How much of an advantage do the allies start with at the beginning of the game?

[1alexey]

Even though aircraft did not directly cause that much destruction, as you way, isn't it true that air superiority and proper integration of close support aircraft into operations were key elements of success during the war?

Looking at the liberation of France, for example, the ability of the Allies to interdict almost anything that moved behind the lines had significant impact on what was happening at the front. Then you have the concept of recon. It is clearly an advantage to have a better idea of your enemy's dispositions than he has of yours.

Of course, I did say that aviation is very important, an is a very good tool, but you have to deliver the coup de grace with lard forces, for it`s contribution to be meaningful.

Lightly damaged vehicles can easily be repaired, if you have the time. Defenders tend to not have the time, and vehicles have to be abandoned. Same applies to supplies, attacking troops can probably wait till they are fully supplied. Defenders need supplies urgently, or their positions will be overrun.

The damage that aviation causes on attacking forces is not nearly as comparable to how much casualties aviation causes indirectly on the defending forces that don`t have the time to gather lightly damaged vehicles and just repair them.

 

[Dark Jakkaru]

(Whether the naval strength she draws away helps Italy in any scenario where France continues to fight with effectiveness past September of 1940 is a question I can't answer given poor Italian performance in the naval war at times.)

I wouldn't quite word it as "poor" though I understand where you are getting at being how "effective" the Italian Navy really was and what was needed to truly bring about a decisive victory for the war. Given Italy's modest objectives of ensuring naval superiority *when* it needed it the most and denying Allied superiority at *critical times*, then I would say the Italian naval was largely successful up until massive fuel shortages in mid-'42 leaves the waters largely to the Allies. Beyond this, it was clearly indecisive enough where you could NOT truly say "Mare Nostrum". On paper, given a number of glaring issues with the Italian air-naval cooperation or FC methods/accuracy only really impacts the issue if there would have been a decisive naval moment in the Mediterranean during '40-42 of which there really was none to be had by either the British or Italian fleets seeing how careful the fleets were managed not to tempt fate. At the end of the war, most of the Italian Capital big gun battleships were largely afloat and intact (6/7). You can even say Italy was the most effective use of battleships deterrence with their Navy being essentially in-tact without massive 4-carrier-Midway Quadra Kill or Bismark solo-mid fail debacles.

Probably the biggest decisions was whether or not Italy should have committed to rebuilding and modernizing *all* 4-WWI era dreadnoughts and how these relics even updated were really helping or hindering the Italian Naval Strategy as they appear to have been of dubious worth during the war years. After all, the Cavour was hit by one torpedo and sank in shallow water before being raised and rebuilt compared to the Roma, that was hit by a two Fritz-X guided bombs (something the ship wasn't designed to fend off) and eventually sank due to unrecoverable flooding.

So I would lean towards a "yes" if the player can managed to replace at least 2 of the relics with more modern capital ships. A solid "no" if the Italian fleet is "as-is" given the essential weaknesses of rebuilding old WWI ships does and compared to the need to have the 2 of the modern Battleships essentially be the primary threat for the British fleet in the Mediterranean Sea.

 

[Secret Master]

You are oversimplifying things.

The investment in the West Wall was massive and as events in 1944 would prove, be na EXTREMELY difficult place to attack, and that was against na overextended and tired german army.

Which was not the case in 1939.

The myth that a french attack would be easy is just that - a myth. Unless a BIG BEF was in place to help. Again - it depends a lot on how political matters will be done and any large deviation of history will feel VERY forced if the game starts in 1936 only.

Are you addressing me or jdavis?

If me, I would like to point out that even the German army leadership after the war conceded that if the Allies had made a serious offensive in September of 39 while the majority of the Germany Army was in Poland, there was next to nothing to stop them. The Saar Offensive should have turned into "The Turning Point of WWII," if the French had bothered to prosecute it.

Now, would that have won the war? Probably not by itself. But even if the French get into the Rhineland and occupy it, that's a much better position than they were in historically in 1940. And the more industry and resources (and manpower) the Allies occupy in 1939, the more their position improves even if Gamelin throws the war with bad strategy later.

The failure to attack while the Poles were still in the fight was the first of several key blunders made during the war.

 

[Dalwin]

Are you addressing me or jdavis?

If me, I would like to point out that even the German army leadership after the war conceded that if the Allies had made a serious offensive in September of 39 while the majority of the Germany Army was in Poland, there was next to nothing to stop them. The Saar Offensive should have turned into "The Turning Point of WWII," if the French had bothered to prosecute it.

