Ahistorical Balance - I'd like to see it change

[Praetori]

I was hoping you'd tell me where you got that from.

Oh that's a bit more tricky remembering but I would say either from Zalogas book on Bagration, Glantz and Orenstein's General Staff Study and/or Samuel Mitcham's book called Defeat in the East (which I must warn you is a bit of a bore).
There are also numerous classes and discussions over the years disassembling the operation on both sides buy I couldn't point you in the right direction in regard to actual documentation (or rather I'm too lazy).

Just to clarify. My argument is not whether the OKH/OKW and Hitler was fooled but rather why they chose to ignore basically every report on the situation that came from AGC, Luftwaffe and Abwehr in the area.
Facing those facts would've shown that Soviet Union was marshaling a military strength along the entire front that didn't match the denials of Soviet prowess that blurted from tongues of Germany's top brass and GRÖFAZ himself. (and the last paragraph you can't reference since it's my opinion, buy you can quote me on it)

The reason I brought the thing up in my answer is that, in a Grand Strategy game things like this were historically very important when it came to the actual results but it's hard to model with mechanics unless you deceive the player in some way (and it needs to be good and fun at the same time).

For example. If we had a full fledged espionage and intelligence system involving battleplans in the game you'd have to have bonuses for the Soviets if they follow the historical national goals, techs and leaders for false battleplans and secrecy regarding the real ones (at the expense of longer planning-times or max bonus) while Hitler, Göring and others would bring penalties to credible intelligence (pun intended) leaving the player with the notion that the attacks are going to happen at Calais instead of Normandy and Odessa rather than Minsk.

By HOI3 terms you, as a player wouldn't sit idle and stare at the southern front in Bessarabia when your radar in Köningsberg (don't get me started) and manual air-recon is showing multiple Soviet armored armies building up north and south of Vitebsk.

If a properly hidden battleplan only reveals only 30% of the units assigned to it and only defensive lines shown to the opposing intelligence and the fake battleplan adds units not actually there (like the Ghost Army of Dover) and battleplan arrows into Romania THEN you have deception of the player.

 

[77Hawk77]

Hold up. So all systems are equal? I'm sorry but some systems are inferior. Look at Mongol civilization vs. Western Latin civilization. Claiming otherwise is just absurd or the result of historical ignorance. I don't know if that's what you're claiming, and I don't want to straw man you, but that's what you look like you're saying here. And when did I make any claims about Russian civilization anyways?

It's your opinion that your system is better, in my opinion the Danish system is better than both the american and the soviet, but this is all politics. And we should not discuss it, and since we can't discuss it let's not assume that the system you like is better, and the system you don't like is inferior.

Also for blatantly obvious game balance reasons the different political systems should be treated equally.

HoI 3 is notorious for modeling the Pacific theater horribly, I agree. However that's not because the US is unrealistically strong, it's just that the AI can't handle amphibious and naval campaigns. They actually had to make a tech to transport garrisons via ships that the AI wouldn't research because the AI would leave islands undefended altogether. As for HoI4, it's still in development so I'm withholding judgement. As for historical plausibility, Operation Torch was launched mostly from across the entire Atlantic, so it's possible to stage an invasion across an ocean. A successful invasion is another thing altogether.

I didn't say that the pacific theater couldn't use other improvements aswell, but the force ratios of in the pacific were not okay. In Hoi2 they were much better.

Since when was that the case in HoI 3? @Secret Master played a game testing the "US was buffed/nerfed" myth and found that wasn't the case.

If secret master has imput to the conversation i'll assume he will speak for himself.
I didn't say US was buffed or nerfed. Just that they were able to produce more than they historically were able to.

Seriously? So a conflict where they'd fight for a few days then go regroup, with a bit of raiding on the side, is more intense than 24/7 mass bombing, naval operations, and land combat on a massive scale? I'm sorry but that's ridiculous.

That's your opinion, based on your own simplification, neither war was that simple, and that's my opinion, fact of the matter is that percentage wise more americans fought in the civil war than in world war 2. And this is way off topic and i don't want to discuss our differing views of the US civil war.

