Balancing, historical accuracy and are wargamer smarter than Joe and Adolf?

[wosung]

Apparently quite a few German players are thinking it immensely spoils their 1941 Barbarossa reenactment that their Russian adversaries avoid being pocketed grand style. Thus, for 1941 a reduction of the Soviet railpool is contemplated to make the Russian side fight it out or else loose its production capablities & and factories.

This all leads to a few questions:

1. How many Sov factories in 1941-1942 really were overrun by the Germans? Lots were evacuated, albeit in a chaotic way. According to frex Overy, Why the Allies won, in 1942 Russia already managed to translate its comparably fewer Ressources into more military hardware than Germany.

2. And what about IRL German fubared desicions later on, like going for Stalingrad and the Caucasus simultanous, like just sitting in Belorussia and waiting for complete destruction, or like fixed defensive spots just to be encircled and annihilated. Should they be treated as well? And if so, how? Arguably there won’t be such a simple solution like reducing the German rail pool to simulate this all.

3. Should there be different solutions for playing against the AI and against your fellow wargamer? Like scenarios to be played only by one side? Like gentlemen agreements about “Sir, I won’t retreat in 1941 if you’ll just overstretch your offensive in 1942”, translating into different handicaps?

4. Are wargamers, from hindsight, smarter than Joe and Adolf? (At least, by definition, the German player WILL start Barbarossa. Thus, is he really smarter than Adolf? Yes, because it’s only a game.)

5. How to simulate the human factor, like strategically genial megalomanic dictators, for a crowd of us hyper-critical wargamers, spoiled by national perceptions about the “real” war and divided into reenactors & optimizers, who in the end detest nothing more than a dumb AI?

What do you think?

Regards

[MengJiao]

ORIGINAL: wosung

Apparently quite a few German players are thinking it immensely spoils their 1941 Barbarossa reenactment that their Russian adversaries avoid being pocketed grand style. Thus, for 1941 a reduction of the Soviet railpool is contemplated to make the Russian side fight it out or else loose its production capablities & and factories.

This all leads to a few questions:

1. How many Sov factories in 1941-1942 really were overrun by the Germans? Lots were evacuated, albeit in a chaotic way. According to frex Overy, Why the Allies won, in 1942 Russia already managed to translate its comparably fewer Ressources into more military hardware than Germany.

2. And what about IRL German fubared desicions later on, like going for Stalingrad and the Caucasus simultanous, like just sitting in Belorussia and waiting for complete destruction, or like fixed defensive spots just to be encircled and annihilated. Should they be treated as well? And if so, how? Arguably there won’t be such a simple solution like reducing the German rail pool to simulate this all.

3. Should there be different solutions for playing against the AI and against your fellow wargamer? Like scenarios to be played only by one side? Like gentlemen agreements about “Sir, I won’t retreat in 1941 if you’ll just overstretch your offensive in 1942”, translating into different handicaps?

4. Are wargamers, from hindsight, smarter than Joe and Adolf? (At least, by definition, the German player WILL start Barbarossa. Thus, is he really smarter than Adolf? Yes, because it’s only a game.)

5. How to simulate the human factor, like strategically genial megalomanic dictators, for a crowd of us hyper-critical wargamers, spoiled by national perceptions about the “real” war and divided into reenactors & optimizers, who in the end detest nothing more than a dumb AI?

What do you think?

Regards

The game is a bit ambiguous about the player's role. I think it is a lot more fun to play the Russians in this game because you get to make decisions pretty close to the kind that STAVKA had to make. I've also only played in a 1942 scenario that I made myself to avoid the problems of 1941 while staying moderately close to history.

For players who want to take the Axis side, things look much less interesting. You actually have something like the role of cheif of staff for the Eastern Forces. You don't get to rebuild your army on the fly, and you don't get to revise German objectives in Russia.

So the player is never quite exactly taking the role of Hitler or Stalin. The fixed start in June 1941 pretty much locks the player out of having the same impact that doing a better job than Hitler or Stalin would have had.

