Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..sorry Ben, it all hinges on Dinant, if the French had kept the 1st class 1st Div there then, mmmm, game on but to replace it with the rubbish x div (i can't remember  and i did the scen arghhh), and then only a couple of days before the German attack..

..that attack slit the throat of the Dyle plan..

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ORIGINAL: jtownsend2k

Political division - Very well handled after the general strike of 1938. The whole "bourgeois in terror preferring Hitler to Blum" thing is very 1936-1938 1940-44; ie, the Reynaud rightward shift neutralized it, while Blum and the SFIO majority went along with it because of the immediacy of the German threat.

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Army morale - So much of what we know comes from the reactions of an army that was, after the first 3-4 days, pretty much royally screwed.

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Also, D. Alexander noted the French army had more full-time officers and NCOs than the Wehrmacht, both proportionately -and- absolutely. Interesting tidbit.

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Unquestionably Georges, Bilotte, and Blanchard all dropped the ball hard - but then again, if I was in their position - being able to look at a map and realize that the war has been lost before it began - who knows, I might have a breakdown and become useless.

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Material - well, the 37mm tank guns blew, but of course the 47s were beautiful, the 25s were adequate, the tank armour was unmatched. We all know the flaws with the turrets and radio.

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That's why I think that a retired and reactive French disposition - that trades the small countries for time and possibly a slower campaign pace once the main combatants lock horns - gives the French their best chance.

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As someone or other - Gunsburg or Young - mentioned, the Maginot line was in some ways beautiful. Bloch and others have derided the French for putting money into concrete when they could have put it in tank divisions - but then again, tank divisions fielded in 1935-7 would have been obsolete Panzer-I/II wastes of tank crews in a long French campaign,

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ORIGINAL: Graymane

The problem that I see with altering the French dispositions too much is that the Germans must also be allowed to alter their dispositions.

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At the end of the day, I don't think there is any disposition that makes it such that the Germans lose. The aim of the French (the victory conditions) must be to hold a strong line and turn the conflict into trench warfare for a long, drawn-out campaign.

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Yet (as I recall) several hundred anti-tank guns were put beyond use in a Communist sabotage attack during the Phoney War.

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So was the BEF- yet Gort reacted cooly and correctly to the situation and got everything out that could be got out. Again, see the reaction of the Poles to their situation a week or two after the start of the war- they at least tried to fight. Obviously, armies are capable of taking this kind of shock and dealing with it.

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I don't see how it supports your argument, though. Rather, it would imply that the French should have been able to cope better. They were not.

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If you had had the same training, in particular. That's part of my point.

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French tanks also tended to have less endurance (i.e. miles on a single tank of petrol) than the German, as I recall. Obviously, if your supply chain is shot to hell, this leads to lots of abandoned tanks. The armour doesn't matter if there's no-one inside. The designs, though, were a result of the specificatios issues, which in turn were a result of the doctrine. The French could have produced faster, lighter tanks if they'd wanted them.

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It gives the French a shot at surviving that first attack without losing all their best troops. The Germans, though, are still going to be able to deliver a fatal blow at some point in 1940.

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I hate to point it out but a) the French were building R-35s and H-35s in 1935-7 and b) a large chunk of their tank force was using the far more obsolete FT-17. The Pz-II was a nifty little thing provided it didn't come up against any enemy armour, and exactly what the Germans needed for 1940.

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The Maginot line made sense given French doctrine and strategy. However those underlying principles were at fault from the first. It didn't have to be this way. It was Weygand before his initial retirement who set out a clear plan for producing a highly professional, mechanised force as the core of the French army. This was rejected.

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Sorry for breaking this up into so many points. Let me know if it bothers you.

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ORIGINAL: Der Oberst

Folks,

There have been a huge number of WW2 scenarios built for this game. Some very good ones!

My question to the community is: What other WW2 scenarios would you like to see? I've got some time and interest to begin building something, and would like to work on something the community sees as having value.

Any ideas or thoughts?

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ORIGINAL: 82nd Airborne

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ORIGINAL: Der Oberst

Folks,

There have been a huge number of WW2 scenarios built for this game. Some very good ones!

My question to the community is: What other WW2 scenarios would you like to see? I've got some time and interest to begin building something, and would like to work on something the community sees as having value.

Any ideas or thoughts?

a better Patton vs Russia / West vs Russia May 45

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ORIGINAL: jtownsend2k

My point isn't that there weren't political divisions; and the 'revisionist' (ie, France-boosting) historiography works best for say November 38-November 39. After that there is a school of thought (Talbot Imlay for one) that thinks the French started having political problems again, and that was reflected in some of the screwy strategic planning that went on. I don't see it as being very decisive, though, and I'm not all that impressed with some of Imlay's special pleading.

