Germany at war game manual

EPILEPSY WARNING

PLEASE READ THIS NOTICE BEFORE PLAYING THIS GAME OR BEFORE ALLOWING YOUR CHILDREN TO PLAY.

Certain individuals may experience epileptic seizures or loss of consciousness when subjected to strong, flashing lights for long periods of time. Such individuals may therefore experience a seizure while operating computer or video games. This can also affect individuals who have no prior medical record of epilepsy or have never previously experienced a seizure.

If you or any family member has ever experienced epilepsy symptoms (seizures or loss of consciousness) after exposure to flashing lights, please consult your doctor before playing this game.

Parental guidance is always suggested when children are using a computer and video games. Should you or your child experience dizziness, poor eyesight, eye or muscle twitching, loss of consciousness, feelings of disorientation or any type of involuntary movements or cramps while playing this game, turn it off immediately and consult your doctor before playing again.

PRECAUTIONS DURING USE:

• Do not sit too close to the monitor. • Sit as far as comfortably possible. • Use as small a monitor as possible. • Do not play when tired or short on sleep. • Take care that there is sufficient lighting in the room. • Be sure to take a break of 10-15 minutes every hour.

USE OF THIS PRODUCT IS SUBJECT TO ACCEPTANCE OF THE SINGLE USE SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT

Contents1. Welcome and Introduction 1

2. User Interface 12.1. Icons 1

2.2. Buttons 1

2.3. The Menus 2

3. The Information Bar 53.1. The Minimap 7

4. The Main Map 84.1. Terrain 9

4.2. Locations 10

4.3. Damaging, Repairing, and Building Locations 12

5. Units 125.1. Special Units 13

5.2. Selecting Units 13

5.3. Replenishing Units 14

5.4. Unit Information Window 14

6. Action Points 16

7. Moving Units 177.1. Zones of Control 18

7.2. Transport Types 19

7.3. Air Transport 20

7.4. Railways and Operational Movement 20

7.5. Paratroops 21

8. View Points 21

9. Combat 229.1. Entrenchment 23

9.2. Unit Modifiers 23

9.3. Combat Modifiers 28

9.4. Combat Results 29

9.5. Fire Support 31

GERMAny AT WAR 1

10. Experience 31

11. Headquarters 3311.1. Purchasing Units 34

11.2. Improving Units 35

12. Weather 36

13. Victory and Defeat 37

14. End of Turn 37

15. Scenarios and Campaigns 3815.1. Single-Player Scenarios 39

15.2. Multiplayer Scenarios 39

15.3. Campaigns 39

15.4. The Grand Campaign – Archangelsk to Astrakhan 40

16. Historical Context for the Campaigns 4116.1. Operation Barbarossa 41

16.2. An Important note about Terminology 55

16.3. Campaign notes 2: The Main narrative 57

16.4. The Antagonists at Moscow 65

16.5. “Case Blue,” The German Summer Offensive Of 1942 71

16.6. The biggest guns 73

17. The Editor 8517.1. Options 86

17.2. Terrain 87

17.3. Hexes 87

17.4. Units 88

18. Credits 89

19. Appendices 9419.1. Support Units 94

19.2. A-A Campaign tree 96

1. Welcome and IntroductionGermany at War: Barbarossa 1941 is a turn-based strategy game which is set on World War II’s Eastern Front. Historical operations of the German-Soviet conflict can be played in campaigns on both sides. Multiplayer games can be played through Matrix Games’ matchmaking system.

When you first play Germany at War: Barbarossa 1941, you may note that the game is influenced by wargames such as the “General” series. However, note that this game also includes many new and exciting features as well as original campaigns and scenarios to give you a high depth of replayability and enjoyment.

The game map is divided into hexes, each of which is approximately 5 kilometers wide. The game is displayed in a 3D-view with a 2D overlay for menus and message boxes.

2. User InterfaceThe menus consist of windows with icons and buttons.

2.1. IconsMany menus have icons that represent certain information. Icons are used because they are graphical information that takes less space than a full range of text.

Tooltips are displayed by hovering the mouse cursor over an item. A brief description of it will display quickly afterwards.

2.2. ButtonsButtons have text on them that describe their functionality. With buttons, the player can execute actions and access menus.

2 Germany at war GERMAny AT WAR 3

Play a Single ScenarioOpens the Scenario Selection screen. The player can select a scenario and choose the level of difficulty they want.

2.3.2. MultiplayerStarts an PBEM++ game against a human opponent via the Slitherine server; internet connection required.

Connecting to the serverIn the main menu there is a button to enter a multiplayer game which leads you to a login screen.

You need an account at the Slitherine forum to play PBEM++, if you do not have one, go to Slitherine.com and register using the “login” button; it’s free. Use this name and password for all Slitherine/Matrix PBEM++ games.

Just select a username (4-19 characters limited to: a-z,A-Z,0-9 and ‘_’), then a password (any character) and you can start playing.

If you already have one, simply login like you enter the forum and you get access to the games on the server.

Troubleshooting• Authorization Not Found - This means something with your

serial number is wrong and it cannot be traced by the game. Reinstalling the game should resolve this.

• Connection to server failed - Retrying the connection will generally resolve this. Also checking your internet connection, in general, is recommended.

2.3. The Menus

2.3.1. Main MenuThe main menu appears automatically after the introduction and is comprised of the following:

Play a CampaignThe player can choose one of the four linked campaigns here, from the 3-scenario Army Group North campaign to the massive 37-scenario Archangelsk to Astrakhan Grand Campaign.


• Detailed Supply: Fuel and ammunition now cost resource points; how many points depends on the individual scenario rules. Default is 1 point for each.

• Bonuses: Either sides can be given resource (up to 150 points per turn) or experience-point (up to 150 per unit, can only be given to that unit once) bonuses.

3. The Information BarOnce a battle loads, at the bottom of the screen you will see the Info Bar. This is the area that relays important information about terrain and units, and provides buttons that allow access to more information as well.

• The game is not up to date - The tooltip will show you the version number of the game you need. An update to that version will remove this error.

Load a Saved GameSaved campaigns and scenarios of single player games can be loaded. For this purpose a new screen with a file selector is directly opened.EditorOpens the Editor for the game.CreditsShows the credits for the game.Quit GameQuits to the desktop.

2.3.3. Difficulty LevelsDifficulty levels for scenarios and campaigns can be adjusted to the player’s taste during the scenario/campaign selection process with the following factors:

• Weather: Influences combat and movement when turned on; in general unit range is decreased in bad weather, as are its fighting capabilities. For more, see Weather, Section 12.

• Fog of War: If set to “On,” the player only sees the enemy units that are spotted; if set to “Off,” the player can see all the enemy’s units, all the time.

• Supply: If set to “On,” units need to refuel and get restocked periodically with ammunition. Resupply costs a turn during which the unit cannot act. If set to “Off,” all units have unlimited fuel and ammo.


Note that when a unit is selected, more of that unit’s data is displayed above these four buttons as well. If a friendly unit has been selected, the units’ strength is displayed as white soldier silhouettes, as well as the number of casualties it has taken (any soldier silhouettes in red), and its current ammunition count and fuel state. Three other buttons below this data allow you to resupply the unit (“Fill”), reinforce the unit (“Max”) or undo either of these choices (“Reset”).

Conversely, if an enemy unit has been selected, only troop, ammo and fuel levels will be shown.

3.1. The MinimapLastly, the right-hand section of the Info Bar contains the minimap and its accompanying filters. The minimap shows the area of the scenario; units of both sides, towns and terrain elements are displayed in specific colors to enable the player to identify them at a glance. A mouse click in the mini-map will move the main camera to the selected area.

Along the left edge of the minimap are six self-explanatory buttons that control the amount of information shown in the minimap:

The far left section of the Info Bar displays unit information and terrain data.

When hovering the cursor over a unit, that unit’s data is displayed here. This information will range from the unit’s equipment or vehicle type to its fortification level, ammunition count and fuel state.

Below that is the terrain data for that hex – the defensive bonus that terrain gives, next to the small pillbox symbol, and the movement cost, in points, to cross it, next to the arrow.

In the next section to the right of the unit and terrain info section is the weather forecast for both the current turn and the next turn as well as the air unit info.

Next, in the middle of the Info Bar, is a set of four buttons, as well as the count of current resources available:

• HQ: Takes the player to the Headquarters screen, where new units can be bought, current units can be upgraded, and more, depending on the amount of resources a player has and the number of open slots available. For more, see Headquarters, Section 11.

• Air/Ground toggle: Switches between selection of air and ground units; very useful when a player has both air and ground units in the same hex.

• Next unit: Click to move to the next usable unit.• Cancel last move: An “undo” button that brings a unit back

after a move that the player wishes to cancel; only possible if during the move no new enemy has been spotted.


The map consists of two kinds of items – terrain and locations.

4.1. TerrainTerrain has an influence on the maximum view of a unit (how far it can see enemy units). Entering terrain subtracts a certain amount from the unit’s available Movement Points. The amount of these Points deducted depends on the terrain itself. Terrain also has a Maximum Entrenchment level. This means that units can only entrench themselves to that level, and no further.

The following table details Movement Cost (the number of Movement Points it costs to enter that particular terrain feature), the View Cost to see into it (some units cannot see that far), and Max Entr (the Maximum Entrenchment level for that terrain feature).

• Show/Hide ground units• Show/Hide air units• Show/Hide victory-point locations• Show/Hide unit’s view (default on)• Show/Hide deployment areas• Show/Hide camera’s view

Along the right side of the minimap are five other buttons; they are, from the top:

• Objectives and statistics: Takes the player to a screen with information on the scenario, its objectives, and any statistics gathered thus far

• Load/Save/Restart/Quit• Options: Screen size/resolution, music and sound-effect

choices, graphics options, etc. This area allows the user to customize the game to their liking or to tweak settings that can make the game run faster if needed.

• Quick save• End Turn: Once all planning, movement, and combat have

been completed, use this button to advance to the next turn.

4. The Main MapThe map itself is a 3D map and it can be freely zoomed in and out. In addition there are five main zoom levels, selectable through the F1, F2, F3, F4 and F5 keys. Additionally, you can use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out. The map cannot be rotated; this is to assure the player avoids a loss of orientation.


Bridge 1 1 0 Can be damaged by engineers, Partisans, and Aircraft

Laboratory 2 1 3

Airport 2 1 2 Possible air supply hex; enables loading/unloading of Infantry; Air units can only be replenished here

Depot 2 1 2

Harbor 2 1 2 Possible supply hex for naval units; enables loading/unloading of Infantry; Naval units can only be replenished here.

If a location is captured for the first time, the side that captures it may get a bonus depending on the settings for that location. All bonuses only occur on the first occurrence that an object is conquered.The bonuses that can be received are:

• Units: The player gets an auxiliary unit for the map, that appears in the deployment menu. The unit is only available during the very scenario.

• Ammo: The conquering unit gets its Ammo supply replenished.

• Fuel: The conquering unit gets its fuel supply replenished.• Resources: The conquering player gets a certain amount of

resources.

4.3. Damaging, Repairing, and Building LocationsTo damage a bridge or a railway, a unit capable of doing so must be placed on the same hex as that location and must be in the location at the start of its turn. Only bombers, partisans, and

Terrain Feature

Movement Cost

View Cost

Max. Entr.

Notes

River 4 1 0 Impassable to all ground units except for Infantry;Infantry with transport gets -2 Movement Points

Mountain - 4 4 Impassable to all ground units except for mountain troops

Lake - 1 0 Impassable to all ground units

Forest 3 2 3

Clear 2 1 2

Swamp 3 1 1

Hill 3 2 3

Street 1 1 2

Railroad - 1 2 Enables transport between cities

Desert 2 1 2

Sea 1 1 0

4.2. LocationsLocations are significant areas that can be captured by a country. They can influence the maximum view of a unit just like terrain does. A flag will be displayed to indicate who owns it.

Location Movement Cost

View Cost

Max. Entr.

Notes

City 2 2 4 Possible supply hex; possible operational transport via railroad

Town 2 2 3

Colliery 2 1 2

Oilhex 2 1 2

Bunker 2 1 5 Can be built by Engineers and destroyed by Aircraft

Fortress 2 1 8


5.1. Special UnitsSome units have special abilities, as follows:

Unit SkillsEngineers Damage or repair Bridges and Railroads, build and destroy BunkersBombers Damage Bridges and Railroads, destroy BunkersParatroops Drop from aircraft on any terrain except Mountains and LakesPartisans Damage Bridges and RailroadsMountain troops Enter mountain hexes

5.2. Selecting UnitsSelect a unit on the map by left clicking on it. A selected unit will have a rotating circle icon around it to indicate it has been clicked.

Depending on the current state of the unit, hexes

engineers are able to damage bridges and railways. Each attempt costs the attacker one Ammunition Point.

Only engineers can repair damaged locations, but this costs 20 resources; engineer units can also build bunkers, at the cost of 50 resources.

5. UnitsThere are two kinds of units in Germany at War: ground units and air units. Ground units are infantry, tank formations, artillery, engineers, etc. Air units are either fighters or bombers.

Units which are owned by a player throughout an entire campaign are named Core Units. Core Units are shown on the map by a small white carat, or inverted triangle, next to their counter image in the Unit Information Window (see Section 5.4). A list of Core Units can also be seen by accessing the Headquarters screen by pressing the HQ button on the Info Bar. All other units the player can control are Auxiliary Units and disappear after the scenario they appear in.

In single scenarios, units are not distinguished from each other. You can control the units of your side and view information on them at any time. Enemy units can be viewed by hovering the cursor over them; a limited amount of information will display in the Information Bar.


represents how much of that unit’s strength is actually available at that time. Thus, a unit at 50% readiness only has half of its combat value available at that time. This number can go no lower than 15%. Units recover 10% of their readiness per turn.

• Experience: Shows how close to the next upgrade this unit is.

• Movement Points: How far the unit can go per turn.• Action Points: How many actions this unit has left this turn.

around the unit will be marked blue. These hexes represent the areas where the unit is able to move to.

