Why the Fascination?

[robot]

As every one here knows I not only play the Germans but all the powers in my long campaigns. Why do I like the Germans??? It certanly was not for there cruelity by the higher and more fanatical what I call crazy Nazis. They did in my eyes dress better then any of the other powers. Also as others have said there equipment is very cool and so much better then other nations.

Do I wish they had won the war hell no I am very thankful they lost. I am proud of the men we sent over there to defeat them.

But I will continue to play them and try to win even tho I more then likely not. Also I do not use the best equipment I can get. Although some of the better stuff does make its way into some of my upgrades.

My infantry is not mech or even motorized. They are ground pounders so they walk to the sound of the guns. My tanks are PZIII, PZIV, PZII and 238 scout cars. Will replace some of the support tanks with stugs as they are lost.

This is the make up of my force all the way up into late 1941.

2 Companys of infantry with 1 company of tanks
3 platoons Grenadiers on foot sec atr attatched
1 platoon Engineers
1 sec HMG
1 sec 37MM ATG Pak mobile
2 sec 150mm w/trucks upgraded to sig 150 as soon as possible
1 sec 81mm mortors

1 Plattoon 238 Rads
1 platoon PZIIc
1 platoon PZIV
1 platoon PZIIIe

This is my western force. My eastern force change is panzer ss the only difference.

I have been sick and have not played for some time. A little longer with recoop time and ill be back with my dars again. Still hope to get all the powers thru this war to the end before I have the big fight against the grim reaper. Just got to take some time a way from the comp.

Love all you guys here and continue to enjoy your writings and comments on the game.

I still dont know why I like playing the Germans.[:D]

[Goblin]

Hope you feel better soon, robot!


Goblin

[mogami]

Hi, I've always tended to play the Soviets more then the Germans.

(PS. There will always be a hole in our mega campaign collection untill we do one for the Soviets)

[Zap]

The germans had all the cool toys

The germans were well disiplined and the army was very efficient. If they did not have to follow the lunacy of Hilter's directives winning or gaining the war advantage a political solution could have occured.

This possibility is what attracts me to the germans. The challenge!

[Grenadier]

What a great topic. I had to chime in here and come in from the cold[:)] I tend to agree with my Lost Victories comrades. For me the fascination with the Wehrmacht stems from the underdog factor, the nearness of their victory and the uniforms, decorations and equipment. All the way back to WWI the Germans stood apart. Look at a landser uniform compared to a doughboy uniform and look at a Wehrmacht uniform compared to a GI uniform. The lozenge camo on the Albatross and Fokkers. The ambush camo on the Tigers and Sturmgeschutzes. The helmet with the US Army adopted. The medals compared to ribbon bars. Look at Sgt Steiner next to Sgt Saunders. Would you rather have a Ritterkreuz around your neck and an Infantry Assault badge on your pocket or a Silver Star ribbon on your chest surrounded by a buch of other ribbons that all blend together? Would you want a fat Matilda or a well porportioned Pz IV?

As one of the scenario designers who tried to be accurate witth TOE's & OOB's I preferred a mixed company supported by a battery of StuG III's as the basis of a scenario. My OOB for Lost Victories reflects this, I believe. I tended to stick to the Eastern Front because the Russians were very predictable and the AI models their style of attack well except for flank sensitivity.

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: robot

As every one here knows I not only play the Germans but all the powers in my long campaigns. Why do I like the Germans??? It certanly was not for there cruelity by the higher and more fanatical what I call crazy Nazis. They did in my eyes dress better then any of the other powers. Also as others have said there equipment is very cool and so much better then other nations.

Do I wish they had won the war hell no I am very thankful they lost. I am proud of the men we sent over there to defeat them.

But I will continue to play them and try to win even tho I more then likely not. Also I do not use the best equipment I can get. Although some of the better stuff does make its way into some of my upgrades.