Maybe it's because what you think and what you say may deviate. All I can see and respond to is what you say.

Consider the possiblity that you misunderstand things.

Are you serious? Pilots and sailors are more expensive than riflemen. Planes and submarines are more expensive than tanks. You seem to be counting out two of the three branches of warfare here. Sure, the majority of land combat took place on the eastern front, but if you include the CBI theater (which was seeing land combat 4 years before the German army set foot in Soviet territory) it's not by the margin you claim. Again, how are you measuring this? By losses? There's no way to quantify how much a rifleman lost in Stalingrad is "worth" compared to a bomber pilot lost over the English Channel, but it's not a 1:1 ratio. Like I said, I've yet to encounter a serious historian who speaks in such generalities and makes such claims as you do.

You completely ignored what i said and went on a rant about how you can't imagine looking at a war the way i just showed you. I gave you quite easily atainable criteria and then you start talking about things i didn't mention at all like comparing riflemen to bomber pilots. It's a nice deflection but has no bairing on what i said.

Because that's how you measure whether someone's right or wrong...please don't make me laugh anymore, I've already fallen out of my chair.

Alexander Hill
Albert Weeks (Robert Weeks was an autocorrect typo)

Your respondse to me saying you shouldn't name drop is to link their names.
I wouldn't say i was laughing at this even though it's rediculus, it's pretty tedious to be honest.
You said you have these claims from these authers. Okay fine.

Book and page number please.

Citations don't work by you just naming obscure authers, not even if you link a list of all their books.

Because I wasn't referencing pre-war production as well

You were leaving out variables of reality that wasn't fitting your narative. That's cool. Still haven't given me the numbers that you claim to have.

And we all know tanks are the only thing you use to measure production quality, lol

I do like me some tanks. How do you measure production quality in an objective and comparative way, with concrete examples that are verifiable by everyone, like ww2 tanks are for the most part?

Look, you're the one who doesn't have English as a first language, so take it from someone who has been speaking English his whole life, that was perfectly civil. If you didn't get that from the winking face (common internet denotation of poking fun), I don't know how I'll get through to you.

I am Danish, not an idiot. Having incorrect punctuation or leaving out a capitol letter here and there, doesn't mean i don't understand English just aswell as you do.
And I quite specifically explained what you did I have a problem with, if you can't understand that or respect that I think you're the one with the problem.

You can do your own research then. It's fairly well-known among those who frequently discuss things on this forum that the IJA had light equipment, most of their planes were obsolete, and their equipment likewise. The best equipment and men had been diverted against the Americans for years.

As for my claim being that the were not armed, that's a little thing called hyperbole.

Why don't you do your own research insted of asking me to do them, i can make claims and not back them up aswell. Like it's fairly well-known amonst those who frequently discuss things on this forum that operation august storm was succesful because of it's good planning, superior training and technology employed, despite the best equipment and men being in the kwantung army facing the Soviets.

We can do this, you can make a baseless claim and i can make a base less claim.
Also on the subject of fallacies that you brought up, you understand that "it's well known that..." is a fallacy, and it's like "no true scotsman would disagree with me".

Numbers without citations + cherry picking + deliberate misrepresentation of numbers

I have done my own analysis many times before, all the other times i have had this conversation infact. Boy, where to start with this.

Well let's start with the italian campaign you cite, 1.6 million axis losses. Right well, maybe if you count the 1 million people who surrendered after April 29, 1945 when ww2 in europe was basically over. If you actually go by deaths as in the other statistics it's 56,000 allies deaths and 150,000 german deaths and 13,000 italians. So let's be generous and say 250,000 deaths in the italian campaign lasted more than a year.

Here is your wiki source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Campaign_(World_War_II)

The western front losses 5 million? You mean you count surrendered after ww2 as being losses yet again.
The losses for the western front including wounded are not unknown, maybe you should dig a little deeper.

Casualties for the German Army.