Perhaps this is just as well. Hitler's best move would have been to have not started WWII at all and in any case not to have attacked the USSR, but the game doesn't deal with that so the player is taking the role of AXIS high command in the East and not Hitler.

Again, Stalin's possible moves in 1937-1941 would seem to be more interesting, but the game doesn't deal with that (which means the player is more or less STAVKA and not Stalin).

My response to the ambiguous role of the player and my interest in exploring possible histories has led me to play the game starting with the situation in April 1942, thus skipping the follies of both Hitler and Stalin and moving to a more purely military set of decisions.

[wosung]

ORIGINAL: MengJiao

ORIGINAL: wosung

Apparently quite a few German players are thinking it immensely spoils their 1941 Barbarossa reenactment that their Russian adversaries avoid being pocketed grand style. Thus, for 1941 a reduction of the Soviet railpool is contemplated to make the Russian side fight it out or else loose its production capablities & and factories.

This all leads to a few questions:

1. How many Sov factories in 1941-1942 really were overrun by the Germans? Lots were evacuated, albeit in a chaotic way. According to frex Overy, Why the Allies won, in 1942 Russia already managed to translate its comparably fewer Ressources into more military hardware than Germany.

2. And what about IRL German fubared desicions later on, like going for Stalingrad and the Caucasus simultanous, like just sitting in Belorussia and waiting for complete destruction, or like fixed defensive spots just to be encircled and annihilated. Should they be treated as well? And if so, how? Arguably there won’t be such a simple solution like reducing the German rail pool to simulate this all.

3. Should there be different solutions for playing against the AI and against your fellow wargamer? Like scenarios to be played only by one side? Like gentlemen agreements about “Sir, I won’t retreat in 1941 if you’ll just overstretch your offensive in 1942”, translating into different handicaps?

4. Are wargamers, from hindsight, smarter than Joe and Adolf? (At least, by definition, the German player WILL start Barbarossa. Thus, is he really smarter than Adolf? Yes, because it’s only a game.)

5. How to simulate the human factor, like strategically genial megalomanic dictators, for a crowd of us hyper-critical wargamers, spoiled by national perceptions about the “real” war and divided into reenactors & optimizers, who in the end detest nothing more than a dumb AI?

What do you think?

Regards

The game is a bit ambiguous about the player's role. I think it is a lot more fun to play the Russians in this game because you get to make decisions pretty close to the kind that STAVKA had to make. I've also only played in a 1942 scenario that I made myself to avoid the problems of 1941 while staying moderately close to history.

For players who want to take the Axis side, things look much less interesting. You actually have something like the role of cheif of staff for the Eastern Forces. You don't get to rebuild your army on the fly, and you don't get to revise German objectives in Russia.

So the player is never quite exactly taking the role of Hitler or Stalin. The fixed start in June 1941 pretty much locks the player out of having the same impact that doing a better job than Hitler or Stalin would have had.

Perhaps this is just as well. Hitler's best move would have been to have not started WWII at all and in any case not to have attacked the USSR, but the game doesn't deal with that so the player is taking the role of AXIS high command in the East and not Hitler.

Again, Stalin's possible moves in 1937-1941 would seem to be more interesting, but the game doesn't deal with that (which means the player is more or less STAVKA and not Stalin).

My response to the ambiguous role of the player and my interest in exploring possible histories has led me to play the game starting with the situation in April 1942, thus skipping the follies of both Hitler and Stalin and moving to a more purely military set of decisions.

But as German player you are in the drivers seat concerning your targets in Russia, aren't you? North? Centre? South? In which order & intensity?

Arguably Hitler's follies in Russia just began to expand from summer 1942 onwards, set aside the fact he started the whole thing. Now, should those operational-stratetgic follies, mentioned above, also be simulated? Or is it more about the pure joy of enacting contrafactual military history, like in ... a German advance to the Ural and to the Caucasus?