Darker blue hexes cannot be seen by either locations or units owned by the player. Moving to those hexes includes a risk of being surprised by an enemy unit which can result in heavy casualties for the moving unit.

5.3. Replenishing Units5.3.1. Ground unitsReplenishment for ground units is influenced by enemy units adjacent to the unit. If there are three or more adjacent hostile units, no reinforcements can be added to the unit (strength points); four or more enemies means no fuel can be added; and six enemies (surrounded) means no ammunition can get through.

5.3.2. Air UnitsAircraft can only be replenished on a hex with a friendly airfield (and its adjacent hexes). This means you should plan ahead with your air units or keep them close to an airfield that is under your control.

5.4. Unit Information WindowTo get more detailed information about a single unit, right click on it. The Unit Information Window will open, displaying all relevant information about that unit.The top row of information in this window, from left, is:

• Unit name: Names are changeable at any time by the player.• Readiness percentage: The higher the better; as units

become tired or degraded, this number drops. The percentage


Action CostsReplenish Fuel / Ammo / Strength 2 pointsMovement 1 pointBuilding Bunkers all pointsRepair all pointsAttack with ground unit 1 pointAttack with air unit 1 point

Units can only attack once per turn, but movement can take place several times until the unit’s Action Points or Movement Points are expended.

7. Moving UnitsAfter a unit is selected, its reachable hexes are shown in blue. Left-click on any blue hex to move the selected unit to that hex; note that terrain costs play a huge role in how far any unit can move in any given turn. Be cautious when moving units into darker blue hexes, as they are beyond the spotting range of any friendly units and may contain the enemy. Attempting to reach an unspotted hex that contains an enemy unit results in an Ambush – see Section 9.3, Combat Modifiers, for more.

If a unit has attached transportation and is selected, the shape of the cursor will change when it is moved over certain blue hexes. This indicates that the hex can only be reached by using attached transportation, meaning the unit will stay in “transportation” mode – truck, horse, half-track, etc., to reach this hex. Be careful when using this all-out movement tactic, as a unit caught in this mode is much more prone to taking losses if attacked, as the unit uses

Below the name of the unit is its counter image. Next, to the right of the counter, is a gray box with six icons in it. The top row of icons depicts weapon range, ammunition count, and current entrenchment level. The bottom row shows unit type, view range, and fuel storage count. Mouse over any of these icons

for a tooltip that describes what that icon is.

Next is a box with attack and defense values for that unit vs. other unit types:

infantry, armor, ordnance, air and ships. Players will need to pay close attention to these values, as certain units are much better at attacking soft targets like infantry, for example, as opposed to hard targets like armor. Understanding these relationships between attackers and their targets is crucial to success in Germany at War.

Finally, in the box at far right are all the bonuses, penalties, and modifiers that the unit has accrued, as well as its intrinsic transport, if other than on foot. For more on unit modifiers, see below.

6. Action PointsFor a unit to take action, it must spend Action Points. The amount it needs to spend depends on the specific action:


an additional Movement Point to do so. In the case of movement into an unknown area, zone of control from unspotted enemy units may cause movement to end before the full plotted distance has been reached.

Note that one hex can potentially have more than one unit’s ZOC exerted over that hex, as ZOCs can stack. For

example, two friendly units separated by a hex both exert a ZOC over that hex, meaning that any movement or retreat costs would be doubled for that hex.

7.2. Transport TypesInfantry and artillery (except self-propelled guns) can be mounted on a transport to gain extra movement range. Transports are purchased as an additional mobility upgrade to a unit and are used automatically if you plot a movement beyond the unit’s base movement range.There are three different types of land transports:

• Wagons (pulled by horses)• Trucks• Half-tracked armored vehicles

the defense value of the transport instead of its own value. The shape of the cursor will change depending on the kind of transport the unit uses.

If all Movement Points are expended or the number of points left is not high enough to enter a bordering hex, the unit stays in its current hex until the next turn. The exception to this rule is a unit without enough Movement Points to move can be forced to move (by retreating) by an attacker.

Rivers can only be crossed by Infantry units. Crossing a river costs the Infantry unit a certain number of Movement Points, as does entering the terrain on the other side of the river. All other units need Bridges to cross a River.

Infantry units with transport (trucks, etc.) will need to spend an extra 2 Movement Points to cross a River.

Mountain terrain cannot be entered by ground units, except for mountain troops.

7.1. Zones of ControlEach unit has a Zone of Control (ZOC) that consists of its adjacent hexes. Enemy units that want to enter these hexes must spend


Railways can be damaged by aircraft, Partisans and Engineers. If a railroad is damaged, Operational Movement is no longer available until the Railroad is repaired.

7.5. ParatroopsParatroops that are embarked on an aircraft can be dropped on any hex within the aircraft’s range - except for mountain hexes.

8. View PointsUnits have a number of View Points; how many depends on the unit. The minimum view range of each unit and each object is one hex.

Usually each terrain type costs one View Point, but the following terrain types are the exceptions to this rule:

Terrain Type View Point CostHill 2Mountain 4Forest 2City 2Town 2

Hexes which currently cannot be seen by owned locations or units are darkened. Units and locations can always see directly adjacent hexes, however.

If an Infantry unit with added transport runs out of fuel, it cannot move. Even though its infantry component can technically still march, the unit would have to leave behind its transport equipment, which it will not do.

Transports also have their own values when it comes to fuel, combat, range, and view. If a unit is attacked while it is embarked, the transport’s values are used to calculate the outcome of a battle.

7.3. Air TransportInfantry can board an aircraft at any airport. The unit’s icon will change to a transport plane; the aircraft can then move. If a friendly airport is in range, the unit can be unloaded in the same turn. Boarding an aircraft costs 5 Resources. Explanation: The plane is virtual – it is not a purchased unit, and it disappears after the troops have disembarked. Note that this feature can and is blocked on many maps.

Transport aircraft have their own values when it comes to fuel, combat, range and view. If a unit is attacked while it’s embarked, the air transport’s values are used to calculate the outcome of a battle.

Units can always be disembarked from their transport aircraft on airport hexes that are not occupied by another friendly unit. The cursor shows an exit sign in this case. To be embarked on an airport, the unit has to stay on it for at least one turn. The shape of the cursor will then show as an aircraft.

7.4. Railways and Operational MovementAs long as two cities are linked together via railway and both are owned by the same player, units can be moved from one city to the other. This type of movement is called Operational Movement and costs 10 Resource Points.


9.1. EntrenchmentIf a unit did not move or fight during a turn, it will automatically dig in and increase its Entrenchment Value, if the terrain values allow it to do so.

Each terrain type has a maximum Entrenchment Value, which is increased by certain locations (such as a bunker). The sum of these values forms the number of entrenchment levels a unit can reach.

Any attack by or on an entrenched unit reduces the entrenchment of that unit by one. Only Artillery may attack without a penalty on an entrenched enemy unit as they have no physical contact with the enemy.

If an Infantry unit enters an empty hex with a bunker in it, that unit will immediately receive an Entrenchment level of 2. To reach a higher entrenchment level than 2, the unit has to remain in the hex one turn per level.

As soon as a unit moves, its Entrenchment Value drops to 0 (zero).

9.2. Unit ModifiersUnits have intrinsic modifiers that give them either bonuses or penalties in combat; for example, armor suffers a penalty of -7 to attack and defense in dense urban areas. Other modifiers can be bestowed on a unit when it has gone through an upgrade, gained experience, or added support units. All unit modifiers for any given unit are shown as icons on the far right section of that’s unit’s Unit Information Window; right-click on that unit to bring this window up.

9. CombatTo execute combat, the attacker has to be capable of attacking the opposing unit type (e.g. Aircraft can only be attacked by other Aircraft or Anti-Aircraft guns) and the enemy unit must be within attack range. Furthermore, the attacker must have Ammo.

The defender’s hex is the reference point used for the ranges of all participating units, including when calculating whether artillery can support a combat.

The result of the combat calculation is the loss in Strength Points for each of the combatants. Both units also lose one ammo point per combat. These are subtracted from the participating units’ values right after the battle.

To attack an enemy unit, select a friendly unit to attack with and move the cursor over the enemy unit. If that unit is within range, the cursor will turn into a pair of numbers representing the projected losses inflicted on both sides.

The left number stands for the attacker’s losses, while the right one is the defender’s losses. A left-click will execute the battle, and the results are shown immediately.

Combat can only occur for a unit once per turn, but movement can take place several times, before and after combat, until that unit’s Movement Points have been expended.


Hill Bonus for Artillery: Accuracy of artillery units is increased by superior positionAttack from hills +2Defence of hills +3

Radio Doctrine 1941-43: German tank units are equipped with radios for better combat coordination.Attack/defence +3 against tanks

Motti Training: Finnish units with motti tactics gain combat strength in weather condition ‘snow’Attack +5Defence +3

Soviet Tank Doctrine ‘40/’41: Poor communications and logistics lead to degraded performance of early Russian tank units.75% chance for Attack -3 and Defense -2

Soviet Tank Doctrine ‘42: Reform and experience gained reduces the misconceptions of earlier doctrines.50% chance for any attack value being reduced by -3.

Soviet Tank Doctrine ‘43: Reform further reduces the misconceptions of earlier doctrines.30% chance for any attack value being reduced by -3.

Soviet Tank Doctrine ‘44: Reform further reduces the misconceptions of earlier doctrines20% chance for any attack value being reduced by -2.

The complete list of unit modifiers is as follows:

Urban Combat Penalty for Armored VehiclesDense urban areas Attack/Defence -7Light urban areas Attack/Defence -3

Urban Combat Penalty for Armored ArtilleryLight urban areas Attack -1/Defence -3Dense urban areas Attack -2/Defence -5

Forest Penalty for Armored VehiclesAttack on forest hex -7Defence of forest hex -3

Forest Penalty for Fighter AircraftAttack on forest hex -4

Hill Penalty for Armored VehiclesAttack on hill hex -8Defence of hill hex -4

Hill Bonus for Mountain TroopsGround attack on hill hex +1Ground defence of hill hex +1

Swamp Penalty for Armored VehiclesAttack on swamp hex -9Defense of swamp hex -9


Ski Guerrilla: Units with ski battalions getView +1 in snow

Snow Fighter: Special units deal perfectly with snowNegates weather rules in case of snow

Recon Combat DoctrineEvades combat damage up to 2 strength points

Evasive ActionEvades combat damage up to 2 strength points

Sparse EnemiesReduced damage if enemy unit has less than 50% of its original strength points.

German Artillery DoctrineSupport fire for attacked units - Effectiveness 50%

Finnish Artillery DoctrineSupport fire for attacked units - Effectiveness 35%

Romanian Artillery DoctrineSupport fire for attacked units - Effectiveness 30%

Soviet Artillery DoctrineSupport fire for attacked units - Effectiveness 20%

British Artillery DoctrineSupport fire for attacked units - Effectiveness 40%

DisruptionReduces combat readiness of an enemy unit, value varies by unit 5-15%.

Bunker BonusDamage to the defender in bunkers and forts is reduced by 1

Bunker KillerIgnores entrenchment up to 2 Levels, also ignores “Bunker bonus” modifier

Air Shelter: In urban areas, the unit profits from the many hiding places for infantry.Air attacks on the unit in:Light urban areas -3Dense urban areas -5

Inferior Axis Supply: If Hungary, Slovakia or Romania uses German equipment, the supply will be reduced due to the inferior management:Ammo storage -2Fuel storage -5

Inferior Soviet Supply June ‘41 - April ‘42: Bad organization in early Soviet units lead to:Ammo storage -2Fuel storage -10

Inferior Soviet Supply April ‘42 - January ‘43Ammo storage -1Fuel storage -5


• Level 0 = 1• Level 1 = 1.3• Level 2 = 1.6• Level 3 = 1.9• Level 4 = 2.2• Level 5 = 2.5

• Unit Modifiers: Depending on the unit’s type and equipment, certain modifiers may occur. See Section 5.2 for more.

• Support Units: Support units contribute to combat in different ways. The majority of the time, their value is simply added to the combat value of the parent unit. For more, see Support Units, Section 6.0.

• Flanking: The defensive value of an enemy unit can be degraded by placing other units next to it, causing it to have to guard its flanks and spread its troops thinner. The defensive value of an enemy unit is reduced as attackers more are placed next it in this way:• 1 unit: 100% (full

strength)• Two units: 85%• Three units: 75%• Four units: 65%• Five units: 55%• Six units (surrounded):

50%

9.4. Combat ResultsAfter combat has been resolved, one of five things happens to the defender:

9.3. Combat ModifiersThe following factors influence combat results:

• The attack value of the attacker vs. the target unit’s type; for example, an armored unit’s attack value vs. infantry.

• The defense value of the defender against the attacker’s type (see above)

• Current unit strength• Ammunition: Defenders with no ammunition get additional

losses• Defender’s entrenchment level: Each entrenchment level is

multiplied by three and the result is added to the unit’s defense value. For example, an infantry unit with an entrenchment level of 2 has 6 added to its defense value.

• Rivers: Attacking from a river hex causes the unit’s attack value to be multiplied by .75; defending in a river hex causes a unit’s defense value to be multiplied by.80.

• Ambush: When a unit attempts to move into a hex containing an unspotted defender, an ambush battle immediately takes place. The moving vehicle is the defender, and it has its defense value multiplied by .70; the previously unspotted attacker has its attack value multiplied by 2.5.

• Readiness: Attack and defense values are multiplied by the unit’s Readiness percentage (see Section 5.1).

• Unit level: Each unit can gain new levels of experience through successful combat. New, green units start at Level 0. A unit’s level is shown by the number of national insignia visible when the unit is viewed on the main map; no insignia means the unit is Level 0. Each level provides a multiplier to the combat value of the unit, as follows:


9.5. Fire SupportFighters, Artillery, and Anti-Aircraft guns can provide fire support in certain cases. If a combat takes place and one of these unit types is in range, it will automatically give fire support.

Units provide fire support once for each combat, but can do so for an unlimited number of combats during a turn, as long as it has the ammunition to do so.

• Artillery will support attacked friendly ground units against attacking enemy ground units.