Wounded in action western front 1939-1945: 339,000
Wounded in action eastern front 1939-1945: 3,498,000

Missing in action western front 1939-1945: 410,000
Missing in action eastern front 1939-1945: 1,018,000

Killed in action western front 1939-1945: 107,000
Killed in action eastern front 1939-1945: 1,106,000

OKW casualties report so you can read it yourself.
http://ww2stats.com/1945_01_MIA 1.jpg
http://ww2stats.com/1945_01_WIA 1.jpg
http://ww2stats.com/1945_01_KIA 1.jpg

If you want we can go through the airforces and naval losses like this aswell. But however you look at it, the losses of wounded, missing and killed on the western front is substantially less than your 5 million germans.

As for the yugoslavian campaign i have no idea how you get those numbers, yugoslavia should have lost 1.6 million out of an army that was only a few hundred thousand strong.
What on earth are you talking about?

Either way, i've already shown you are passing off people who surrendered after ww2 as being casualties and I don't want to find medical records for every single country in ww2, I already found the german ones.
You just listed well known equipment lists from wikipedia, as if they somehow validate any of the numbers you then posted, you gave no sources for your numbers, they are clearly not accurate, and as far as i can tell you're pretty much just making them up. You give zero indication of your methodology, or how you calculated your numbers.

Doesn't the serious historians that you are so familiar with tell you that you need a citation for every single statistic you quote?

 

[Loke]

The Russian invasion of Manchuria.

All odds in favor of Russia.
2:1 More Russian Soldiers.
5:1 More Russian arty.
2:1 More Russian aircrafts.
5:1 More Russian tanks.

..//.. By 1945, the Kwantung Army contained a large number of raw recruits and conscripts, with generally obsolete, light, or otherwise limited equipment. Almost all of the tanks were early 1930s models such as the Type 95 Ha-Go and Type 89 I-Go, the anti-tank units only possessed Type 1 37 mm Anti-Tank Guns that were ineffective against Soviet armor, and the infantry had very few machine guns and no anti-materiel rifles or submachine guns. As a result, Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea had essentially been reduced to a light infantry counter-insurgency force with limited mobility or ability to fight a conventional land war against a coordinated enemy. In fact, only six of the Kwantung Army's divisions existed prior to January 1945. Accordingly, the Japanese considered none of the Kwantung Army's units to be combat ready, with some units being declared less than 15% ready..//.. According to the wikilink this is from Glantz "August Storm" p.32

Not so impressive win from where im standing, the Russians did what was expected, nothing more.

 

[Gethsemani]

Not so impressive win from where im standing, the Russians did what was expected, nothing more.

I am not sure what to make of your selective reading of Wikipedia articles. Here's the first paragraph from the Campaign section of the wiki article: "The operation was carried out as a classic double pincer movement over an area the size of the entire Western European theatre of World War II. In the western pincer, the Red Army advanced over the deserts and mountains from Mongolia, far from their resupply railways. This confounded the Japanese military analysis of Soviet logistics, and the defenders were caught by surprise in unfortified positions."

Highlights here are how the campaign was conducted over a massive area (in 11 days the Red Army advanced a distance that took the Western Allies eight months to advance and which took the Wehrmacht some 3 months during Barbarossa) and how the Kwantung Army was taken by surprise due to Soviet strategical proficiency. Whether or not the actual combat performance of the Red Army in Manchuria was stellar is beside the point. On a strategic and operational level they executed an extremely ambitious plan that required exceptional logistical capability and advanced at an unprecedented rate across a country with very poor infrastructure and quite a lot of difficult terrain. How you find that unimpressive is beyond me.

 

[Loke]

I am not sure what to make of your selective reading of Wikipedia articles. Here's the first paragraph from the Campaign section of the wiki article: "The operation was carried out as a classic double pincer movement over an area the size of the entire Western European theatre of World War II. In the western pincer, the Red Army advanced over the deserts and mountains from Mongolia, far from their resupply railways. This confounded the Japanese military analysis of Soviet logistics, and the defenders were caught by surprise in unfortified positions."