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I think there's no question British commanders showed more sang-froid - but they knew there was a channel there. Even allowing for the fact that they were notably less panicky, they weren't exactly falling back in disarray from the Battle of the Thames with England lying naked before the panzers, either. Plus, Gort... for all that he saved the BEF and displayed sang froid, he was also an unquestionably bad choice for his old job as CIGS and his new job as CinC of the BEF. Ironside was also out of his depth, and I think that's part of why Britain needs to take some blame for not having a more robust involvement in army planning and averting the horrible disposition errors.

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The point is to emphasize the unused, untested quality of those parts of the French Army which were, unlike the Series B divisions, not starved of talent. The immediate - and permanent - contact between the cream of Army Group A and the dregs of the French army (and then reinforcements which were always piecemeal) is a poor laboratory test of any army's performance.

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What of Gazala? Kasserine? Indicators of Anglo-American defeatism, legacy of political division and the spectre of the great war? France just had its Gazala/Kasserine/etc in the wrong place.

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Well, they went from the expectation of victory one day, to the correct appreciation that their army - still 90% intact - was hopelessly, fatally dislocated beyond hope of redemption.

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They weren't aiming for Guderian like thrusts, though, and really, should they have been?

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If the war had developed in a less Guderian-like fashion, the greater numbers of heavier tanks might well have trumped the real deficiencies of French armour.

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I never rule this out, in the least, I just don't think the converse can be ruled out either. There are a lot of imponderables the longer the conflict went on; the Allies using their existing air-strength more rationally;

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The point Bloch was making, I believe, is that the French ought to have put the costs of the Maginot fortifications into tanks and aircraft - the counterpoint being that more (as opposed to any) mid-30s tanks and aircraft would not be as useful in 1940 as the Maginot line could have been.

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For all the flaws of the French tank force, it had, spitballing here, about 2000 tanks with armour at or approaching (or exceeding) that of the Panzer III; including some called 'light.' If the Allied battle line hadn't been so glass-jawed, there's in my view no telling what the verdict would be on deep flaws of each tank fleet.

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Martin Alexander has made a pretty good case for Gamelin in fact being a splendid modernizer of the French Army; certainly the material results were excellent. Weygand, de Gaulle and Reynaud might, if anything, have hurt Gamelin's efforts by politicizing the nature of army modernization; the SFIO and Radicals didn't want a right wing army de metier invading places and staging coups, but good old subfusc and supposedly 'republican' Gamelin just kept under the radar, leaving the French army more mechanized and with more, heavier materiel than the next-door neighbors in spite of France having 1/3rd the industrial plant.

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I'm used to forum-warrioring. I don't quite understand how the quote nesting works so I'm just using simple quotes. I don't think our views are extremely far apart on this subject at any rate. We're just differing on an inherently hazy counterfactual.

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Mm. Where I see French political problems as coming into play is with the politicians in late May through June. The option of fighting the war tooth and nail was there- but it would have allowed the left to gain the upper hand in French society and no doubt would have had repercussions for the Empire. Instead the French decided to make peace and focus on the enemy within.

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Well, we represented about 10% of the Allied army. How much influence do you think we had? Moreover it had been British policy since about 1915 to let the French have overall command on their own soil. Ultimately, Britain's borders lay on the Rhine. We had to accept French strategic perogatives or else risk a split in the alliance.

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As to whether Gort was the right choice, I don't really know who the possible alternatives where. Suggesting O'Connor, Montgomery or Slim isn't much good- obviously these men's talents weren't known at the time. Gort at least had the virtue of being optimistic (upon seeing all the glum faces at his newly-formed HQ, he remarked "I suppose I can't expect everyone to be as enthusiastic as I am").

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Yet the French armies that moved into Flanders didn't do much better. Gort found himself attacking the German flank alone. The troops at Lille surrendered in 24 hours. The force driving into Holland was driven back not by stiff ground resistance, but by air attack.

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There is something in this- that armies tended to do rather badly the first time they encountered the Wehrmacht. Yet you should bear in mind that this was the British Army's first time too. Divisions which had not existed until September at least stood and fought as formed entities- if not very effectively. Long-standing French reserve formations often failed to even do that.

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It was only hopelessly, fatally dislocated according to their doctrine. Another staff would have taken a shot at getting it out. Of course with the same army they might have failed.

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No. But the whole point is that French doctrine was built on the idea of the "methodical battle", where everything would proceed according to a predefined plan- so why bother to ensure your tanks can fight for three days without resupply? This is a fundamentally flawed concept.

