France First (IDEA)

[toblerone77]

Well I for one would like a 1939 scenario. In the game you take on the role of a world power. It is possible, historically speaking, that the French could have resisted Germany more effectively. At the time France had a very large army and under better leadership and tactics could have put up a better fight. This is all supposition of course, but the “what-if” factor" would be nice to explore.

[CWO Marc]

@toblerone77:

Well I for one would like a 1939 scenario. In the game you take on the role of a world power. It is possible, historically speaking, that the French could have resisted Germany more effectively. At the time France had a very large army and under better leadership and tactics could have put up a better fight. This is all supposition of course, but the “what-if” factor" would be nice to explore.

Agreed.  The French Army and Navy were good-sized and decently equiped (Winston Churchill, I think sometime prior to his becoming Prime Minister, once said “Thank God for the French Army”), so with better political and military leadership France could have put up a strong fight in 1939.  It’s too bad De Gaulle was still a somewhat obscure colonel at the time; it’s fun to imagine how the war would have gone if he’d been the head of the Army rather than Gamelin.  Not that it’s likely that he would ever have gotten the job: apparently, Gamelin got it because the politicians felt that he was an easy general to control.

[toblerone77]

Yes I wish Mr. Harris and company would have held more closely to the concept that a player is taking on the role of a nation in WWII and the player is “deciding the fate of the world”. I love history, but I also love the fantasy and exploration of how history could have been had the player been in charge LOL.

I really wish Global had started in 1939 and was more flexible on how the game begins. I’m willing to swap a bit of simulation or realism in exchange for game play and just plain fun.

[knp7765]

Actually, France could have done more than just resist the German attack. They could have made a lot of progress attacking in 1939. While Germany was busy attacking Poland, the Western border was only defended by 10 divisions. Unfortunately, the French were not willing to advance beyond the range of the guns in the Maginot line. I would be curious to see what might have happened if the French army really pushed into Germany. Might Hitler have been stopped then and there?

[Black_Elk]

@toblerone77:

Yes I wish Mr. Harris and company would have held more closely to the concept that a player is taking on the role of a nation in WWII and the player is “deciding the fate of the world”. I love history, but I also love the fantasy and exploration of how history could have been had the player been in charge LOL.

I really wish Global had started in 1939 and was more flexible on how the game begins. I’m willing to swap a bit of simulation or realism in exchange for game play and just plain fun.

I agree with this statement completely. To me the start conditions are better when they just serve just as a rough outline. Not tied so much to a specific year or season, but a bit more anachronous. I don’t like so much the rules restrictions on war, or elaborate rules for income collection, and how the first round is scripted.  Would prefer for example when more units come into play via purchasing, rather than having so many pieces on the board at the outset. I tend to regard the opening round like a film reel, that might be from any time in the broader period.

I think of the battles like snapshots,  whenever they happen in the course of the game, it doesn’t really matter, I still think of whatever year in the real war might correspond to the situation I’m seeing on the gameboard.

In our round the board banter, we call out the battle names that seems most apt from the history, regardless of when it occurs during the actual A&A game. We still note which General or Admiral would have been “pissed” about such and such an attack! As if the timeline was malleable (which, in fact, it is!) You know how it’s all very free form like that. Less historical simulation,  more a function of the play, and how the opportunities for historical analogy randomly present themselves through the course of play. I don’t see why you couldn’t have a 1939 board that ends up looking like 1941 after just a few rounds. I don’t need a real timeline enforced by rules,  just a rough sense of WW2 suggested by the unit set up, the production spread, and relative income.

[CWO Marc]

@knp7765:

I would be curious to see what might have happened if the French army really pushed into Germany. Might Hitler have been stopped then and there?

Hard to say.  One definite impact is that it would have put a large black mark in Hitler’s hitherto perfect score card.  In real life, Hitler achieved success after success (both in terms of foreign policy and of military operations) right up to the late summer of 1940, when the Battle of Britain started going off the rails.  This string of successes both intimidated his foreign enemies and helped Hitler get his way domestically with the few people around him (such as the ones in the army general staff) who dared to express doubts about his strategies.  A Franco-British invasion and occupation of large parts of western Germany in 1939 would therefore have been a rude shock for Germany, and would have seriously damaged Hitler’s image.  But would it have been enough to trigger a coup against him?  I don’t know, but I kind of doubt it.  The army had been seriously worried about Germany’s vulnerability in the west during the Polish campaign, so losing western Germany would have justified their fears.  But my guess is that it wouldn’t have been enough to push them to assassinate Hitler.  The army was pretty much the only group in Germany capable of removing Hitler by force in 1939, since the state terror apparatus had by then pretty much eliminated or intimidated all of his purely political opponents, but although the army in real life spent years contemplating various ideas for eliminating Hitler it proved to be very reluctant to actually take action against him, even when the war in the USSR started going very badly.

