Anti-Heavy Armour Tank

Carking the 6th wrote:

"the German soldier has astonished the world; the Italian Bersagliere has astonished the German soldier"

-Erwin Rommel

I bet the Senussi liked them as well..

GreatbigHippo wrote:

WednesdayAddams wrote:

Carking the 6th wrote:

Like that the hell does the Italian Besalgarliafjjfckskcjjsjcnsjx impressing the German soldier have to do with the game?

THHe what?

the Italian Besalgarliafjjfckskcjjsjcnsjx

"The German soldier has astonished the world, the Italian Bersaglieri has astonished the German soldier"

Carking the 6th wrote:

"the German soldier has astonished the world; the Italian Bersagliere has astonished the German soldier"

-Erwin Rommel

WednesdayAddams wrote:

GreatbigHippo wrote:

WednesdayAddams wrote:

Carking the 6th wrote:

Like that the hell does the Italian Besalgarliafjjfckskcjjsjcnsjx impressing the German soldier have to do with the game?

THHe what?

the Italian Besalgarliafjjfckskcjjsjcnsjx

what is a italian besalgarliafjjfckskcjjsjcnsjx

Carking the 6th wrote:

The use of chemical weapons wouldn’t really have been nearly as effective as you may think. Gas didn’t win ww1 for the Germans, same here. The power of chemical weapons is vastly overblown, as they will always be limited in scope and easy to counter by simply using the same thing. What I mean is that while it can be strong in a surprise attack, it’s not the best for a long term war. It may have helped with the early German attacks that succeeded anyway, but by the time of Barbarossa, the allies would have used it as well, and considering the main reason German gas was more effective was that the allies didn’t put much effort in actually advancing their own, I could see allied gas being as or even more powerful anyway. Fact is, gas won’t stop American bombers from flying over you and then gassing your cities into oblivion, and I doubt the Soviets wouldn’t see the Germans stockpiling and start making their own during the combined research efforts during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The best you’d get would be more dead people and Germany getting gassed like hell by the allies, especially the Soviets once they invade Germany.

Zaktty wrote:

Carking the 6th wrote:

The use of chemical weapons wouldn’t really have been nearly as effective as you may think. Gas didn’t win ww1 for the Germans, same here. The power of chemical weapons is vastly overblown, as they will always be limited in scope and easy to counter by simply using the same thing. What I mean is that while it can be strong in a surprise attack, it’s not the best for a long term war. It may have helped with the early German attacks that succeeded anyway, but by the time of Barbarossa, the allies would have used it as well, and considering the main reason German gas was more effective was that the allies didn’t put much effort in actually advancing their own, I could see allied gas being as or even more powerful anyway. Fact is, gas won’t stop American bombers from flying over you and then gassing your cities into oblivion, and I doubt the Soviets wouldn’t see the Germans stockpiling and start making their own during the combined research efforts during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The best you’d get would be more dead people and Germany getting gassed like hell by the allies, especially the Soviets once they invade Germany.

Even if they did use gas, say on the UK, everybody had a gas mask.

What does this have to do with a heavy arnor tank

GreatbigHippo wrote:

Zaktty wrote:

Carking the 6th wrote:

The use of chemical weapons wouldn’t really have been nearly as effective as you may think. Gas didn’t win ww1 for the Germans, same here. The power of chemical weapons is vastly overblown, as they will always be limited in scope and easy to counter by simply using the same thing. What I mean is that while it can be strong in a surprise attack, it’s not the best for a long term war. It may have helped with the early German attacks that succeeded anyway, but by the time of Barbarossa, the allies would have used it as well, and considering the main reason German gas was more effective was that the allies didn’t put much effort in actually advancing their own, I could see allied gas being as or even more powerful anyway. Fact is, gas won’t stop American bombers from flying over you and then gassing your cities into oblivion, and I doubt the Soviets wouldn’t see the Germans stockpiling and start making their own during the combined research efforts during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The best you’d get would be more dead people and Germany getting gassed like hell by the allies, especially the Soviets once they invade Germany.

Even if they did use gas, say on the UK, everybody had a gas mask.

That’s the thing with nerve agents. The gas masks would have been mostly ineffective.

WednesdayAddams wrote:

What does this have to do with a heavy arnor tank

fine, go ahead

we dont need a heavy armor tank anyway

Carking the 6th wrote:

Still, could you even use those strategically? I’m not sure if you can really mass produce Sarin and then use it in planes against cities or something. And would you even have enough to affect, say the huge and spread out red army?

