You will ignore Italy with its 35 million, Canada, Australia and the rest of British Dominions and colonies?
How much of an advantage do the allies start with at the beginning of the game?
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The HOI3 France campaign is not similar to history because Germany uses very few of its historical tactics. It plays a French style of war, and should suffer for it.
I want to make one correction here. Two months wasn't historical. Germans were in Paris in just 4 weeks and 5 days. And France surrendered in just 6 weeks and 1 day. Heck Hitler was in Paris for his tour on June 23rd.
It's fine and dandy to talk about how we or the German AI needs to fight historically. But that is a load of crap when it comes to HOI3. Can ANYONE attack through Luxembourg, capture Sedan and then get to the English Channel in 10 days time? The mechanics of HOI3 prevent it, not to mention that even the stupid French AI is smarter then the real French. 61 divisions were trapped and basically gave up in Belgium. When was the last game that the French units trapped in Belgium just gave up? Do we get results were 10,000 French troops give up while we suffer 35 wounded or dead? Can we rely on the AI French changing generals and the new general saying that his number one priority was to get a good night's sleep? Can we or the German AI face an evacuation from Dunkirk instead of taking 1-2 weeks to destroy all those trapped units?
In WWI the artillery killed, not the rifle.
You are trying to count rifles were you should count guns.
The question is not whether or not they reached the proscribed number of divisions.
The question is if they met the proscribed volume of firepower.
And i dare say they did.
As for the Marne, Germany probably could have beaten back the french, damaging first and second corps in the process, but what they have gained?
The whole campaign was always a gamble, but when it failed, Germany still handled it remarkably:
Falling back onto the raillines in Eastern France and holding there for 4 years, while neutralizing Verdun as a strategic asset.
What tipped the scale was the Americans increasing the troop volume on the Western Front by 50%.
When?
1914?
1918 after or shortly before Michel?
Yes, but on the Western front A-H and the Ottomans were a no-show.
Against Russia A-Hs contribution were substantial but as for the Ottoman Empire i am not sure how much of an advantage they confered.
It already was before.
A good part of the material needed for explosives came from Germany prior to the war and the facilities that could have made it were in North-Eastern France.
If the USA had maintained a neutrality not just in the sense of 'no troops' but also of no support, no credits and no weapons supplies (a good part of the rifles and the artillery for the Brits and French come over the Atlantic) WWI might have been over by 1916.
I quoted Wikipedia, who in turn quoted Holger H. Herwig: The Marne, 1914. The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World. New York 2011.
The French wikipedia page however quotes your numbers (without source it seems).
You are describing exactly what happened in North Africa between Italians and British with Operation Compass. The difference is that Italians had much superiority in men and much inferiority in arms.
I have beaten France in 6 weeks as Germany in HOI3 by mimicking their historical tactics and strategy.
The French AI is as stupid as the real French, but the German AI is far more stupid than the real Germans. The reason that they do not win in 6 weeks is because they utterly refuse to play to their own strengths. And if they refuse to do this, they should take a severe beating and be in no position to invade the USSR. In HOI3 Germany is pumped full of steroids so it can batter through France while using outdated French style strategy. The main reason why Germany won so quickly is that they used modern, mobile methods of warfare. They do not in HOI3.
"How the Red Army Defeated Germany: The Three Alibis." - Dr. Jonathon M. House
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zinPbUZUHDE
I once beat France in 5 weeks because they left the Maginot line empty. It proves nothing. Have you ever captured Paris outside of using paratroopers in 4 weeks and 5 days? Nope. Have you ever destroyed half the allied armies in just 10 days? Nope.
You have refused to address the issue of the German AI playing into France's hands and still winning with ease. Yes, I took Paris with paratroopers, but I still took Paris. You want Germany to win the historical victory every time without addressing the fact that this relies on a certain mix of German brilliance and French stupidity, and only the latter half of this is in HOI3. If you want that historical outcome every time, you must also add the former half. Otherwise, the victory should not be anywhere near as clean for Germany, if it happens at all.
My point is that the French stupidity ISN'T in the game. It was even dumber then HOI's AI. I've never seen half of the French army race into Belgium only to be cut off. The only really dumb things the French AI has ever done is to leave a Maginot province empty for a short period of time.
But the real French never left Maginot forts empty. That particular kind of stupidity never happened.
HOI France is as stupid as real France, but in different ways. My real point is that the difference between France and Germany should be in strategy, with France being stuck in WW1. In HOI3, both sides are stuck in WW1. I want Germany to deserve its win, if it gets it, by being smarter, not just by mindlessly bashing away. That would not have produced a wonder victory.
Yes, it's the artillery that kills. But the artillery doesn't advance, it doesn't flank, it doesn't extend the line, which was exactly the point of the Schlieffen plan. They did not have enough troops to be able to flank on both sides while holding the line, and no amount of artillery could fix that. Another strategy could have used better the artillery superiority, but we'll never know.
For casualties, it's the number of military casualties for the whole war. That does include the Spring Offensive (which I think was the part of the war where the difference in casualties were the biggest, and it's around 200,000 more dead for the Entente).
The artillery advances, it allows to flank, to extend the line because all of a sudden you no longer need 5 soldiers to hold 10 m but only 2.
Also, how would the Schlieffen plan have flanked on both sides?
IIRC the only flank movement was on the German right.
Also, how would the Schlieffen plan have flanked on both sides?
IIRC the only flank movement was on the German right.
