How does the Axis "win" ?

[Redpossum]

Just that, what is considered an Axis victory?

[firepowerjohan]

Just that, what is considered an Axis victory?

Victory Conditions in Commander Europe At War
- Any side that has no major country in the war at any time will lose
- If in Summer 1945, both sides have active major countries a victory score is calculated for each side where the score is number of enemy major country primary Capitals held (Berlin, Rome, London, Paris, Washington, Moscow).

example 1 : France and UK surrender in 1940, USSR and USA are still not at war with Axis. No Allied country is at war i.e AXIS VICTORY
example 2: In summer 1945, Axis hold Berlin, Rome and Paris while Allies hold London, Washington and Moscow. Axis will get one point for Paris, Allies will get no points. Axis-Allies 1-0 i.e AXIS VICTORY
example 3: In summer 1945, Axis hold Berlin while Allies hold all other major country primary Capitals. Axis will get no points, Allies will get one point for Rome. Axis-Allies 0-1 i.e ALLIED VICTORY
example 4: In summer 1945, Axis hold Berlin, Paris, London while Allies hold Rome, Washington, Moscow. Axis will get 2 points (one for Paris and one for London). Allies will get 1 point for Rome. Axis-Allies 2-1 i.e AXIS VICTORY

[vypuero]

If Washington can't be captured, why even include it in the victory count?

[firepowerjohan]

If Washington can't be captured, why even include it in the victory count?

Washington can be captured. Even if it is very unlikely. If Washington stay Allied then no side get any score for it, so it wont affect the score any.

[SMK-at-work]

I like this system - it sems very elegant and pointed.

Only thing is I'd like the standard game to continue until Dec 1945 before the default end.

[vypuero]

At first I thought I would agree, but I think if you extend it to the end of 1945 it will be too difficult for the Axis. The victory system seems reasonable as they describe it.

[firepowerjohan]

We are planning on a number of options and one of them is to have the 1945 end "Yes" "No" options, meaning if ppl want to make their own victory conditions of try to play until 1950+ then they can select that option off.

[jon_j_rambo]

Interesting system. You only score by capturing something

[SMK-at-work]

Allow me to clarify - for me the German surrender in May 1945 represents a major allied victory - Germany was ALWAYS going to lose (IMO) and the question was only a matter of when.

Had they surrendered in, say, January 1945 it would have been an overwhelming victory, had they done so in, say December 1945 it would have been some sort of "draw".

So I'd like an option where the victory conditions are determined by when Germany surrenders - based on the idea that it is going to lose and it's jsut a matter of when.........just my pov of course.

For a fixed end date then I quite like the sound of the proposed system, but I'd prefer to have an open end date. So maybe somethign liek this could be an alternative scorign system for those who choose to have the open end date option?

[vypuero]

I agree that their "survival" should be a victory but I also think that having more of a balance in that, with good play and/or luck, the Axis have a reasonable chance for an actual "win" adds to the enjoyment of the game, and is not entirely unjustified.

[SMK-at-work]

IMO they could never have won - not with Hitler in command, and not once the USSR was on board - the USA joining actively made it even more impossible,.....as it were!

Agaisnt France and the UK alone sure, Germany may well ahve succeeded, but if hte USSR joins automatically at some time in 1941 then it's jsut a matter of time.

[firepowerjohan]

But even if Axis holds just Berlin and Rome, they can fight on to get a DRAW in 1945, or you can play with the "1945 End" option set OFF, which means the game goes on until either side has conquered all enemies. This ofcourse does not prevent house rules to play until say 1950 or something.

[honvedseg]

The war was not absolutely "unwinnable" from the beginning for the axis, but the conduct of the various occupation troops quickly alienated the occupied people and made it impossible to recruit reliable troops from those areas. It also made the remaining forces of the allied nations less likely to surrender, and more willing to push their war effort harder to win.

If the German army had succeeded in assassinating Hitler in any of its early attempts, the war might have been fought on a less "idoelogical" footing, without the emphasis on the exploitation and "annihilation" of conquered people by "political" units. Without the fear of German atrocities and prisoner abuse which the Soviet propaganda programs played upon, the Russian will to resist might have crumbled, leading to a long stalemate and an eventual "draw" between German and remaining allied powers. The resources (strategic metals, oil, etc.) in the occupied Russian territories might eventually have allowed Germany to survive a prolonged conflict better, especially had the local populations not been antagonized. The longer that Hitler remained in control, however, the more the war became ultimately "unwinnable" for the Axis. By mid-war, the damage had already been done, the allies were already making inroads, and Hitler would only have been replaced by another unstable tyrant "wannabe".

Rome was not overly important from a military standpoint, and its occupation by the allies would not have constituted a "loss" by Germany. On the other hand, it did reflect the inability of Germany and the axis overall to protect its territories at that stage of the war against allied advances.

