memory and German benign occupation

[samei]

I keep running out of memory.
I've got 680 kB but if I try to go to aircraft changemission etc it becomes a real pain!
It means I can't really do AF attacks as it takes me ages to change missions so the Nazis keep wasting my planes!
I tried to go to DOS and run the exe problem but it gives me init.graph error.
I've changed to DOS window and run the program there but I still have memory probs?
Any solutions (bearing in mind I'm not familiar with the Config-Sys stuff)
PS on the bright side by July 42 I've surrounded and destroyed several Nazi panzer corps; prevented them from getting Orel ,Tula, Kharkov, Dnepetrovsk let alone Moscow, Leningrad, Sevastopol and Rostov .
PPS why would anyone want to play the homicidal Nazis? The suggestion about a benign German occupation is interesting.
This would only be possible if Hitler wasn't in charge as Nazi -indoctrinated regular troops and Generals frequently committed atrocities (even Manstein was ordering them). If you posit a semi autocratic/ democratic regime like the Kaiser's then you could have: no partisans, no SS, no Hungarians, Spanish or Italians (no Fascist Anti-communist crusade), Rumanaians or Finns up to 1939 borders only, Ukrainaian allies for the Germans if Ukraine conquered, reduced German production of all goods inc tanks etc (no slave labour), quicker German surrender without Nazi propaganda demonizing "Asiatic hordes" (possibly surrender if Warsaw falls or if Soviets reach border), pssibly reduced Soviets replacements ( Soviet resistance hardened once news of the Nazi atrocities spread)>

[Yogi Yohan]

Originally posted by samei:
PPS why would anyone want to play the homicidal Nazis? The suggestion about a benign German occupation is interesting.
This would only be possible if Hitler wasn't in charge as Nazi -indoctrinated regular troops and Generals frequently committed atrocities (even Manstein was ordering them).

Not much to choose between Stalins Soviet Union and Hitlers Germany, unless you're a Jew. Probably the two most criminal regimes in the history of man, excepting perhaps Mao's China and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia (I'm putting those between the III Reich and the Soviet Union).

I'm not saying that the ordinary Wehrmacht did not occasionally commit atrocities without orders from the Nazi regime, but so did British and American troops, not to speak of the Russians. However, for any serious student of WW2 it should be obvious that the war in the east was as brutal and bitter as it was mainly because Hitler had decided that the normal rules of war would not apply here, that this was to be a war of annihilation against the entire slavic race.

On other fronts, Wehrmacht troops mostly behaved correctly. Western allied prisoners were generally treated in accordance with the Geneva convention. The claim that the entire German army was predestined to commit acts of barbarism on the eastern front, regardless of orders to that effect from the Nazi authorities has no real foundation.

In fact, a plan for a "benign" occupation of the Soviet Union was prepared by the German Foreign Ministry before Barbarossa and involved setting up "independent" satelite states in the non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union (the Baltic States, Bielorussia, the Ucraine, Georgia etc), much in the same fashion Ante Pavelics Croatia was enlisted as a German ally. Hitler could have approved this plan, and the Army, no doubt would gladly have followed such orders.

It must be remembered though, that even a "benign" occupation could have given Hitler the opportunity to wipe out the Jewish population of the Soviet Union. In much the same way as Ante Pavelics Croatia performed its own little holocaust of Serbians, Jews etc, facist-type regimes in Bielorussia and the Ucranine in particular would no doubt have channeled the age-old antisemitism of the population to purge the Jews pogrom-style. The war in the east was always going to be an ugly business.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by samei:
I keep running out of memory.
I've got 680 kB but if I try to go to aircraft changemission etc it becomes a real pain!
It means I can't really do AF attacks as it takes me ages to change missions so the Nazis keep wasting my planes!
I tried to go to DOS and run the exe problem but it gives me init.graph error.

Please give details about this.

I've changed to DOS window and run the program there but I still have memory probs?

What OS are you using? What kind of system do you have? Have you removed all the drivers and special programs (ones that stay in memory as in terminate-but-stay-resident programs (TSR)) you can that stay in memory? If you're using Win95/98 then the only thing you should have to load in memory before running Windows is maybe a CDROM driver, so memory shouldn't be a problem.