• Anti-aircraft will support attacked friendly ground units against attacking enemy air units.

• Fighters will support attacked friendly air units against attacking enemy air units.

Supporting units cannot lose Strength Points during fire support; only the attacker can. Units that give fire support during the current turn are marked with a Support symbol. This also occurs if the supporting unit is out of the attacker’s sight.

Support symbols disappear when the turn is over.

10. ExperienceUnits gain experience by damaging the enemy, occupying cities (not towns), surviving a battle without taking any damage, and by eliminating enemy units. To see how much experience a unit has, examine it in the Unit Information Window by right-clicking on it in the Main Map. Unit experience is on the top row of information, next to the symbol of two stars.

• Hold Position. The defender shrugs off the attack and maintains its position in the hex.

• Retreat: The Defender seeks a free hex that is not adjacent to an enemy (or in its Zone of Control, or ZOC). This can (25% chance) cause the loss of the unit’s intrinsic transport (trucks, horses, etc.), from 1-3 ammunition points, and from 5-10 fuel points due to lost ammunition and fuel depots. If only enemy ZOCs are available to retreat through and the retreating unit has more than 50% readiness, that unit can move through the ZOC(s) at a penalty of 10% readiness per enemy ZOC. Note that enemy ZOCs can stack, making one hex have potentially greater than a 10% readiness cost to retreat through.

• Shattered: If a unit has to retreat but there is no hex free of an enemy ZOC to retreat to and the unit has less than 50% readiness or it doesn’t have enough fuel to do so, the unit is shattered and removed from the game.

• Destroyed: The battle has brought the unit down to a strength of zero, destroying it.

• Surrender: If one of the following cases is true – the defender’s readiness is less than 50% and its strength is 3 or less; its ammunition count is zero, the unit cannot retreat, and its strength is 5 or less; its ammunition count is zero and its strength is 3 or less – then when attacked, this unit will surrender and be removed from the map.


11. HeadquartersThe Headquarters area is accessed by pressing the HQ button on the Info Bar. This area is vitally important to keeping your forces upgraded between battles as well as purchasing Core Units (or Auxiliary Units if you are out of available Core Unit slots) during the scenario.

The Headquarters area opens automatically to the Core Units screen. Note that every unit here shows the white triangle symbol indicating its inclusion as a Core Unit; click on the “Auxiliaries” button on the right side of the screen and note that these units do not have that symbol. When playing a campaign, only the Core Units will go from map to map with you.

When a unit has amassed enough experience to gain a level, it will have a new blinking national insignia underneath it on

the Main Map. This is missing a step to open the expanded unit info – it reads as if you could click on the insignia on the map. Click on the blinking icon to see that unit’s choices for levelling up; choices can range

from adding strength points to adding attached support units to new training that makes the unit more able to attack certain targets.Points needed to reach new levels are as follows:

Level Experience Needed1 50 points2 150 points3 300 points4 500 points5 800 points

10.5.1. Reinforcements and ExperienceWhenever a unit is reinforced after it has sustained battle damage, the new “green” reinforcements cause the unit’s collective experience to drop by 5 percent per each strength point reinforced. So, for example, a unit that has 100 experience points and adds 5 strength points of reinforcements will lose 25 experience points.


bought, and the next button down, “Deployment,” turns from dark gray (unable to be clicked) to light gray, or active. Click this button and you are brought to the deployment zones on the main map, as denoted by the light green hexes. The cursor will change to the “deploy” icon when hovered over acceptable deployment hexes; note that only air units and infantry can be deployed into river hexes without a bridge, even if that hex is light green. Aircraft only on sea hexes

Once the hex is clicked on, the new unit has been deployed to that hex.

Note also that newly recruited units can move and fight immediately after deployment.

11.2. Improving UnitsAt times, especially in longer campaigns, Core Units will have the chance to be improved by the addition of new equipment. It is wise to review your units in the HQ screen at the start of each scenario to see if any units are eligible for improvement in this fashion. Improving a unit occurs immediately, but only if the player has the resources available to do so. Upgrades within a certain established line of equipment – for example, within the Panzer III line – are cheaper than wholesale changes to move into another line.

A unit’s experience levels are retained after equipment upgrades.

11.2.1. Auto AttachAt the beginning of a battle, you may find yourself with dozens of units needing new support units. If you don’t feel like taking the time to pick and attach these support units, just click the “Auto Attach” button and your aides in Army HQ will do it for you.

Keeping your Core Units upgraded and at full strength is crucial to the success of any campaign!

11.1. Purchasing UnitsAcquiring new units is a straightforward process. Click the “Recruitment” button on the right side of the Core Units screen and browse through the units and unit types available to you. Keep in mind that you can only purchase a unit if you have an open slot AND enough resources to buy that unit; your resource points are in the middle of this screen, and will be adjusted as you make purchases. Disbanding a newly purchased unit immediately refunds you the cost of that unit, should you wish to make different choices.

Once you have selected the unit you wish to purchase, click the “recruit” button at lower right; once clicked, the unit has been


Air combat -70%; Air-to-ground or ground-to-air attacks -70%; Range ground of units -30%. Ground unit range decreases by 20%Snow Range of air units -50%; View air units -50%; Air combat -70%; Air-ground or ground-air attacks -70%; Range for ground units -20%; View ground units -50%.

13. Victory and DefeatVictory: When the player achieves the necessary victory conditions, the Victory Window is displayed. The player gets information about the kind of victory he achieved and the amount of resources he has received as a reward. The level of victory may determine the branch that the player takes in the campaign.

Defeat: In each campaign a scenario has a limited number of turns. If the last turn has ended and the player did not achieve all needed goals, the Defeat window appears and informs the player of the result. In the campaign, this does not necessarily mean that the campaign cannot continue, but it may take a different branch.

14. End of TurnAt the end of a turn, the following things happen:

12. WeatherWeather has an influence on the way some units operate. All units of the same kind (e.g. ground units, air units) are influenced in the same way. At the beginning of a turn, the weather for the whole map is defined. Below is a chart indicating weather effects:

Weather EffectsSun No unusual effectsCloudy View air units -25%; Air combat -20%; Air-ground or ground-air attacks -50%.Fog Air-ground or ground air attacks -50%; View ground units -50%.Rain Range of air units -30%; View air units -50%;


At the beginning of each campaign scenario, Core Units can be upgraded with new equipment before being deployed. This is the only time when equipment upgrades are possible (see Section 11, above).

15.1. Single-Player ScenariosClicking the Scenario button when the game has loaded brings up the list of 14 single-player scenarios in the game, from the Drive on Stalingrad to Zitadelle (the Battle of Kursk).

15.2. Multiplayer ScenariosClicking the Multiplayer Scenario button gives a large number of choices as well, from Berlin in 1945 to the multiplayer version of Zitadelle and more.

15.3. CampaignsThe four linked campaigns give the player a chance to develop Core Units and move them from scenario to scenario. The three shorter-length campaigns are:

Army Group North: Take AGN through the Baltic states to the isolation of Leningrad; 3 linked scenarios.

Case Blue: Army Group South’s drive for the Caucasus in the Summer of 1942; 4 linked scenarios.

Operation Barbarossa: Fight the largest conflict in world history from the jumpoff of invasion through the winter of 1941.

• The Entrenchment Level of all units that were not moved and did not fight is increased by one up to the maximum allowed level of the occupied hex.

• Movement Points and Action Points of units are refilled (if used).

• If Resources are set for the player for the next turn, they will be added.

• Support symbols are removed from the map.• Readiness of each unit increases 10%

15. Scenarios and CampaignsCampaigns are a string of scenarios following the most important battles of the entire theater of war. A scenario is a single battle. Although all scenarios are historical, some of the single scenarios

have been adjusted to be somewhat “hypothetical” to achieve a better balance of play. This is noted in the scenario briefing.

In between the scenarios of a campaign, all units are filled up to the maximum strength allowed to them. If new units are available in the purchase menu, a list of these units is displayed when the scenario starts.


16. Historical Context for the CampaignsBy Bill Trotter

16.1. Operation BarbarossaThis was the code name given to Hitler’s surprise offensive against the Soviet Union, which was launched on June 22, 1941 and was the largest military operation in history, up to that time. Its uniqueness went deeper than sheer scale: no other campaign in World War Two was designed to achieve, through sustained aggressive combat such ambitious, over-riding geopolitical objectives (the eradication of Bolshevism and the utter destruction of the Soviet Union as a political entity), and no other strategic operation had, interwoven with its purely military goals, an organized, methodical, state-sanctioned policy of genocide.

By making his regular armed forces accomplices to the liquidation of large non-combatant segments of the Soviet population (not just the Jews, but the Communist Party leaders, the Gypsies, the Ukrainian nationalists and – in Hitler’s colorful choice of words – “anyone who even looks askance at us”) – the Nazi government subverted the Prussian officer caste’s sense of honor and preempted, to a great extent, the moral and philosophical objections that had served, for many generations, as a check against the most barbarous atrocities made feasible by the techniques and weapons of modern warfare.

In no other modern army – one must indeed look back to the barbarian hordes of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan to find a precedent – had the systematic brutalization of the average soldier been made an institutionalized part of his training. The indoctrination and desensitization processes had been experimented with in Poland, then temporarily set aside for the victorious

15.4. The Grand Campaign – Archangelsk to AstrakhanLike the other campaigns, the Archangelsk to Astrakhan campaign features a set of linked scenarios, but with a twist: at some point in

campaign, depending on past success, the player will be asked to focus their effort on one of the three German army groups: north, central, or south. Core units will be brought into that specific theater and the player will push forward to capture the main goal of that group, whether it is Leningrad, Moscow, or Stalingrad. Which

will you choose? The choice to follow one of three branches allows nearly unlimited replayability.


The “ideological” component of Barbarossa was more ephemeral and was defined more in practice than in strategic memoranda. By conquering the vast expanse of land west of the Volga, the Reich would gain all the “Lebensraum” (“Living space”) it needed, and an industrial base that, once repaired, would make Germany the economic equal to the United States and Great Britain combined, along with more fine agricultural land than it would ever need to feed its pure-blooded citizens.

Never before in military history was an operation planned that would achieve such ambitious objectives in so short a time. Basically, “Barbarossa” was envisioned as a three-month campaign, one in which the disparity of raw numbers and the difficulties of sheer mileage would be off-set by superior technology, leadership, tactical expertise, and the dazzling speed of “Blitzkrieg” tactics. Nor was Hitler’s plan a miscalculation based solely on blind arrogance. Had not the mighty Red Army been beaten to a stand-still by “brave little Finland,” during the “Winter War” (November 30. 1939 to March 15, 1940), during which the Red Army, severely demoralized by Stalin’s recent purges of its officer cadre, had suffered a quarter-million casualties in order to subdue an opponent with no operational armor and only one-tenth as many artillery pieces? That humiliating fiasco, Hitler stated, had revealed the Red Army to be “a colossus with feet of clay.”

Moreover, Stalin’s scrupulous honoring of the “non-aggression” pact between the USSR and the Reich proved conclusively that the Soviet dictator was totally unprepared for the massive German onslaught. And, indeed, that was the case, for Stalin’s spies along with his conventional reconnaissance services had done their work loyally and, on the whole, with exceptional accuracy – the signs of an offensive build-up were simply too many and too big to ignore,

attacks on France, the Low Countries, and Norway (partly for reasons of “public relations” and partly because the enemy in those campaigns was not defined, from the start, as being “sub-human”), then applied ever-more-widely in the Soviet territories overrun by the Wehrmacht during the summer and autumn of 1941.

Measures whose severity was “justified” by the atrocities of Russian partisans used “retaliation” as a code word to camouflage the goal of “extermination,” with the end result, on both the German and Soviet sides, being the widespread barbarization of warfare itself.

Operation Barbarossa was intended to accomplish two overriding goals, one strategic and the other, for want of a better term, “ideological.” The worst strategic nightmare for the Third Reich was the prospect of waging a two-front war, against the Western Allies in one direction and against the Soviet Union in the other. Ideology could not negate geographical realities: Hitler’s Germany, like the Kaiser’s empire before it, remained land-locked and vulnerable to a blockade.

If Germany could knock out its largest and most dangerous potential opponent, the Red Army, its strategic situation would be enormously improved, especially if it could draw freely on the resources of the fertile and industrially developed lands to the west of Hitler’s new imaginary border, the one that ran from Archangel in the far north to oil-rich Astrakhan beyond the Caucasus Mountains.

No serious thought was given to what might happen if Stalin’s government had the capacity to sustain resistance after that imaginary line on the map was reached. No serious planning was therefore given to the cruel exigencies of a winter campaign, because Russian resistance would be shattered long before the first autumn rains made the land impassable for Germany mechanized legions.


during hasty and disorganized aerial counterattacks during the first two days of combat. By the end of June 25, the Germans had achieved not just air superiority, but air supremacy

From Stalin down to the stunned battalion commanders on the fort lines, the Soviet defenders were taken almost completely by surprise, not just by the fact of Nazi aggression as by the ferocity and scale of it. Command and control arrangements broke down within hours, if not minutes, of the first assaults.

Resistance was ferocious but spotty and uncoordinated. Stubborn pockets were bypassed and surrounded, to be mopped

up at leisure by the slower-moving but well-led conventional infantry, while the panzer spearheads knifed deep into Russian territory, destroying centers of communications and support, over-running supply depots and hospitals, railheads and replacement depots, motor pools and stables, leaving large masses of courageous but hopelessly confused and ill-led Russian soldiers to lash out spasmodically or dig-in for all-round defense as best they could.

Barbarossa was designed to be the ultimate triumph of Blitzkrieg tactics, applied on a scale never seen before or since. From his very first operational directive, issued on December 18, 1940, Hitler stressed the need to destroy the Red Army in “a lightning campaign.” He was not ignorant of history; he was always mindful of Napoleon’s fate and of the dangers of being lured too deeply into Russia’s vast interior. “Barbarossa” was intended to destroy the bulk of Stalin’s forces in their forward, western-most positions, and to do so within three months’ time. The Wehrmacht was almost totally committed to this objective; neither OKH (the High Command in Berlin) nor the three Army Groups launched in the offensive had made provisions for a large strategic reserve, or – more disastrously – for the rigors of a winter campaign.

and dozens of reliable reports even pin-pointed, if not the day and hour that hostilities would commence, then at least the approximate window of time during which the Wehrmacht was likely to strike.