Regards

[ComradeP]

With or without Stalingrad, divisions that were destroyed, reformed and used on other fronts during the historical Stalingrad disaster will withdraw, so the Germans are already in a way penalized for a mistake they didn't make. The main problem with a historical arrival/withdrawal schedules is that you probably won't make the same decisions as were made in real life, so the schedule isn't really the result of your actions.

[jay102]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

With or without Stalingrad, divisions that were destroyed, reformed and used on other fronts during the historical Stalingrad disaster will withdraw, so the Germans are already in a way penalized for a mistake they didn't make. The main problem with a historical arrival/withdrawal schedules is that you probably won't make the same decisions as were made in real life, so the schedule isn't really the result of your actions.

This is demoralizing for any player want to play Axis because they need to pay for mistakes they don't make. In WitP, It make no one ever trying to play Japan if the carriers historically lost at Midway pre-scheduled to withdrawal on that date.

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: wosung

Arguably Hitler's follies in Russia just began to expand from summer 1942 onwards, set aside the fact he started the whole thing. Now, should those operational-strategic follies, mentioned above, also be simulated? Or is it more about the pure joy of enacting contrafactual military history, like in ... a German advance to the Ural and to the Caucasus?

Regards

If you play the Russians, the greatest "operational-strategic folly" is already committed for you when the game begins. The mass of your partially re-trained and partially re-equipped armies are deployed close to the border just waiting to be cut up. The mass of your air forces sit on the ground waiting to be destroyed. Stalin was politically brilliant in seizing the "buffer zones" of Eastern Poland, Rumania, and the Baltic States. Then he totally blew it militarily by pushing all his army's West to line the border.

Had the bulk of his forces been deployed along the old Soviet border (the Stalin Line) in their long established cantonments and training areas, they would have been much less vulnerable. No real point in moving forward until 1942, when the training and equipping was to be completed. The "buffer zone" should have been held with NKVD border guards and flying engineer columns (to destroy bridges and such). That's the point of a "buffer"..., to absorb the shock of an attack while giving your forces time to prepare to meet it.

[wosung]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

With or without Stalingrad, divisions that were destroyed, reformed and used on other fronts during the historical Stalingrad disaster will withdraw, so the Germans are already in a way penalized for a mistake they didn't make. The main problem with a historical arrival/withdrawal schedules is that you probably won't make the same decisions as were made in real life, so the schedule isn't really the result of your actions.

You don't mean, divisions destroyed in Stalingrad have to be withdrawn, regardless whether Stalingrad happens or not, do you?!

So who do you all think is more handicapped, compared to the IRL setting, the German or the Russian player? Arguably a better than life human Russian player's performance is counterbalanced by a scheduled mobilization in form of brigades, historically an mere emergency measure, so to reduce the command difficulties of a half-beaten mass army...

Anyway, this whole issue at least shows how far the biggest theatre of operations ever IRL was influenced by "political-ideological" thinking, or by military unprofessionalism. Arguably, the side which made fewer mistakes, ultimately won. Should this handicaps be simulated?

Regards

[MengJiao]

ORIGINAL: wosung

ORIGINAL: MengJiao

ORIGINAL: wosung

Apparently quite a few German players are thinking it immensely spoils their 1941 Barbarossa reenactment that their Russian adversaries avoid being pocketed grand style. Thus, for 1941 a reduction of the Soviet railpool is contemplated to make the Russian side fight it out or else loose its production capablities & and factories.

This all leads to a few questions:

1. How many Sov factories in 1941-1942 really were overrun by the Germans? Lots were evacuated, albeit in a chaotic way. According to frex Overy, Why the Allies won, in 1942 Russia already managed to translate its comparably fewer Ressources into more military hardware than Germany.

2. And what about IRL German fubared desicions later on, like going for Stalingrad and the Caucasus simultanous, like just sitting in Belorussia and waiting for complete destruction, or like fixed defensive spots just to be encircled and annihilated. Should they be treated as well? And if so, how? Arguably there won’t be such a simple solution like reducing the German rail pool to simulate this all.

