Idea: Volunteers

[Alex_brunius]

I propose a mechanic to handle volunteers.

These are troops from other nations that are neutral, friendly or close in Ideology.

Depending on these factors I suggest that you could get a small share of their manpower (5-10% max). The requirement is that you are engaged in a war.

Another factor that could contribute to how many volunteers you get could be the size of "your" ruling political party ideology in that nation.

Once your manpower gained from the volunteers reach say for example 10 you could unlock a suffix to your next land or air division produced saying "43:ed division 'norwegian volunteers'. or "13:th fighterwing 'american volunteers'."

This would most likely mean that the list of flavour callsign division names need to be made more flexible/dynamic to incorporate for example volunteers as they appear and that the list of suffixes/callsigns is separated from standard list of names.

I belive this would bring a little more meaningfullness into diplomacy / espionage. As Japan I could for example spend alot of dipomatic and espionage efforts on befriending manchuria and siam hoping to get loyal volunteers into my real army instead of almost useless expeditionary forces. It would also motivate you to influence neutral nations and give some substantial reward even if you can't manage to get them to join the alliance. Volunteers from Sweden fought in both the Finnish vinter war and the wehrmacht.

 

[Zelino]

I like it

 

[Myth]

But how many instances of volunteers were there, really? Sure, Swedish volunteers to Finland during the Winter War and apparently also to Germany during WW2. Enough to fill out entire divisions? I find that hard to believe. Spanish "volunteers" fought on the Eastern Front, yes, and a whole division of them. That, however, is clearly more like an expeditionary force from a friendly, but not allied, power. The greatest instance of volunteers would be the Spanish Civil War, with entire volunteer brigades fighting for the Republicans, but would such a volunteer system be worth it just for that? I dunno. There were volunteer pilots too, but enough to make entire air units? Probably not. I just don't see this as being terribly worth the effort.

 

[Easy-Kill]

But how many instances of volunteers were there, really? Sure, Swedish volunteers to Finland during the Winter War and apparently also to Germany during WW2. Enough to fill out entire divisions? I find that hard to believe. Spanish "volunteers" fought on the Eastern Front, yes, and a whole division of them. That, however, is clearly more like an expeditionary force from a friendly, but not allied, power. The greatest instance of volunteers would be the Spanish Civil War, with entire volunteer brigades fighting for the Republicans, but would such a volunteer system be worth it just for that? I dunno. There were volunteer pilots too, but enough to make entire air units? Probably not. I just don't see this as being terribly worth the effort.

Just an event which increases manpower on the defeat/annexation/puppetization of an ally.

 

[Myth]

But we have governments-in-exile now.

 

[Oddb@ll]

Well I for one see the historical benefits of this idea.

The german war machine in their campaign against the soviet union needed as many able bodied men as possible to send to the front. They sought to create an image of a modern "crusade" against the bolsheviks in the east and the propaganda was all over the place. In some places the message got through, volunteers enlisted. The Wehrmacht itself could not use these foreign men, but the SS gladly did so. In the SS one could find, norwegian, belgian, french, swedish, danish, brittish, indian etc troops troughout the war.

So the idea is not "ahistorical", not at all. There are probably more examples but this I find particularly good since it contains such a wide variety of nationalities.

 

[Myth]

So the idea is not "ahistorical", not at all. There are probably more examples but this I find particularly good since it contains such a wide variety of nationalities.

No one is arguing that the idea is ahistorical, just that it isn't really worth it as there aren't enough major examples.

 

[MannheimCouncil]

Well, the obvious example would be the Spanish Civil War, where a lot of volunteers fought on both sides. I don't mean the thinly disguised expeditionary forces of Germany and Italy, but the people who joined up individually.

I think Alex_brunius's approach makes a lot more sense than having events that give you whole divisions without asking for anything in return.

It also makes a nice complement to expeditionary corps from friendly powers.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Well perhaps I should change the "Once your manpower gained from the volunteers reach " To "If you manpower gained..." to better reflect the situation.

