Best posts made by ItIsILeClerc

As far as I know (and that is just 1 way to do it), allies must first make a decision: fly the Indian RAF over to Africa or not. If you do it, Egypt is a whole lot better to defend but Calcutta looses its teeth.
If you don’t, Egypt should be lost and Japan will have Calcutta anyway (the RAF will only buy 1 turn respite for India -if at all).

Second, The allies must pay very close attention to (and understand) German build-strategies. Come round 2, Germany will have revealed its targets by positioning but especially by production. If London is not the target, UK should start a FTR-production in SA. And if German support for Italy looks very serious (lots of bomber production), an IC in Egypt is also necessary.

Third, UK must prepare to move its starting FTR/INF into Egypt asap. Experiment with this but you can have all FTR in Egypt by UK3. If stacking two more INF in Egypt will help you keep it, but will cost the UK a TRS, do it.

Last but not least, Russia can help defending Cairo RU3 (landing its aircraft there after attacking Iraq). RU4 they may need to leave again (defending Moscow), but it gives the UK an extra turn of putting 3INF + 2FTR there (max; 3INF produced in Egypt, 2FTR from SA).

Strategic rationale: the combined German Luftwaffe + Italian navy + land units cannot beat this defence. Sure, if they attack, UK + Russia will loose all their aircraft and land units there, but Italy will loose all its land and aircraft units as well and Germany looses as much or even more aircraft than UK + Russia combined. And still this does not give them Cairo. And, after producing a lot of bombers and loosing all but a few over Egypt, the Axis cannot ever hope to take Moscow anymore. In fact, the Red Army could be marching into Eastern Europe by now because so many German luftwaffe is produced and lost.

+1 to all and everything JDOW said!
(Well, in his above reply, that is ;-)). Really 100% how I experience a German advance into Russia.

@knp,
I calculated it like this, assuming Russia does not loose a single unit to Germany prior to its attack on Moskou (sounds harder than it actually is, believe me. Agreed, Russia must think ahead and do some pretty maths for this):

*Russia starts with 41 units in Europe and can produce;
*RU1 7INF + 4ART (37 IPC)
*RU2 7INF + 4ART (37 IPC)
*RU3 10INF Moskou + 2/3MECH Stalingrad (38/42 IPC)
*RU4 10units in Moskou (30+ IPC) including some ARM if possible to increase defensive value, assuming a GE5 attack on Moskou.

The total hits 86 units without Siberians or RAF.

There are of course many variables to income, so the total number of units in Moskou can be a bit more or less. The earlier Germany DOWs Russia,the more income Russia can have. Russia can take Persia or not (and/or Somaliland). Japan can nibble on Siberian IPCs. Etc. etc.

Anyway, Russia will, should and must have more than 75 units in Moskou. There are too many variables to discuss so I 'd like to leave it in the middle if over- or under estimated whether the Russians can get this to even 80+ by GE5.

In another game that I play that is much more historically accurate it is very clear that Germany, if defeated Russia, can never overcome the Naval Power of the allies. The best the Axis could do is ‘turtle up’ behind the Rhine. In the real war you have to understand that the USA never had the economical disadvantage it has in A&A. The USA alone, easily produced as much as Germany, Italy and Japan Combined. And her limits were not even reached yet, while those of the Axis clearly were. But would the allies have sued for peace? Difficult to say. The Liberation of France would happen no matter what but after that, if Germany could successfully entrench behind the Rhine, who knows…

My guess is NO. Japan would have been neutralized, France would have been Liberated, Italy would have been forced to Surrender and then, after Completely isolating the turtled up Germany, Russia would have been Liberated as well  :-).

For historical information, Capital Cities (Moscow) were not as important is it is in A&A. Loosing your capital can work two ways: it can either enrage the nation into more furious resistance or it can cause a serious drop of morale. France ‘surrendered’ after the fall of Paris, but the French also had much less left to defend after that since their production capacity was crippled by the axis advances.
Russia was a completely different story: ‘Scorched earth’ did not oly mean there was nothing left for the Germans to use during their advance into Russia, it also meant the Russians moved their production capacity into safety in the Urals and Western Siberia.
With the loss of Moscow, Russia would have lost only a small portion of it’s Industrial capacity (about 1/10 is my guess) and ‘only’ 3 to 6 armies. They would have had about 150 armies left (Russia organized their units in armies rather than corps). Reasons enough to fight on I think!