Have you tried making a DOS boot disk that doesn't load any drivers or run any TSR programs?

[Charles22]

From what I understand of the situation in the East, though what has said is largely correct, there were other reasons why some of it played out as it did, in addition. For one thing, the USSR did not sign the Geneva Convention, so the Germans knew what the expect from them. Also, given the hatred that flowed between the two parties in Germany when Hitler was coming to power, they both knew what to expect in treatment of prisoners and the populace.

[Yogi Yohan]

Originally posted by Charles22:
From what I understand of the situation in the East, though what has said is largely correct, there were other reasons why some of it played out as it did, in addition. For one thing, the USSR did not sign the Geneva Convention, so the Germans knew what the expect from them. Also, given the hatred that flowed between the two parties in Germany when Hitler was coming to power, they both knew what to expect in treatment of prisoners and the populace.

You are absolutely right. Regardless of the Germans, the Soviet attitude to treatment of POWs would in all probability have led to widespread mistreatment of prisioners on both sides. This however has no bearing on the German treatment of civilians. They could still very well have set up puppet regimes (as in Croatia), and given the level of resentment against the Bolshevists in the non-russian Soviet Republics, these might well have enjoyed considerable popular support. Especially so if the people was encouraged to vent their agressions on jews, communists, etc. The partisan war could have been avoided.

Instead, the German regime in the occupied east was brutal in the extreme, quickly dissipating the initial welcome of the "liberated" Soviet citizens.

[Nick Papp]

Originally posted by samei:
I keep running out of memory.
I've got 680 kB but if I try to go to aircraft changemission etc it becomes a real pain!
It means I can't really do AF attacks as it takes me ages to change missions so the Nazis keep wasting my planes!
I tried to go to DOS and run the exe problem but it gives me init.graph error.
I've changed to DOS window and run the program there but I still have memory probs?
Any solutions (bearing in mind I'm not familiar with the Config-Sys stuff)

Hi Samei,

Did you mean 580kb of memory or really 680kb?

This problem was noted on the Bug Forums and seemed to be more of a problem when air missions and transfers took place. The memory useage of the game crept up in the last release to the Beta Team, to about 575kb's. It seems likely that some data arrays we overloading the base memory and causing the problem. Arnaud caught it, has fixed the "leak" and the new Beta we are testing seems to not have this problem anymore.

Thanks for the post!!

Regards,

Nick

[This message has been edited by Nick Papp (edited September 21, 2000).]

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:

Instead, the German regime in the occupied east was brutal in the extreme, quickly dissipating the initial welcome of the "liberated" Soviet citizens.

I've always kind of liked the idea of a benign occuptation as a what-if, but it just goes beyond believability when you consider Hitler's mindset:


"The war against Russia ... is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful, and unrelenting harshness."
-- Hitler to his generals in March '41.


[This message has been edited by Ed Cogburn (edited September 21, 2000).]

[Yogi Yohan]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
I've always kind of liked the idea of a benign occuptation as a what-if, but it just goes beyond believability when you consider Hitler's mindset:

"The war against Russia ... is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful, and unrelenting harshness."
-- Hitler to his generals in March '41.

When playing WIR as the Germans, you take the role of Hitler. It should be up to you what kind of occupation policies you want to put in place. And in any case, Hitler had no problems using satelites to do his butchering for him in Yugoslavia, he could conceivable have done so in the east as well.

[frank1970]

Hitler wanted to extinct the Soviets that´s right. But he also allowed Russian troops to fight for the Germans later in the war (ROA). There were other volunteers in the SS-Divisions from all countries in Europe and the Sovietunion (There was a Tatarian Cavallery Regiment in the SS!). So, why shouldn´t the player have a chance to create this Ucrainian (?) or Russian Units?
Unmerciless hardness is a "good" method when you can afford it. With problems getting bigger your point of view would change quite fast.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
When playing WIR as the Germans, you take the role of Hitler. It should be up to you what kind of occupation policies you want to put in place. And in any case, Hitler had no problems using satelites to do his butchering for him in Yugoslavia, he could conceivable have done so in the east as well.

Well, technically we aren't taking the role of Hitler, as he's the leader of OKW in the game, unless you use editwir to turn him into Patton.

