Yes I was very hesitant to liberate it, but in this case Germany and Russia were at a standstill, both trading back the Polish territories and the Soviets making the occasional excursion into Romania/Balkans. In this particular game Germany was able to take France right back, but at the expense of a giving up troops against the Soviets. It lost more in units than the 17 IPCs it gained from taking it. The Soviets captured Berlin two turns later with Paris still under German control. As the US had Japan blockaded, convoyed and strategic bombed, the game was over.
You set up a PBEM (play by email/forum - it’s an option on TripleA, on the right hand side) game. You need your opponent’s email address. And the games get saved/posted to the forum. Your opponent gets dice rolls emailed to them. Garg has a great TripleA setup tutorial posted. Maybe he can link you to the thread; it got me started easy peasy.