Highlights here are how the campaign was conducted over a massive area (in 11 days the Red Army advanced a distance that took the Western Allies eight months to advance and which took the Wehrmacht some 3 months during Barbarossa) and how the Kwantung Army was taken by surprise due to Soviet strategical proficiency. Whether or not the actual combat performance of the Red Army in Manchuria was stellar is beside the point. On a strategic and operational level they executed an extremely ambitious plan that required exceptional logistical capability and advanced at an unprecedented rate across a country with very poor infrastructure and quite a lot of difficult terrain. How you find that unimpressive is beyond me.

You did see the odds in Russian favor? Tanks 5:1, infantry 2:1, arty 5:1 and aircraft 2:1 ... Read the part about the Japanese aircrafts aswell...

So no, im not impressed, I would have been if this Japanese -"light infantry counter-insurgency force with limited mobility" and its AT technology from the early 30s - army had stopped the much larger and better equipped Russian army.

 

[Praetori]

Highlights here are how the campaign was conducted over a massive area (in 11 days the Red Army advanced a distance that took the Western Allies eight months to advance and which took the Wehrmacht some 3 months during Barbarossa) and how the Kwantung Army was taken by surprise due to Soviet strategical proficiency. Whether or not the actual combat performance of the Red Army in Manchuria was stellar is beside the point. On a strategic and operational level they executed an extremely ambitious plan that required exceptional logistical capability and advanced at an unprecedented rate across a country with very poor infrastructure and quite a lot of difficult terrain. How you find that unimpressive is beyond me.

I agree that it was an impressive showcase of Soviet capabilities by the end of the war. Their losses however were not very flattering when considering the opposition and certain leeway must be given the Japanese forces being in a pretty poor condition and operationally surrounded on 3 sides from Mongolia to the Soviet border at Vladivostok just by the very geography.
There could never have been any doubt on the outcome but the fact that the Red Army managed to complete their major objectives so well ahead of even the most optimistic estimates show that the Red Army of 1945 was a juggernaut in regard to deep operations.
During the offensive into Manchuria especially the 25th Army had a difficult task in regard to terrain and logistics and didn't quite make the push through Chagang in time to block a major part of the Kwantung army to retreat but non the less the distances covered were (and are) impressive.

In in-game terms the late battles haven't in previous titles been, or as far as we know in HOI4, hamstrung by any Soviet or Japanese penalties though so I fail to see the relevance.

 

[hkrommel]

If secret master has imput to the conversation i'll assume he will speak for himself.
I didn't say US was buffed or nerfed. Just that they were able to produce more than they historically were able to.

Perhaps you shouldn't comment on things you have no knowledge of, since that is exactly the myth SM tested.

You completely ignored what i said and went on a rant about how you can't imagine looking at a war the way i just showed you. I gave you quite easily atainable criteria and then you start talking about things i didn't mention at all like comparing riflemen to bomber pilots. It's a nice deflection but has no bairing on what i said.

Soooo, just like everything you've said? You've yet to refute anything other than "I don't like your source", "I'm too lazy to go find things unless you give exact page numbers," and "you don't see war correctly". I'm sorry but that's just not how argumentation is done.

Why don't you do your own research insted of asking me to do them

I did. You can't expect me to remember page and line number of everything I've ever read, and you can't argue with someone just by asking for sources, then when I give them, saying that you don't find "obscure authors" (who are actually qualified historians) credible. Do you realize how ridiculous you sound?

Well let's start with the italian campaign you cite, 1.6 million axis losses. Right well, maybe if you count the 1 million people who surrendered after April 29, 1945 when ww2 in europe was basically over. If you actually go by deaths as in the other statistics it's 56,000 allies deaths and 150,000 german deaths and 13,000 italians. So let's be generous and say 250,000 deaths in the italian campaign lasted more than a year.

Because I was counting casualties. CASUALTIES. How much more abundantly clear can I make it? I described the methodology at the very beginning, and you hand wave it and substitute your own numbers. That's ridiculous. Captured troops are included in all calculations, as they should be when measuring casualties.