Yet Stalin chose to ignore them, and even announced his intention of going on a summer vacation several days before the planned beginning of Barbarossa. Officers in command of the frontier defenses were specifically enjoined to take NO “provocative” steps, such as dispersing their aircraft or bringing up additional supplies of weapons and munitions. Fortunately for the fate of Russia, some local and regional commanders courageously acted on their own initiative and took at least preliminary precautions, so that their forces were not caught utterly unprepared.

But too few showed such resolve; they had seen what happened to other officers who had displayed too much initiative in the face of Stalin’s orders, however irrational those orders might have seemed. So when “Operation Barbarossa” was launched, between 0300 and 0330 hours on the morning of June 22, the German sledgehammer landed with thunderclap surprise against almost wholly unprepared Soviet defenses.

From the Baltic to the Black Sea, 153 German and German-allied divisions, comprising approximately 3.6 million men, along with 3, 600 tanks and other armored vehicles, smashed across the USSR’s only-partly-manned border defenses, behind a cataclysmic barrage fired by approximately 7,100 artillery pieces and supported overhead by 1,950 aircraft.

Opposing this tidal wave of men and steel were about 140 Red Army divisions and 40-odd independent brigades. Totaling 2.9 million men, between ten thousand and 15 thousand armored vehicles (most of them obsolescent), and 8,000 combat aircraft – of which roughly 80 per cent were destroyed on the ground or


of their most powerful units to the thrust against Moscow. There, they argued, was the heart and soul of the Soviet empire; Stalin was not Tsar Nicolas First – he could not abandon Moscow without also abandoning all legitimate claims to the supreme leadership of the USSR. He would be compelled to commit his best troops to the defense of the capital, and it was there, along the critical axis from Smolensk to Moscow, that the panzers could encircle the cream of the Red Army and the conventional infantry divisions, aided enormously by the Luftwaffe, could destroy them.

Obviously, Hitler’s more ambitious objectives and the military’s more focused ones were not mutually achievable. Yet no compromise plan was ever developed that would satisfy both strategic agendas. As it was, the Germans seemed to “make it up” as they moved eastward, sometimes dithering for days over which thrust should receive priority and which should act in a supporting role.

So poorly informed was Hitler about the true industrial potential of the USSR that even after Barbarossa was launched, German heavy industry was still turning out tanks and aircraft at the same leisurely rate it had employed during peace time, and every day that Barbarossa’s initial goals went unmet was another day for the relocated Russian factories, shifted into the Urals and therefore beyond range of a tactical air force like the Luftwaffe, could produce more and more new T-34s and more new Yak fighters, so that despite the enormous losses the Russians sustained in the opening weeks of war, there were already sufficient replacements “in the pipeline” to maintain stiff resistance and even to set aside fresh units for a long-planned counterattack at the very gates of Moscow.

Given the vagueness of the Germans’ ultimate strategic objectives, and their near-complete ignorance of their enemy’s true industrial potential, it is amazing that Hitler almost pulled

Army Group South (von Rundtsedt) would have the farthest objectives and the longest march: a huge thrust south-east toward the communications hub of Kiev, a strategic envelopment designed to cut off all Russian forces in the western Ukraine, before they could withdraw to the eastern bank of the Dnieper River;

Army Group North (von Leeb) would perform a mirror-image offensive to the north-east, designed to cut off all Soviet forces along the Baltic coast and severe Leningrad from all communications with Moscow; exactly what was to be done about reducing that enormous city was a problem Hitler figured he would find a solution for when the time came;

Army Group Center (von Bock) would follow Napoleon’s classic route, driving straight toward the heart of Russia along the traditional invasion axis, Warsaw-Smolensk-Moscow. The best and most powerful panzer divisions were assigned to AG Center and were to be used to cut off and encircle the huge enemy forces concentrated in eastern Poland and blocking the main roads north of the Pripet Marshes.

About the initial objective – cutting off and annihilating the bulk of Russia’s standing army as close to the western frontier as possible – there was general agreement between Hitler and his senior military advisors. But beyond that somewhat nebulous objective, there was much dissent and argument. Hitler’s goals were as much political and economic as military: he wanted to make the Baltic into a German lake; seize the agricultural riches of the Ukraine; neutralize and rebuild the industrial resources in the Don Basin, and – ultimately – pass through or around the Caucasus Mountains and seize the immense oil reserves around the Sea of Azov.

The generals at OKH believed that the most effective strategy that would facilitate these goals was to commit the preponderance


Group South, and Third Panzer Group was peeled-off and sent to bolster von Leeb’s spasmodic advance on Leningrad. Moscow would fall, Hitler assured his flabbergasted generals, to the infantry and artillery forces of Army Group Center, even without the help of most of its armor.

In Moscow, the astonished Soviet high command could not at first believe their good fortune. After the debacle at Smolensk, it seemed that the Russian capital would almost surely fall. Stalin had begun evacuating critical government offices and personnel and had declared the city to be “a fortress” – i.e., a location to be defended tooth and nail and to the last cartridge.

Second Panzer Group, pushed hard by Guderian, was increasingly delayed by mechanical breakdowns and by nuisance attacks on its long, exposed left flank, but on September 19, its lead elements made contact with those of First Panzer Group, which had completed its deep northward envelopment of the huge enemy concentration defending Kiev. Tactically, it was a stunning victory; on September 26, almost 700,000 Russians troops surrendered in the besieged Kiev Pocket. Once again, Hitler found convincing evidence of his own “Military genius”! Had the Germans been fighting the Polish or French armies, such a signal disaster might well have caused a total collapse of resistance.

But they were fighting the Red Army, and in the larger strategic sense, the surrender of the huge Kiev pocket was, to Stalin, merely another humiliating inconvenience, for by carrying out this historic and colossal envelopment, Hitler had given the defenders of Moscow six priceless weeks to complete several new lines of defensive works, including a series of anti-tank ditches more than 200 miles long! Those same weeks had also been used to add significantly to the hoarded forces being built up for the planned

it off. Making excellent use of its two powerful panzer corps (somewhat confusingly designated “Panzer Groups”), Army Group Center scored its first successful battle-of-encirclement when its two offensive pincers met at Minsk, creating a pocket that yielded almost 300,000 prisoners, 2500 tanks, and 1400 pieces of artillery. After a brief pause to refuel and rearm, the panzers struck east again, repeating their double envelopment triumph by closing the trap on another huge pocket of enemy forces near Smolensk, this one yielding 100,000 prisoners, 2,000 tanks, and 1,900 guns.

By this time, the invaders had covered slightly more than half the distance from their start-line to Moscow, and by any conventional yardstick, it seemed reasonable to assume that the Russians were tottering on the brink of collapse.

On the flanks of Army Group Center, the picture was not quite so rosy. Von Leeb’s Army Group North was delayed as much by swampy, impassable terrain as by enemy action.

Already, the rough condition of the Soviet roads, especially the choking clouds of dust that enveloped any large-scale tank movement, was compounding maintenance problems beyond the coping powers of the over-taxed German logistical system. Army Group South, meanwhile, was grinding eastward at a disappointing rate -- hammered repeatedly by sharp, desperate counterattacks that materialized from deep inside the Pripet Marshes.

In order to speed up the offensive as a whole, Hitler made, on July 19th, the first of several seemingly deranged changes-of-mind that would, collectively, become the chief ingredient in Barbarossa’s failure: he decided that Moscow was, after all, on objective of “secondary importance,” and he stripped Army Group Center of its two most powerful armored components: Second Panzer Group was diverted to beef-up Von Rundtsedt’s Army


were operating at the end of a long, tenuous supply line, one that was increasingly interrupted by partisan attacks all the way back almost to the Polish border, and the Russians were sending brand new T-34s to their assembly areas straight from the remaining factories in Moscow.

Even worse for the Germans, Stalin’s highly effective spies in Tokyo had been able to assure him that Japan had no intention of attacking into Siberia, thus making it relatively safe for the Soviets to transfer tens of thousands of fresh, well trained infantry east along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, while the German infantry divisions preparing to smite them were operating at 60 % or less of their authorized strength. Increasingly, there was dissent in the German high command. Why not go over NOW to a strong defensive stand, and launch the new offensive against Moscow in the spring? But Hitler and his supporters ignored all the danger signs: the immense formations of fresh reserves, the hundreds of new T-34s, the resurgent and much-improved aerial fleets of the Red Air Force; they even chose to ignore the mud and the increasingly pathetic state of their infantry, who were neither trained nor equipped for the brutal Russian winter that would descend, mercilessly, over the entire Moscow front sometime in mid-December.

One more push, Hitler claimed, and Stalin’s legions would – finally – collapse before the Wehrmacht’s irresistible fighting spirit and superior expertise.

But things had gone beyond that now. The German soldier’s “spirit” was as worn-out as his body. As before, the initial German attacks made significant progress, and the Russians’ responded with massed counterattacks that were conducted without regard for losses. The crucial difference this time: the Russians could replace their dead and the Germans could not. Army Group Center threw

counter-stroke that would eventually save not only Moscow, but the whole Soviet Union from total military-political collapse.

By October 1, Von Leeb’s AG North, making at best only mediocre use of its new infusion of panzer strength, had finally cut off the city of Leningrad. Both logic and common sense dictated an immediate, all-out assault on the city, followed by the deployment of Von Leeb’s forces in the direction of Moscow, but again, Hitler listened to his “intuition” and forbade an assault on the city – it would be invested tightly and allowed to wither away under incessant bombing, shelling, and through the brutal attrition of starvation.

During the last days of September, as the weather began to turn against the Germans, Hitler once again changed his mind – intelligence reports convinced him (now, when it was almost too late), that the Russian concentration near Moscow was – surely, it had to be! – the Red Army’s last major operational force. He recalled the two panzer groups he had re-routed earlier, and tasked Army Group Center with enveloping the Soviet capital and destroying – in one final all-or-nothing throw of the dice – Stalin’s one significant remaining asset. Rather optimistically, this climactic assault was code-named “OPERATION TYPHOON,” but the panzer groups reabsorbed into AG Center were not the same potent formations they had been a month earlier. Increasingly hampered by bottomless mud and worn-out mechanically from the additional strain of the Kiev operation, many tank divisions were operating now at half their authorized strength.

For a solid miserable month, from October 7 to the second week of November, the dreaded “Rasputana” (“Time of Mud”) made large-scale mechanized operations impossible for of the armies girding their strength for the Moscow showdown. But the Germans


Given the paucity of hard intelligence about Russian’s true capabilities, the sheer vastness of the landscape through which its divisions fought their way east, the citizens-of-another-planet alien-ness of the society which they sought to subjugate (and which few of their leaders ever truly understood), the shakiness of the assumptions on which their logistical support were based, and the increasing ferocity of Soviet resistance, Germany’s soldiers could take pride in their achievements, however much they might have despised the ideological agenda that motivated their leaders.

At the height of its success, Operation Barbarossa advanced along a front line that totalled 1,720 miles (2,768 km.), and reached a depth of 760 miles (1223 km.); the area thus conquered was three times as large as the territory subjugated in the Polish campaign, and almost 2.5 times as large as that captured during the offensive on France and the Low Countries.

To put such big, abstract numbers into more familiar frames of reference: the Wehrmacht’s front line, at its point of maximum advance, was as long as the distance between the beaches of the Florida Keys and the northern boundary of Maine, and its depth roughly equalled the distance between the sands of Coney Island, New York, and the suburbs of Springfield, Illinois. If the campaign had cost the German Army roughly 900,000 “irrevocable casualties” (killed, permanently maimed or driven mad, and missing), that same army had inflicted upon its Soviet adversaries approximately 4.3 million killed and 2.9 million missing or captured – in other words, more than 12 times the TOTAL American losses for World War Two.*

During the period of June 21 – December 6, 1941, by all rational “normal” military-and-geographical calculations, the Wehrmacht beat the Red Army to the ground in victory after

in every man, gun, and vehicle still operational; there were no strategic reserves…because Hitler had been so certain that Moscow would fall before the full fury of General Winter could take effect. But within a week of the start of Operation Typhoon, temperatures had plunged to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the remaining panzers could not even be started unless their own fuel was consumed in bonfires to thaw out their engines.

One last convulsive effort carried the frontal elements of AG Center close enough to Moscow for their forward observers to witness the citizens of Moscow’s suburbs getting on the trolleys that would take them to work, close enough for the German scouts to actually hear the great bells of the Kremlin. But after December 5, the German spearheads were too exhausted and too decimated by losses to even defend themselves, much less continue their attacks.

And on December 6, the long-planned Russian counterattack began; in many places it was unstoppable. Hitler, in desperation, took operation command of his remaining combat forces – sacking any commander who urged him to adopt a flexible defense stance before it was too late -- and forbade them to take “one step back,” but Hitler’s hysterical admonitions fell, all too often, on the frozen ears of dead men, and by the time the Russian counter-offensive ran out of steam (for it was in many ways a clumsy and badly coordinated affair), the German front lines had been pushed back an average of 125 miles from Moscow.

Operation Barbarossa, then, ended in failure. Although it had produced victory after tactical victory, it had done so in a haphazard fashion; had been almost as a day-to-day improvisation ever since the great encirclement battles had failed in their intended purpose, which was to bring down Stalin’s regime by inflicting upon its armies losses no western nation could have supported.


16.2. An Important note about TerminologyIt will help the reader/wargamer considerably to understand the often vast and usually complex operations of the Russo-German conflict if he comes to grips early with a simple but potentially confusing distinction between the terminology used by OKH (Hitler’s supreme HQ in Berlin) and the Stavka (Stalin’s equivalent staff apparatus in the Kremlin):

The largest operational designation in the German Order of Battle was the “Army Group” (two or more “Armies,” each consisting of two or more infantry, panzer, or mechanized divisions along with attached and often ad hoc support and specialist units (flak, engineers, tank destroyer, elite “assault groups,” siege artillery, etc), which were attached for the duration of specific, limited operations).

