My reading of it is that early German armour in force would have been a major problem . The air supremacy was in fact not that useful in regards to tanks - obviously it could spot them and all soft skinned support vehicles were vulnerable to strafes but tanks were mostly immune to anything but bombs. I believe that the typhoon anti-tank rockets had a hit rate of about 1%. Contrary to popular belief the vast majority of German armour was destroyed by ground forces including in the famous Mortain counterattack. Having said this heavy bombers and naval fire were effective against static tank concentrations and the navy might have been able to break up any large scale armoured counterattack - though they didn't stop the 21st Panzer division on the day
Therefore I think the delays to armour were important after all the Germans did keep bringing them into the fight after the beach head was established and they helped hold the line for 6 weeks- what they were unable to do was assemble them in a large striking force behind the lines for a co-ordinated attack that might have broken the beachhead - Allied pressure and presumably dealys meant that all reinforcements were fed in piecemeal. I recall one particular case of tigers already in France but the resistance had drained the oil from the train bogey axles and replaced it with abrasive powder and the train seized up - in the end they took 3 weeks to reach the battle.
Fair points all, but you don't need to kill the tanks to stop a tank formation. They are so vulnerable without the soft support that they verge on useless. "soft support" isn't just spare parts and supply units, it is fuel, supporting infantry and artillery, ammunition. All things a tank force in combat consumes in large quantities and without which renders them ineffective. In fact the vulnerability of the soft targets have a great deal to do with the piecemeal nature of the German response.
Also, the same factors that slowed the allies in those first 6 weeks also hampered any German counteroffensives. The Bocage, for which the US was unprepared, was ideal for defense and was going to hamper counteroffensives. The British attempts to break defenses around Caen would have been not unlike any attempt to try and break the ring (ground, air and naval) around the beachheads.
As to piecemeal..... If all you have is all you got then that is what you use. Had they not done so the Allies would probably taken advantage of the lack of resistance sooner.
You have said this before in an another discussion. Can you give some proofs to your strong claims that the Germans were incapable in doing this?
My objection is primary logical. If Germans did advance almost to Moscow (that is a fact), what could have prevented them advancing 50-100km further if they had got more better conditions or started a little earlier? How would further 50-100km have mattered, so that it was according to your opinion completely impossible to acceive this?
Advancing TO Moscow is not enough. You need to arrive with enough force to encircle Moscow, which takes much more, and is much more complicated, than just advancing those 50-100km even if you are doing it against weak defenses. The Germans were better equipped, and in a stronger position, in Stalingrad, which is a town in comparison to Moscow. yet they fared poorly.
In Moscow they would not have been going up against weak defenses. They were going up against prepared and strengthened defenses as well as a strategic reserve built up for the purpose of a counter attack. And they were doing it with minimal supplies and strength and at the end of a thin and tenuous supply line.
In fact I want to change my argument. The Germans were LUCKY they didn't accomplish more and faster. Had they reached Moscow by the time they ended up starting Operation Typhoon, you would probably have AGC now at the far end of their supply, which is now cut off by the Rasputitza, while the Soviets have their best infraxtructure (that leading to Moscow) available to them. How well would AGC at Moscow have fared without supply for 8 weeks? it might have brought about the German defeat even earlier.
I think the way that COH2 handles map vision is a big design problem. You have these "maphack" commander abilities (radio intercept), the occasional maphack unit (OKW searchlight HT), you have these long plane flyovers that loiter forever and give practically 100% map vision, you have these unit abilities (vet T-70, axis spotting scopes) that give huge map vision, and you don't really have any dedicated scouting units. Of all of these, I like the T-70 the best, because at least there is some skill required to get it some vet and move it around to scout effectively.
But really what's lacking is a dedicated scout -- a fragile unit that can cloak and scout the map at risk of being revealed. A unit that requires multitasking micro skill and cunning strategy to gain important intel. I would so love for all those press-a-button-for-maphacks to be nerfed and some real scouting units added. Remember the cloaked PE ketten from COH1? The snipers on hold fire behind the lines? The rare insanely micro'd vetted American jeep? I really miss those tactics in COH2. It's like a whole fantastic aspect of RTS is just gone.
I think you get at an under mentioned weakness of the game. GJ.