3. Should there be different solutions for playing against the AI and against your fellow wargamer? Like scenarios to be played only by one side? Like gentlemen agreements about “Sir, I won’t retreat in 1941 if you’ll just overstretch your offensive in 1942”, translating into different handicaps?

4. Are wargamers, from hindsight, smarter than Joe and Adolf? (At least, by definition, the German player WILL start Barbarossa. Thus, is he really smarter than Adolf? Yes, because it’s only a game.)

5. How to simulate the human factor, like strategically genial megalomanic dictators, for a crowd of us hyper-critical wargamers, spoiled by national perceptions about the “real” war and divided into reenactors & optimizers, who in the end detest nothing more than a dumb AI?

What do you think?

Regards

The game is a bit ambiguous about the player's role. I think it is a lot more fun to play the Russians in this game because you get to make decisions pretty close to the kind that STAVKA had to make. I've also only played in a 1942 scenario that I made myself to avoid the problems of 1941 while staying moderately close to history.

For players who want to take the Axis side, things look much less interesting. You actually have something like the role of cheif of staff for the Eastern Forces. You don't get to rebuild your army on the fly, and you don't get to revise German objectives in Russia.

So the player is never quite exactly taking the role of Hitler or Stalin. The fixed start in June 1941 pretty much locks the player out of having the same impact that doing a better job than Hitler or Stalin would have had.

Perhaps this is just as well. Hitler's best move would have been to have not started WWII at all and in any case not to have attacked the USSR, but the game doesn't deal with that so the player is taking the role of AXIS high command in the East and not Hitler.

Again, Stalin's possible moves in 1937-1941 would seem to be more interesting, but the game doesn't deal with that (which means the player is more or less STAVKA and not Stalin).

My response to the ambiguous role of the player and my interest in exploring possible histories has led me to play the game starting with the situation in April 1942, thus skipping the follies of both Hitler and Stalin and moving to a more purely military set of decisions.

But as German player you are in the drivers seat concerning your targets in Russia, aren't you? North? Centre? South? In which order & intensity?

Arguably Hitler's follies in Russia just began to expand from summer 1942 onwards, set aside the fact he started the whole thing. Now, should those operational-stratetgic follies, mentioned above, also be simulated? Or is it more about the pure joy of enacting contrafactual military history, like in ... a German advance to the Ural and to the Caucasus?

Regards

In a totally open-ended game, a person taking Hitler's role could offer a lot to the populations in the areas his forces take. This would reduce the political objectives to:

1) cripple Soviet forces
2) set up popular Anti-soviet regimes
3) negotiate a treaty with the rump of the USSR

But since you aren't exactly Hitler, you can't get most Slavs to accept your anti-soviet regimes since you're working for a Hitler whose policies mark
Slavs as subhuman.

[Flaviusx]

Interestingly, Shaposhnikov wanted to do just that, leave the mass of the Red Army deployed in depth in the old borders, with just a screen on the new border territories. But Stalin overruled him.

[MengJiao]

ORIGINAL: wosung

ORIGINAL: MengJiao

ORIGINAL: wosung

Apparently quite a few German players are thinking it immensely spoils their 1941 Barbarossa reenactment that their Russian adversaries avoid being pocketed grand style. Thus, for 1941 a reduction of the Soviet railpool is contemplated to make the Russian side fight it out or else loose its production capablities & and factories.

This all leads to a few questions:

1. How many Sov factories in 1941-1942 really were overrun by the Germans? Lots were evacuated, albeit in a chaotic way. According to frex Overy, Why the Allies won, in 1942 Russia already managed to translate its comparably fewer Ressources into more military hardware than Germany.

2. And what about IRL German fubared desicions later on, like going for Stalingrad and the Caucasus simultanous, like just sitting in Belorussia and waiting for complete destruction, or like fixed defensive spots just to be encircled and annihilated. Should they be treated as well? And if so, how? Arguably there won’t be such a simple solution like reducing the German rail pool to simulate this all.