[CWO Marc]

@toblerone77:

Yes I wish Mr. Harris and company would have held more closely to the concept that a player is taking on the role of a nation in WWII and the player is “deciding the fate of the world”. I love history, but I also love the fantasy and exploration of how history could have been had the player been in charge LOL. I really wish Global had started in 1939 and was more flexible on how the game begins. I’m willing to swap a bit of simulation or realism in exchange for game play and just plain fun.

Total agreement from me.  As I’ve heard one wargamer say, one of the nice things about commanding historical armies on a game map is that you’re not forced to repeat the mistakes that their actual commanders may have made in real life!  (Unless, of course, the game being played includes so-called “idiocy rules” that force you to do strategically stupid things.)  Regarding your point about wishing Global to be more flexible about its start date, that’s one of the reasons I customized my Global map: to adjust the territories to (more or less) reflect a “pre-war” (specifically, pre-1931) status as a default starting point, which can then be adjusted with roundel overlays as required depending on the desired starting date.

[crusaderiv]

but I also love the fantasy and exploration of how history could have been had the player been in charge LOL. I really wish Global had started in 1939 and was more flexible on how the game begins. I’m willing to swap a bit of simulation or realism in exchange for game play and just plain fun.

I totally agree too…that’s what I tried to do with our game and or rules.

[knp7765]

CWO Marc,
A lot of interesting supposition. There was another path that I was wondering about: Hitler ending things himself (possibly committing suicide). I’m just not sure about his mental state in autumn of 1939.
Back in 1936, when the Germans remilitarized the Rhineland, it was said that if France and Britain had objected in force and sent troops to enforce the demilitarization, there was a very real possibility that Hitler would have lost face to such a degree that he would have committed suicide. Just imagine a new German leadership occurring in 1936. Could the second world war have been totally averted, at least in Europe? Who might have taken the reigns? Goering? Himmler? Hess?
But of course, Britain and France did nothing which simply boosted Hitler’s ego and started solidifying his position as Fuhrer.
Following this was the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland being handed to Hitler by France and England, to be followed shortly afterward by the rest of Czechoslovakia. There was another small acquisition up on the East Prussian border with Lithuania. All of this served to really solidify Hitler’s position in the German leadership and I think kind of made the Army leaders kind of scared of him (for lack of a better term). Hitler kept taking these gambles and the Allies kept backing down from him, which made it harder and harder for anyone that might oppose him in Germany, including the Army, to actually consider any type of removal process.
This being the case, by Sept. 1 1939, I would imagine Hitler’s ego was at it’s highest. So even if England and France had invaded Germany in support of Poland, I just wonder if that would have been enough of a crushing blow to Hitler that he might have ended it, or was his ego and position just too high due to all the previous successes up to that point that he could have handled it mentally and emotionally.

[Narvik]

@knp7765:

Back in 1936, when the Germans remilitarized the Rhineland, it was said that if France and Britain had objected in force and sent troops to enforce the demilitarization, there was a very real possibility that Hitler would have lost face to such a degree that he would have committed suicide.

But of course, Britain and France did nothing which simply boosted Hitler’s ego and started solidifying his position as Fuhrer.

Did nothing ? Now that is blatantly wrong, man. UK and USA did a lot. They exploited the opportunity and helped Hitler grow strong. In 1936, Stalin and the commies was still enemy nr. One, and don’t forget that UK and USA had troops fighting on the Russian ground during the Revolution War. Stalin had promised to destroy all Capitalist nations, including UK and USA. Then Hitler wrote a book, Mein Kampf, where he promised to destroy Sovjet Union and communism. Even France would support this. So, the Set-up was to build a strong rightwing Germany as a buffer to Sovjet Union.

This was not a bad idea, but then something went horrible wrong. Suddenly one day, out of the blue, surprise surprise, Hitler and Stalin become friends and allies, and divided Europe between them. This was clearly a blatant deal-breaker, the Western Allies had been outsmarted and backstabbed. It was a game changer.

[crusaderiv]

Unfortunately, the French were not willing to advance beyond the range of the guns in the Maginot line.

Not really. French army enter in the Saar region in the middle of September and stay there till the end of October and they decide to withdraw behind the Maginot line.( French army lost 263 men and Germany 198…)

AL.