Now, would that have won the war? Probably not by itself. But even if the French get into the Rhineland and occupy it, that's a much better position than they were in historically in 1940. And the more industry and resources (and manpower) the Allies occupy in 1939, the more their position improves even if Gamelin throws the war with bad strategy later.

The failure to attack while the Poles were still in the fight was the first of several key blunders made during the war.

Just my personal opinion of course, but if the French had occupied the Ruhr in '39, I think the only way Hitler would have survived 1940 is if someone insisted he be that way to stand trial.

 

[Axe99]

Absolutely agreed. What should have happened and what did happen were different enough that this is hard to balance properly if we want to see anything resembling historical WWII. Luck was a big part of it.

Aye, and it raises a big challenge for the dev team, as no-one likes things to be railroaded. Once we go down the slope of nerfing France so that it always falls, even in MP, do we then rail-road the Battle of Britain, or the fall of Singapore, or Barbarossa, and where do we stop? Any of these operations, if the result had been the opposite of what it was historically, would have had huge ramifications for the result of the war, as large (possibly not Singapore, but only possibly) as the fall of France. Afraid I don't have the answers (beyond the 'have a start date just after the French forces in Belgium have been cut off'), just highlighting that there's almost no difference between railroading France and a lot of other key events in the period.

 

[1alexey]

Just my personal opinion of course, but if the French had occupied the Ruhr in '39, I think the only way Hitler would have survived 1940 is if someone insisted he be that way to stand trial.

For what?
He would probably be left alone, just forced into resignation and emigration like Wilhelm was after WW1.

 

[Dalwin]

Aye, and it raises a big challenge for the dev team, as no-one likes things to be railroaded. Once we go down the slope of nerfing France so that it always falls, even in MP, do we then rail-road the Battle of Britain, or the fall of Singapore, or Barbarossa, and where do we stop? Any of these operations, if the result had been the opposite of what it was historically, would have had huge ramifications for the result of the war, as large (possibly not Singapore, but only possibly) as the fall of France. Afraid I don't have the answers (beyond the 'have a start date just after the French forces in Belgium have been cut off'), just highlighting that there's almost no difference between railroading France and a lot of other key events in the period.

This would be less of a problem in a game of somewhat different scale where it only took 4 hours to play through from beginning to end. Wildly varying results would be more tolerable for some than in a game that takes as long as HOI does.

 

[jdavis86]

I wouldn't quite word it as "poor" though I understand where you are getting at being how "effective" the Italian Navy really was and what was needed to truly bring about a decisive victory for the war. Given Italy's modest objectives of ensuring naval superiority *when* it needed it the most and denying Allied superiority at *critical times*, then I would say the Italian naval was largely successful up until massive fuel shortages in mid-'42 leaves the waters largely to the Allies. Beyond this, it was clearly indecisive enough where you could NOT truly say "Mare Nostrum". On paper, given a number of glaring issues with the Italian air-naval cooperation or FC methods/accuracy only really impacts the issue if there would have been a decisive naval moment in the Mediterranean during '40-42 of which there really was none to be had by either the British or Italian fleets seeing how careful the fleets were managed not to tempt fate. At the end of the war, most of the Italian Capital big gun battleships were largely afloat and intact (6/7). You can even say Italy was the most effective use of battleships deterrence with their Navy being essentially in-tact without massive 4-carrier-Midway Quadra Kill or Bismark solo-mid fail debacles.

Probably the biggest decisions was whether or not Italy should have committed to rebuilding and modernizing *all* 4-WWI era dreadnoughts and how these relics even updated were really helping or hindering the Italian Naval Strategy as they appear to have been of dubious worth during the war years. After all, the Cavour was hit by one torpedo and sank in shallow water before being raised and rebuilt compared to the Roma, that was hit by a two Fritz-X guided bombs (something the ship wasn't designed to fend off) and eventually sank due to unrecoverable flooding.

So I would lean towards a "yes" if the player can managed to replace at least 2 of the relics with more modern capital ships. A solid "no" if the Italian fleet is "as-is" given the essential weaknesses of rebuilding old WWI ships does and compared to the need to have the 2 of the modern Battleships essentially be the primary threat for the British fleet in the Mediterranean Sea.

I think the real answer is the Luftwaffe, or the threat in being to British naval forces. You take their role away and the Italian fleet would have fared even worse.

 

[Beagá]

Are you addressing me or jdavis?