3. Should there be different solutions for playing against the AI and against your fellow wargamer? Like scenarios to be played only by one side? Like gentlemen agreements about “Sir, I won’t retreat in 1941 if you’ll just overstretch your offensive in 1942”, translating into different handicaps?

4. Are wargamers, from hindsight, smarter than Joe and Adolf? (At least, by definition, the German player WILL start Barbarossa. Thus, is he really smarter than Adolf? Yes, because it’s only a game.)

5. How to simulate the human factor, like strategically genial megalomanic dictators, for a crowd of us hyper-critical wargamers, spoiled by national perceptions about the “real” war and divided into reenactors & optimizers, who in the end detest nothing more than a dumb AI?

What do you think?

Regards

The game is a bit ambiguous about the player's role. I think it is a lot more fun to play the Russians in this game because you get to make decisions pretty close to the kind that STAVKA had to make. I've also only played in a 1942 scenario that I made myself to avoid the problems of 1941 while staying moderately close to history.

For players who want to take the Axis side, things look much less interesting. You actually have something like the role of cheif of staff for the Eastern Forces. You don't get to rebuild your army on the fly, and you don't get to revise German objectives in Russia.

So the player is never quite exactly taking the role of Hitler or Stalin. The fixed start in June 1941 pretty much locks the player out of having the same impact that doing a better job than Hitler or Stalin would have had.

Perhaps this is just as well. Hitler's best move would have been to have not started WWII at all and in any case not to have attacked the USSR, but the game doesn't deal with that so the player is taking the role of AXIS high command in the East and not Hitler.

Again, Stalin's possible moves in 1937-1941 would seem to be more interesting, but the game doesn't deal with that (which means the player is more or less STAVKA and not Stalin).

My response to the ambiguous role of the player and my interest in exploring possible histories has led me to play the game starting with the situation in April 1942, thus skipping the follies of both Hitler and Stalin and moving to a more purely military set of decisions.

But as German player you are in the drivers seat concerning your targets in Russia, aren't you? North? Centre? South? In which order & intensity?

Arguably Hitler's follies in Russia just began to expand from summer 1942 onwards, set aside the fact he started the whole thing. Now, should those operational-stratetgic follies, mentioned above, also be simulated? Or is it more about the pure joy of enacting contrafactual military history, like in ... a German advance to the Ural and to the Caucasus?

Regards

This is why I'm currently sticking to 1942 as a starting point. There's still plenty of room for folly, but you don't have to sit through the historically gratuitious need to beat up the
Russians in 1941 or the Germans in the winter.

[wosung]

Well, arguably even if Hitler theoretically might have had the power to become a ... savior of the East, racial-and ideological constraints effectively hindered the Nazi elite to do so.

Regards

[MengJiao]

ORIGINAL: jay102

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

With or without Stalingrad, divisions that were destroyed, reformed and used on other fronts during the historical Stalingrad disaster will withdraw, so the Germans are already in a way penalized for a mistake they didn't make. The main problem with a historical arrival/withdrawal schedules is that you probably won't make the same decisions as were made in real life, so the schedule isn't really the result of your actions.

This is demoralizing for any player want to play Axis because they need to pay for mistakes they don't make. In WitP, It make no one ever trying to play Japan if the carriers historically lost at Midway pre-scheduled to withdrawal on that date.

I agree that it is less fun to play the Axis in this game. I think it is because the player's role on the Russian side is reasonably close to STAVKA (at least after 1941) while the Axis player's role is one with less overall control.

[MengJiao]

ORIGINAL: wosung

Well, arguably even if Hitler theoretically might have had the power to become a ... savior of the East, racial-and ideological constraints effectively hindered the Nazi elite to do so.

Regards

A really competent Hilter could have used the Wehrmach to wipe out the SS just as he used the SS to wipe out the SD. He would have to do it in
early 1939, I think.