My infantry is not mech or even motorized. They are ground pounders so they walk to the sound of the guns. My tanks are PZIII, PZIV, PZII and 238 scout cars. Will replace some of the support tanks with stugs as they are lost.

This is the make up of my force all the way up into late 1941.

2 Companys of infantry with 1 company of tanks
3 platoons Grenadiers on foot sec atr attatched
1 platoon Engineers
1 sec HMG
1 sec 37MM ATG Pak mobile
2 sec 150mm w/trucks upgraded to sig 150 as soon as possible
1 sec 81mm mortors

1 Plattoon 238 Rads
1 platoon PZIIc
1 platoon PZIV
1 platoon PZIIIe

This is my western force. My eastern force change is panzer ss the only difference.

I have been sick and have not played for some time. A little longer with recoop time and ill be back with my dars again. Still hope to get all the powers thru this war to the end before I have the big fight against the grim reaper. Just got to take some time a way from the comp.

Love all you guys here and continue to enjoy your writings and comments on the game.

I still dont know why I like playing the Germans.[:D]

[:D] ROBOT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you for letting ALL of us know your force composition...Now you really DO NEED TO RETURN ASAP !!!!!![:D][:D][:'(][:'(]

[Charles2222]

Different reasons for different people I suppose, but my reasons are based on two things: 1)they lost 2)they conquered the greatest amount of territory in the quickest time. The mystery of why little things here and there weren't done, such as the ME262 and Type XXI not being used earlier than they were, and all so many things that happened that if slightly different courses were taken often would likely have meant crushing victory, spells more interest in playing them. It doesn't hurt their interest any that they often had at least a piece or two in every level of their armed forces which were the best in the world for a given time (ME262, Panther, Tiger, King Tiger, Jagdpanther, Stuka (tank buster), FW190, MG42, panzerfaust/shreck, Bismark, Type XXI uboat, 88flak, 88AT, 20mmflakvierling, and V2).

That's to say nothing of the new or refined tactics that they brought.

[KG Erwin]

We can debate this till the cows come home, but the true superiority of the Germans from 1939-41 comes from several factors, including superior radio communications, air superiority, and the German tactical training method of "mission tactics". Much initiative was placed into the hands of local commanders to accomplish their missions, which led to lower-level initiative being encouraged. THIS is what made "blitzkrieg" possible. Without these, the game becomes a bit more difficult.

Limit yourself to Pz I & IIs vs the Poles, and you'll see what I mean. In real life, the Germans lost many older-model tanks to Polish ATGs and ATR teams.

8.3 removed some of the artificial "fudge factors" to make the Germans as good as they were with the implied benefits listed above. This now makes the game more realistic, thereby frustrating those who automatically assume that the Germans were inherently superior in all facets of warmaking. This is simply not true.

If the weather is clear, and you can call in airpower, then all the better for you. If the planes are socked-in, then the ground-pounders are on their own. The reality now sets in, and you just have to deal with it.

One more thing--the blitzkrieg era lasted as long as the Germans' enemies lagged behind in rapid battlefield communications, the innovative tactical-training methods , and the development of better combat planes. The process of imitation and innovation made the Allied victory inevitable, but the Germans kept pace in technical innovation, giving us the MG42 and Stug44, which were models for later Allied weapons.

The history of weapons development is in of itself a fascinating subject, and maybe a future thread could be dedicated to the evolution of WWII weapons. I've already gotten way off topic, and I apologize.

However, the subject of the fascination with the Germans may partially lie in their post-war influence--the MG42 turning into the M60, for one.

The biggest influence is as yet unmentioned--perhaps subconsciously, we acknowledge the greatest contributions our defeated foe gave us --the V2 rocket, and Werner von Braun. Without him, the landing on the moon in 1969 would not have been possible.

With this, I'll shut up for now.