The point of the Schlieffen plan was to circumvent the french border fortifications - just like the Ardenne offensive bypassed the Maginot Line.
And that worked remarkable.
Just look at verdun. half the place belonged to the Germans for half the war, while the rest could not be used as intended, that is as a place to assemble an attack.
Artillery doesn't advance in the context of the movement war of 1914. For the trench war, maybe, but you don't hold ground with artillery, you need corps (with infantry and artillery to support them).
Also, and it's more Moltke than Schlieffen, the german troops on the left were more important than in the original plan, and were planned to do a counter offensive against the french assault in Lorraine (which they did, but they couldn't advance as much as planned afterwards), and as such, flank by the south. Some say it might have been a mistake of Moltke to reinforce his left too much to counterattack and not concentrate more forces on his right, but I doubt that the Schlieffen could have worked anyway.
The point of the Schlieffen-Moltke plan was to take out France quickly, using the numerical advantage to extend the front, and envelopping the Entente army by flanking on both sides (in the case of the original plan, they intended to let the French army get itself stuck in Lorraine).
You wouldn't even have needed such a plan to take out the fortifications, since the French assaulted Lorraine, and in the counter offensive were thrown back, first from Lorraine, and the second time, kilometers from the border, which shows that the first line fortifications didn't had that much incidence. Though it is true that some of the Germans high command believed the fortifications to be dangerous (Schlieffen himself) and that was the point of letting the French advances on left in the original plan. "France must be considered as a big fortress". On that regard, I think that Moltke was right and that it wasn't as important as the extension of the frontline or other factors (though it is hard to judge which decisions would have resulted in a better outcome).
They might as well. What real life France did was to leave the front near Sedan empty. The HOI3 AI doesn't do that.
See this is where your logic fails. It wasn't some brilliant German plan. It was that the French had next to zero troops where the Germans attacked at. And then the real life French compounded their idiotic mistakes and rushed into Belgium to be trapped. Heck HOI3 AI is not even that dumb. If HOI3 AI sees German troops at Sedan it sends other troops there to fight.
And until you have a game that is as stupid as real life France is you will instead have a much slower battle, one province after the other.
Actually it did and that what served the Germans so well, namely that they had really big guns (the 155mm howitzer, the 170 mm Minenwerfer, the 210mm Mortar as well as the 310 mm mortar) they could either move as horse-teams (all up to the 210 mm mortar) or transport by truck and assemble quickly (the 310mm mortar).
Your view is also a bit simplistic:
Sure, artillery cannot hold ground, but then neither can infantry without artillery.
And nobody, or at least not me, is arguing for just artillery, but an infantry formation with ample artillery support is much more able to do pretty much anything whether it is holding ground or taking it. And the Germans started the war as the only nation with 'heavy field artillery' which i suppose means heavy guns that could actually be moved instead of having to be constructed and deconstructed to get into action.
I think this is another mistake in thinking that i see often:
Schlieffen-Plan was an utopian plan. It would have worked had everything gone right.
It makes sense to plan that why, but it also important to realize that it was, as far as Germany was concerned, more a statement of intent than a prediction or expectation how the war would go.
Even in 1870 the Germans had spent 3 months in front of Paris after the campaign had gone remarkably, while Schlieffen is very silent about what would happen if and when the German Armies reached Paris.
Given that peace had not been sought last time that happened it seems unlikely the German General Staff assumed that they just had to take Paris and the french would pack up and capitulate.
And for the intent of a plan of operation Schlieffen worked very well.
They swept through Belgium into France, were 'beaten' in a battle were they suffered 20% less losses than the supposed victors, then leisurely 'retreated' towards their ideal defensive position and pretty much stayed there for the Rest of the war.
Unless we assume that France could have been hit hard enough in 1914 to quit the war i think what the germans got in 1914 was best solution they could hope for.
@casualty figures:
I assume that is wounded + missing+ wounded, because German barely had in excess of 6 Million killed and wounded at all fronts.Pan H said:
But even then it seems unlikely that Germany would have suffered 2/3 of their casualties on the Western Front.
I find numbers of about 670.000 German war dead to nearly 2 million Allied dead (France 1,18 Million; UK 622.000, Belgium 24.000, USA 85.000) and 1,2 million wounded Germans for 5,5 million wounded Allied (3,5 mio for France, UK 1,8 mio, USa 240000).
That's not true. The French had defences at Sedan. Yes, it was not enough to stop 5 panzer+3 motorised divisions, but it was physically impossible to man every part of the frontline to defend against an attack of such strength. There was no "idiocy", there was simply the fact that Germans operated their panzers in army sized groups, while the allies had them in brigade sized formations and as infantry support.
The advantage the AI has in HOI3, is that it knows where your troops are to a much better extent that could be possible IRL, so it moves troops faster to react to your redeployments. HOI2 was in a way better, as the redeploying troops vanished from view, presenting a surprise when they popped up in a ready to strike somewhere you did not expect.
He couldn't fit 48 Corps through the marching routes of the Schlieffen Plan in the first place. To execute the flanking movement so fancifully envisioned you needed a teleporter because the flankers had to march through spaces already occupied by existing Corps to meet the timetable.
This was the biggest and most spectacular failing of the version of the plan that keeps circulating; albeit there's good evidence it may not have been meant to be the real wartime plan to begin with.
Moltke was right to send more troops East, and in any case if he hadn't A-H would have collapsed in 1914 thanks to Conrad's utterly insane decision to engage in the dance of death around Premzyl.
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