[wosung]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Interestingly, Shaposhnikov wanted to do just that, leave the mass of the Red Army deployed in depth in the old borders, with just a screen on the new border territories. But Stalin overruled him.

I didn't know that.

Now, would it be possible to code the AI using different sets Russian defensive behavior (Shaposhnikov variant, Stalin variant). Like, being an equivalent of the German AI, which somehow also has to decide where to focus strategically?

Or what about some "mad dictator" scenarios, with a Soviet no retreat behavior in 1941 and a German one from 19XX onwards?

Regards

[abulbulian]

ORIGINAL: jay102

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

With or without Stalingrad, divisions that were destroyed, reformed and used on other fronts during the historical Stalingrad disaster will withdraw, so the Germans are already in a way penalized for a mistake they didn't make. The main problem with a historical arrival/withdrawal schedules is that you probably won't make the same decisions as were made in real life, so the schedule isn't really the result of your actions.

This is demoralizing for any player want to play Axis because they need to pay for mistakes they don't make. In WitP, It make no one ever trying to play Japan if the carriers historically lost at Midway pre-scheduled to withdrawal on that date.

+1

I agree 100% here. Have now got to the first blizzard turn in my game and finding out the game mechanics are enforcing large (not even historical loses) when my situation was far from historical. I've already posted about this:

"Here's some of the bad mistakes by Germans in that first winter:

1) no winter prep clothing had priority to get to front
- I couldn't change this cause game has hard coded winter effects on axis units

2) many units pushed to such extreme that div sometime at 50% strength
- most of my units still very strong with respect to TOE - 80%-90%

3) Supply lines were over extended in last autumn and winter pushes
- my supply lines were in good shape for the majority of game (mud is harsh) and motor pool was at least equal to needs

4) Hitler want Moscow late and pushed generals to attack late Nov and Dec to take it. Thus, not preparing defense lines as all out attack consumed last of muni, fuel, and supply stocks
- I hunkered down in Nov and units started to fortify and rest.

5) German armor units left out and exposed to elements.
- I had almost all my armor in Urban or Cities behind the lines and safe.


* also, I took Leningrad and had Fins on line too to help
before blizzard turn
** Sov loses at 4 mil and 16k tanks
** axis loses at 0.5 mil and 2.4k tanks

All this didn't make a drop of difference, first turn of blizzard Sov units bust through my fort 3's push and isolate some div, which have no hope to break out or survive more than one more turn. "

Here's the kicker: I was able, with some luck, to get a Smolensk pocket. But I didn't really have to fight them, rather I just let them slowly surrender. Thus, my units were very strong and TOE's for inf units were very high. So going into the winter my units were in excellent shape with supplies and rest.

I'm very tired of the arguments that the winter was the main reason why the Germans took large loses and the Sov were able to push in many places in Stalin's winter 41 offensive. NO, this has been proven to be only one contributing factor. Here's some of the more important reasons the German's suffered so much that first winter:

- costly battles around Smolensk, Kiev, and Vyazma-Bryansk.

- Hitler wanting most so badly that risked basically everything on a last ditch push burning up what was left of fuel and supplies. Not to mention the exhaustion of the men and equipment involved fighting in bad weather.

- so on the onset of the Sov offensive, German units were not 'dug-in' and with the ground freezing (can't dig in) and fuel almost non-existent (burned fuel to keep warm) they were exposed and vulnerable.

Documented accounts of German lines that had the opportunity to rest and dig in before the Sov winter counter offensive were able to beat off all attacks. Only in keep with the flanks of other areas that had to retreat were they forced to pull back.

So people that have done the research in depth, please don't blindly explain the it was the winter weather and weather alone that cause the Germans the loses in men and material in Dec41-Jan41. That's fiction. Yes, the weather was a contributing factor and magnified the cracks already appearing with the invincible Wehrmacht. But these cracks were caused by other more serious problems brought about by Hitler's insane desire to capture Moscow and hope to end the war before 42.