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Perhaps; but the French should have been able to see this wasn't going to happen. Not after Poland. Instead we got "We are not Poles. It could not happen here."

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There's this notion that the French had vast, unused air legions. I'm not convinced of it- and in any case none of their fighter aircraft were a match for the Me-109, and their most modern types were not available in much quantity until 1941. Of course, British fighter production boomed in late 1940 (exceeding Germany's), but we were unable to produce enough trained pilots for them. I think Germany will retain air superiority throughout the year. It may fall off, but the Allies face an uphill struggle to regain the air battlefield.

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I think you're missing the point especially when it comes to aircraft. The French grossly neglected their air industry. Extra investment in the early to mid 30s would have had a huge impact by 1940.

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This assuming that tanks are intended to fight tanks. That's not the case- anti-tank guns are for fighting tanks. Tanks are for screwing around with your enemy's lines of communication.

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ORIGINAL: jtownsend2k

Unquestionably the 'psychodrama of the French right" played a role in Bordeaux, but for me, an honour-saving flight of an 'official enough' government to the Empire was close enough to realization; if it weren't for Reynaud's terrible self-inflicted antagonists, he, his durs, and especially Mandel could have done far more than de Gaulle did both to salvage French prestige and to help the war effort go on.

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Well, I think Dill was passed over for CIGS both when Gort and Ironside got it, and I think he'd have been meaningfully better than either in that role. As for CiC BEF fair enough; I'm not sure if Wavell or Brooke would even be faintly plausible for that role in 1940.

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I guess what I'm trying to get at is that even if British commanders were both more effective and more succesful, an element of that is either irrelevant and/or related to circumstances, and Britain wasn't then awash in commanders notably superior to the derided French ones.

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I think they would have. I mean, we shouldn't conceive of the 'clotting' and 'continuous line' doctrines as being such shackles; the real shackle was that the reserve formations were not nearly numerically or materially adequate to the task of 'colmattage,' let alone the prescribed counterattack.

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And the 'checkerboard'/'box defence' approaches were already doctrinally sanctioned before the defeat; in my view the problem is that there's nothing that can maneuver effectively in front of Army Group A (barring, again, the inexplicably lacking staff planning for moving Army Group 2 Northwest).

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Arguably, so is the chimerical pursuit of The Decisive Kickass Armoured Breakthrough and Exploitation. We make fun of WWI cavalrymen, we make fun of Soviet blitzkrieg tanker fantasies, but Guderian gets a walk because, well, he happened to make it <i>work.</i>

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If anything, violations of methodical battle doctrine - infantry commanders chucking in tanks the moment they saw them, the dribbling in of forces peacemeal - typified some of the disastrous early mistakes.

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There was some of that; but every army has blustering, conservative fools.

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There were also changes made, information disseminated, and tank formations prioritized. The revisionist literature is pretty hard on the "Poland ignored" thesis, which seems to rest more on some idiot quotations than analysis.

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I don't think they even could, Allied air strength was only 'superior' with the empires counted, which is a silly way to do the tally, especially for Britain. The French case is less an 'unusued legion' than it is 'chaos during the decisive hours, and the usual dog's breakfast after the war was effectively lost in a week." It's quite possible that committing the whole RAF - while intrinsically vastly smarter in a Clausewitzian sense than just having them guard against the phantom blitz - would just have gotten the RAF decimated, and thus a new dark age, made darker and etc.

However; in the event this becomes a long war the allied air production - which was impressive - becomes much more important than the disorder and stupidity that typified the airpower usage of both Allies in May 1940.

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I think 'missing the point' is a bit strong; I'd say rather that that is an area that could have benefited more, earlier. I think in terms of 'lucky bargain' the Maginot line is still better than "more tanks built in the Maginot line construction period rather than the "Maginot line." Given the disparities in ground forces between Germany and France the Maginot Line was money well spent, and then a good purchase wasted.

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Additionally, part of the problem wasn't just that there wasn't enough money going into aircraft; it was that there was a severe lack of coherence to 1930s French air force philosophy.

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I'm happier with them mentally pigeon-holed in a multi-role fashion, for any given post-WWI era. (As opposed to a more 'indirect approach' single-role conception.) Armour plate, firepower, mobility, engages tanks, engages fortifications, engages infantry... there might be a future in these tank things.