[vypuero]

Are you Russian? I think without intervention by the US the Axis would have won the war. By intervention, I include supplies sent by the US. They may not have conquered Russia completely, but they would not have been in Berlin in 1945 or at all, for that matter. In addition, the cold war would have been harder to win against Nazis than it was against Russia. It would have been bad, very bad.

[SMK-at-work]

Certainly the US was required - but it was actually in hte war a long time before it was "actually" in hte war - it had started gearing up for war production to help the UK before Russia was invaded, and hte famous "Arsenal of democracy" speech by Roosevelt was delivered on 29 December 1940 - the UK should start getting supplies from the USA shortly after that........

So the opportunity for Germany to win the war outright ends with its inability to invade the UK - Sealion could never have succeeded (the Royal Navy would have massacred it), andafter that it is just a matter of time until Germany looses.

Conceivably if Hitler were assasinated early on they might have had some kind of "peace" with a subservient France, but that would have jsut set up the next round of Germany vs Europe (WW1 was Round 1, WW2 was WW1 part 2...) - maybe in the 1950's vs the USA and UK....

But it is also entirely plausible that Stalin ewas planning on attacking in 1942 - IMO the US would have happily stayed out of such a fight - neither were democracies so there would have been little impulse to help outhte USSR IMO.

However USSR vs Germany then invites the UK to "get back into it....", which might well bring hte US in, assuming the Japs don't do so.....

But then if the Japanese still attack in Dec 1941, and the US only has to deal with htem then htey crush them by 1944 and are on a war footing with all that production and no-one to fight.......

There are a lot of "what ifs", but none of them involve Germany under Hitler actually winning anything more than short term strategic victories - ultimately they have to fight the USA - in 1939 they changed the name of the long range bomber project from Uralbomber to Amerikabomber.......so in 1939 Germany was already quite aware of who they had to beat!

[Redpossum]

Certainly the US was required - but it was actually in hte war a long time before it was "actually" in hte war - it had started gearing up for war production to help the UK before Russia was invaded, and hte famous "Arsenal of democracy" speech by Roosevelt was delivered on 29 December 1940 - the UK should start getting supplies from the USA shortly after that........

So the opportunity for Germany to win the war outright ends with its inability to invade the UK - Sealion could never have succeeded (the Royal Navy would have massacred it), andafter that it is just a matter of time until Germany looses.

Conceivably if Hitler were assasinated early on they might have had some kind of "peace" with a subservient France, but that would have jsut set up the next round of Germany vs Europe (WW1 was Round 1, WW2 was WW1 part 2...) - maybe in the 1950's vs the USA and UK....

But it is also entirely plausible that Stalin ewas planning on attacking in 1942 - IMO the US would have happily stayed out of such a fight - neither were democracies so there would have been little impulse to help outhte USSR IMO.

However USSR vs Germany then invites the UK to "get back into it....", which might well bring hte US in, assuming the Japs don't do so.....

But then if the Japanese still attack in Dec 1941, and the US only has to deal with htem then htey crush them by 1944 and are on a war footing with all that production and no-one to fight.......

There are a lot of "what ifs", but none of them involve Germany under Hitler actually winning anything more than short term strategic victories - ultimately they have to fight the USA - in 1939 they changed the name of the long range bomber project from Uralbomber to Amerikabomber.......so in 1939 Germany was already quite aware of who they had to beat!

Excellent points, S-O, as always. But I do think I will beg to differ with you on the subject of Seelowe.

Namely, I dispute your assertion that it was utterly hopeless. A long shot, yes. Desperately risky, yes. Unlikely to succeed, I might even go this far.

But it wasn't impossible, by any means. And I think Winston Churchhill agreed with me on this point

I am reminded of a Panzer General campaign I played back when the game was still relatively new, and I was passionately into it.

I opted for the plan they called Sealion 40 Plus, which posited bringing the italian fleet out through the Gates of Hercules, and using them to assist the german fleet.

With this option, and heavy air support, I was able to fight the Allies to a rough draw in the naval war. Both german and italian fleets were annihilated, with the exception of one heavy cruiser squadron. The crippled remnants of the british fleet withdrew to Scapa Flow.

From there I was able to put my units ashore in the south of England, encircle London, and take most of the "Home Counties" area, because it was relatively open terrain.

Then I had to strike north.

The battle came down to the last few turns, and the Allies still held Manchester. The weather turned to "delta sierra", and mud conditions prevailed on the ground.

The rain didn't really matter much as far as the air situation. The war in the air was as bloody as the naval war at the beginning of the battle. The RAF was annihilated by this point, but so was my Luftwaffe. Every Stuka squadron was completely destroyed; I had a few shattered remnants of fighter units, and one severely depleted He-111 unit.

My ground units were in scarcely better shape, reduced in some cases to 30% of their TOE strength.