In the Red Army, the largest normal operational formation was called a “Front,” and for all practical purposes it was equivalent to the Germans’ Army Groups…with one at-first bewildering difference. “Fronts” were usually designated according to their geographical orientation vis-à-vis Stavka’s situation maps in the Kremlin, in a manner roughly congruent to the rim-arcs at the wide end between two spokes of a wheel; hence they were designated either according to that compass bearing, with Moscow at the center (i.e., the “North-West Front,” the “Western Front”) OR according to the most critical city or terrain feature within that roughly pie-shaped wedge of terrain (i.e., the “Leningrad Front” the “Briansk Front” the “Trans-Caucasian Front,” etc.)

During the “Barbarossa” period (June-December, 1941), the Soviet “fronts” tended to be fewer in number, and much broader in scope, than they became as the war went into its subsequent phases. During those early battles, when the Red Army was learning modern staff

stupendous victory; yet like the legendary hero-giants of Slavic mythology (the bogatyrs), that army always seemed to rise from its own ruins, as though its very contact with the soil of Mother Russia replenished its strength and reinvigorated its will-to-resist. It was not only the stupefying distances of the Russian landscape, the merciless extremes of its weather, and the inexhaustible size of its reserves that finally defeated the best professional army that had ever marched across Europe – it was the individual Russian soldiers’ limitless capacity to die hard, to make the invader pay in blood for every square meter of sacred Russian soil, and the ponderous but inexorable process by which the Red Army’s senior commanders learned from their mistakes and, by the middle of 1943, were able to wield their superior numbers of men and machines with a degree of expertise equalling or surpassing their Nazi counterparts’, that turned the Red Army, finally, into the great “steam roller” its own propaganda had always claimed it was.

* With the opening of previously classified Russian archives, estimates of the total Russians dead from 6/1941 through 5/1945 have been steadily revised upward. Most Western historians now accept that the total Russian fatalities, military AND civilian, during the Great Patriotic War, must approach, if not exceed, the inconceivable number of thirty million.

If Russia had been a “western nation,” its government would never have survived the cataclysmic losses of 1941 alone. But it was not; it was “Mother Russia,” and Stalin played a trump card indeed when he recast the struggle, in the grimmest days of early autumn, 1941, as the “Great Patriotic War” and cleansed it of all the discredited encrustations and hollow slogans of the Communist system; there were, in fact, millions of Soviet citizens who would gladly have enlisted to fight against that system (and in this crucial aspect Hitler’s own racial arrogance deprived him of a huge, potentially decisive source of both manpower and intelligence – by treating all the “Slavs” as sub-human beasts, he unwittingly made fierce anti-Nazi patriots out of at least one million disaffected Soviet citizens who initially greeted the German invaders as “liberators”. Or perhaps his callousness was not “unwitting” at all; perhaps he truly believed that if his armed forces needed the help of such riff-raff in order to prevail against Stalin’s legions, perhaps they did not deserve to win! One venture into Hitler’s thought-processes at one’s own psychic peril…


To make all of this easier to comprehend, we’ve included Sketch Map A, which shows the large-scale disposition of the contenting armies/ fronts as they were at the start, and at the conclusion, of Stalin’s Winter Campaign (December 1941 – April, 1942). A quick referral to that graphic aid will, we hope, greatly assist the reader/ player in relating the game’s campaign battles to the real-history events on which they are (we trust) so entertainingly based!

16.3. Campaign notes 2: The Main narrativeBy mid-November, 1941, Moscow was half-encircled and not even the most optimistic True Believer in Stalin’s inner circle of military advisors could guarantee that the city would be able to hold out another week, or that it would even exist by the end of December. But the strategic picture was not entirely one of foreordained gloom; Stalin had much better and more accurate behind-the-lines intelligence than did Hitler, and he knew that grinding attrition (on men and machines alike) had greatly dulled the striking power of the invaders. Between the bottomless mud of late autumn and the bone-cracking cold of early winter, the German troops were suffering from hunger, frostbite, apathy, and despair – the increasing number of wretchedly ill-clad and poorly fed prisoners made that abundantly clear. Company-for-company, the Germans still showed superior expertise and a frustrating ability to out-fight and out-maneuver formations ten times their size, but their punches were getting weaker by the day. By December One, it was clear to everyone from Stalin on down that the Moscow campaign was balanced on a knife’s edge, and no sane gambler would have bet the house on a Russian victory. After all, ever since June, the Red Army had never, ever, been able to permanently stop in its tracks a single determined German

work through the most stressful kind of on-the-job training (with a forced-labor sojourn in Siberia, a short but action-packed re-assignment to a mine-clearing penal battalion, or in the most abject cases, a summary execution by the NKVD as the likeliest consequence for screwing-up one’s responsibilities), the sheer size of those early fronts, the density of variegated formations packed into them, the rigidity of training and procedural doctrine, and the Luftwaffe-abetted chaos that made a shambles of orderly pre-war command-and-control arrangements, made this “textbook” system cumbersome to administer, unwieldy to maneuver, and impossibly sluggish when it was tasked with responding to the deadly pirouettes of Blitzkrieg tactics and the havoc wrought by deeply-penetrating armored spearheads.

Therefore, in the weeks before and immediately after the initial Soviet counterattacks on December 5-6, Stavka promulgated a much more realistic organizational structure: it increased the number of “fronts,” but made each of them more geographically compact, more administratively streamlined, and considerably easier for their much-harassed commanders to keep track of. Therefore, from mid-December, 1941 on, the Red Army’s “fronts” became much more comparable to the Wehrmacht’s “Armies.”

A further source of confusion, for Western history enthusiasts, stems from the fact that neither the American nor the British Army used “front” as an official operational designation. Instead, the word was loosely and ambiguously used to refer – usually in a journalistic or public-relations context — to a distinct geographical area of campaigning – i.e., the Tunisian Front, the Sedan Front, the Normandy Front, the New Guinea Front, regardless of whether the size of Allied troops engaged there was 50,000 or one million. Everybody sort-of knew what was being talked about, and the semantic fuzziness had little or no impact on actual combat operations.


The Russians’ attack plans were neither complex nor sophisticated; however improved their basic skills had become in defensive operations, neither their training nor their command-and-control mechanisms permitted the sort of dazzling, swift-footed, rapier-thrusts the Germans had mastered so effectively. The big counterattack, therefore, would NOT be a subtle operation, but a crude, brutal tidal-wave affair that everyone knew would cost enormous casualties. But the Reds could afford to lose 10 men for every German veteran they killed (and in many battles, the ratio was even higher than that!), and still prevail in their sweat-simple objective!

Whoever the strategist was who coined the maxim: “Sometimes sheer quantity has a quality all its own!” was about to see his precept vindicated on a colossal scale.

* * *The curtain rose on the Russian counter-blow on the night of 5-6 December, 1941. Stavka’s planners were smart enough not to commit the bulk of their hoarded forces everywhere at once; rather they chose to strike a “rolling,” staggered series of powerful but limited blows, first against the German positions most directly threatening Moscow, and then at other adjacent sectors where the Germans seemed vulnerable. The effect of these scattered “hay-makers” was to keep the Germans guessing where the next blow would fall, making it riskier for them to commit the small localized “kampfgruppen” reserves they’d managed to scrape together, using equipment that was often not fully repaired and scratched-together infantry units made up of rear-echelon troops stiffened with a small cadre of veteran non-coms, including numerous men who were still recovering from earlier wounds or illness.

offensive. Delay them, yes, increase the butcher’s bill of their cost, yes; but utterly stop them cold, no – not once.

As more and more fresh Siberian divisions detrained just outside of the Moscow lines, and more and more factory-fresh T-34s gathered in well-hidden assembly areas (and as significant numbers of British Cromwells and Bell Aircobra fighters arrived from the Lend-Lease convoys that were enduring terrible losses to unload the largesse of Western factories in Murmansk and Archangel), it required nerves of steel for the Soviet high command not to throw those formations piecemeal into the heavily-pressured defensive lines near Moscow as soon as they were unloaded from the trains that brought them to the Moscow sector.

But their nerve held; just enough fresh replacements were fed into the defensive battle to prevent a catastrophic collapse, while the lion’s share of replacements and new material was held back, until the Stavka had amassed TEN new field armies, uncommitted, fresh, in prime condition, and stiffened with mountains of shells, bombs, fuel, and cold weather gear. However desperate the hourly situation might be, the Germans had not yet scored a decisive breakthrough, and every kilometer they advanced contributed to bleeding their best combat formations white. Now, having stiffened both their own and their hapless soldiers’ resolve, the Stavka generals remained in agreement that the only strategy that would decisively save Moscow, if not the Soviet Union itself as a political entity, was to husband sufficient resources to make the big counterattack, when it was finally unleashed, both initially overwhelming and backed up by sufficient resources to sustain its momentum until the German tide had been forced back, by irresistible brute force, to a “safe” distance from the capital city.


The Fuehrer had had a belly-full of “professional,” conventional advice from more orthodox Prussian officers such as Leeb and even the now-legendary Runstedt, who kept urging a controlled withdrawal to shorter, more defensible lines, a “flexible defense” was the terminology they used during increasingly acrimonious staff conferences, which to the Fuehrer became synonymous with “pell-mell retreat.” So, in his most dramatic intervention yet, Hitler ordered the whole distinguished lot of them into forced retirement, replacing them with competent but less-strong-willed generals more inclined to do his bidding, and then he issued his infamous “stand and die; not one step back” order. The respected (and, by the Russians much-feared) commander of Fourth Panzer Group, General Erich Hoepner, was indiscreet enough to voice some scathing complaints, expressing his disgust at being forced to obey deluded orders from “civilian amateurs,” and for his bluntness was summarily sacked in disgrace.

By early January, these relentless “rolling” Russian attacks had ripped-apart the boundary between Army Group Center and Army Group North. Fresh Soviet units were committed to exploit these gains, in within a week had penetrated 30-40 miles deep into German territory. Simultaneously, Stavka launched supporting actions to increase the pressure against the Germans still hanging on north and south of the growing salient in front of Moscow.

The important Tikhvin salient southeast of Leningrad was hammered flat like a protruding nail, somewhat easing the pressure on the besieged metropolis; a surprisingly strong and well-coordinated partisan offensive wreaked havoc on German rail lines west of Minsk and on both sides of the Pripet Marshes (a place where even the Waffen SS feared to tread), greatly hampering the already over-burdened German logistical system; a powerful limited

Stalin had at first urged an all-out, broad-front counteroffensive, but common sense prevailed and even he finally admitted that Stavka as yet lacked the organizational skills to coordinate so huge an effort. The replacement armies’ commanders, not to mention the bulk of their manpower, were too raw and too much in awe of their enemy’s reputation, and the German’s demonstrated brilliance at improvising flexible defensive tactics with the skimpiest resources, to confidently undertake any complex, nuanced offensive actions; all that most Russian commanders could do was bravely lead their highly motivated masses of men and armor straight at the nearest German positions and hope the defenders would break before the attacking formations were cut to pieces.

Under winter conditions, however, the low-tech resources of the Red Army actually proved to be an asset. While the surviving German panzers and self-propelled guns were largely confined to roads and carefully prepared static positions, large formations of Soviet cavalry, ski-troops, and hardy Siberian infantry towed into battle, in armored sleds, behind tractor-like prime movers, were more mobile and proved fairly adept at finding weak spots on the German flanks and in the boundary-seams between adjacent units; above all they were suicidaly brave and just kept driving forward until they came upon a communications center, a field kitchen, a motor pool, or an ice-locked battery of artillery and then closing with it in savage close combat until one side or the other prevailed. These costly but crudely effective tactics took their toll. So many immobilized tanks and supporting batteries were being over-run by fanatically determined Russian infiltrators that Hitler took the unprecedented step of seizing absolute tactical, as well as strategic, command over all German forces, on December 18.


the Luftwaffe, these enclaves actually did what Hitler hoped they would do by blunting the momentum of StavkaS already faltering offensive and tying down disproportionate Russian resources.

For once the initial counterattacks in front of Moscow had succeeded, and driven by the whip of Stalin’s invective, Stavka rather lost control of the whole operation. Its purpose morphed from reducing-the-threat to Moscow into something much vaster: an open-ended broad-front offensive, which the Red Army at this juncture had neither the resources nor the skill to sustain. And once the Russian spearheads out-ran their own supply lines, the attacking formations encountered many of the same problems the Germans had been forced to cope with: attrition, mechanical break-downs, dwindling ammunition stocks, artillery that could not keep pace with the forward units it was intended to support. By hurling too many aimless assaults at too many points, the Russian Winter Offensive lost cohesion and eventually was reduced to a series of wild, flailing outbursts, launched from late February to early March, that achieved no strategic purpose but greatly increased the already horrific casualty lists.

Gradually, the legendary German discipline and the officer cadre’s matchless ability to organize coherent positions out of chaotic disorder, reasserted itself; each new Russian punch grew weaker and had less effect, and for several weeks before the “official” termination of the Red Army’s Winter Offensive, on April 1, 1942, a relative state of calm – one born of mutual exhaustion – had returned to the Russian Front.

Both armies now rested, licked their wounds, brought up replacements and new equipment, and made ready for the next round.

It is debatable whether or not the Winter Offensive marked THE “turning point” on the Eastern Front, or merely the first

attack, erupting suddenly from the Russian Southwest Front, drove a dangerous salient into Army Group South’s positions below Kharkov; and far to the south, where the German Eleventh Army was making little headway, at great cost, in its protracted siege of Sevastopol, the Russians scored a staggering surprise by launching their first big-scale amphibious operation of the war, seizing a large beachhead on the Kerch Peninsula (at the narrows separating the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov), and forcing the German’s to abandon their attacks on Sevastopol in order to fight for their lives against this unexpected thread from the rear.

