To the Death

[Optha]

There are no changes necessary, just give the russians the first movement. ( they allready positioned in an offensive formation)

[frank1970]

There are sources that show that Stalin had the plan to attack Germany when Germany was busy fighting the Western Allies!

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Optha:
There are no changes necessary, just give the russians the first movement. ( they allready positioned in an offensive formation)

If you just played it that way it wouldn't be too much different than the current game, except that the Soviets could fix some of their disposition problems, unless the Soviet player tried to attack, which would be a disaster based on readiness levels. This would make the Axis job quite tough, even against the AI, I think. I would do this: boost Soviet readiness to the 50-60 range with some higher, reduce Axis readiness and move their units back from the front line (or even take off map and add as reinforcements), reduce the Soviet city manpower ratings as I think they would not have supported the war as eagerly (at least at first) if Stalin attacked the west, which should effect the manpower available at least a little bit, and it would need this to be balanced.

Probably some other things would need changed also, like some of the Soviet reinforcements being on map at the start, as they would call up at least some further reserves over those already called up before June 22 historically. Sounds like it has possibilities for both being fairly historical and balanced, with changes.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Frank:
There are sources that show that Stalin had the plan to attack Germany when Germany was busy fighting the Western Allies!

Where's your source for this Frank? The USSR was in no condition to go to war against Germany in 1940. Their fight with Finland showed Stalin how bad the problem was, that is why they were thinking of 1942 as the time when they would be ready for war.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Optha:
There are no changes necessary, just give the russians the first movement. ( they allready positioned in an offensive formation)

Ricky laid out the changes that would be needed pretty well. The problem is those types of changes are beyond my ability. I do NOT have the source code for WiR, I'm limited largely to features in the code that print messages to the screen. I can track things down pretty easy that way, but without the clue of where the code is (when the code prints a message to the screen) its virtually impossible for me to find the location of the code and change it. For one example, I'm still looking for where the code assigns rail movement points, if I can find it this it would allow me, in my scenario, to reflect the USSR's weakness in rail capacity. This is one of the categories where the USSR was heavily dependent on Lend-Lease (locomotives, rail ties, cargo boxes, etc) A true hacker could probably do this, but I'm not a hacker, I'm just a guy with a debugger and too much free time on my hands.

If I knew 2BY3 Games was producing their WiR remake within the next year, I wouldn't even bother spending my time on this "scenario".

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:

Ricky laid out the changes that would be needed pretty well. The problem is those types of changes are beyond my ability.

Using Editwir, this is pretty "easy" to do, except for the need to change so much. Also, I agree with Ed that what I have seen would indicate a Soviet attack in 1942, not 1941. However, with this being a "what-if", it could be setup to start in 1941 without problem. 1942 might work also, but it would probably be impossible for the Axis to win then. Maybe I will give this one a whirl, based on 1941 start, with a few surprises thrown in.

[frank1970]

I read a book about the possible Soviet attack in a bookstore, but don´t remember the name of the book. I think it was a Research work for getting a PhD (?). I will look for the name and then post it here.
Frank

[Mist]

Originally posted by Optha:
There are no changes necessary, just give the russians the first movement. ( they allready positioned in an offensive formation)

According to Manstein book 'Lost Victories' the analysis of russian initial troop deployment showed that their position was neither offensive nor defensive. I think that big downsides of Red Army that were revealed after the Finnish campain made russian high command to deny the idea of attacking Germany. But they also could not think of the defence yet.

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Mist:

According to Manstein book 'Lost Victories' the analysis of russian initial troop deployment showed that their position was neither offensive nor defensive. I think that big downsides of Red Army that were revealed after the Finnish campain made russian high command to deny the idea of attacking Germany. But they also could not think of the defence yet.

I have book, not handy right now, that takes a fairly similar position on the initial Soviet dispositions. It is by a British author and used quite a bit of original Soviet sources to support the position, and came out in the mid 80s, I believe. Anyway, this author took the position that the Soviet war plan in case of fighting with Germany in 1940 was to use its large armored formations to attack/counterattack the Germans. Then, in war games held that year led by Zhukov on one side and Pavlov (supporter of the current plan) I believe on the other, with Zhukov taking the German side and Pavlov the Soviet, Zhukov easily won as the Germans against Pavlov using the current war plan. Stalin also made the comment that based on initial strength the two sides would be fairly equal and he himself did not believe the force ratio would allow a successful execution of the Soviet war plan.

At this point, Zhukov, who was already in the ascendency after the defeats of the Japanese, gained a lot of say in the Soviet planning. The next part was supposition on his part, but he thought that Zhukov left the current dispositions in place as a cover for his deployment in the spring of 1941 of the 500,000 or so reserves that were called up, along with other units in the interior. These units were deployed at Gomel, Velikye Luki, etc. to act as breaks on the flanks of the Axis advance.

Thus, the front line deployment gave the appearance of being deployed for offensive action because under the original plan that was there job, and the units would be sacrificed in order to gain time for the deployment of new forces. Another issue raised with the forward deployed units was related to the time needed to rearrange the forward units, the rail capacity needed for it, and a place to put these troops up if they were pulled back. Anyway, it seems to paint a very reasonable picture explaining the Soviet deployment, based on Soviet records, although relying in part on supposition, and I don't know what newer information may have come out of old Soviet records since the end of the USSR.
:p Anyway, one possible way of looking at it, and it does show and explain the deployment of reserves in many of the areas that saw heavy fighting in later July and August.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by RickyB:
Using Editwir, this is pretty "easy" to do, except for the need to change so much.

No, you're forgetting what the game engine does. Even if you boost Soviet readiness in the scenario file, the *game itself* is still punishing Soviet units on every turn with readiness penalties based on the current date. The penalties don't go away until 1944. *That* is the part I'd have a real hard time finding and changing in the code. Just boosting readiness of units in the scenario file won't help, the readiness boost will disappear after the first turn.

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:

No, you're forgetting what the game engine does. Even if you boost Soviet readiness in the scenario file, the *game itself* is still punishing Soviet units on every turn with readiness penalties based on the current date. The penalties don't go away until 1944. *That* is the part I'd have a real hard time finding and changing in the code. Just boosting readiness of units in the scenario file won't help, the readiness boost will disappear after the first turn.

The readiness penalty is there, but it is not a major problem from what I see. In 1941, a Soviet unit boosted to 80% readiness drops down to 59% and then starts climbing, within the first few turns. If the start date is pushed back to 1942, the readiness starts acting very similar to the Germans. This is based on no movement or combat, but I believe that it would be historical for what we are looking at, as I do believe that the Soviets would have had more problems with readiness than the Axis would.

In setting up a quick test of a 1941 scenario, the Soviets that attacked and did not move retained about the same basic readiness they would have without attacking, although movement did drop it. One special supply brought the Soviet units back up to about 80% on average. Anyway, this and the Soviet problems following orders in the game are about what I would expect in reality (if this had happened). I guess it would be the Axis blitzkrieg supply that I would have a problem with, but then it doesn't have a big effect on the defense like it does on the attack.

[frank1970]

Hurray, I found the name of the source!

"Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941-1945"
Herbig Verlag

In his book the author collects hints and sources to trust his theory that Stalin wanted to attack Germany in 1941.

[Grisha]

RickyB,

The books you were referring to with the British author sound like John Erickson's Road to Stalingrad and Road to Berlin. He is an excellent historian on the Great Patriotic War, even by Russian standards.