But please, no invisible kettens! That those things could scout, move quickly, and detect mines for themselves, all while cloaked, made them just the kind of unit you described in your first paragraph, too powerful as a scout with too little counterplay.
The problem is one of comparing armchair generals (and Austrian corporals) to real generals and logisticians.
The "operational arts" generals were correct that they could defeat the Soviet military in the first 700km. What was wrong was that this would be sufficient to knock out the soviets, which is really a political determination, but one most of the generals were inclined, in '41 and after all their successes, to agree with.
Those same generals extended their successes even further and then wrote memoirs that had it not been for this (lates start?) or that (winter) they would have beat the Russians. So the armchair generals try to figure out how to start sooner. Or start later but with more panzers.
But what the germans needed was a "mulberry"-like project that would retool the rail and road infrastructure, as well as sufficient trucks and rolling stock (locomotives, railcars) to make supply possible. This never happened. So they were doomed from the start despite most everything in the first months going their way.
Another big impact had the postponed start of the campaign. Initially, operation bararossa was scheduled for april i believe, but was continuously postponed until june. This limited the effective time frame until the start of the winter.
The winter of 1941 came earlier than expected and German troops were not prepared for it (Lack of winter clothing, vehicles/guns not suitable for winter conditions). This led to the halt of the German offensive and can be regarded as a crucial and decisive factor in the failure of the eastern campaign.
This analysis works only if you believe it was the weather that stopped the Germans. I would disagree with that. It was the distance and the Soviets that stopped them. The force that made it near to Moscow was a completely spent force. Offensive operations even against a weakly defended Moscow was impossible. And Moscow was not weakly defended.
Had they started earlier they a) might have still faced the mud of the spring thaws, and B) the Soviet response of rebuilding their reserves, which was the biggest obstacle the Germans had, would also have started sooner.
The Germans would have failed regardless. In all their operations they still took 25% casualties (725,000) in '41, which is low in comparison to what they achieved, but it wasn't replaceable. The Russians were reinforcing their army to the tune of 500,000 a month with the millions (14 million at the start of Barbarossa) of men they had who had military experience.
By all measures D-Day went extremely well and that is despite many mistakes having been made. Allied naval shelling and aerial bombardment of the beaches was completely off target. At the US beaches units came ashore at the wrong locations. The seas were on the rougher side of what was acceptable (and hence almost all the DD Shermans floundered and sank). Paratroopers missed their drop zones sometimes by many miles and landed far from their own units.
But much more fundamental things went right:
- Operational surprise of both the date and location was achieved.
- Landing operations had been well rehearsed.
- Air superiority had been achieved over all of France and air supremacy over the beachheads.
- Tremendous planning and effort went into preparing to continue landing operations and supply to increase and supply hundreds of thousands of troops.
The allies were very unsure of success. 80% casualties were expected amongst the airborne even in a success.
not much of this has to do with the German response. Under any circumstances the Panzers could not have arrived before midday and by then the beachheads were established.
Frankly I don't think there is anything in these circumstances that could have saved the Germans. They were doomed from the start. Even the largest allied blunder of Normandy (in my opinion), the lack of preparation for battle in the Bocage, didn't do more than delay the allies for a few weeks. They were not going to be able to put up the kind of defense needed to stop what the allies could land on the beaches and bring to bear, not under the protection of allied air support.
The historian Andrew Roberts has claimed that the reason for not giving the German Wehrmacht soldiers winter equipment was not about logistics, but more about that Hitler refused to allow them that.
Whether the article is true or not it simply would not have mattered.
The German logistics were extremely hampered and would have been regardless. Any ton of winter clothing is a ton of fuel or ammunition or spare parts or replacement equipment, or food that is not going to get to the troops.
The Allies faced the same zero-sum decisions in 1944 and they had an even more robust supply chain and logistical plan than the Germans in 1941. They did manage to get winter clothing to most of the frontline troops. While it is kind of famous that the 101st Airborne went into Bastogne without proper winter gear they also didn't have anywhere close to a full load of weapons and food either. They were doing R&R and the limited supplies were going to frontline troops.
I am not saying this, only that it would have gone much better, if the decisions would have been made by more qualified people than Hitler. I have also said that the Germans made more than one or two mistakes, and I have presented some of them here.
