The Italians in WitE

[Dinglir]

I believe the Italians in WitE should be able to attach battallion and lower sized support units directly to the divisions (in the same way as the Germans do). I fully respect such a change not to be implemented in WitE I but I hope to see it in WitE II.

Historically, the Italians had developed a military doctrine called "the war of rapid movement" prior to Word War II. This doctrine called for smaller divisions with two rather than three regiments pr division (called binary divisions).

The point of this was to free up the divisional infantry commanders from having to command three infantry regiments (all with pretty much the same capabilities), which gave a series of advantages.

One of the main ones was the ability to attach support units to a divison without overburdening the divisional commander. For instance, if a division was to attack a fortified position, the army command could temporarily attach a pioneer batallion, a siege artillery batallion and a flame tank company to the division, which gave it a much more effective than it would have been with simply three infantry regiments. If the same division then had to cross a river, the support units would be detached and engineers would be attached instead.

Another benefit was that a binary division was actually faster than a similar division with three regiments. Unfortunately for the Italians, this didn't really help much in North Africa, where their fast binary infantry divisions were continously outmaneuvered by much faster motorized British and Commonwealth divisions.

This idea of attatching support units to smaller divisions also show in the order of battle for WitE, where the Italians in 1942 have:

1 Army (on map unit)
3 Army Corps (on map units)
10 Divisions (on map units)
2 Brigades (on map units)
5 Regiments (support units)
48 battallions (support units)
12 Companies (support units)

Given the way that the game handles support units (attaching the to HQ's), this means that the Italians will have 3 Corps (4 including the Airforce Corps) with a total of 65 support units attached, giving an average of 15 support units pr Corps. This is ridiculous given that the chance of adding support units to combat drops with every support unit already attached.

This leave the Italians as being about the worst (excluding Slovakia) Axis Minor nation in the game. I do cerainly not argue that the Italians should be anywhere near the Germans in effectiveness, but I do believe that they should be at least as good as (and a little better than) the Rumanians and the Hungarians.

Thus, being in line with the Italian doctrine (while not allowing the Italians to attach 3 extra regiments to a division for a high CV division), I believe that the Italians should be able to attach batallion and company sized support units directly to a division.

What are your thoughts?

[Telemecus]

I have not done much reading on this area. But given what you said this does sound right to me.

What were the reasons for not allowing the southern allies to directly attach SUs but allowing the Germans and Finns to do so?

[Naughteous Maximus]

What were the reasons for not allowing the southern allies to directly attach SUs but allowing the Germans and Finns to do so?

[&:] The Finns? You cannot attach SUs to the Finnish units, only Germany can do this to there own units.[:-]

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Naughteous Maximus

What were the reasons for not allowing the southern allies to directly attach SUs but allowing the Germans and Finns to do so?

[&:] The Finns? You cannot attach SUs to the Finnish units, only Germany can do this to there own units.[:-]

You are right, I was thinking of being broken down to regiments - wrong point.

So rephrase question. Why not directly assign allied SUs?
Also why not let southern allies break down to regiments?

[Dinglir]

I guess the reason for allowing the Germans (ond noone else) to attach to divisions is that they did have better leadership overall, making the m able to attach more units to a given division.

I do not really see the point of breaking an Italian unit into its component parts given that they a re already extremely weak.

Those are my guesses, but I weren't involved in developing the game, so your guesses are as good as mine.

[eskuche]

If you want to conjure a reason for it, I imagine one is the German ability to form (regimental sized?) kampfgruppen, which in the literature I've read were exceedingly fluid and achieved their mission objectives through the leadership doctrine of auftragstaktik, or freedom to exploit tactical opportunities down to perhaps even the squad level. I'm not sure regarding the time length of SU detachment/attachment for these missions, however.

[Karri]

ORIGINAL: eskuche

If you want to conjure a reason for it, I imagine one is the German ability to form (regimental sized?) kampfgruppen, which in the literature I've read were exceedingly fluid and achieved their mission objectives through the leadership doctrine of auftragstaktik, or freedom to exploit tactical opportunities down to perhaps even the squad level. I'm not sure regarding the time length of SU detachment/attachment for these missions, however.

But that's not really in-line with the thinking of attaching battalions, regiments and companies to divisions. If anything, it's the Finns who should have this ability as they operated quite a diverse collection of detached units.