If me, I would like to point out that even the German army leadership after the war conceded that if the Allies had made a serious offensive in September of 39 while the majority of the Germany Army was in Poland, there was next to nothing to stop them. The Saar Offensive should have turned into "The Turning Point of WWII," if the French had bothered to prosecute it.

Now, would that have won the war? Probably not by itself. But even if the French get into the Rhineland and occupy it, that's a much better position than they were in historically in 1940. And the more industry and resources (and manpower) the Allies occupy in 1939, the more their position improves even if Gamelin throws the war with bad strategy later.

The failure to attack while the Poles were still in the fight was the first of several key blunders made during the war.

If the french were mobilized in force the germans would have defended there better. They weren´t that stupid and they had some degree of intelligence. Even more so if the UK had deployed forces already in France. And besides, it would be a VERY narrow corridor and thus easy to defend. Was german strategy a "bet"? Maybe. Did it work? Yes. It´s undeniable they knew what they were doing to a large extent.

So no, I don´t buy that.

Yes, it would mean less forces for Poland but considering they would have some help from the russians, not relevant.

Of secondary note is the fact that french tanks were far from reliable marvels, specially in the crappy woody terrain of the border. I bet the British and russians wouldn´t care much to see thousands of dead for almost zero gain or extra germans dead, but the french themselves wouldn´t think that way...

 

[jdavis86]

1939 may be questionable. The Saar "offensive" did prove that the possibility was there.


During the Rhineland crisis of 1936 however, France absolutely could have marched to the Ruhr valley, Hitler would have been sacked by the Prussian Generals, and ww2 would likely not occur.

 

[Secret Master]

Just my personal opinion of course, but if the French had occupied the Ruhr in '39, I think the only way Hitler would have survived 1940 is if someone insisted he be that way to stand trial.

His status as leader would certainly have been in doubt.

Of course, the other possibility is that he arrests half the officer corps to prevent a coup, causing a Soviet Purge like drop in German fighting ability. We know how well that would turn out...

 

[Dark Jakkaru]

I think the real answer is the Luftwaffe, or the threat in being to British naval forces. You take their role away and the Italian fleet would have fared even worse.

Not quite as the Italian and British Navy understood their strengths and weaknesses and tried to get one or the other to commit at a disadvantage that never truly ended up in a decisive fight. After all, the Royal Navy didn't have a real modern answer to the new Littorio Italian BB which had the range and hitting power not to risk some lucky salvos but they would have easily cleaned up the Mediterranean if the Italian Navy only had the 4 rebuild WWI ships to contend with and just modern Heavy Cruisers. Whether it was with more or less Luftwaffe support the Italians were not going to change their naval strategy and suddenly become as risky as the Germans were to send capital ships on convoy raiding missions. This view was further reinforced when they ventured further at Cape Matapan expecting some air cooperation of which where was none and the British had a Carrier. That experience proved that if the Italian Navy wanted to truly run free outside the Italian air umbrella they would have needed at least a Carrier which was sorely needed in that battle seeing as most ships of that era didn't exactly have a good amount of air defense guns on board.

While Cape Matapan was solid Italian loss, it was not the decisive engagement the British were looking for as the Italian navy prior to venturing forth already felt they were risking too much and cut their losses. It just reinforced the Italian Navy not to change their plans for the remainder of the war and this is reflected in the very heavy escort duty modern battleships were doing resupply to North Africa or causing some critical food shortages on Malta by threatening convoy with 3 modern BB with a ton of support ships and various air support within their strike range.

Ironically, since you brought it up, the Luftwaffe were the only one's to actual sink the Roma, the only Italian BB completely lost during the war. And, IIRC, no Littori Italian BB actual sunk another combat ship seeing as most engagements were done at range and couldn't hit much of anything without new radar or FC system.

 

[Zinegata]

In 1941 the german nearly reach Moscow in 6 month and they had not that transportnumbers the allied had and
worse climat when the allied forces had in west.So my question is how come the allied armys only had libereted France in 6 months.I think the german leadership is why they could take so much punishment and still go on fighting in 1944-1945.

Because the Russians weren't mobilized and most of their Divisions weren't combat-ready. This is how you have an army with 3000 tanks - none with a gun larger than 50mm - defeat an enemy armed with KV tanks that have 152mm guns. KV tanks that don't have fuel or ammunition can't fight to begin with.

In the tiny handful of battles where enough Russians actually showed up armed, the Germans found their nose bloodied.

The Russians by contrast *had* to keep attacking an enemy that was already prepared and mobilized.