Hitler was the reason for that they started the war, but for example the invasion of France was planned by Manstein and executed by the German generals. Of course, the German generals would never started the war, so in that way Hitler "was the reason for the early successes". But if Hitler just started the war, and then given the task of leading the war to a German joint of staff lead by Manstein, the outcome of the war would have been completely different I think. I am not claiming that they would necessary have won the war, but it would have gone better for them.
The allies had better leadership, because their decisions were made by qualified generals, but for the Germans, Hitler was making the most important decisions. That was a huge advantage for the allies. For example Hitler never allowed strategic/tactical retreats followed up by counterattacks, which were the thing that the Germans were good at.
I actually don't believe the German generalship as a whole had the skill set to win this war. They could win battles, which was enough going up against Poland and France, but they didn't have the tools (or the skill set) to execute a Sea Lion nor to defeat Russia.
My short version of why is this:
But this is an attempt at the long version.
It is a BBC documentary about design and design philosophy, but if you look at some of what they present it is also about war-making philosophy. How the allied priority was first and foremost to get the quantities needed to win, not just the quality. They look at the design and production of the Sten, the Tiger, the T-34, the Mosquito, the Liberty Ship and Germany's Type 52 locomotive. It is the fact that I have never heard before this of that locomotive that points to the difference in outlook of the allies vs the axis and the axis fanbois. It is precisely the lack of focus on things like trucks, trains, railways, etc that the Germans could not have won the war.
Compare that to the Allied preparation for Normandy. They tried to plan for the lack of rail, harbors, etc. They never assumed the enemy would cooperate. They sacrificed better tanks for more tanks that could be delivered by the supply train they had. They had practiced the doctrine of amphibious assault for a couple of decades and spent years building purpose-built equipment. It is the thinking of logisticians over gamers, Austrian corporals, and Prussians schooled in the "operational arts". After all, they did have 76mm Shermans in England, but the calculation not to bring them over was actually pretty good for the first few weeks (they didn't face German heavies). They did get much stronger Shermans by October (over 200 Jumbos) but for the sake of mobility and upkeep they declined. Most US formations just didn't go up against German armored formations, but they almost always had Shermans at their beck and call.
Fine. Have it your way. Nazi Germany was so superior that they were really only a mistake or two away from winning the war.
Sheesh, you people really want to argue your way into this even though the numbers just don't add up.
Hitler was the reason for the early successes. He understood his political position for the most part much better than his generals. He is the one who succeeded in bluffing his way in to the Austria and Czechoslovakia, who made the decision to invade France, etc.
"There was a railway line from Berlin to Middle East that worked at least before the war."
To the "middle east"? Where? The rail line that went through Syria was not completely operational and there is only one line. It is the only heavy rail. There was a light rail that was operational but not suitable for freight. Rail it easily interdicted by land and air and the Germans did not have the infrastructure and logistics in the area that the British had.
There was nothing that would have won Germany the war. That is all fanboi fantasy and never backed up by the logistics.
If a fanboi had a plan to increase the rail logistical operations in the east by 1941, or some way to supply all the additional divisions they always include in their plans, maybe it will make sense.
This is the problem of having people wanting to win wars while still thinking like Austrian corporals, rather than those trained as logistical quant jocks at West Point. Corporals talk about early adoption of a T-26E1 while the adults in the room realize it would delay the arrival in combat of effective tank, and there would be far fewer of them when they had very effective late variants of the M4.
By 1942-3, the allies were never poorer generals or combatants than the Germans. They just chose to fight differently. And they won. hands down. And would have even had the Germans decided to use 20/20 hindsight and do things differently.
Game design. Why USF and SU are design as early aggresive factions which lack lategame while Axis depends on positioning and surviving early on to later win with a better late game.
Aggresive tends to result on you having the initiative and the other faction been on the defensive/reactive.
Unfortunately it also means that wins as Allies are fast and might feel unsatisfying. They will also lead to a lot of whines about not having the power to reach late game.
Likewise the Allied players in longer games will feel robbed because they were "winning" but reach a point where that becomes more and more difficult. And they will complain about late game power.
If we aren't going to change that aspect of the game are we just arguing at what point (10, 15, 20 minutes in) the late game tipping point should be? Sorry, I just think that is poor game design. It sounds like something unsatisfying to play. As Allies you have to dominate or lose, as Axis you have to survive or lose.
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