Yes, Hitler did a lot of butchering, all indirectly through subordinates, but who did the butchering isn't important. If Hitler is present, his view will determine who gets butchered. He considered the "slavic" race to be inferior, not much higher on the list than the Jews.

Don't get me wrong, I've asked for control over whether partisans show up for example, but it appears unlikely at this point for such options to show up in the limited WiR upgrade. We are still in a heavy bug-fixing stage, right now.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Frank:
Hitler wanted to extinct the Soviets that´s right. But he also allowed Russian troops to fight for the Germans later in the war (ROA). There were other volunteers in the SS-Divisions from all countries in Europe and the Sovietunion (There was a Tatarian Cavallery Regiment in the SS!). So, why shouldn´t the player have a chance to create this Ucrainian (?) or Russian Units?
Unmerciless hardness is a "good" method when you can afford it. With problems getting bigger your point of view would change quite fast.

Hitler's problem did get bigger as Germany was losing the war, till he allowed recruitment of people he considered inferior to Germans, and reduced the requirements for entry into the SS. Its not clear he ever changed his mind about the "superior race", though. In any event, all this happened when it was too late, the outcome was obvious to most, except Hitler. The kind of what-ifs we're talking about here would have required Hitler to treat the slavic peoples of south and eastern Europe in a completely different manner from the very beginning.

Maybe we'll get some what-if options in the game eventually. I'm not against them, I just consider them exceedingly unrealistic if Hitler is still in the picture, but if Hitler isn't in the picture then there wouldn't be war with the USSR. Its not likely at this point, bug-fixing is still the name of the game, currently.

[Yogi Yohan]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
Well, technically we aren't taking the role of Hitler, as he's the leader of OKW in the game, unless you use editwir to turn him into Patton.

Actually, yes we are. We have operational control over the eastern front (via the OKH) and overall command of the entire direction of the war. Before december of 1941, there's nobody that fits that descripton, but after the sacking of Von Brauchitsch, there's one name that fits the bill perfectly: Adolf Hitler. So, technically, we do take the role of Hitler when playing the Germans.

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
Yes, Hitler did a lot of butchering, all indirectly through subordinates, but who did the butchering isn't important. If Hitler is present, his view will determine who gets butchered. He considered the "slavic" race to be inferior, not much higher on the list than the Jews.

The Croats and the Bulgars are Slavic peoples, and they were allies of the Reich. If Hitler had realised that winning over the Ucranians and Bielorussians was necessary for defeating the Soviets, he would have ditched the racial aspect of the war faster than you can say "untermensche". So it was an error of judgement that could easily have gone the other way. It is not at all unbeliveable.

I do understand however that this is something that won't make it into 2.1 . I was merely trying to explain why a Nazi government with Hitler in charge could well have pursued a "benígn" occupation policy.

The key point is that "benign" is a very relative word in this context. I doubt the jews of the Ucraine would have found it easygoing. There remained opportunity for bloodbath. Hitler would have been well pleased with it.

[samei]

Is the beta version different from the one I downloaded about 3-4 weeks ago?
Or is the beta version still to be availabe?
I'm running Win98 on a 350MHz PII by the way.

PS My point about the Germans was that they could only do a benign occupation under a different regime. Hitler was massively anti Slav and this passed to his Regular units as well who frequently had orders to eliminate Bolsheviks and Jews. The lower rate of atrocities on the Western Front was because under Hitler's racial theories Western Europeans (Jews, gays etc excepted) were at least human. German troops initiated the atrocities which led to Soviet recrimimations. The interest in an alternative scenarion would be if a non Nazi Germany could exploit antiSoviet feeling in Ukraine etc effectively enough to win. It would be counterbalanced by no SS, less Axis allies but less fanatical resistance by Germany.
Comparing two evil dictators is a bit pointless. Avoiding Cold War bias less harm was done by Stalin crushing Hitler than vice versa. The best outcome would obviously have been if neither was born.