Finally, the distance from Normandy to the Ruhr - where the Western Allies finished off the German armies in the West - is much less than the distance from Brest to Moscow. Heck, the distance from Moscow to Berlin itself is considerably greater than the distance covered by Barbarossa (which started from Poland and ended near Moscow). If we're just talking about getting back all the pre-Barbarossa Soviet territory, that mission was already accomplished in 1944.

 

[1alexey]

During the Rhineland crisis of 1936 however, France absolutely could have marched to the Ruhr valley, Hitler would have been sacked by the Prussian Generals, and ww2 would likely not occur.

And what would French do to all the paramilitaries(at least 1.5 millions of SA only) and the army that would spread out and fight guerrilla war?

French, in 1936, didn`t had the finances to support even mobilization, not to mention any kind of prolonged anti-guerrilla campaign, and their neighbouring countries were quite content to make sure they take a lot of financial strain and fail, hence why French never tried.

This is how you have an army with 3000 tanks - none with a gun larger than 50mm - defeat an enemy armed with KV tanks that have 152mm guns. KV tanks that don't have fuel or ammunition can't fight to begin with.

Nope, it is because looking at tanks is fool`s errant. Any kind of tank will be defeated without sufficient support, and with sufficient support, even relatively low quality tanks can do really well.
Armor is not the main weapon of armored division. Infantry is, and Germans enjoyed quite a superiority there for first months of Barbarossa.

 

[Axe99]

This would be less of a problem in a game of somewhat different scale where it only took 4 hours to play through from beginning to end. Wildly varying results would be more tolerable for some than in a game that takes as long as HOI does.

Aye, fully agree - the time investment required means it's good to have things be somewhat predictable, but HoI1, 2 and 3 all had their moments as well, if not with the Fall of France (noting that in at least one of my games in HoI3, when I wasn't playing the UK or France, the French held on until 1941 by themselves - it was un-modded, but can't remember which expansion) there are plenty of other events that could have gone either way. Seems a little odd we're so focussed on France and not thinking about the others.

 

[jdavis86]

Not quite as the Italian and British Navy understood their strengths and weaknesses and tried to get one or the other to commit at a disadvantage that never truly ended up in a decisive fight. After all, the Royal Navy didn't have a real modern answer to the new Littorio Italian BB which had the range and hitting power not to risk some lucky salvos but they would have easily cleaned up the Mediterranean if the Italian Navy only had the 4 rebuild WWI ships to contend with and just modern Heavy Cruisers. Whether it was with more or less Luftwaffe support the Italians were not going to change their naval strategy and suddenly become as risky as the Germans were to send capital ships on convoy raiding missions. This view was further reinforced when they ventured further at Cape Matapan expecting some air cooperation of which where was none and the British had a Carrier. That experience proved that if the Italian Navy wanted to truly run free outside the Italian air umbrella they would have needed at least a Carrier which was sorely needed in that battle seeing as most ships of that era didn't exactly have a good amount of air defense guns on board.

While Cape Matapan was solid Italian loss, it was not the decisive engagement the British were looking for as the Italian navy prior to venturing forth already felt they were risking too much and cut their losses. It just reinforced the Italian Navy not to change their plans for the remainder of the war and this is reflected in the very heavy escort duty modern battleships were doing resupply to North Africa or causing some critical food shortages on Malta by threatening convoy with 3 modern BB with a ton of support ships and various air support within their strike range.

Ironically, since you brought it up, the Luftwaffe were the only one's to actual sink the Roma, the only Italian BB completely lost during the war. And, IIRC, no Littori Italian BB actual sunk another combat ship seeing as most engagements were done at range and couldn't hit much of anything without new radar or FC system.

Matapan highlights the incredible importance of radar, and to a lesser extent air superiority. The Italians were so outclassed in that fight that their guns were pointing the wrong way when the British engaged.

If anything it should demonstrate how much of an upper hand the British had against the Italians. Take away the added air superiority given by the Luftwaffe, and you would have seen more outcomes like this.

And what would French do to all the paramilitaries(at least 1.5 millions of SA only) and the army that would spread out and fight guerrilla war?

French, in 1936, didn`t had the finances to support even mobilization, not to mention any kind of prolonged anti-guerrilla campaign, and their neighbouring countries were quite content to make sure they take a lot of financial strains and fail, hence why French never tried.

