Profile of AvNY

31 rolls of film from WW2 were "rescued" and developed after the passing of the person who took the photographs. Here is a link to the story:

http://petapixel.com/2015/01/16/31-rolls-undeveloped-film-soldier-wwii-discovered-processed/

Seems the Germans would repurpose every possible armored vehicle. Isn't this an old Renault?

^ That's not a bad idea.

But Amis don't need heavies. OK, the historic thing might be a moot point but Germany was famous for its over-the-top heavy tanks. The Allies weren't, even though they rushed some into production at the end of the war. I don't buy into the Pershing thing at all.

US needs:

* A more resilient, prestige Sherman variant
* Better AT guns
* A more interesting take on the tank destroyer doctrine beyond the Jackson (AT halfies, for example)
* Better, dedicated AT infantry and while I'm at it, sticky bombs
* An early tank better than the Stuart (Chaffee fits, a tank that scales well into the late game like the Puma does)
* Calliopes please

The vibe they need to capture is this - Germany is powerful, cornered and bleeding armoured beast. Dangerous when cornered, with a powerful bite. US is nimble, fast, well-supplied and tactically flexible.

The asymmetrical struggle between those themes is the whole point of US versus OKW. Pershings don't help that. They skew it.

It can be fixed with a core faction tweak and some commanders. An early Chaffee to counter Luchs rush, for example, or elite AT infantry with better zooks.

Two steps.

Get rid of vet 4 and 5 (No, the old men and young boys were never going to be super soldiers, and the grizzled vets aren't about to learn even more super-human new tricks).

Reduce the pop used by allied forces, particularly medium armor and some of the infantry. If you can outplay your opponent and gather/conserve more resources, your reward should absolutely be rewarded with more troops and vehicles on the field, you are going to need them.

Just a few points.
The German army was everything but particularly "experienced" in the context of early WW2. The restrictions of Versailles left a vast part of their manpower pool untrained, especially among the enlisted and lower echelons of leadership, aka the "Weiße Jahrgänge", and despite the Soviet help in circumventing the restrictions imposed upon them, the Germans had exactly zilch valid experience in conducting modern mobile warfare; in fact, not a single large scale combined arms maneuver had been conducted on German soil prior to the outbreak of the war. What lessons they could derive from the Polish campaign would by their own assessment be of doubtful value against a peer opponent. The Germans by and large fully expected the French to eclipse them in overall professionalism prior to Fall Gelb.

I your point misses the obvious benefits and experience that come from doing actual operations on a massive scale and under real fire. The biggest challenge in training and in drills is making them realistic and large enough to seem real and to reveal actual problems, kinks, etc. You think your drills will come close but they never really come close to what the real thing is like. The Wehrmacht in 1939 got to invade another country whose troops were going to shoot back live ammunition. That means the Wehrmacht has more chances to see and fix mistakes in their operations and their troops get to see what real death, wounds, mobility, etc. look like. By that standard they are "veterans" in a way no Frenchman or Brit was in 1940.

It does not take long (in 1930s terms) to build up a trained military, especially not when you have a professional and experienced cadre and believe war is coming (even if not imminent). The US did it in two years and the Russians rebuilt a vast army in less time (out of necessity). The Germans started training and rearming from the early to mid 30s when most of the rest of the world did not want to take seriously the prospect of another war.

As for the logistical situation ie. prior to Barbarossa/Normandy your assesment strikes me as a bit simplistic. The miserable Soviet road/rail quality (plus the different Russian gauge), density and general lack of infrastructure posed at least as much of a problem as the challenges of keeping an army supplied via the Channel/Atlantic ocean, especially given the vast Allied resources and shipping capacity.

Resources in shipping does not help you either getting onto the land or transporting it from those landing points to an ever farther front line, especially if you have to land new troops at the same time (and then the material for those new troops, etc. etc.) To use the prior analogy, you have the 100,000 sq meter warehouse and lots of forklifts, but still only one loading bay. That is why the only major offensive in the fall of '44 was Market Garden, and even that, by the standard of most offensives was not actually great. It stands out because it was a very "dramatic" and ambitious operation with a involving massive airborne drops. And to accomplish even that the allies had to hold off on all other operations for a couple of weeks, giving the Wehrmacht desperately needed breathing room.