By February 15, even Hitler was beginning to lose his nerve. Declaring that his brutal “stand and die” order had served its purpose, he suddenly gave permission for what was left of Army Group Center to conduct a “dignified withdrawal” to more easily defended terrain. Whatever military qualities distinguished a “dignified” retreat from an “orderly, prompt, and rational” one, was a question that generated considerable gallows’ humor among the officers charged with this daunting task; several lesser commanders took care to leave flowery messages of welcome and top hats jammed atop stake-mounted skulls to greet the Russians destined to occupy their abandoned trenches – one of the few times in this grim conflict that the soldiers on both sides shared a rueful laugh.

Hitler did, however, order several major German pockets, most notably a large blister-shaped enclave near Demyansk on the southern flank of Army Group North, where two full corps of Sixteenth Army were surrounded, to form “hedgehogs” for all-around defense, so they could act as breakwaters and tie down large Russian forces in static siege fighting. Thanks for vigorous and imaginative defensive tactics, poorly coordinated Russian assaults, and costly but on the whole successful re-supply operations by


to throw away, at the height of “Fall Blau,” the Wehrmacht’s best remaining chance for total victory over the Red Army; by acting-out his fantasies of martial grandeur, instead of listening to the sage advice of his seasoned advisors, he inadvertently set up the very conditions that would lead to the debacle at Stalingrad.

And in the third and final installment of this historical overview, we’ll examine why and how this happened.

16.4. The Antagonists at MoscowARMY GROUP CENTRE: Field Marshal Fedor von Bock.Born into one of Germany’s most respected military family’s (in Kurstrin, Brandenberg, on 3/ 12/ 1880), von Bock was commissioned in 1898 and served with the utmost distinction during the Great War (earning the highest award Imperial Germany could bestow, the Poure le Merite – a.k.a. “The Blue Max”) for his courageous and tactically astute leadership of an infantry battalion in several of the war’s bloodiest campaigns.

Bock remained in the truncated Weimar Republic’s army after the war, dutifully rising to commander of the Pomeranian Military District by the time Hitler attained political power in 1933. A man not noted for finely discriminating political principles, Bock easily switched his loyalty to the new Nazi regime, and his recognized all-round professionalism gained him an important command on the German right wing during the Polish Campaign.

His undoubted personal courage and all-round competence earned him a Knight’s Cross for that operation. During the invasion of Western Rurope in 1940, he showed the same steadfast, methodical professionalism in his handling of Army Group B; if he lacked the killer-instinct and risk-taking brilliance of Rommel or Guderian, he also lacked their prima dona temperament and

of three (Stalingrad and Kursk being the other two). What CAN be asserted is that the Battle of Moscow marked the first time the Wehrmacht had been stopped cold and hurled back a significant distance. But when the smoke cleared and the winter’s dramatic events were analyzed coolly, the basic equation had not been reversed; Germany still retained the strategic initiative and still had the skill and resources to defeat the Red Army. Moscow had been saved, but it was still within striking distance, had the Germans chosen to attack in that direction in the summer of 1942.

What had changed was this: Hitler’s grand design (however murky it was in the fine print!), as manifested in Operation Barbarossa, had been checked – it was no longer possible for Germany to prevail under the conditions Hitler had opted for when he invaded the Soviet Union.

But as the staggering German victories in “Case Blau” would demonstrate, it was still very much possible for Germany to win – but only if her best and most seasoned commanders retained control of the campaign.

And there, almost certainly, is the most profound, though submerged, effect of the events of December, 1941 – April, 1942. The Germans did not rout, and, ironically, they managed to re-establish a stable defensive line more or less where OKH had wanted to establish one at the start of the Soviet counterattack; moreover, although many of Hitler’s elite divisions had been severely reduced in size and firepower, not one major German formation had been totally wiped out. Despite the fact that it was Hitler’s blind over-confidence and lack of clear-cut strategic priorities that caused Operation Barbarossa to fail, the Fuehrer emerged from the winter crisis with renewed, and increasingly deluded, faith in his own “military genius.” This would lead him


to become depressed, sluggish to react, and sunk into a pit of gloom for the first time in his career.

Stricken with pneumonia (or at least, that was the reason given out publicly), he reluctantly agreed that he was too ill to continue his heavy responsibilities, especially during the crisis situation that had erupted 12 days earlier and on December 18, he resigned his command. He was replaced by Feldmarschall Gunther Kluge, who had commanded the Fourth Army, under Bock, with exceptional ability.

Bock was able to obtain only thirty days’ rest before being recalled to assume command of Army Group South. His performance during the campaigns of “Fall Blau” revealed more sheer brilliance and professional savvy than anything he had done previously, and by the late summer of 1942, he had proven himself a virtuoso at commanding combined-arms operations on the largest and most complex scale.

A man of incorruptible honor, and personally, at least, a general who tried to disassociate himself from the increasingly barbarous actions of the “career Nazis,” Bock may well have been an early, if very circumspect, member of the anti-Hitler conspiracy, and as the Feuhrer’s orders became more and more detached from military reality, Bock began to reveal a hitherto repressed streak of stubborn individualism. Increasingly, he “bent” Hitler’s directives to conform to tactical realities and to save the useless effusion of blood by his troops.

Alerted by unfavorable Gestapo reports, Hitler urged Bock to retire, in the late summer of 1942, “for reasons related to your personal health.” Bock knew how to take a hint, and in retirement, he resumed an apparently quiet private existence with his wife, and distanced himself from the anti-Hitler conspirators because he

therefore was more comfortable for Hitler to work with. It would not be unjust to say that Bock’s lack of rough edges, more than any demonstrated battlefield brilliance, made him a suitable candidate, in Hitler’s eyes, for command of Army Group Center during the final organizations for “Barbarossa,” and before accepting that assignment he was duly, and quite fittingly, promoted to Generalfeldmarschall.

Bock really came into his own during the first four months of the Russian campaign. In the vast Blitzkrieg triumphs at Minsk and Smolensk, he showed a quiet, steady genius at being able to orchestrate the movements and actions of the powerful combined arms under his command, and during that 120-day period, his forces encircled and virtually exterminated no less than eighteen Russian field armies, a feat quite possibly without precedence in military history. He not only handled AG Center with consummate skill, but proved himself equally adept at orchestrating combined operations with the two army groups to the left and right of his own; neither the somewhat obdurate Leeb nor the high-strung Runstedt ever had any serious problems working with him.

But he was, by this time, 61 years old and no longer a robust man. The cumulative fatigue and strains of the long summer-autumn campaign had worn him down both physically and emotionally. Moreover, he seems to have felt genuine compassion for the men under his command, of whom he had demanded so much and who had never left him down.

Both his confidence and his psychological equilibrium were more eroded than most of his staff realized; he later confessed that the sheer unending size of the Russian theater, and the seemingly infinite capacity of the Red Army to regenerate fresh armies even after sustaining cataclysmic loses, had, by December 1, caused him


rest of Stavka, an anger that would quickly become known to the general populace, most of which was on the verge of rebellious despair already; and 2) The removal of Zhukov would be viewed by Adolf Hitler as a sign of divine intervention in favor of the Third Reich; Zhukov’s liquidation or downfall would have been regarded, by the German generals who respected and feared him, as being the equivalent of a major field victory, and it would likely reignite the badly faltering zeal of the rank-and-file Wehrmacht soldiers. Stalin could lose 100,000 soldiers and replace them in less than a month; but if he lost Zhukov, he might also lose the loyalty of all his best remaining field commanders. Not all of them liked Georgii Zhukov – whose manner could be as tactlessly arrogant as his features were blunt and peasant-like, but all of them agreed that he was truly the Indispensable Man at Stavka.

It was Zhukov who ran the day-to-day conduct of the Moscow defenses, it was Zhukov who had planned and, with iron willpower, amassed the forces needed to not only stop the advance on Moscow, but administer a repulse to the Wehrmacht so sharp and stinging that its aura of invincibility would be shattered forever.

Zhukov began his military career in the Tsarist Army, and was twice decorated with the St. George’s Cross for bravery. Enlisting in the Bolshevik forces in 1918, he soon became commander of a cavalry detachment. Between the wars, he continued to advance as a cavalry officer, while simultaneously keeping very current with technical developments in the field of armor warfare. He rose steadily, being appointed commander-in-chief of the 1st Army Group, a well-mechanized outfit entrusted with fending off Japanese aggression in the far east.

The Japanese tried a quick land grab in 1939, in Mongolia, and in the proto-Blitzkrieg Battle of Khalkin Gol Zhukov made

knew he was already being watched and did not want to implicate or jeopardize anyone else.

He deserved better, but five days before the German surrender, he and his wife were both killed in an Allied bombing raid.

AND IN THE LEFT-WING CORNER, WEARING Red Army silk trunks emblazoned with a golden hammer-and-sickle, we have the Challenger, the Muscovite Mauler, the Comrade with the biggest pair of brass balls in the Kremlin, Field Marshal GERGORII K. ZHUKOV, COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE ALL-CRUCIAL Western Front, a.k.a. the Big Moscow Bull’s Eye. The only Red officer to be decorated four times as a Hero of the Soviet Union, Zhukov also enjoyed the distinction of being one of the few men to shout down Joe Stalin to his face and live to tell about it!

He is the one Russian commander who towers stands above the mass of his excellent colleagues in the same way George C. Marshall towers over the men he selected to prosecute the shooting-war for America. As much as any one man could be, Zhukov WAS the embodiment of the Red Army, and, by 1941, he was probably the sole living man capable of replacing Stalin at a moment’s notice.

Ordinarily, any leader that popular, that powerful, and that charismatic, had a very short life-expectancy; but Zhukov survived the Great Purges and never fell from power, even though on one level, at least, Stalin feared him as a potential rival and/or because Zhukov was one of the few men capable of organizing, and successfully leading a palace revolt inside the Kremlin. But even Stalin’s paranoia had some limits; he was shrewd enough to understand two things: 1) He could not possibly liquidate or even demote Zhukov without creating near-mutinous outrage among the


hand just in time to disengage gracefully from a situation that was already, by early March, shifting to the Germans’ favor, although just how much so would not become apparent until much later.

After the war, and especially during that dangerous period when Stalin was obviously losing his marbles and may have seriously harbored fantasies about overwhelming NATO with an all-out nuclear AND conventional offensive, Zhukov proved to be a critical voice of reason and restraint in Soviet military policy. He continued to serve his nation honorably and intelligently in retirement, until he died, a genuine living legend, on June 18, 1972.

16.5. “Case Blue,” The German Summer Offensive Of 1942As the Russian Winter Offensive slowly ebbed, Hitler turned his enthusiastic attention to one of his most cherished and grandiose schemes: the destruction of all Soviet forces in the region of the Don River Bend, followed by the seizure of the vital oilfields beyond the Caucasus Mountains (which Hitler seemed to regard as little more than troublesome foothills). In theory, there is nothing wrong with combining military and economic objectives, quite the contrary; but doing so presupposes the planner has sufficient resources to seize the latter while successfully achieving the former.

No question but that the Caspian Sea oil reserves were a stupendous strategic asset; capturing them, even in a severely damaged state, would greatly improve Germany’s situation – the need for petrol and strategic lubricants was fast becoming urgent -- and depriving Stalin of those same resources would greatly hamper Russia’s ability to prosecute a prolonged war.

While all that was true, it would still be hard to find a more perfect example of Hitler’s obsession with economic objectives he

fools of them. He used both masses of horse cavalry and relatively powerful columns of armor to slice up and totally defeat a large Japanese invasion force, one significantly outnumbering his own forces, in every regard except tanks and a modestly superior edge in tactical air power (in the hands of a good pilot, the stubby but agile Polikarpov fighter was one of the few Allied aircraft that could dog-fight a Zero with some chance of winning the contest).

As would happen later in the Russo-German war, Zhukov’s success was not disputed, but his willingness to endure excessive casualties was. Stalin didn’t give a rap about “excessive casualties” as long as the end result was so crushingly favorable. From then on, Zhukov’s ascent was rapid. His ability to plan, organize, and allocate forces for huge, multi-faceted operations was second-to-none among Allied commanders. If results alone are considered, and the commander’s willingness to incur prodigious, even wildly excessive, friendly casualties is set aside, it is plausible to argue that Zhukov was the single most successful Allied field commander of the entire Second World War.

But in December, 1941, Zhukov was still learning his trade; he was an unfinished work-of-art. His orchestration of the opening moves of the Winter Offensive was devastatingly effective, but as the front lines became more distant and the offensive became more wide-spread than Zhukov had ever thought proper, thanks to Stalin’s heavy-handed enthusiasm and bully-boy intervention in day-to-day decision making, Zhukov rather lost control of the operation’s large-scale development. He did not regain that authority without more than one memorable mano-a-mano shouting match with “Uncle Joe,” events so unprecedented and spectacular that those who witnessed them, in the words of Nikita Khruschev, “almost shit their pants with fright.” Zhukov regained a firm


south bank of the Lower Don (which would be used, later, to facilitate the big moves into the Caucasus);

4. The capture and fortification of Stalingrad, which would serve as both a strongpoint guarding the rear of that climactic advance, and a pivot point for the redeployment of major resources in the penultimate drive toward the Caspian oil fields.

Elsewhere on the Eastern Front, Army Groups Center and North would remain in a defensive mode until success, hopefully, attended the southern offensive. If the opportunity seemed ripe at that point, a concerted effort would be made, finally, to assault and capture Leningrad.

As a violent overture, on May 8, Manstein’s strengthened Eleventh Army was to deliver a knock-out blow against the annoying but much-too-lightly equipped beachhead on the Kerch Peninsula, before turning back to settle Sevastopol’s hash once and for all. To assist in this clean-up operation, Hitler temporarily loaned Manstein significant Luftwaffe assets and tasked them with destroying or neutralizing the troublesome remnants of the Red Black Sea Fleet, which the aircraft were remarkably unsuccessful in doing, despite the relatively weak AA armament of Russian warships.

16.6. The biggest gunsSevastopol was one of the most heavily fortified harbor-cities in the world. Manstein’s Eleventh Army had no choice but to reduce the fortress through protracted, methodical siege operations, and it took him seven months and heavy casualties to do so.