For Yugoslavia, as I stated the partisan campaigns due to their nature and the casualties that resulted merited consideration. I looked for Polish numbers but reliable ones were difficult to find.

As for the other numbers, the fact that you are using OKW shows me you really have no idea what you're talking about. The historical standard is Overman for Germany and Krivosheev for the USSR. Overman actually includes more German casualties than the OKW numbers, and thus actually helps your claim.

What has become abundantly clear to me is that you don't understand what you're talking about, and don't know how to talk about it. Whether it's hand-waving my arguments away, blaming me for not providing sources for well-known information and when I supply those sources, refusing to read them or to consider them credible when they obviously are, and then going after my casualty analysis by saying it includes captured, when I say at the beginning it is a casualty analysis, which includes captured, and that means captured on both Western and Eastern fronts.

With that said, I'm going to end this discussion here. You may reply, but until you show some modicum of respect, adherence to basic principles of argumentation, and an ability to actually read and respond to what I've actually said, I will not continue with this discussion. @Invader_Canuck has commented on this thread, and he (or she) and I have had multiple discussions regarding the relative strength of the USSR and the Allies. Feel free to look those up to see a model for you to follow. We were both respectful, we both didn't demand sources for ever other word, we both respected each other's sources, and we actually responded to what the other was saying. That's how actual discussions are done.

 

[Gethsemani]

In in-game terms the late battles haven't in previous titles been, or as far as we know in HOI4, hamstrung by any Soviet or Japanese penalties though so I fail to see the relevance.

The problem, as far as I perceive it, is that the games tend to have obviously linear progressions, everything gets better, nothing ever gets worse. This doesn't take into account, for example, the Soviet priority of speed over casualties, which meant they suffered relatively high casualties even in "easy" operations due to their focus on achieving the highest possible operational speed. Ideally there should be some research or national focus that represents this decidedly Soviet mindset, which would grant speed, re-organization bonuses or similar but would also increase the casualties you take.

 

[Praetori]

The problem, as far as I perceive it, is that the games tend to have obviously linear progressions, everything gets better, nothing ever gets worse. This doesn't take into account, for example, the Soviet priority of speed over casualties, which meant they suffered relatively high casualties even in "easy" operations due to their focus on achieving the highest possible operational speed. Ideally there should be some research or national focus that represents this decidedly Soviet mindset, which would grant speed, re-organization bonuses or similar but would also increase the casualties you take.

Sounds fair and valid as long as it's historically "connected". Much like the kamikaze and banzai that should (and I guess already have) an appalling casualty rate.

 

[Loke]

The problem, as far as I perceive it, is that the games tend to have obviously linear progressions, everything gets better, nothing ever gets worse. This doesn't take into account, for example, the Soviet priority of speed over casualties, which meant they suffered relatively high casualties even in "easy" operations due to their focus on achieving the highest possible operational speed. Ideally there should be some research or national focus that represents this decidedly Soviet mindset, which would grant speed, re-organization bonuses or similar but would also increase the casualties you take.

That speed is all dependant upon those half a million trucks and other transportation equipment the Allies LL to Russia...

 

[Secret Master]

I think the problem with this analysis is that we're treating the entire conflict as one singular global conflict, when in reality it was 2 massive conflicts that that occurred in the same time frame.

I understand your point...

But the game has to model it as one conflict. The rules are the rules. So sometimes we have to find approximations that apply globally even if they aren't perfect.

To be honest, that's an insurmountable problem with the franchise. I love HOI to death and the Devs do a gret job, but I don't think it is possible to create a game that can do justice to the Eastern Front, the Battle of France, the Pacific, and the Second Sino-Japanese War all using the same engine.

Or at least do so without tying up three times as many man hours as is feasible while turning some kind of a profit.

Since when was that the case in HoI 3? @Secret Master played a game testing the "US was buffed/nerfed" myth and found that wasn't the case.

Yes, I did test it.

The US, in HOI3 terms, is roughly where it needs to be in terms of manpower and industrial output. It might be a tad on the low side in terms of IC, because I could barely make historical production goals on normal difficulty using all the tricks I know (maybe a better player could do it better).