In 1936 France had (acknowledged by all at the time) the best standing army in the world. I'm not sure what the mobilization implications would have been. They would have handily dealt with the scant force Hitler used to reoccupy the Rhineland. Part of the reason they didn't do anything was because the British government didn't give them full backing.

At the time Hitler was all bluster. The German army had by no means recovered. There was no force trained and equipped to challenge the French army in Germany. I'm not sure where you're getting this 1.5 million paramilitary number. Once again, Germany did not have an organized army to take on France with in 1936.

Germany's political situation at the time was equally as perilous. There were many in the German government looking for an excuse to oust Hitler. France responding in force to the Rhineland would have given the Generals the political capital they needed to get rid of Hitler. The assumption that a guerilla war would occur is also off base. France only needed to to stick her toe in long enough to shake up the German government.

 

[Zinegata]

"Stronger than ever" hardly qualifies.
At the similar numbers, German troops could`ve hold the Soviet front almost indefinitely in WW1, but collapsed in a space of less than 2 years in ww2.

And I see that you need to read up on the First World War and stop thinking that all of these British "tragedy of the trenches" dramas are historical fact; because that it just one tired myth that needs to die, along with the adjoining myth that tanks+aircraft reversed the equation and made the offensive the norm in the Second World War.

The Germans were never on the defensive in the Eastern Front during the First World War. In fact the First world War was never a defensive war with the exception of the Western and Italian Fronts from 1915-1917.

People keep forgetting that Germany conquered most of Belgium and reached the Marne in 1914, and almost reached Paris again in 1918. This is not an army on the defensive. Heck, if you knew anything about German tactical practice you'd know that even at the tactical level they relied on highly offensive tactics even when "defending" - their favored method being to leave a very thin line of initial defenses for the British/French to capture; which they crush with a massive counter-attack.

Meanwhile, in the East, you had utterly massive battles of maneuver and encirclement. Tannenberg keeps getting mentioned, but that's a pittance compared to something like the "dance" around Przemyśl - which were enormous battles of encirclement that the Brits and French don't like to mention because it shows people can in fact engage in a war of maneuver despite the supposed paralyzing power of trenches and machineguns.

Really, the only reason why the trenches and defense narrative persists is because of the British and French overdramatizing it as representative of the war (really, name the last First World War movie that actually featured Russians instead of Brits and French in the trenches); in large part to cover up their offensive plans were based on a lot of incompetent wishful thinking.

This is after all a French Army that believed "elan" made them bulletproof and a British Army whose commander believed he was ordained by God and yet couldn't bother to check if the 1 million shrapnel shells his army fired actually cut the barbed wire.

In short, the First World War actually taught the Germans that offense paid off. Which was disastrous when they started facing competent enemies who didn't simply break at the first hammer blow.

but look at the other side of things, how Both Germans and Soviets
could often break through the defenses in a meter of hours.

And if you were aware of real frontage issues you'd realize that in such fast successes the Soviets would pile as many as 5 Divisions for a 15km front, against which there would be only 1 German Division covering the same frontage, conferring a 5-to-1 advantage for the attacking side. If they didn't break through quickly, then the attacking side is about as incompetent as the Brits and French were in the First world War.

Meanwhile, the US National Guard battalion at Mortain faced an entire SS Panzer Division. Explain to me then - if the offensive was so powerful - why did just one battalion stop cold a whole Division?

Because really, the old 3-to-1 attack ratio still applied in the Second World War; and if anything it became even more of a necessity.

Now consider that in Battle of Kursk...

I have considered it, and unlike you I actually looked at the real battle instead of the fantasy version where the Germans "won" because of doctored casualty figures that keep getting cited by dishonest Internet myth-making sites.

Really, if the Soviets lost so much more than the Germans, why is it that the Soviets were able to immediately launched a counter-offensive and not the Germans? Why did the Germans lose ground - including pretty much all of the land they held after the "back hand blow" counteroffensive?

Even more importantly, a close reading of the battle would show that wherever the Germans encountered heavy defenses - mines, AT guns, and entrenchments - they were in fact stopped cold. The only time they really inflicted heavy losses on the Soviets was Prokorovka (which dishonest German-biased Internet "references" have attempted to conflate as representative of the entire battle) - where the SS Panzer Corps was on the defensive and trying to contain a massed tank charge. There is a reason why the Germans believed in "move offensively, fight defensively" - because even while they were addicted to offensives on the strategic level they realized it was still better to be on the defensive tactically.

