An in my opinion your a douche bag ... to each his own. Debate the proposed question just don't shout it down. An I have replyed to civil questions but not any from the "Party of No".
ORIGINAL: ComradeP
So you're insulting people to win arguments you can't win? You might want to join a different forum, there are plenty for people like you.
For the record, this is not my argument.
How exactly are you going to do that? The issue with this sort of option is that you immediately get into fantasy mode predicting the results.
The Luftwaffe lacked experienced pilots, the fuel to train new ones and sufficient weapons to take the P51 et al on. They were shot out of the sky in early 1944 and 2 or 3 extra squadrons wouldn't have made any difference.
There's a pretty direct relation between the number of fighter planes with good pilots in the air and the effectiveness of an enemy bomber force, so I'm not sure where you see the fantasy.
The fantasy is that the Luftwaffe could ever have had the resources to take on the Allies. As I said, their wonder weapons (if they worked) could not be produced in any great numbers. Their attrition was high, and the key issue was not training being cut due to time constraints, but lack of fuel. People were being put in the air with only a handful of hours flight time. Some of the pilots they were up against had spent a couple of years in training.
The question you're not asking yourself is: why did the Luftwaffe lack experienced pilots? The answer being: because they were being attrited to death and had to constantly lower their training times, which in turn lead to a downwards spiral to oblivion.
No, the Luftwaffe lacked experienced pilots because they kept losing them to superior numbers and equipment, and lacked the fule to give a decent training to the replacements. These are not issues that could ever be overcome.
I'm also not talking about "2 or 3 extra squadrons", I'm talking about a fighter force that beats the VVS to such an extent that it is less attrited and a Luftwaffe that doesn't lose precious equipment and planes during a retreat.
But again, the VVS was getting back on its feet by early 42. The Russians produced so many planes that it was only ever a matter of time in the east. Ask yourself this, given the number of "Aces" who walked out of the Russian front with 100 kills or so to their name, how much better do you expect the Luftweaffe to do?
By 1943, the Luftwaffe could acheive air parity and limited superiority where they concentrated, to the point there was only a squadron or two of fighters covering entire Army Groups during battles like Kursk. The Luftwaffe never stood a chance. If the German player can do anything meaningful out of theatre, I'd argue the game is broke....
If you're saying that, say, 500 extra fighter planes with experienced pilots, backing up planes with properly trained pilots, would not have worsened the effectiveness of the Allied bombing campaign, then that's an argument I can't support.
I'm not saying the above would not have made a difference (albeit not the major one you suppose - an experienced P-51 pilot is going to take an experienced ME-109 pilot more times than not). I am arguing the above simply could never have happened.
At no point on the western front would the addition of a single extra division have made any difference. The Germans were annihilated east and west in 1944, so switching a division between theatres really is shuffling deck chairs on the titanic.
That depends on the moment where you add the division. Add a full strength experienced Panzer division to Normandy (as in: actually near the Allied landing area) and the Allied landings would be guaranteed to be less pretty.
But that's a tactical decision. Deploy Panzer Group West between Caen and St Lo the night before the invasion and you might have stopped it. But on what historical grounds are you making this an option? The Germans deployed (off the top of my head) 9 Panzer Divisions to Normandy, plus another Pzgr. Plus another armoured division equivalent in Schwere Btns. They couldn't stop the Allies, the addition of another armoured division would not have saved them.
Probably not stopped, but Allied losses would be higher. Adding such a division to the fighting in Sicily would probably have slowed down the Allied advance significantly. The same goes for the fighting in Italy proper.
But what is the point? In neither instance (even without the extra division you want to send) did the western Allies overrun Germany territory before the Russians started doing it. Why would you want to give up 6th Panzer on the eve of Bagration when what's already in France and the west will hold the western Allies another 11 months as it is.
Perhaps stopping the tide instead of turning the tide would be a better description of what would happen in most cases, but I'd say you're overestimating the Allied chances of success for operations in the West, as many came pretty close to not achieving much at all.
Why stop the tide at all? You;re fighting in the east. The only tide you're really interested in is red and that won't be stopped by sending the GrossDeutschland to the Dutch/french border in September 1944.
But what is the level? France was falling in 1944 regardless of what the German player could feasibly do, not least because even a half dozen extra divisions in Normandy would not have dragged it out beyond the point the allies landed in Southern France.
What would "feasibly" be in this case? If the casualties on the Eastern Front would be lower due to the success of the Wehrmacht or less success of Soviet attacks, German divisions would be in a better shape than they were in "real life" 1944. They would be bigger and would have more room for soaking up losses, especially if lower losses in the East would convince Hitler to not constantly create new divisions but to reinforce existing ones.
A better situation in the east? the Russians lost 11 million war dead. How much worse could they have done in that regard? By all means, introduce a rule that says if German losses are lower in the east, the west will stabilise and allow you to fight into 1946, but don't start sending divisions out of theatre to fight in off map, out of sight, entirely computer controlled guessing wars in Italy and France.
A landing in Southern France assumes the Allies won in both Africa and a large part of Italy, as well as that the Normandy landings had a chance for short term overwhelming success. The Allies would probably have won in Africa, the Tunisian campaign being another pointless waste of German manpower. However, the campaign in Italy was not a set-in-stone success for the Allies. If Rome would not have been captured, Dragoon was never going to happen as Churchill would not have accepted it. Likewise, if the Normandy landings would have been stalled longer, Dragoon wasn't going to happen either as Eisenhower would have objected.
But again, why drag the war out in the west? Just assume (if the German player does well) that there are knock on effects and abstract it. This lets you fight into 1946 in the east, on the assumption the west was made more difficult.
The battle in France in "real life" 1944 has a pretty big chance of Allied success, no matter how often you replay it, but if some variables change (more and bigger German divisions, no Dragoon), the Allied chance of historical success is slim.
But again, mpore German divisios is only possible if the war in the east goes well, so just assume if it does that things go better in the west. Fewer casualties means miore replaemets for the west and maybe more replacement formtions created and sent to it. You don't need to switch units. If things go badly in the east, then sending extra units west to stabilise the western front is just lunacy. There is nio point switching extra Panzers westwards if the Russians are in Warsaw in late 43.
The fighting on the Eastern Front had a direct impact on all later battles. More German success or fewer losses would have meant either a higher chance of German success, or a lower chance of Allied success elsewhere.
Fine. Abstract it. Just assume that if the German player does well enough to survive into 1946 in the east, that there were knock on effects that allowed the west to last longer as well. Ultimately, though, it doesn't require the player to do anything.
This isn't science. In other words, someone needs to decide beforehand the effect of adding extra fighters to the home front, in order to code the parameters into the game. This element is the contentious bit, and I would argue, largely futile as well.
That's not really a solid argument, as it applies to every simulation. The game is already full of such parameters: a fighter has an X chance to shoot down an enemy plane. If more fighters fly over the Reich, those fighters all have an X chance to shoot down an enemy plane. That's not different from the rest of the game's simulation and abstraction at all.
OK. I would agree to a rule that said for every 500 extra fighters the Russian front gives up, German production rises by 0.5% for three months, before dropping back to the historical norm. Those fighters never come back to the eastern front. For every 10 Divisions they give up to the west, the west can last by another month beyond April 1945.
How does that sound?