[Ronin]

Samei,

your opinion is pretty weired. Britain killed 1 million people in WW2 but not soldiers, they killed kids and women (not to mention what they did in their colonies or Ireland). Well, I guess I'll never play the brits then in wargames again. The USA dropped two atomic bombs and strafed schoolkids in WW2. They had slaves, still surpress their black minority and whiped out nearly the complete american natives. Not to mention what they did in Vietnam. I guess I now can never play the US again. (I'm half US BTW)

Your opinion is pretty biased. Why do you play wargames? You should know that the "good one" is always the victor, so dont complain about it. If the Germans would have won WW2, your Arthur Harris would have treated the same way their Hermann Goering was.

And Stalin was NOT better than Hitler. Stalin has the highest bodycount in human history. Not even Hitler comes near at it. But I guess you dont care about this victims, because they where killed so far away and not in central Europe. And your "little cold war" has wasted the life of millions in "minor" conflicts like Vietnam, Afganistan, Africa, Korea... not to mention the possibility of an atomic holocaust. In my opinion you can easily replace Stalin with Hitler. The only thing without Hitler would be a Stalin who rules whole Europe instead a part of it.

BTW- you say youre only intersted in the Soviets side of WW2, does this mean you dont know anything about the German side? I think your opinion is very biased against Germany. Actually the war is 55 years over. Its history. We shall learn from it but dont judge people or countries now for things done a long time ago. You would have a very hard time to find some country with a "clean" record.

Have a nice day.


[This message has been edited by Ronin (edited September 23, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Ronin (edited September 23, 2000).]

[Yogi Yohan]

Originally posted by samei:
PS My point about the Germans was that they could only do a benign occupation under a different regime. Hitler was massively anti Slav and this passed to his Regular units as well who frequently had orders to eliminate Bolsheviks and Jews.

This is what i must totally disagree with. Hitlers anti-slav sentiment was not stronger than to allow him to have Slavic allies throughout the war. He set a slavic puppet regime in Croatia, as i am pointing out "ad nauseam" and was allied to Bulgaria. A "benign" occupation under Nazi rule was entirely feasible, had the NEED been realised. But it wasn't.

The massacres of jews, communists etc were normally carried out by SD einsatzgruppen, not regular Army troops.

As for the Army, as a body it did NOT share Hitlers wiews regarding race, although i'm sure quite a few of its individual members did. In fact, the Army became a safe haven for political opponents of the Nazi regime, since it was the only part of Nazi German society that retained a measure of power indpendent from the NSDAP, and could to some extent protect its members from persecution. It was not until after the 1944 assasination plot against Hitler that the Army was completely tamed.

I would like to recommend Alan Clark's classic book "Barbarossa" and William L. Shirer's "Rise and fall of the Third Reich" for those who would like to familiarise themselves more thoroughly with this subject.

[Nick Papp]

Gentlemen,

While I have been folllowing the intellectual interplay occuring on this thread, in looking back to the original post, we have come a LONG way from discussions about why the game seems to run out of memeory with air opperations. Let's keep the nature of posts on this Forum to issues pertaining to this game.

There are no winners or losers, vindicated or moral heroes in war. There are only surviviors. Let's remember...the victors end up killing soldiers, civillians, destryoying property, culture and industry in the process as well. Trying to make this a moral or ethical debate is only likely to get someone upset, and would probably be better discussed on a different mail board.

Thanks,

Nick Papp

[This message has been edited by Nick Papp (edited September 23, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Nick Papp (edited September 23, 2000).]

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
The Croats and the Bulgars are Slavic peoples, and they were allies of the Reich.

No, they were "tools" of the Reich, not allies. A big difference.

If Hitler had realised that winning over the Ucranians and Bielorussians was necessary for defeating the Soviets, he would have ditched the racial aspect of the war faster than you can say "untermensche".

And you have the evidence to prove Hitler would have dropped his opinion of the eastern slavs and joined with them? His quotes and best of all his "Mein Kamph" (sp?) say something very different.

So it was an error of judgement that could easily have gone the other way. It is not at all unbeliveable.

Racists tend to hold on to their beliefs very fiercely, regardless of contradictory evidence. The neanderthals of the Klu Klux Klan in the US being excellent examples, and do I need to mention the Neo-Nazi skinheads?

I do understand however that this is something that won't make it into 2.1 . I was merely trying to explain why a Nazi government with Hitler in charge could well have pursued a "benígn" occupation policy.