The test can be found here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...lds-naval-powers.529044/page-23#post-16220619


The key in HOI3 is that production isn't just about IC. There is the whole "practicals make it super cheap to produce stuff" issue to consider, along with the technology issue. You could hypothetically add 10% to construction practicals in the US and suddenly the US ends up with 25% more industrial capability than she did historically. It's really hard to get it spot on in terms of historical stuff.

But I wouldn't say the US is overpowered. If anything, she's a bit underpowered in IC terms (a tiny bit) and never has to make a decision regarding the 90 Division Gamble because of how the game operates, but she's roughly on par for where she should be.

Now, if you really want to abuse the game, you can briefly outproduce the entire planet as the US, but that involves doing bizarre ahistorical stuff that is not relevant to a real game of HOI. I don't consider my Madness! This is the USA! test to be an authentic way of winning the game, but it is an example of why you should never tell me that it is insane for me to try to reach a production target.

 

[Praetori]

That speed is all dependant upon those half a million trucks and other transportation equipment the Allies LL to Russia...

Lend leasing of equipment is already in the game. Getting a lot of trucks from the western allies will enable you to motorize more of your units and add more support companies thus increasing your operational speed.

 

[77Hawk77]

Because I was counting casualties. CASUALTIES. How much more abundantly clear can I make it? I described the methodology at the very beginning, and you hand wave it and substitute your own numbers. That's ridiculous. Captured troops are included in all calculations, as they should be when measuring casualties.

casualty
ˈkaʒjʊəlti,-zj-/
noun
noun: casualty; plural noun: casualties
a person killed or injured in a war or accident.

You're were deliberately trying to mislead to prove a point that was wrong. You tried to make it sound like that more eastern front events happened on the west front by counting all the people who were fighting on the eastern front as western front casualties because they surrendered to the americans in the final days.
That is the most blatant and obvious skewing of numbers i could imagine someone doing, and that is not counting all the numbers you just made up.

You can have your belief and enjoy it, but i am not going to debate this with someone who lies/misleads and fabricates figures.

 

[TheCrimsonMajor]

casualty
ˈkaʒjʊəlti,-zj-/
noun
noun: casualty; plural noun: casualties
a person killed or injured in a war or accident.

You're were deliberately trying to mislead to prove a point that was wrong. You tried to make it sound like that more eastern front events happened on the west front by counting all the people who were fighting on the eastern front as western front casualties because they surrendered to the americans in the final days.
That is the most blatant and obvious skewing of numbers i could imagine someone doing, and that is not counting all the numbers you just made up.

You can have your belief and enjoy it, but i am not going to debate this with someone who lies/misleads and fabricates figures.

I've been reading your conversation, and you both have made some interesting points, but your accusation that he is trying to be deceptive is unfounded. When used in a military context, the word "casualty" can often include POWs. On this forum, few people would just assume it only to include the number of soldiers killed and injured.

Merriam-Webster: "3a : a military person lost through death, wounds, injury, sickness, internment, or capture or through being missing in action"

Wikipedia: "A casualty in military usage is a person in military service, combatant or non-combatant, who becomes unavailable for duty due to several circumstances, including death, injury, illness, capture and desertion. In civilian usage, a casualty is a person who is killed, wounded or injured by some event, and is usually used to describe multiple deaths and injuries due to violent incidents or disasters. Casualties is sometimes misunderstood to mean fatalities, but non-fatal injuries are also casualties."

Vocabulary.com: "a decrease of military personnel or equipment.
Types:
damage, equipment casualty
loss of military equipment
loss, personnel casualty
military personnel lost by death or capture
battle damage, combat casualty
loss of military equipment in battle
operational casualty, operational damage
loss of military equipment in field operations
combat injury, injury, wound
a casualty to military personnel resulting from combat
sacrifice
personnel that are sacrificed (e.g., surrendered or lost in order to gain an objective)"


If @hkrommel hadn't defined the scope of his usage in his post, it would have been appropriate to ask him to clarify. But he did clearly define how he was using the word. It's entirely implausible that he was trying to deceive anyone. You are certainly entitled to argue that it is not appropriate to include POWs in a measure of casualties, or that certain German POWs should be treated as casualties from the Eastern Front because that's where they spent most of the war fighting.