Short answer is yes.

Britain, France and Germany all had strategic reserves of gas during the 1930s and the ability to use bombers to disseminate it above enemy cities. The Den Haag convention forbade its use but everybody kept stockpiles anyway.

H.G. Wells predicted in The Shape of Things to Come predicts that WWII would be fought largely with gas -- perhaps like views on nuclear weapons today. The British heavily invested in giving all civillians gas masks in 1939.

The main reasons it wasn't used were essentially a) in the British case, fears of mutually assured destruction (Bomber Command were apprehensive even about regular air raids at first) and b) Hitler personally forbade Germany to use the stockpiles since he was traumatised by a gas attack in WWI.

Japan (who only signed the Den Haag Treaty in 1980) had no such limitations and used it liberally on Chinese cities.

In most cases it was designed against unarmed civillians. So maybe not the entire Red Army, but certainly enough to commit horrible war crimes I don't want this game to trivialise by simulating.

Seeing as China ultimately defeated Japan, and the Soviet Union is even larger and more powerful than Germany, it still seems like it wouldn’t change very much. People would just gas each other into oblivion and the much smaller axis would break first.

Carking the 6th wrote:

Seeing as China ultimately defeated Japan, and the Soviet Union is even larger and more powerful than Germany, it still seems like it wouldn’t change very much. People would just gas each other into oblivion and the much smaller axis would break first.

Would Germany have won absolutely? No. Do I think it would be a significant enough point of divergence that, after that, Germany could have won? Yes.

makes sense

“Could Germany have won (even in part)?” No. They couldn’t have. They could take every population center west of the Urals, but that’s it. They’d still have to fight endless partisans and be bled dry while forces from the east (which would still have millions of people and considerable industry). More importantly they would have to win a war of extermination, which would be impossible. They would only accept total victory, which means your point about winning (but not absolutely) cannot really work. They wanted to wipe out practically all Slavs and both sides knew this and planned to fight to the death. With constant allied bombings and your already thin by even 1942 manpower being constantly bled by partisans, the German army would eventually collapse and be forced back. Germany at this point was simply too small and weak, and up against too many enemies to win the war in the war it was fought. You can’t hold onto a place 5x your size when you’re trying to kill everyone there as well.

As for Soviet Industry… well…

That’s kinda debatable, considering the overall numbers. Also factor in that lend lease (4-10% of Soviet equipment in the war came from it, though almost completely after 1942) may have been increased if push came to shove and the Soviets started breaking. At the end of the war the USSR still had 11-14 million soldiers, combined with about 5 million allied forces in Europe. Germany mobilized a total of 13.6 million in the entire war.

Could the Germans have won if they were not Nazis? Maybe, they could work with anti-Soviet populations, and not waste resources on genocide, or throwing out crucial Jewish industry and scientists that could have helped them, etc… but WW2 as we knew it could now have been won by the Germans. If they went for Moscow and took it, they would just be forced back as the Soviet industry and Caucasus oil is still safe. If they went for Stalingrad? The Soviets would have sabotaged the oil fields, and by the time the Germans could get them online, kick them out. They could rely on a mix of reserves, Siberian fields and American oil until it’s taken back. It goes on. The Germans were out of offensive potential by the time Stalingrad was over, and could never go on the offensive again. Their forces near Moscow were stretched out. My point is that they couldn’t take all 3 of those cities as they simply didn’t have the capability against the rapidly regrouping Soviets, and could only desperately try to take one. They tried Stalingrad in our timeline and didn’t come close. Moscow wouldn’t save them, and Leningrad was cut off and not of use to the Soviets at that time. I just can’t imagine a WW2 as we know it where they win, the odds are stacked too far against them and they have practically every disadvantage possible by 1942. GERMANY COULD NOT WIN

Carking the 6th wrote:

Could the Germans have won if they were not Nazis?

Exactly. They threw out millions of Jews, including prominent scientists who helped the allies, destroyed Jewish business which contributed to the economy, and brutally suppressed and pillaged Europe, and while slave labor made up 1/4 of the economy later on in the war, it had long since been lost by then. The Germans could have saved endless resources had they done the bare minimum and treated their conquered people with respect. You could pull a move like modern Germany and make Europe economically dependent on you, or at least very interwoven with Germany at the center. Freeing Ukraine, the Baltics and others when occupying them would grant you less partisans and more anti-communist recruits, etc. I’m just blabbering on and it all is still not the most likely thing, but still, would turn out better, ironically.