As for the impact of Bagration/Cobra, well, the catastrophic German defeats did actually not come as much of a surprise to those among the General Staff, precious few as they were, who had realised the poor state of the contemporary Wehrmacht which had for all intents and purposes reverted to a pre-modern force with its limited degree of motorisation, shaky fuel supply, etc. - aka "der Krieg des armen Mannes", the "poor mans war", and that on top of being utterly outnumbered and outgunned, attempting to defend divisonal frontages of up to 30 kms with very depleted formations, which of course was a quite farcical undertaking... HG Mitte prior to Bagration was a rotten edifice if there ever was one.

The contention had been that the Germans had been brilliant in defense in the latter half of the war and they only lost because that brilliant military was overwhelmed by sheer numbers in men and material. Their defense was not brilliant or they would not have had effective forces decimated one after the other. Bagration cost them about what Stalingrad did. And another 100,000 were lost in Normandy prior to the Allied breakout and the disintegration at the Falaise Gap.

It was a very expensive July.

I wanted to add one more part about Hitler... He was not a strategic idiot and he was not insane (well, not until the very end probably). Don't forget that by the end of summer '41 the generals must have thought Hitler was some sort of political/military savant. He had lead them to the capture of Europe and most of Afrika and they believed they were well on their way to defeating Russia, the mighty landmass that had vexxed even Napoleon. They must have been drunk on their successes by that point.

He made rational choices that made sense but they were based on the worng criteria. If there was a strategic choice to be made between what was best for Germany and the German people and what fit his Nazi ideology, he picked ideology every time.

Here is a great lecture from the US Army War College on this very topic (only half hour.):

This is not the way to open a dialogue.

There are many reasons for the early successes of '39, '40. and '41. Vague oversimplifications like "starting from their home base" is neither an explanation for their success, nor is it a good basis to discredit military accomplishments.

I like the criticism of the response juxtaposed with categorizing a summation as "oversimplification".

On the day Operation Barbarossa began 3 million men crossed their demarcation line with fully loaded supply trains with direct rail and road links to their supply location and to face an outnumbered, UNlead, and poorly trained opposition. The ONLY thing they had to concern themselves with was the speed and distance of their advance.

The Allies had the opposite problem. The Russians at the beginning of Bagracion were starting from lines that had already been advanced several hundred miles. And the Western allies started D-Day landing a whole 150,000 men on a beach and using an enormous amount of additional men and material to do it. They would then have to continue to land men and their supplies over beaches or a distant and damaged port and then transport it across the damaged roads of France. The Germans ran so fast that the supplies were unable to support sustained operations past September.

The French, British and Russians (to a lesser extent) all had their share of WWI veteran commanders and command staff, no different than the Germans. It was their inability to anticipate and respond to the new wave of fast moving/motorized warfare, among other things, that led to their early humiliations.

Which is exactly my point. in 1939-1941 The Germans had developed a strategy that got within their opponents OODA loop. More to the point they did it with experienced troops against inexperienced troops (this makes a huge difference). In 1944 the allies had to go up against an axis that already knew what modern warfare looked like and had experienced troops to fight it.

I hope you realize than the whole of England was essentially the world's largest military base leading up to mid 1944. The massive buildup and organization of the invasion forces was done covertly...but in relative safety and the English channel was really no great obstacle for the Allies as they had full navy and air superiority in Western Europe at that time.

If you truly believe that this is all there is to it you would make a very poor logistician. Having a full 100,000 sq. meter warehouse can supply very little at a time if it only has one loading bay.

England was full of supplies. But the allies knew they had to focus on getting those onto French soil and to operating units. And they did it well. The Germans thought the allied reliance on motorized transport would be a liability since horses could forage but trucks need fuel. They did not conceive of Pluto, the fuel supply system the allies set up to pump fuel over the beaches.

There is a US military adage that amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics. The corollary is a rephrasing of the old "tactics win battles but strategy wins wars" to "tactics win battles, logistics win wars."

Lots of thought goes into logistics in the US military and has ever since the creation of West Point as an academy of not just military training but of engineering and scientific training as well.