I managed to take Manchester on the last turn. But the butcher's bill was horrendous. When your units desperately need resupply and replacements, and instead you have to feed them into the fight anyhow, because there's no time to do anything else, the price is ugly.

Now, I won't pretend that PG was an accurate or realistic simulator, but on the other hand I don't see anything totally implausible about that scenario. Admittedly, getting the italian fleet out through the straits of Gibraltar wasn't going to be an automatic success, but neither was it impossible.

Even if you don't like this particular scenario at all, the point remains that the threat was very real, and could not be ignored.

[SMK-at-work]

If you take hte Italians out of hte Med then the Brits are entitled to bring their Mediterranean fleet out too - which pretty much evens things up. And of course Mussolini was quite averse to taking German orders in hte first place - co-operation betwen the 2 countries was poor and any game that lets you blithely sail hte Italian fleet around as if the Axis were unified has nothing to do with history!

Air support is irrelevant - the action would have been at night, from RN Cruisers and destroyers based out of range of Me-109 escorts. The German plan called for transports to anchor off the English coast for 3 days to offload - then those same transports would sail back to the continent for the 2nd wave.

They actually tried one test run with 50 barges - only half of them managed to get their troops ashore on time - one capsised when the soldiers rushed to one side, one tug broke its tow, several broached in hte surf. And this was on a calm day in good weather with no navigational hazards and no opposition!!

They were going to "block" the ends of the channel with e-boats and mines at one end, and U-boats at the other - neither of which could have stopped determined attacks - and the RN would sure as hell have been determined!

And consider what happened to seaborne reinforcements to Crete when the LW had total air superiority - hint - they were massacred....

Germany had about 25 destroyers and torpedo boats available. the RN had about 80 or 90. Germany had about 6-8 cruisers available - the UK had over 20. And Germany had no (zero, none) battleships available - they were going to bring a pre-dreadnought into service that was being used as a gunnery training ship! Another plan was to sortie the whole of hte surface fleet into the Atlantic to "distract" the Home Fleet - it might have done so too - only the RN Battleships were not what they had to worry about!

The RN figures are just in homewaters mind - not including the Med fleet.....

Churchill's opinion is also irrelevant - neither side knew everything at the time - certainly the British expected invasion, thought the Germans were good enough to do it and their own forces were in poor condition.

But they were wrong about the Germans being able to do it - they didn't know - couldn't know - how ill prepared the Germans were.

A german invasion attempt would have lost 100% of the forces embarked.

It would also have lost something like 25% of all Rhine barges - the lifeblood of much of the industry on the continent, and a goodly proportion of the available coastal shipping.

It would have wiped out the Kriegsmarine as a surface force for the rest of the war, and the loss of 300-500,000 troops would have had a massive impact on continental politics - Stalin would have been encouraged to attack, Hungary might not have had the pressure put on it to join the Axis, other Balkan States might not have done so - the invasion of Yugoslavia probably could not have happened........

In some ways it is a shame they didn't try.

But you should not doubt that it would have been a disaster.

Now if you start German planning for Sealion BEFORE 1939 you get a different answer - yes they might have pulled it off - but the plan hatched in 1940 could not have worked.

For further reading I suggest a couple of sites:

http://www.jfsc.ndu.edu/current_student ... a_lion.doc - a papre writen by some military chaps in 2002 which discusses military "academic" aspects and comes to the same conclusions as above - ie proper planing might have allowed it to work but wasn't in place.

And

http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/ww ... rlord.aspx - a more simplistic look, but one that is much easier to understand.

[Redpossum]

My FIRST criticism of the first document you cite comes at the top of the first page. Look at the authors' names, or more importantly look at the acronyms after the names, and tell me what's missing.

USAF, USA, USN.

What's missing is USMC. Seelowe was (planned to be) an amphibious operation, yet the amphibious arm of the US military is conspicuously not represented.

OK, they start with a general strategic review, yadda yadda, repetitive, nothing new.

Next they go into a laborious explanation of the concept of Schwerpunkt, like we'd never read Von Clausewitz...

Now, let me quote from section III-D, "The Kriegsmarine lost nearly half its surface fleet during the invasion of Norway in April 1940". If we're re-writing history in playing C-EAW, why do we have to assume that the Norwegian campaign was as disastrous as the historical reality? Presumably the decision to invade Norway or not is for the Axis player to make?

Now permit me two much longer quotes. I apologise for the length of these, but both are vitally relevant.


Hitler missed a golden opportunity at Dunkirk to largely destroy the BEF. On 24 May 1940, German General Guderian??™s Panzers were within 15 miles of Dunkirk while four motorized divisions and at least six infantry divisions were closing in as well. Dunkirk, and with it more than 300,000 British and French troops, was ???ripe for the taking??? when the panzers were ordered to halt and stand fast (3, 55).
If Hitler had recognized the British Army as a COG for the invasion of England, perhaps he would have done more to prevent their evacuation from Dunkirk. In consequence, Operation SEA LION called for a much larger invasion force than might otherwise have been necessary, further complicating invasion plans and endangering chances of success.