However, it is both rude and unreasonable to accuse someone of lying when you have such scant evidence. Civil forum discussion requires that we give each other the benefit of the doubt and debate substantive issues when we disagree. Ad hominem attacks are never appropriate.

 

[Praetori]

That is the most blatant and obvious skewing of numbers i could imagine someone doing, and that is not counting all the numbers you just made up.

It is an argument I've seen in the past in academic circles as well. Casualty figures in WW2 should always be taken with a grain of salt and should never be regarded as accurate so there's always merit behind analyzing the figures.

There's a strange fact that the total number of casualties (when reporting WIA, KIA, MIA and POW) slants the figures in the Allies favor at war end. Now a large percentage of this can be attributed to Axis forces surrendering en-masse to the Allies where they would not do so against the Soviets (and let's be fair, a fair number of the POWs taken by the Soviets never returned so there might have been some valid reasoning behind this behavior) and the fact that even at the very end units still fighting the Red Army retreated and surrendered to the Allies rather than yield to the Soviets.

The situation regarding casualties in late 1944 was clearly skewed to the Eastern Front but then it must be remembered that the fighting had gone on there for more than 3 years and involved the majority of all divisions ever employed in Europe. When you dig a bit deeper at individual casualty-rates there's indication of the ferocity of the battles in the west that is more statistically spread-out on the eastern front due to the larger scale and number of units involved.

Thus if you take the generic German front-line soldier the risk of him becoming a casualty of war in 1944 was actually a fair share greater if he was fighting the western allies than it was fighting the Soviets. The sheer number of divisions employed on the Eastern Front however meant that a lot more men fell in the East than in the West. Those figures however hide the fact that the average casualty-rate for a division (on both sides) during a day of fighting was no less severe in the west than it was in the east, quite the contrary.

 

[77Hawk77]

It is an argument I've seen in the past in academic circles as well. Casualty figures in WW2 should always be taken with a grain of salt and should never be regarded as accurate so there's always merit behind analyzing the figures.

There's a strange fact that the total number of casualties (when reporting WIA, KIA, MIA and POW) slants the figures in the Allies favor at war end. Now a large percentage of this can be attributed to Axis forces surrendering en-masse to the Allies where they would not do so against the Soviets (and let's be fair, a fair number of the POWs taken by the Soviets never returned so there might have been some valid reasoning behind this behavior) and the fact that even at the very end units still fighting the Red Army retreated and surrendered to the Allies rather than yield to the Soviets.

The situation regarding casualties in late 1944 was clearly skewed to the Eastern Front but then it must be remembered that the fighting had gone on there for more than 3 years and involved the majority of all divisions ever employed in Europe. When you dig a bit deeper at individual casualty-rates there's indication of the ferocity of the battles in the west that is more statistically spread-out on the eastern front due to the larger scale and number of units involved.

Thus if you take the generic German front-line soldier the risk of him becoming a casualty of war in 1944 was actually a fair share greater if he was fighting the western allies than it was fighting the Soviets. The sheer number of divisions employed on the Eastern Front however meant that a lot more men fell in the East than in the West. Those figures however hide the fact that the average casualty-rate for a division (on both sides) during a day of fighting was no less severe in the west than it was in the east, quite the contrary.

I agree with just about everything you said.

But this is getting out of hand either way, and i don't think the conversation is going to lead anywhere.

 

[77Hawk77]

@TheCrimsonMajor

That's fair enough, I tried to make peace, but there are limits to how much condersending lecturing and arrogance i will put up with, I apologised for writing in a hostile manner and attempted to give every chance i could for him to make his claims verifiable. I will not put up with claims and assumptions being presented as fact, and then be mocked when all I ask is for some way to verify what is being said.