Among the deadliest and more-feared Russians weapons were the two land-mounted battleship turrets prosaically identified as “Coastal Batteries 30 and 35,” but more commonly and affectionately

no longer had quite enough military power to achieve. Needless to say, Hitler didn’t see things that way, but by this time his “strategic vision” had become dangerously occluded by megalomania; he assumed that, combined with his partly reconstituted Wehrmacht, his blinding “military genius,” supported by the fanatical loyalty of his generals, would somehow pull off a military triumph, in a single summer, roughly comparable to the combined career-long victories of Alexander the Great.

Planning shifted into high gear even as the last sputtering battles of the Russian winter offensive were unfolding, and on April 5, Hitler issued the defining strategic directive for “Fall Blau” (“Case Blue”), a summer offensive even more ambitious, though quite a bit dicier, than Operation Barbarossa.

Because there were insufficient railroads to allow the assemblage of strong enough forces to permit a simultaneous, broad-front offensive, the summer effort would be launched in four staggered but mutually reinforcing phases, all involving Bock’s Army Group South, which had received by far the lion’s share of replacements and new equipment:

1. A double envelopment of Voronezh, after which a strong defensive line would be established to ward off any contemplated Russian intervention from the direction of Orel;

2. A subsequent advance from Voronezh down the Don River to link up with a second German column thrusting east from Kharkov;

3. A continued, now reinforced, advance down the Don (which would serve to protect the German left flank), and which would join with yet a third German force driving east from the Mius River; small local attacks would peel off from this prong and seek to capture, then fortify, bridgeheads on the


500-man crew and specialized equipment necessary to emplace, aim, fire, and maintain the gigantic weapon. When fully assembled, Dora weighed a whopping 1,328 tons.

To prevent the piece from being knocked off-mount car by the force of its own recoil, an entire company of engineers had to labor for almost a week to seat the gun firmly in a massive concrete pedestal. Dora could fire two types of ammunition: a concrete-piercing round that weighed 7.1 tons and had an effective range of 37 km; and a 4.8-ton high explosive round with a range of just under 50 km. So much time and money had gone into building Dora and its specialized trains, however, that there had been little more than spare change left to pay for its ammunition! When Manstein ordered the monster hauled from Berlin, he was more than slightly disappointed to learn that its TOTAL ammunition supply consisted of just 48 projectiles! Additional shells eventually arrived, but only in small batches of a dozen or so.

“Thor” and “Odin” came with more shells, but that was the only advantage the great mortars conferred. Their effective range was so short that they had to be carefully hidden in defilade positions – if the Russians spotted them, “Maxim Gorky” alone could have taken them out with one accurate salvo.

Yet there was no denying the psychological boost these dinosaurs gave to Manstein’s troops. Just the puissant thunder of their first shots – when they finally were allowed to shoot! – raised a vast cheer from the siege lines around Sevastopol. And, boy, did they look potent in the newsreel footage rushed back to the Reich and hurriedly shown in thousands of cinemas throughout German and the occupied nations – how, the bedizened civilian audiences must have wondered, could ANY target survive a pounding from such titanic super-weapons?

called “Fort Maxim Gorki.” Each turret sheltered a pair of highly accurate 14-inch rifles, was capable of 360-degree traverse, and was protected by slabs of hardened naval steel 200 mm. thick.

Both turrets proved to be incredibly tough targets. “Gun Turret One,” for example, sustained approximately 150 direct hits from German, Rumanian, Austrian and captured Czech/ French/ and Russian guns of the 105-150 mm. class yet was never out of action for more than a day and until the bitter end still remained capable of destroying an entire Axis infantry company with one well-placed salvo. Manstein could not afford to launch an all-out ground assault on Sevastopol until “Maxim Gorky” had been silenced – if nothing else, the fearsome reputation of those two armored turrets made both German and Rumanian infantry decidedly reluctant to advance in their direction.

The ideal way to silence them, of course, would have been by concentrated naval bombardment, but the nearest Kreigsmarine battleships were sequestered deep inside Norwegian fjords, 1,200 miles to the north. Nor did the vaunted Stukas accomplish much, even with 1000-kg. bombs. Although their pilots certainly made brave and persistent attempts, the dive bombers always met with such a solid wall of Russian flak that they were forced to drop their heavy ordnance from unacceptably high altitudes, with dismal results in terms of accuracy.

Manstein therefore had no choice but to call upon the services of the heaviest guns in Hitler’s inventory: the 800-mm railroad gun “Dora,” and two 600-mm siege mortars (great squat hulking bestial-looking things) fetchingly nicknamed “Thor” and “Odin.”

We’re talking seriously heavy artillery, here! Dora could only be moved by means of two fully dedicated freight trains – one carrying the gun’s massive components and the other carrying the


16.6.1. Opening MovesManstein’s curtain-raising operation was brutally successful; in ten days of wild fighting, his German and Rumanian troops shattered the Russians’ Kerch lodgment and drove the surviving fragments into the sea. More than 150,000 Red troops were killed or captured, roughly ten times Manstein’s casualties. Sevastopol fell, after one of the bloodiest siege actions of the entire war, only on July2. Undisputed possession of the Crimea gave Hitler an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” to support his southern-most operations; more critically, it denied Stalin the use of the only air bases in Russia from which long-range bombing attacks might be launched against the vital Axis oil refineries at Ploesti, Rumania.

* * *On the whole, and despite some marginal improvements in weaponry (captured Russian 76.2mm field guns, grafted on to the chasis of obsolete tanks, proved a fairly successful improvisation, and the Wehrmacht had captured hundreds of them), the German Army of June, 1942 was roughly only two-thirds as powerful as the force committed to Barbarossa. Astonishingly, Germany’s domestic arms production has risen only incrementally during the past year, with absurd amounts of scarce research time and strategic metals being side-tracked for “wonder weapons” which usually proved to be infinitely more trouble than they were worth. Advanced models of vehicles and aircraft were barely trickling off the production lines, while the Red Army – despite continued spotty shortages of such basic items as infantry rifles – had absorbed not only significant domestic reinforcements, but thousands of tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, and ship-loads of SPAM from steadily increasing Lend-Lease convoys.

Well, the best way was for Dora, Thor, and Odin to miss said targets, which they consistently did, and not by small distances. In a well-prepared “registration” shoot, Dora lobbed a sequence of carefully-plotted shots which raised such enormous dust and debris clouds that, in the newsreel footage, the shells certainly seem to be as destructive as tactical nukes. But German ordnance experts later calculated that, from this leisurely, unopposed test-firing, they obtained the following results:

No. of rounds landed Distance of impact from target1 35-40 meters2 160-250 metersAll the rest 300 meters or more

Odin and Thor also delivered less-than-god-like results, and their rate of fire proved to be so agonizingly slow that the best their elite crews could manage – provided nobody was shooting back at them – was two rounds every 3.5 hours.

On the other hand, when the big mortars DID tag something, the results were impressive. One glancing hit on Maxim Gorky’s “Turret No. 2,” scored by a concrete-piercing round on June 6, 1942, ripped apart the armored roof, forced the right-hand gun six-eight feet into the earth, and killed or wounded 40 Russian gunners.

Eventually, the remaining battleship turrets were knocked out the hard way, by German pioneer detachments, covered by flame-throwers and multiple MG-34s, who worked in close and shoved 500-kg charges of TNT into the turrets by hand, through ventilation ducts and small seams opened-up by previous artillery hits.


woke up one morning to see formations of 200 Grants bearing down on them at full speed. Though pressed with immense gallantry and self-sacrifice, this “spoiling attack” ran out of momentum almost as soon as it began and the salient it punched into German lines was rapidly cut to pieces by Field Marhsal Bock’s furious counter-attacks . Historians may argue over whether or not the Kharkov bloodbath significantly affected Fall Blau’s outcome, but in truth it probably made little difference one way or the other, except that the lop-sized Russian casualties (approximately 240,000 men and 1250 tanks) reinforced Hitler’s delusional contempt for his opponent. Stalin probably figured that losing five Grants in exchange for one PzKfw-IV was a pretty reasonable transaction, considering how steadily his own factories’ output of T-34s was continuing to rise.

Fall Blau proper commenced on June 28, with the attack on Voronezh, which reached the outskirts on July 2. The central city did not fall until after a fierce four-day street-brawl. After July 6, the German infantry began setting up a strong defensive line facing northwest, from Livny to Voroenzh, and the Second Hungarian Army moved up from behind to extend that line down the western bank of the Don River. Simultaneously, Fourth Panzer Army side-slipped around the Voronezh area and pivoted toward the south, in preparation for Phase 2.

On June 30, it was the Sixth Army’s (General von Paulus) turn to advance. Against spotty resistance, Sixth Army made its planned junction with Fourth Panzer Army on July 7, but the anticipated big bag of Russian prisoners failed to materialize – there simply weren’t as many Red units in that sector as the Germans had anticipated, and most of those that had been stationed there succeeded in withdrawing over the Don before making contact, leaving the Germans holding only a handful of forlorn rearguard

The crack Wehrmacht formations in AG South were, at best, only rebuilt to 75-80 per cent of their authorized strength. During the late spring and early summer, the sheer numerical strength of Hitler’s infantry had regained its 1941 levels, but the numbers were illusory. Fifty-one divisions of allied and satellite troops (Rumanian, Hungarian, Italian, and the ferociously aggressive all-volunteer “Blue Division” from Franco’s Spain) had fleshed-out the German drive, but virtually none of these units had the firepower, training, motivation, or logistical and armored support needed to compete with their enemy counterparts. They were so obviously of questionable value that, at the start of Fall Blau, they were relegated to bolstering the quieter, non-critical sectors of the line, or were deployed – with rather more success – in massive anti-partisan sweeps that temporarily reduced that threat to containable levels (although the atrocities committed in these operations ended up driving more fighting men INTO the surviving partisan organizations than they subtracted from them through combat attrition; Hitler’s propensity for shooting himself in the ideological foot continued to undercut the early pro-German enthusiasm of the Ukrainian population, thus denying him enough eager recruits to create at least 20 new rabidly anti-Communist divisions!).

Preparations for the start of Fall Blau were dangerously delayed by fierce but clumsy Russian counterattacks both north and south of Kharkov. For the first time, the Reds relied on enormous masses of tanks to punch holes in the German defense, but the attack was not entirely unexpected, and within twelve days it had run out of steam. This action may have seen the largest operational use of Lend-Lease “General Grant” tanks supplied by the U.S., which the Germans were able to slaughter at a ratio of 5-to-one, but which at least had a temporarily sobering effect on the German defenders who


First Panzer Army routed quickly, with unprecedented numbers of Russian troops simply deserting at the first opportunity. The way to Stalingrad seemed open… And then, Hitler did it again.

Just as List’s offensive was tearing the defenders apart, Hitler suddenly ordered him to re-orient his advance due south, in order to isolate the fortress city of Rostov. To add striking power, he then detached Fourth Panzer Army from Army Group B, reattached it to Group A, and directed it to make a concentric southward turn, to bolster List’s left flank. This left Von Paulus’s Sixth Army bereft of all but a fraction of its armor, and the vehicles he retained were mostly half-tracks and self-propelled guns, stiffened with small packets of obsolescent Czech tanks and some now-almost-useless PzKfw-IIIs.

Worse: by peeling-away Fourth Panzer Army, Hitler created a gap between it and the slow-moving infantry units under Von Paulus, a proverbial “barn door” in fact, through which some two-thirds of the Russian forces still fighting inside the Don River Bend – who would have been trapped, had Hitler stuck to his original plan -- were able to make an orderly and undisturbed withdrawal to the eastern bank of the river, where they were quickly reorganized and prepared to add their weight to the defenses of Stalingrad! Von Paulus knew what was happening, and tried to use his own limited mechanized forces to strike the enemy in the rear, in mid-retreat, but at this critical juncture of the campaign, Sixth Army literally ran out of gas.

The logistical support for Fall Blau had always been marginal at best; Hitler’s sudden mood-swings made a bad situation into a nightmare for his supply officers. The Führer could fume and rage all he wanted to, but his pique could not change the realities on the ground. Sixth Army could now advance only as fast as its tired soldiers

detachments. Although the advance in general was going fairly well, the big German second punch had mostly landed on empty terrain.

But Hitler was not satisfied with either the pace or the aggressiveness of his commanders; Fall Blau was not even two weeks old when he began interfering in its development in a manner unusually heavy-handed and disruptive even for him. On July 9, much to the confusion and resentment of his field commanders, he suddenly promulgated a “more efficient” reorganization of Army Group South. The Eleventh, Ninth, and First Panzer Armies were henceforth grouped together as “Army Group A”; everybody else was redefined as “Army Group B.” To enforce such a radical re-structuring of a huge offensive operation barely a dozen days after launching it was a violation of all accepted strategic wisdom, to say nothing of common sense. Again, as had happened in the previous winter, staff conferences became acrimonious. When the flabbergasted Field Marshal Bock – whose performance thus far had been splendid – objected too vehemently, Hitler dismissed him on the spot, citing his “slowness” in securing Voronezh (he’d done it in less than a week, against ferocious Russian resistance!), and replaced him with General List (Army Group A) and General Maximilian Von Weichs (Army Group B), both of whom were reasonably capable soldiers, but neither of them were quite in the same league as Field Marshal Bock. They were, however, proven Hitler loyalists and could be relied upon to follow orders without back-talk. Worse confusion was soon to come; less than two weeks after it had started, Fall Blau was starting to come un-glued.

16.6.2. Onwards To Stalingrad…Or Maybe notList initiated Phase 3 by launching a heavy attack due east, and at first things went very well indeed. The Russians facing


in retreat. It is a measure of how desperate the Russian situation seemed that, in early July and for the next several weeks, the left-wing press in Great Britain and America launched a shrill, at time hysterical, propaganda campaign demanding that an Allied “Second Front Now!” invasion be launched in Europe, to ease the pressure on the USSR. Neither Roosevelt nor Churchill relished the prospect of a Russian collapse, but the Americans were tied down in North Africa and the most the British could do was to launch a raid-in-force against the French port of Dieppe (August 19), which proved to be an instructive but bitterly costly failure.