Indeed, the numbers of Kursk are deceptive because the Soviets didn't need more men just to "defend" against the Wermacht. Instead, all the extra troops were there to make sure the Soviets could immediately go on the counter-offensive after the Germans had shot their bolt; and again the counter-offensive was hugely successful and pretty much drove the Germans out of all the territory they gained in Third Kharkov. This is again why shallow analysis that only looks at troop numbers and kill ratios is so deceptive and pointless. More often than not it's just cherry-picking - like claiming that a boxer won the match because landed a solid right hook when in reality that same boxer landed on the mat three seperate times and was actually TKO'd.

Nonetheless, none of this matters anyway since we're originally talking about France 1940, where again you're throwing out big words without knowing the reality is this simple:

Option 1: France keeps its forces along the Dyle, which thanks to the shorter line length means they get to keep 7th Army in reserve

Option 2: France advances to Breda, the extra length of line requiring the immediate use of 7th Army leaving France with no reserves.

That's the frontage issue. Shorter line and have a reserve, or longer line with no reserve. Pretending that overextending their defensive lines wasn't a big deal in a vain attempt to save Belgian and Dutch Divisions - none of whom by the way proved useful in containing the Sedan breakthrough - simply flies in the face of the facts.

When you lengthen your line, troops have to man that line. If your line is too long - more than your troops can hold - the result is that there are holes or weakspots in your line. Sedan was one such weakspot created precisely because the line was over-extended. All you're really doing is to find excuses for a blatant violation of this simple, unalterable "ruthless math" of war; which no amount of semantic gymnastics will alter no matter how many big words you use to try and pretend 1+1 = 3.

 

[Zinegata]

Nope, it is because looking at tanks is fool`s errant. Any kind of tank will be defeated without sufficient support, and with sufficient support, even relatively low quality tanks can do really well.
Armor is not the main weapon of armored division. Infantry is, and Germans enjoyed quite a superiority there for first months of Barbarossa.

That you cherry-pick this pointlessly, rather than make the very simple logical leap that "If the KV tanks had no ammunition, then maybe the infantry supporting them were in similarly dire straights", again simply demonstrates that you are engaging in semantic gymnastics and excuse-making rather than actually trying to divine the root causes of German success in Barbarossa.

Which again you seem to not want to find, despite it being presented right in front of you, because you don't like the simple reality that Germany was only successful in 1941 because "They sucker punched an unprepared enemy and mainly massacred enemy "troops" that were still mid-mobilization." Because then comparisons to how Pearl Harbor only worked because of the Japanese sneak attack are inevitable, which shows the German Army wasn't really that advanced and people are just subscribing to long-discredited propaganda.

 

[Zinegata]

If me, I would like to point out that even the German army leadership after the war conceded that if the Allies had made a serious offensive in September of 39 while the majority of the Germany Army was in Poland, there was next to nothing to stop them. The Saar Offensive should have turned into "The Turning Point of WWII," if the French had bothered to prosecute it.

It has to be noted that despite this concession we're still talking about an assault over the Rhine river, which is a formidable obstacle in itself and which in large part stopped cold the Allied advance in 1944 despite the German army being reduced to a shambles after Falaise.

The German military was certainly concerned by a possible French offensive through the Saar, but there is no guarantee it would have succeeded and the Germans could always just have sent back units from Poland; where they in fact posted more troops than they thought necessary to subdue the Poles because they were worried the Soviets might backstab them. Really, it was this worse-case scenario spectre that really worried Germany - not "We're busy in Poland and the French attack", but rather the really utterly hopeless combination of "We're busy in Poland, the French attack, and the Soviets backstab us" which is bad for Germany regardless of the order it happens in.

 

[jdavis86]

It has to be noted that despite this concession we're still talking about an assault over the Rhine river, which is a formidable obstacle in itself and which in large part stopped cold the Allied advance in 1944 despite the German army being reduced to a shambles after Falaise.

The German military was certainly concerned by a possible French offensive through the Saar, but there is no guarantee it would have succeeded and the Germans could always just have sent back units from Poland; where they in fact posted more troops than they thought necessary to subdue the Poles because they were worried the Soviets might backstab them. Really, it was this worse-case scenario spectre that really worried Germany - not "We're busy in Poland and the French attack", but rather the really utterly hopeless combination of "We're busy in Poland, the French attack, and the Soviets backstab us" which is bad for Germany regardless of the order it happens in.

Doesn't the Saar Offensive demonstrate the potential success of a continued assault? This was just another failure of the French high command. If you had competent leadership in place I think the French army could have made a breakthrough in Sept 39.