[Gallo Rojo]

I think that another four reasons (many good ones had already been posted so I don't want to repeat them) are:

a) Playing the Germans is usually very easy... especially if you buy Tigers, Panthers, SS and like. So it's a logical choice for newbie. I begun playing the Germans myself in SP I... but I had swapped to Soviets by the time SPWaW get to my hands)

b) Germans have been outnumbered by their enemies almost during the entire war (that's evident in the late years but it's also true at the beginning of the war); so their success was mainly due to better training, tactics, and sometimes equipment. I think that many players like to be in that position because it seems to be very challenging. It seems much more challenging and heroic to fight with only a section of Tigers, three Stugs and two platoons of PzGranedires against a Company of T-34/76 and a Soviet Motor Infantry Battalion than vice-versa... although actually playing the soviets under such conditions may in fact be more challenging.

c) this is a mix of a + b + the fact that SPWaW is a tactical level game. Germans, although strategically outnumbered, managed to win tactical battles many times. So a newbie can play SPWaW with the Germans, feel that he's a great general, easily winning battles against the odds (and against the AI)... but I would love to see such a player playing the Germans in a strategic game about the Battle of Normandy, of the Soviet summer offensive of 1944. (disclaimer: this point is only for newbie and like... if you're a gognard, you'll probably pick the Germans in the strategic game).

d) Ok... let's admit it: there're a good number of freaking Nazi sympathizers out there playing war-games. he he he [;)]... I'm neither saying that any of you nor that all the players who like playing Germans are Nazi sympathizers... but we all know that there's a good bunch of war-gamers with an secret love for the Dark Side. I don't know if that's because Nazi militarism seduces them, or because of those stories about the SS having sexual slaves in the occupied territories... you know what I'm talking about [:'(][;)]

[cadmus]

The responses to Wild Bill's original question have tended to fall into two categories ... (1) "Stuff, and (2) intangibles, mystique, the underdog, etc. I can understand the allure of the "stuff", but I wonder if perhaps, even for those that think that stuff is the attraction, the real, underlying reason is the second category, the intangibles having to do with the underdog, the ability to do so much by virtue of imagination, esprit, etc. rather than sheer overwhelming material might. And I think there may be some connection between the allure of the Germans in WWII and that held by the Confedrates in the Civil War. Again, the matter of the underdog, the romance of the lost cause, doing so much against overwhelming odds and so on. (I visited Antietam some years back and I think I recall seeing a photograph of Rommel and some other officers touring the battlefield, studying the tactics and strategy of Bobby Lee. Does that tie it together?)

Now, of course, we're generalizing here. Not everyone is enamoured of the German side, or the Confederate side, but there does seem to be, as Wild Bill pointed out, an unusually high percentage of wargamers who are. And we always have explain to others that by being so we are not endorsing the politics and policies of the Nazi regime or sayng that slavery was good idea. (And, of course, those to whom we have to explain such things never quite seem to understand ... the eternal curse of the wargamer.) No, it's something quite different, something we can't quite explain and maybe something that many of us aren't quite clear about ourselves. So we explain it away in terms of "stuff", or even uniforms and so on.

And, many of us drawn to the German side, are not monmaniacs about it. I myself frequently take the Soviet side in East Front scenarios. But even then, I suspect it's all tied together... looking at the German situation from another point of view ... examining again, the ability to do so much against such great odds, etc.

Has anybody counted the number of East Front memoirs published compared to West Front memoirs? Of those East Front memoirs, how many are by German authors? The market is there for those German East Front memoirs more than there is for any others. So, it's not just wargamers.

[mogami]

Hi, People play the sides that lost because they lost. What is the point in repeating victory? Wargamers want to understand then solve historic problems. To take the victors and win all one has to do is repeat the historic methods. To take the losers to victory you have to first prevent the cause of the defeat.
I think Japan is the biggest Underdog of all because it faced the most insurmountable problems. Germany was not the Underdog in Europe before June 1941. In that period I play the Poles or the French or the Greeks. From June 41 to 1943 I play the Soviets. And for really Underdog adventures after 1943 I play the Japanese. (woof)