Dreadful Axis Mistakes

@Linkon:

Iceland was full of Arians. 
Norway had a Nazi Party that formed the colaboration government after they were invaded.

Iceland wasn’t a Norwegian territory when WWII started.  It had been a Danish dependency since 1814, and it had been a semi-independent country with ties to the King of Denmark since 1918.

Vidkun Quisling’s Norwegian fascist party, the Nasjonal Samling, never received more than 2.5% of the vote from the time of its foundation in 1933 to the time of the Nazi invasion, so it was very much a fringe movement.  The only reason they eventually achieved power is that the Nazis installed them as a collaborationist government after they had invaded and occupied the country.  Nazi-style parties were formed in many countries in the years leading up to WWII – including Britain and the United States – but their existence did not in itself mean that those countries were full of Aryan supremacists.  The fact that they were for the most part regarded as marginal extremist groups actually suggests the opposite: that the voters of those countries for the most part rejected fascist ideologies.

@Linkon:

Historically, Japan already beaten both Russia and China, often at starting battle odds of 1:2 or worse.  They had local air supremacy, and often used combined arms tactics that were not avaible to the opposition.

I remember reading that their Siberia campaign stalled mainly due to bad weather that prevented their air power to assert.
Wikipedia reports that Tokyo put a limit on air attacks of Soviet airfields.
Later battles by Japan in WWII were typified by their numerical inferiorities.

I’m in the midst of working on a rules set for a WWII strategy game. Where possible, I have incorporated qualitative differences between unit types. For example, a jet fighter is much better at air-to-air combat, and a lot harder to shoot down, than a piston-driven fighter. (Though the difference between the best possible piston fighter and the worst possible jet fighter is rather small.)

I have been able to find some pretty good data comparing the qualitative effectiveness of German infantry against the infantry they faced. (Soviet, British, and American.) Unfortunately, my data on the relative effectiveness of Chinese and Japanese infantry is less complete. I have tentatively made Japanese infantry qualitatively the same as Soviet infantry. This means they are a step down from British or American infantry, and two steps down from German infantry. I have made Chinese infantry a step or two down from Japanese infantry.

Your post seems to suggest I may have underestimated the effectiveness of Japanese infantry. I’d be happy to have an excuse to strengthen the early game Axis, especially Japan. But before I can increase the qualitative effectiveness of Japan’s infantry, I will need a link to a reasonably authoritative source which addresses the subject of Japanese infantry’s effectiveness.

@KurtGodel7:

I’m in the midst of working on a rules set for a WWII strategy game. Where possible, I have incorporated qualitative differences between unit types. For example, a jet fighter is much better at air-to-air combat, and a lot harder to shoot down, than a piston-driven fighter. (Though the difference between the best possible piston fighter and the worst possible jet fighter is rather small.)

I have been able to find some pretty good data comparing the qualitative effectiveness of German infantry against the infantry they faced. (Soviet, British, and American.)

Please keep us posted.  I’m interested in this rules set you’re working on.

@KurtGodel7:

Your post seems to suggest I may have underestimated the effectiveness of Japanese infantry. I’d be happy to have an excuse to strengthen the early game Axis, especially Japan. But before I can increase the qualitative effectiveness of Japan’s infantry, I will need a link to a reasonably authoritative source which addresses the subject of Japanese infantry’s effectiveness.

IMO, the strength of the Japanese military is very clear. They were a Effective fighting force. During Iwo Jima, only 22,000 men held off 70,000 men for a whole month, and it was expected that an invasion of Japan itself would involve MILLIONS of American casualties. I think that’s just amazing. However, they did not have the manpower to replace the lost units.

Being on defense and having months to dig into mountains is why the Japanese were able to slow the US down.  You always need on average, 3 times as many offensive soldiers as defensive soldiers. The Japanese produced as many machine guns during the entire war as the US produced every month starting in 1943.  Without lots of heavy artillery the ‘queen of the battlefield’, modern tanks and lots of machine guns, the Japanese Infantry would do poorly against a similarly equipped foe

@MrMalachiCrunch:

Being on defense and having months to dig into mountains is why the Japanese were able to slow the US down.  You always need on average, 3 times as many offensive soldiers as defensive soldiers. The Japanese produced as many machine guns during the entire war as the US produced every month starting in 1943.  Without lots of heavy artillery the ‘queen of the battlefield’, modern tanks and lots of machine guns, the Japanese Infantry would do poorly against a similarly equipped foe

I echo Bruce Willis here.  Don’t forget their extreme training to never surrender (although many did) and Bushido, the code of the warrior.  They believed their Emperor was God.  Americans are not so willing to die and our culture, mores, and beliefs are very very different.
So looking at the bitter fighting on those glorified airbases in the Pacific as a measurement of Japanese infantry military might is very misleading.

@gamerman01:

@MrMalachiCrunch:

Being on defense and having months to dig into mountains is why the Japanese were able to slow the US down.  You always need on average, 3 times as many offensive soldiers as defensive soldiers. The Japanese produced as many machine guns during the entire war as the US produced every month starting in 1943.  Without lots of heavy artillery the ‘queen of the battlefield’, modern tanks and lots of machine guns, the Japanese Infantry would do poorly against a similarly equipped foe

I echo Bruce Willis here.  Don’t forget their extreme training to never surrender (although many did) and Bushido, the code of the warrior.  They believed their Emperor was God.  Americans are not so willing to die and our culture, mores, and beliefs are very very different.
So looking at the bitter fighting on those glorified airbases in the Pacific as a measurement of Japanese infantry military might is very misleading.

Japan should have studied the 3 to 1 attacker to defender rule. Japan’s attacks and counter attacks lacked the numbers of men to produce any results.

Japaneses commandement was poor.
There was dissension between army and navy.
That’s the main reason of japan defeat!

@otahere34:

@KurtGodel7:

Your post seems to suggest I may have underestimated the effectiveness of Japanese infantry. I’d be happy to have an excuse to strengthen the early game Axis, especially Japan. But before I can increase the qualitative effectiveness of Japan’s infantry, I will need a link to a reasonably authoritative source which addresses the subject of Japanese infantry’s effectiveness.

IMO, the strength of the Japanese military is very clear. They were a Effective fighting force. During Iwo Jima, only 22,000 men held off 70,000 men for a whole month, and it was expected that an invasion of Japan itself would involve MILLIONS of American casualties. I think that’s just amazing. However, they did not have the manpower to replace the lost units.

if they used the soldiers they lost on those desolate islands in Burma in suicidal attacks, the fate of India would have been much different…

The biggest mistake was Germany not going full steam on the wartime economy until 1943 or so. The women were not working initially.

The biggest shortfall was in the fighter production and the submarine production, Had there been an extra 100 subs and an extra 1,000 at the start of the war (especially a longer range fighter), it would have been much harder for the UK to resist. Losing the battle of britain was the biggest problem.