In the end, though, none of these alarums and public-relations posturing amounted to much, because in late July, Hitler’s feverish brain went into overdrive and he began issuing a series of orders that proved – to any German general who still doubted it – that the Führer’s vaunted “strategic intuition” had now truly run amok. On July 23, having somehow convinced himself that Fall Blau would soon achieve all its far-flung objectives (which it might have done, if he had only let well enough alone!), Hitler suddenly ordered all but a handful of divisions from Eleventh Army, along with all the super-heavy siege artillery that had helped crack the stalemate at Sevastopol, to entrain and redeploy almost a thousand miles to the north, where the Führer was now convinced that the capture of Leningrad, in September, was both desirable and feasible (a year earlier, it would have been both). Not only did this huge redeployment wreak havoc on the already over-burdened German rail system in Russia, but it also effectively removed from the southern front the only fresh and powerful reserve force available to reinforce the final stages of Fall Blau!

Next, in the first sign of the Führer’s increasing, almost mystical, obsession with Stalingrad (surely, the city’s very name had a lot

could walk; a critical supply shortage developed even for horse-drawn weapons and supply wagons. Horse can’t work if they’re starving, and horse fodder was not a priority cargo on the supply trains that did manage to get through. And in retreat, of course, the Russians had destroyed (or poisoned) any horse fodder left in the region, other than the wiry steppe-grass itself, which German-employed horses found both unappetizing and poor in nutritional value.

Hitler’s fear that the Russians would make an Alamo-like stand in Rostov proved unfounded; the city fell after perfunctory resistance (July 22-23), enabling both First and Fourth Panzer Armies to surge forward and capture several excellent bridgeheads on the far side of the Don. And there they sat, for 2-3 days, waiting for adequate gasoline supplies to catch up. Conditions went from bad to worse up in Sixth Army’s sector, where Von Paulus’s army was so starved for fuel that virtually the only vehicle still able to move was the general’s staff car. Even more ominous was a temporary shortage of basic ammunition! Had the Russians counterattacked at that point, Sixth Army would have been a sitting duck, not the fearsome antagonist they perceived it to be!

In fact, the Russians were in something of a widespread panic. Unaware of how desperate the invaders’ supply problems had become, and not even fantasizing about the deranged orders Hitler was about to issue, they used this priceless ten-day lull to feverishly fortify Stalingrad. But future prospects seemed grim. On the map, the German gains since the commencement of Fall Blau looked spectacular; cumulatively, Stalin had suffered approximately half-a-million casualties; the loss of Rostov, and the perceived German threat to the Caucasus oil fields, were heavy psychological blows.

On the whole, the Russian troops defending the Stalingrad and Caucasus Fronts seemed demoralized and pessimistic, listless even


divisions spread out like so many over-extended fingers on a hand, across an arc measuring more than 500 miles, there was no real depth or momentum behind these penetrations, and when Russian resistance thickened-up, as it did by mid-August, the Germans were not only unable to advance further, they could hold the picturesque ground they had captured only by organizing caravans of camels – guarded by bandolier-covered tribal mercenaries who looked as though they were stragglers from the Mongol Hordes of a thousand years earlier -- to haul their food and ammunition to the front lines!

By August 18, the last Russian remnants had been cleared from the Don River Bend by Army Group B; five days later, the Wehrmacht successfully crossed the river and, despite frenzied Russian counterattacks, pushed ahead to the western bank of the Volga, at an otherwise insignificant ferry-crossing some twenty-five miles north of a city that few Germans had ever heard of, and whose main strategic target was thought to be a sprawling downtown tractor factory that had only recently started turning out T-34s…

Although no one knew it at the time, “Fall Blau” had reached its high-tide demarcation and was about to morph into one of the most savage, protracted and decisive house-to-house brawls in the annals of military history: The Battle of Stalingrad.

17. The EditorIn GeneralInitially, the editor is composed of nothing but a blank slate and a few menu items. This is but one part of your editorial palette – the second part can be considered to be any interactive menus used to place materials on that blank map.

to do with it!), he detached an armored corps from Fourth Panzer Army, turned it 180 degrees around, and sent it BACK toward the city to support Sixth Army’s plodding drive. Mind you, if he had not some weeks earlier thrown the whole of Fourth Panzer Army off-course to support the Rostov-Caucasus attack, the Germans could almost have strolled in and taken Stalingrad at their leisure! Now, it was too late.

As though the formidable ranges of the Caucasus were nothing more than contour lines on a map, Hitler issued a flurry of deluded orders that fragmented Army Group A and sent various components of it deep into those mountains on various mutually-exclusive errands: one prong was ordered to clear the Black Sea coast all the way down to the Turkish border; another motorized column was ordered to seize Grozny and then push on to the coast of the Caspian Sea, pocketing huge oil refineries like so many chestnuts.

In fact, a light, swift-moving armored reconnaissance probe did actually penetrate to within sight of the vast petroleum-producing complexes southeast of Astrakhan, but just like the scouts who got close enough to Moscow to observe the streetcars through their binoculars, this proved to be nothing more than a dramatic gesture. A brave but largely unopposed detachment of Alpine troops pulled off a similar stunt by scaling Mt. Erebus (the highest peak in the Caucasus range) and planting a symbolic swastika flag on the summit.

These heartening accomplishments made for eye-catching headlines back in the Third Reich, but they were militarily insignificant and were made possible only because it took the Russians a long time to thicken their defenses in the mountains (many of the reinforcements arrived by ferry boat on the Caspian Sea coast and had to hike the rest of the way to their assigned mountain passes). But with Army Group A’s 20-odd understrength


17.1.2. FileThe File tab lets you save or load your creations. You can also load existing maps as mentioned before, but again – save BEFORE you make any edits to ensure the original map does not get changed!

17.2. TerrainIn the Terrain menu, the player can edit hexes in two different ways. First a hex can be placed as a whole with the ground, map, and location type at once, replacing the existing hex on that position.

The second is, to do it one by one. Each hex can be placed independently, if you so choose.

17.3. HexesThe elements of a hex are:Terrain: the type of terrain like hill, river, etc.Material: the textures mapped on the terrain like grass, swamp, etc.Ornament: Locations that have no interaction with the player yet can influence game values.Locations: Locations that do both – interact with the player and influence game values.

Among those elements only the class “Locations” can be edited by the designer with one exception: railways can be marked as damaged.

17.3.1. Location PropertiesAfter a location is placed on the map, you can rename it and change its owner. A text that is displayed after the conquest can also be edited.

Also, locations can contain resources and Victory Points as well as a special bonus for the capturing unit. Bonus units can

However, you don’t have to just start from scratch – you can load an existing map from any scenario in the game and then edit it accordingly (although it would be highly recommended to SAVE it first as a different file name before you go off changing your map!).

The two small icons on the right of the menu bar are an air-ground toggle and a nation toggle.

The menus can be activated by left clicking on them. They are all described below.

17.1. OptionsThe Options menu has two sub-tabs: Main and File.

17.1.1. MainThe Main tab gives you access to the game’s main menu and an option to exit to your desktop.


18. CreditsGermany at War: Barbarossa 1941 was created by:PHOBETORLEAD DESIGNERRonald Wendt

LEAD PROGRAMMERThomas Gereke

TITLE GRAPHICSAndras Kavalescz

MUSICAndrew Oudot

ADDITIONAL HISTORICAL RESEARCHSteven Bohlin

BETA TESTERSLars “spillblood” ScharfenbergRickie “Rick” RobersonPieter “ComradeP” de JongQwixtTide1MisterBoatsDSWargamerLadutre66paxunideducterWittmann1941RazzThomas Gillmancrsmanyradic202Mattias “Rezha” EngzelljnpointderfderfSteve Pope

be activated to provide the conqueror with non-core units for this scenario.

The last option of the object properties is the supply option. It adds supply functionality to the location and its six neighboring hexes. This enables the player to deploy newly purchased units on those hexes.

17.3.2. Special / Deploy HexesAt the beginning of a scenario (that is part of a campaign), the core units of the player have to be placed on the map. To ensure the units are placed according to a start situation you want as a scenario designer, the hexes on which units can be put have to be deploy hexes.

With the special menu, you can change a hex to a Deploy hex for ground and/or air units.

17.4. UnitsPlacing units is a straightforward process of selecting them from the unit list and dropping them into place on the map. Once placed on the map, there is a dialog box in the lower left corner where the scenario designer can alter some of the unit’s values such as strength, ammunition count, experience, etc.


moetSPNILHOBCherperterebigids1Hexagonbasem2502FlatwaterDavid PopeMarkus GötzLesley Baines

SLITHERINE GROUPMATRIX GAMES / SLITHERINE

PRODUCERSErik Rutins, JD McNeil, Iain McNeil

BOX AND LOGO DESIGNClaudio Guarnerio

MANUAL EDITING AND CONTENTRonald Wendt, John Thompson

MANUAL DESIGN AND LAYOUTMyriam Bell Design

PUBLIC RELATIONS & MARKETINGMarco Minoli, Filippo Chianetta

PRODUCTION ASSISTANTSAndrew Loveridge, Gerry Edwards

ADMINISTRATIONLiz Stoltz, Dean Walker

BETA TEST COORDINATIONKarlis Rutins

CUSTOMER SUPPORT STAFFChristian Bassani, Paulo Costa, Andrew Loveridge, Erik Rutins, Iain McNeil

FORUM ADMINISTRATIONErik Rutins

TECHNICAL DIRECTORPhil Veale

WEB-DATABASE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENTAndrea Nicola, Valery Vidershpan, Phil Veale

NETWORK AND SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORValery Vidershpan, Andrea Nicola

QUALITY ASSURANCE LEADErik Rutins

BETA TEST TEAM FOR GERMANY AT WARLars “spillblood” ScharfenbergRickie “Rick” RobersonPieter “ComradeP” de JongQwixtTide1MisterBoatsDSWargamerLadutre66paxunideducterWittmann1941RazzThomas Gillmancrsmanyradic202Mattias “Rezha” EngzelljnpointderfderfSteve PopemoetSPNILHOBCherper


terebigids1Hexagonbasem2502FlatwaterDavid PopeMarkus GötzLesley Baines

We used the following libraries to create Germany at War:Parts based on code of the game‘Operation Barbarossa - The Stuggle for Russia’coded by Ralf Zenker

Ogre version 1.8.1 - MIT LicenseCopyright (c) 2000-2012 Torus Knot Software Ltd

CEGUI version 0.7.6 - MIT LicenseCopyright (c) 2004-2012 Paul D Turner & The CEGUI Development Team

OIS version 1.4.0 - zlib/libpng LicenseCopyright (c) 2005-2010 Phillip Castaneda (pjcast -- www.wreckedgames.com)

freetype version 2.4.10 - zlib/libpng LicenseCopyright (c) 2012 The FreeType Project (www.freetype.org). All rights reserved.

zlib version 1.2.7 - zlib/libpng LicenseCopyright (c) 1995-2012 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler

libpng version 1.5.14 - January 2013Copyright 1998-2013 Glenn Randers-PehrsonCopyright 1996-1997 Andreas DilgerCopyright 1995-1996 Guy Eric Schalnat, Group 42, Inc.

Ronald wants to thank some people without whom this game would not have been possible :Klaus and Luise Wendt for your everlasting supportKeiko Wendt for being patient with a busy fatherChristiane Wendt for being a good friend when it’s really neededMartin Joseph words can’t expressAva Everett for being a great host to a refugeeMario & Bettina Joseph for listening and being thereThomas Gereke for your great work and attention to detailAndras Kavalescz for support with excellent work and faith in my causeErik Rutins for listening and for suggesting just the right thingsNorbert Meyer for giving me opportunities I needed during this developmentMarcus Götz for giving me the chance to evolve in unknown watersAytug Aksu for doing the best, considering the distanceFrank Disselkamp and Timo Hentschel for the distractionAlibaba Spieleclub and Deutsches Spielearchiv for their initiativesAdministration, personnel and parents of Kindergarten Julienstr for the wonderful years 2008-2011 and ongoing supportAdministration, personnel and parents of the Dr.-Theo-Schöller-Schule Grundschule for the help when we entered the schoolMaro, Riko Jensen and several others of Design Mod Project for moral supportAlith Anar, Templer and several others at SI-games.com for moral supportAll supporters and fans of classic Atari hardware for the joyMy friends who gave me backing in generalAll those who think twice

Thank you !R.I.P Gina Els(c) 2007-2013 Ronald Wendt


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--

-2

all

ru,de

Mor

tar

Com

pany

/Platton

: attack

+2/

defens

e +1

aga

inst inf

antry

2-

--

--

--

4all

ru,de

Hea

vy A

ntita

nk P

latoon

: a

ttac

k/de

fenc

e ag

ains

t tank

s+3

--

-3

--

--

1all

all

Add

ition

al B

attalio

n/Sq

uadr

on: un

it stre

ngth

du

rable+

1 (D

iv 3

x/Bde

1x/

Reg

2x/

Bn

2x)

33

33

33

33

1all

all

Com

bine

d Arm

s St

aff:

Supp

ort fir

e effectiven

ess +1

0%-

--

-1

--

-1

all

all

Spec

ializ

ed A

ir O

ffens

ive

Staff:

In a

ir b

attle

s all attack

value

s +2

/Defen

se v

alue

s -1

--

--

--

1-

1D

iv.,

Bde

all

Spec

ializ

ed A

ir D

efen

sive

Staff:

In a

ir ba

ttles all de

fens

e va

lues +

2/Attac

k va

lues -1

--

--

--

11

1D

iv.,

Bde

all

Flamethr

ower

Platoon

: N

eglects

entren

chmen

t (one

Lev

el)

-1

--

--

--

2D

iv.,

Bde

all

Gua

rds St

atus

: Exp

erienc

e Los

s ca

used

by

Reinf

orce

men

t -25%

11

-1

-1

--

3D

iv.,

Bde

ru


19.2. A-A Campaign tree


Germany at war game manual

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