In my current game before the blizzard, my units on the line were rested, well supplied, fortified (mostly 2-4), and had 80-90% TOE. But it didn't mean anything when the first blizzard turn hit and my opponent just attack everywhere and won almost all battles.

So I'm troubled with WitE's approach to the winter 41-42 and how the German's will suffer all the same ill effects as they did historically even if an axis player attempts to plan much better for the that first winter.

Maybe the Sov offensive will lose stream. I will hold my comments until I get through this first winter against a human opponent.
[:'(]

[Flaviusx]

Wosung, there were even a series of Red Army wargames that showed what would happen with the deployment chosen. Zhukov played the Germans in that wargame and more or less did to Pavlov's western front what the Germans did to them in due course.

Stalin ignored those results. Instead, he sacked Merestkov as chief of staff and replaced him with Zhukov, which hardly solved the problem.

Pavlov himself would be executed shortly after the invasion for more or less losing the whole of Western Front precisely as predicted in the wargames.

Near as I can tell, Stalin was playing some kind of deep political game here and hoping to win a war of nerves with Germany by this forward deployment. He seems to have felt that a deep deployment would amount to some kind of tacit admission of weakness and inevitably lead to huge concessions by the Soviet Union to Germany.

However, Hitler wasn't playing any kind of political game nor looking for mere concessions. He just wanted to destroy the Soviet Union.

[Great_Ajax]

This isn't exactly correct. A unit is not withdrawn from the game because it was destroyed historically. They are only withdrawn if they were deployed to a different theater.

Trey

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

With or without Stalingrad, divisions that were destroyed, reformed and used on other fronts during the historical Stalingrad disaster will withdraw, so the Germans are already in a way penalized for a mistake they didn't make. The main problem with a historical arrival/withdrawal schedules is that you probably won't make the same decisions as were made in real life, so the schedule isn't really the result of your actions.

[FredSanford3]

With regard to the retreating issue, where players willingly surrender territory for the sake of force perservation (can be applied to both sides):  How about if the National Morale in 9.1.3 of the manual wasn't strictly scheduled, but could vary depending on territory held/recently lost?  e.g.- If a player abandons X population points worth of cities/towns, their morale drops by Y amount.  This would encourage both sides to stand and fight, lest their forces lose heart.  I would venture to say that had by some chance the Germans been winning in the later war years, their morale wouldn't have been decreasing.  Their national morale decreased because they weren't winning.  For clarity, I'm suggesting National base morale be variable.  I know individual unit's morale will vary with their won/loss record.
 
So far as historical withdrawal schedules, could there be some variability added in which particular units are withdrawn?  Say, for example, instead of a particular division, allow substituition based on nationality/type/service.  Some restrictions would apply, you couldn't remove a Romanian security division in place of an SS Pg Div.  Or, you could 'spend' VPs to obtain/retain units you want.

[wosung]

ORIGINAL: MengJiao

ORIGINAL: wosung

Well, arguably even if Hitler theoretically might have had the power to become a ... savior of the East, racial-and ideological constraints effectively hindered the Nazi elite to do so.

Regards

A really competent Hilter could have used the Wehrmach to wipe out the SS just as he used the SS to wipe out the SD. He would have to do it in
early 1939, I think.

That's your definition of "competence".

WW1 noncom Hitler was by far more uncomfortable with the "arrogant" aristocratic Wehrmacht officer corps establishement than with the "loyal" SS.

This very preference influenced the course of WW2: The Sichelschnitt thrust through the Ardennes 1940 was against the conventional wisdom of the military establishment, like the stop order in front of Dunkirk. In both cases Hitler didn't only battle the Wallies, but also attempted to discipline the unruly high officer corps. Previously, Manstein and Guderian, weren't exactly mainstream, but in their military thinking young revolutionaries. Plus, the later the war, the more did Hitler relied on burgeois instead of aristocratic generals.

Regards

[jay102]

+1, Losing a population center(cities, urbans) should hurt national morale a bit. Losing Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad...can badly hurts. This should give both side enough incentive to defend the ground as historically did.