You haven't convinced me Hitler would ignore his own racism, and believe *beforehand* that he would need the help of the Slavs to win. He believed Germany could win the war against the USSR in one summer campaign with little help, besides Italy, Rumania, and Hungary, which did not provide any important, significant assistance. His utter contempt for the Slavs would have ensured he would not court them *untill* he knew Germany couldn't win, and he was going to need all the help he could find. By then, the atrocities against Eastern Slavs would ensure he got little backing from them.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
This is what i must totally disagree with. Hitlers anti-slav sentiment was not stronger than to allow him to have Slavic

Again, how do you know this?

allies throughout the war. He set a slavic puppet regime in Croatia, as i am pointing out "ad nauseam"

The Croatian faschists were already there. The Croats even had Jewish concentration camps in Croatia during the war. Germany knew it was going to have real problems with the Serbs, so what better way than to pit them against one another freeing the Germans from having to end up fighting both. Also, Italy played a major role in Croatia's geopolitics, including supporting the faschist Croatian regime, so its likely Hitler took a backseat to Mussolini in matters related to the Croats, Slovenes and Serbs. In any event the Germans knew they would need an ally to control the Serbs, thus they welcomed the faschist regime in Croatia. *If*, however, Germany believed they could handle Yugoslavia on its own, the Croats I am sure would have suffered along with the other Slavs of the Southern Balkans.

and was allied to Bulgaria. A "benign" occupation under Nazi rule was entirely feasible, had the NEED been realised. But it wasn't.

This I agree with. But the reason it was never realised is because Hitler's racism initially made cooperation with USSR's Slavs impossible. As long as Hitler was there, co-opting the Slavs of Russia from the very beginning would never happen.

[Yogi Yohan]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
The Croats and the Bulgars are Slavic peoples, and they were allies of the Reich.

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
No, they were "tools" of the Reich, not allies. A big difference.

And so would the Ucrainians, Bielorussians, Lithuanians etc under a "benign" occupation.

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
And you have the evidence to prove Hitler would have dropped his opinion of the eastern slavs and joined with them? His quotes and best of all his "Mein Kamph" (sp?) say something very different.

My evidence is in your own next post:

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
The Croatian faschists were already there. The Croats even had Jewish concentration camps in Croatia during the war. Germany knew it was going to have real problems with the Serbs, so what better way than to pit them against one another freeing the Germans from having to end up fighting both. Also, Italy played a major role in Croatia's geopolitics, including supporting the faschist Croatian regime, so its likely Hitler took a backseat to Mussolini in matters related to the Croats, Slovenes and Serbs. In any event the Germans knew they would need an ally to control the Serbs, thus they welcomed the faschist regime in Croatia.

Hitler was, as you say, a racist. I doubt he would have made any difference between east and south slavs, to him they were all "untermenschen" to be slaughtered or used AS TOOLS at the whim of the German "ubermenschen". So, which of the two fates that was to befall the eastern slavs was purely dependent on how Hitler measured his chances against the Soviets. Better intelligence might have been enough, as suggested by his passing comment to Guderian about Russian tank strenght.

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
*If*, however, Germany believed they could handle Yugoslavia on its own, the Croats I am sure would have suffered along with the other Slavs of the Southern Balkans.

I agree completely, in fact this is the point i'm trying to make. All it would have taken for a "benign" regime to be implemented was that Hitler judged his chances more accuratly. What this would have taken is anybodys guess, but the Germans seriously underestimated Soviet strenght and overestimated their road infrastructure, so better intel might have done the trick. Who knows? But it COULD have happened.

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
You haven't convinced me Hitler would ignore his own racism, and believe *beforehand* that he would need the help of the Slavs to win.

But thats exactly what happened in Yugoslavia. Shouldn't you at least be convinced by your own arguments?

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
But thats exactly what happened in Yugoslavia. Shouldn't you at least be convinced by your own arguments?

There was a faschist party in existance prior to the takeover of Yugoslavia by the Germans, and having looked around on the net, it appears Hitler made a distinction between Slavs in Marxist Russia, and Slavs elsewhere. Mein Kampf made it pretty clear what he thought about the peoples of the USSR.

In any event, lets save this argument about a "benign occupation" of USSR option for when it might actually happen (in a hypothetical WiR remake by Matrix).