention to when planning the summer offensive? I can't win on points; inflicting unacceptable losses on the Russians while being in the minority is most likely beyond me; oil doesn't matter. I'm thinking that it makes sense to set myself two objectives and attack there: the first objective is Stalingrad, and the second is either the Caucasus or Saratov. The idea isn't so much to damage the Soviets as to occupy territories that I can give up without a fight in the winter of '42–'43, avoiding casualties, and then just drag out time until American tanks hit me in the back in '45
. Also, Saratov is a national supply source, although I don't know how the loss of one national supply source would affect the USSR. Please share your thoughts on the summer campaign of '42 in the No Early End scenario.
Sorry, my English is poor—the translation was done using a GPT chat.