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ORIGINAL: jtownsend2k

Some, of course, have wondered if further resistance might have led to an entirely new set of allied military disasters in Africa, but at any rate, outside of our scope here.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..sorry Ben, it all hinges on Dinant, if the French had kept the 1st class 1st Div there then, mmmm, game on but to replace it with the rubbish x div (i can't remember  and i did the scen arghhh), and then only a couple of days before the German attack..

..that attack slit the throat of the Dyle plan..

Well a) if the battle was so important, finish your damned scenario on it.
and b) the vast bulk of the German panzer force went through on the crossings to the south, and Dinant could have been taken in the flank from there.

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ORIGINAL: Graymane

Maybe you two could summarize your positions

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit
..i would finish but, gotta a few native types to look after ol' man, y'know how it is , , th' Empire, a white man's burden an' all that..

..otherwise, Sedan ?..mmm, it would have meant " game on", nothing more..

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ORIGINAL: Graymane

Maybe you two could summarize your positions without quoting each sentence individually, it is getting darn hard to follow the train of thought here =)

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit
..i would finish but, gotta a few native types to look after ol' man, y'know how it is , , th' Empire, a white man's burden an' all that..

..otherwise, Sedan ?..mmm, it would have meant " game on", nothing more..

I really doubt that holding at Dinant would have enabled France to react. As it was, there was nil southward effort from 1er Groupment des Armees, with the exception of the BEF.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: Graymane

Maybe you two could summarize your positions

Well here's the main argument;

I believe French doctrine, which was to a large extent a consequence of the French nation's experience of the First World War, led to their inability to cope with a mobile battle, and that this would have been their downfall even if the initial German blow had been less devastating.

jtownend2k puts more emphasis on a failure of dispositions and plans.

It's not a radical disagreement. We just disagree of the relative importance of factors.

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..oh pls, Sedan without Dinant was an isolated thrust,

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** a B class div, under TOE and under trained...

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ORIGINAL: jtownsend2k

Works for me. I also tend to differ somewhat on a lot of the imponderable value judgements.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..oh pls, Sedan without Dinant was an isolated thrust,

An "isolated thrust" that contained the vast majority of the German mechanised force. Dinant was two panzer and one motorised divisions, as I recall.

Sedan was the biggie. The French, in any case, were unable to react. What does it matter if the German spearhead is vulnerable to being cut off if the French make no attempt to do so? It was vulnerable as it was. Nothing happened.

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** a B class div, under TOE and under trained...

Great excuse. Funny that the 3. and 4. Wave German divisions didn't do as badly.

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..nope, Sedan was "a" biggie, it was expected to be a real bitch hence the troops alloted to it,

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..2 panzer, 1 mtrsd, 3 or 4 infantry with air on call and added artillery, on a point attack, s'alot to take some unimportant little town held by one division...

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..nope, Sedan was "a" biggie, it was expected to be a real bitch hence the troops alloted to it,

That's nonsense. The reason the panzer divisions were mostly committed to Sedan was because that was where the Schwerepunkt was to be delivered. If heavy resistance was expected they would have bypassed the spot.

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..2 panzer, 1 mtrsd, 3 or 4 infantry with air on call and added artillery, on a point attack, s'alot to take some unimportant little town held by one division...

It of course adds weight to the German offensive. Of course in light of events we know the French were too paralysed to do anything regardless of whether the German flank was north or south of Dinant.

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..Sedan..come on, it was a fortress, in theory anyway,

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The proof is that it was Rommel from Dinant that did the dash to the Channel, not the forces at Sedan..

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..as to French paralysis, sorry, you can't generalise, some mobile divs did well, others lousy,

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a few days earlier and those German tanks would have been wiped from the map by the Char bis1s of a very good div.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: Graymane

Maybe you two could summarize your positions

Well here's the main argument;

I believe French doctrine, which was to a large extent a consequence of the French nation's experience of the First World War, led to their inability to cope with a mobile battle, and that this would have been their downfall even if the initial German blow had been less devastating.

jtownend2k puts more emphasis on a failure of dispositions and plans.

It's not a radical disagreement. We just disagree of the relative importance of factors.

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ORIGINAL: Graymane

Even the desire to overload the left wing and take the fight into Belgium is simply a desire to not fight on French soil.

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I also note that the English suffered from victor's disease as did everyone else pretty much.

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I think it is manifested in the old boy network of the high command between the wars. I think it is also manifested in the German High Command for good and ill.

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I like to think, what could Germany have done if their higher command had believed in their new kind of warfare more than they did? There were numerous times in the French campaign when higher commands froze the spearheads (and other units as well). It is highly likely and quite possible it would have been all over in the same timeframe as Poland with the loss of the BEF if the Germans wouldn't have put the breaks on the campaign at certain critical times.