I wrote in a way that allowed for falsifiability in what i said, and expected the same but did not get that.
And yes in military terms casualties may well mean the loss of personel in general, but the whole point was how many people who died, I specifically said that, and he didn't mention he that wasn't how he counted.

I asked a question within a premise, he broke the premise without saying so, and i have no patience for that.

EDIT: sorry for double post, i thought i was editing.

 

[Praetori]

I agree with just about everything you said.

But this is getting out of hand either way, and i don't think the conversation is going to lead anywhere.

As with all such discussion. But the general premise of your thread-start still holds.
The problem is providing decent enough game-mechanics that are easily conveyed in a human-readable format.
Leaders were an extremely important part of the Grand Strategy ramifications of the war and there's no doubt that various leaders had personal traits that is best represented by negative modifiers or made frequent decisions that motives the same. Having semi-static leaders is a way to enact such penalties where they belong while a more free system would need positive modifiers to give players a reason to keep them in the first place.

Neither Stalin nor Hitler could probably have been removed in anything less than an outright coup and after that we're in uncharted territory and thus any reasoning beyond that point is plainly fictional and no knowledge or historical figures would do such a scenario more or less realistic.

What we CAN tell however is that decisions made by both Stalin and Hitler resulted in enormous casualties where the various military commands would have acted differently. To say that the Soviet losses or the German neglect of operational risks (such as Stalingrad, Kursk, AGC etc) were inevitable would also be incorrect. It was as much a result of decisions made by two dictators that led to these situations as the overall operational situation, maybe even more. If's and but's can always be discussed until we all tire of it but actual historical events themselves can be analyzed and translated into flexible game mechanics that more often than not should result in historically plausible results.

 

[hkrommel]

and he didn't mention he that wasn't how he counted.

Manpower is spread out over several sources since each theater is calculated individually, but sources aren't hard to find. I use the median estimates where multiple sources conflict (example Italian mainland campaign casualties pre-armistice range from 336,650 to 580,630, these numbers average to 458,640). All numbers are rounded to the nearest thousand where applicable. KIA/MIA totals are included wherever possible, and non-combat related injuries and deaths excluded where possible. Civilian casualties not included because of forum rules and irrelevance to discussion.

NOTE: Soviet casualty counts are far different from other nations, particularly when they include sickness. Poor records exist for the 1941-1942 period, and records really aren't great for the rest of the war on either side (same for German Western Front figures, note the missing wounded count). I'm using Krivosheev's analysis for the USSR, Overman's analysis for the Axis, combat deaths only plus wounded, MIA, and captured. Krivosheev puts the KIA/MIA (irrecoverable losses) at 8,700,000, however not all of these are combat deaths. A note about wounded: I've decided to exclude wounded numbers since German wounded are already excluded on the Western Front. Soviet and German records are extremely sketchy, and in some cases include soldiers being counted multiple times for different wounds, non-combat-prohibitive wounds, etc.

So by tonnage of equipment, far more was lost in other theaters (obviously, because naval combat). Losses are roughly 60% on the Eastern Front, so that's 15% away from your assessment. Combine the two factors (equipment tonnage loss and casualties), add in some other factors such as the strategic bombing campaigns, and you'll find the Eastern Front is not the majority of the war by any stretch of the imagination. It may be a plurality, sure, but not the majority.

I laid out what I was doing quite clearly. Look dude, you may disagree with me, but calling someone a liar for using the common definition of a word and blatantly stating things that aren't true shows either a lack of maturity or a lack of reading comprehension. I mention using MIA, wounded, sick, non-combat deaths, and casualties in general multiple times, so you're just blatantly lying at this point. Our discussion is over, so just let it go without being more insulting.

 

[MGL 86]

Firstly, deaths is not a way to measure combat.

I can`t understand this. Germany lost 4 out of 5 soldiers (with their equipments if the equipment is more important than manpower) against Russians. And you are basically saying US did more work than USSR because we killed remaining 1 together with UK, France, Poland, Canada, Australia, Norway, Greece so on.