Again, this is an action which will take place within the context of C-EAW, why are we obligated to assume that this error will be repeated? A smaller escaping BEF means a smaller german invasion force, which in turn simplifies most of the main objections to viability of Seelowe.

But here's the clincher-


The most important center of gravity and hence the British ???hub of all power and movement??? was the RAF. For an invasion to be successful, German strategy required air supremacy and not simply superiority in the air over southern England, the Channel, and the Continental ports from which the invasion was to be launched (8, 235). Perhaps more than any other aspect of the period, from Dunkirk to the end of the summer, German air strategy reflects the flaws in their understanding of this center of gravity (8, 213). In particular, German failure to press successful strategies for degrading RAF radar, command and control, and other critical air defense systems indicates impatience in dealing with this key COG.
Figure 1 above shows significant events in the Battle of Britain (Operation EAGLE) and reinforces the view that Germany did not remain focused on any one set of targets long enough to effectively suppress the objective and achieve the operational task. The result was the indefinite postponement of Operation SEA LION.


(the acronym COG stands for center of gravity, or schwerpunkt)

This is the meat of the matter, and probably the best, most concise passage in the whole document. And it serves to make my original point.

The problem was that the germans failed to prosecute the air war in a manner conducive to operational success. If the air war had been won, all the other obstacles could potentially have been surmounted.

Again, please recall my original point. Simply that Seelowe was a credible threat. Not that it was likely, not that the odds were good, not that it was anything other than a desperately risky gamble.

Only that it was possible, and a credible threat.

Over to you, good buddy

And let me say in closing that I really enjoy these debates with you

[rtamesis]

I think that the power that isolationist sentiment had on both the Congress and the American public during 1940 and 1941 before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor is often underestimated. After WWI, many Americans during that time viewed the war in Europe as strictly a European problem and would have been most reluctant to get involved in the absence of a direct attack on US soil or forces, especially if the Germans successfully landed a sizable force in southern England in the summer of 1940 and managed to encricle or capture London. There were many American Nazi sympathizers like Charles Lindbergh who would have pressured the American government to stay neutral in the conflict. Even US Ambassador Joseph Kennedy was said to be sympathetic to the German side during those early years before the US entered the war. The more likely scenario of a successful Sealion would have been the withdrawal of the Royal family to Canada as well as members of the British government, Churchill's resignation and the formation of a British government comprised of Nazi sympathizers that would have surrendered the country to the German army. FDR would have ranted and raved in speeches about the need for the US to fight Nazis, but Congress and the American people would have just shrugged and moved on. The US formally got involved in the war in Europe after Hitler decided to support the Japanese and declared war on the USA. To make the US automatically join the Allies on a certain date in the absence of a direct attack on itself or an Axis power declaring war on it is simply not historically accurate and more for game balance. Therefore, I also hope that there would be an option for US neutrality unless directly attacked or if Germany declares war on it.

On the subject of Sealion, if Field Marshall Albert Kesselring had his way, the Germans would have landed in Britain soon after Dunkirk in mid July. British Intelligence thought that this was the most dangerous period and were relieved when the threat had not materialized after August. Admiral Erich Raeder had first raised the subject in November 1939 and asked Hitler about it again on May 21, 1941. If Hitler had agreed and made the German Wermacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine work together to prepare for an invasion of Britain that summer before the weather turned bad in September, who knows how things would have turned out.

[SMK-at-work]

Actually what's really missing from the list of authors is the RAF and the RN!!

Inter-service-rivalry aside the authors doa great job of highlighting the command problems in hte German forces. IMO their idea that the RAF wold ahve been the problem for the invasion is nonsense - the RAF was not the kind of tactical strike force the Luftwaffe was and only its few Beaufort torpedobomber squadrons would ahve been of any use. Of course they could operate at night without fear of interceptin so might have been devastating, but more likely the cruisers and destroyers of hte RN would have done much more damage.

As I said in my post - Sealion AS CONCEIVED IN 1940 must have failed - however if planning had started prior to 1939 then there is a chance of success.

But then that's like saying that the Brits & French could have thrashed the whermacht in 1940 had they adopted better tactics and strategy in the 30's, and it is, IMO, actually outside eth scopwe of CEAW - you are only dealt the hand you have.

Mind you the allies should be able to play their hand better - not racing forwards into Belgium and getting het best half of the armies cut off there would be a good start.....

"What ifs" remain just that - it is, IMO, impossible to sensibly discuss a hypothetical successful sealion, because for every "what if" that is required for it to be suceessful there are any number of possible opposing "what ifs" that could screw it up worse.