In most cases this would be a very minor flow thats not enough to fill an entire division, I agree with this. And in equally many cases the volunteers would be spread out in ordinary fighting units. But by having the mechanic there in the first place we allow for dynamic flows of manpower that otherwise is missed.

The research for Volunteers in the German army automatically brings us to their Waffen-SS where all volunteers ended up no matter nationality. If im not totally missinformed they had alot of foreign volunteer divisions such as:

5th "Wiking"
11th "Nordland"
15th "Lettische Nr. 1"
19th "Lettische Nr. 2"
20th "Estnische Nr. 1"

And the list goes on. Each of these were full divisions with 15-20 thousand men. I belive that Germany in total had foregin volunteers of well above 10 divisions active, a quite substantial force.

To really develop this Idea though you would have to implement a system where all volunteers (foreign and domestic) are used to make up a separate kind of divisions. With separate volunteer manpower pool and all, and that might be a littlebit to much detail.

 

[unmerged(56754)]

The SS divisions manpower, in HOI terms, comes from the small amount of manpower you get from occupied territories.

Yes, many volunteers did fight, but hardly ever in division size.

One could argue that the volunteer manpower is abstracted in the manpower gain you get.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Well some other examples then. The flying tigers were american volunteers making up one full airwing in China.

Wiki:

"Chennault spent the winter of 1940–1941 in Washington, supervising the purchase of 100 Curtiss P-40 fighters (diverted from a Royal Air Force order) and the recruiting of 100 pilots and about 200 ground crewmen"

The number of Swedish volunteers in the winter war was above 8000 even if the war only lasted a few months. This also brings us to a modification of the suggestion. To allow volunteers an official diplomatic agreement would probably be required. I have a hard time seeing anyone recruiting in a foreign nation without it.

I realize this thing is very tricky to represent dynamically but if possible that would be awesome

 

[unmerged(47582)]

Look this could be a good idea for international brigades, not divisions from each country.

Just look at it like in the SCW.


But then again i never understood why people would Volunteer for a war that is not even in there "part" of the world...

 

[Orthank]

I might be wrong but all in all something like half od Waffen SS divisions were made from foreign volunteers.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

I might be wrong but all in all something like half od Waffen SS divisions were made from foreign volunteers.

You're wrong

Most SS-divisions consisted of Germans or 'Volksdeutsche' (Germans living in other countries like Hungary or Romania).

Even divisions that did contain a large group of foreign volunteers had a large proportion of Germans in them. And a majority of the SS Volunteers divisions were divisions in name only.

 

[Eams]

But how many instances of volunteers were there, really? Sure, Swedish volunteers to Finland during the Winter War and apparently also to Germany during WW2.

The 200 swedes in the SS and Wehrmacht hardly needs to be simulated, but the thousands of Irish who either fought for the UK (about 40000?) or worked in its wartime economy just might.

 

[Myth]

The 200 swedes in the SS and Wehrmacht hardly needs to be simulated, but the thousands of Irish who either fought for the UK (about 40000?) or worked in its wartime economy just might.

See, I didn't know about these Irish. Add them as manpower to Belfast?

 

[Eams]

See, I didn't know about these Irish. Add them as manpower to Belfast?

Yeah, that won't lead to any angry players
Still, the fact that such a low number of both Swedes and Swiss fought for the nazis while such a large amount of Irishmen fought for the UK does give some credit to the OP's suggestion.
Now, how to handle all those sailors wanting to get revenge on the Nazis for sinking them...

 

[Markusw7]

I just checked up about the Irish volunteers and there were apparently 70000 while northern Ireland apparently only contributed 50000 troops.

 

[Black Lotus]

The only problem I can see is if they ever formed seperate division sized units, rather than just get placed in smaller regiments not represented.

 

[Bullfrog]

Surely this will remain similar to HoI2 with foreign manpower...though the idea itself is kind of cool.

What I would like is a foreign recruitment option in diplomacy instead of foreign manpower. So I can tell norway to recruit a brigade. This might well create problems with the occupied nation, or, if there is a large portion of NS (Nasjonal Samling) in Norway, there would be a mp free brigade every once in a while.

Unfortunately, I doubt this will be in HoI3. Oh well. Maybe next time.