Farfarer61
Posts: 723
Joined: 7/21/2004 Status: offline
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I recently had the privilege of spending a long semi-formal dinner sitting next to a senior serving Finnish general, who turned out to be a WWII history lay expert, and a passing gamer. We talked at length about Finnish WWII decisions, Leningrad, Ladoga-Oneida front, and even whether the no move lines in WITE made sense. ( they sorta kinda do ). The Finns were expert at woodland operations, and achieved 10:1 kill ratios, but self-admittedly had no interest or training in urban warfare. They acknowledged the German superiority in this field ( offensively) and Russian (defensively). If only for purely military casualty ratios for a small country, they were never going to attack Leningrad, and political farsightedness tempered other expeditionary tendencies. As a "what if", once Leningrad had fallen, and the defeat of the USSR probable, then it was a reasonable hypothetical in a game to have the Finns join and behave as they do in WITE. The loss of Finnish morale ( in the game ), once one accepted the hypothetical makes no sense as operations would be seen as payback, euphoria etc. On the other side, Finland did well under Czarist Russia, with significant autonomy save foreign policy. Finally, the Finns acknowledged that the Germans, whom they thought lacked skill in the boreal forest, had become quite adept by 1944-45. By terms of the peace with Stalin, if the Germans did not retreat fast enough out of Finland, the Finns were obliged to attack them, which they did. There were only able to achieve 2:1 kill ratios against the Wehrmacht, and wished the teacher-student relationship had not been so fruitful ;) Although the game is USSR favouring IMHO, the takeaway is I assess Finns should not be able to cross any no move lines until Leningrad falls, meaning no Garrisoning requirement,
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