Best posts made by KaLeu

March 5, 1943: first flight of the Gloster Meteor, the Allies’ only operational jet plane during WW2, from RAF Cranwell.

December 17, 1939: Germany’s Admiral Graf Spee is scuttled by her crew outside Montevideo harbor. This famous German commerce raider had been so succesful in the preceding months that the British and the French sent more than 20 ships to track her down. That culminated in the Battle of the River Plate, in which Admiral Graf Spee sustained critical damage. They found refuge in neutral but Allied-friendly Uruguay, but with no hope of getting the ship repaired and the prospect of the crew being interned, Captain Hans Langsdorff made the decision to scuttle her.

January 12, 1945, saw the beginning of the Soviet Vistula-Oder offensive, led by the celebrated marshals Zhukov and Konev. The operation had been prepared for many months during which the Soviet amassed a force of such magnitude that Hitler refused to believe the incoming reports.

World War 2 was pretty much hopeless for the Germans at this time, but decisions made on either side would have a lasting impact on post-war Europe. Hitler had mostly lost his sense of reality and failed to order the trapped German forces in the Courland pocket home, where they could have helped defending; he even sent troops out to Hungary. Zhukov on the other hand, stopped the offensive at the Oder, just a bit over 40 miles from Berlin – but the Soviet front line had become dangerously extended, and he considered pushing on too dangerous.

They each had their detractors: Guderian fell out with Hitler about the failing defense and Chuikov with Zhukov about the stalled offensive. Plenty of room for alternative history writing: would the Soviets have been stopped before they reached the Oder if Guderian’s advice had been followed? Would they have taken Berlin if Chuikov had had his way?
The offensive was halted on February 2. Two days later, the Yalta conference started and all the decisions that would draw the map for decades to come were made.

I herewith confirm my continued existence.

‘Panther’ seems a logical successor to the preceding ‘Leopard’, but as far as animals are concerned, ‘panther’ isn’t a separate species - it’s a term often used for black leopards. And the official Latin names of all the big cats start with Panthera, including Panthera tigris. So from that perspective, a Tiger is a Panther.

August 21, 1942: German soldiers on Mount Elbrus, Europe’s tallest mountain. This was about as far as the German army would reach in the Caucasus. And the feat itself didn’t work wonders in German propaganda: Hitler was livid when he heard about it and thought it was a complete waste of time.

See https://europebetweeneastandwest.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/hubris-arrogance-on-europes-everest-mt-elbrus-a-metaphor-of-german-defeat-in-the-east/ for a recounting of this story.

August 29, 1944: American troops of the 28th Infantry Division march down the Champs Elysees, Paris, in the ‘Victory’ Parade.

From https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=825

@captainwalker said in On this day during W.W. 2:

(…) the airborne invasion of Holland (Operation Market Garden) (…)

Thanks for sharing this. However, Operation Market Garden didn’t happen in Holland, but in the eastern part of the Netherlands. Holland is in the west.

It’s a pet peeve of mine: ‘Holland’ is frequently, but inaccurately, used as a synonym for ‘the Netherlands’. Unfortunately, this happens so often that many people have come to believe that the two are actually the same. Even the Dutch government only recently stepped away from this habit.

Not precisely a day “during W.W. 2”, but nevertheless very relevant to it, was February 15, 1933. On that day, Giuseppe Zangara tried to assassinate president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, a mere two weeks before his inauguration. Zangara was a desperate man of doubtful psychological stability and blamed his difficulties on the rich and the powerful. He was also quite short and not in the front row, so he had difficult taking his aim with taller people standing in front of him, climbed an unstable chair, and missed Roosevelt. Mrs. Lillian Cross, standing in front of him, turned around to bravely grab the arm holding the gun, but while others rushed to overpower Zangara, he did fire four more bullets. Several people were wounded, among them Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago, who would die of his injuries a few weeks later. Zangara was initially convicted to 80 years in prison, but faced execution for murder a month later after Cermak had died.

Needless to say that history would have been dramatically different if Zangara had succeeded. That scenario has been the topic of speculation and fiction, most notably as the point of divergence in the well-known novel The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.

Aged only 51, Napoleon Bonaparte died on St Helena May 5, 1821. Arsenic poisoning has long been believed to be the cause of his death, but at present, the original diagnosis of stomach cancer is considered more likely.
Opinions on Napoleon’s many deeds and achievements will probably diverge forever, but if anything, he was a memorable figure.

I could try and say something intelligent about this myself, but there’s a vast array of well-documented posts on Quora about this: https://www.quora.com/If-Japan-had-attacked-the-USSR-in-1941-instead-of-the-United-States-at-Pearl-Harbor-would-the-USSR-have-been-defeated

Once the Soviets knew that Japan wasn’t going to attack (from the famous journalist/spy Richard Sorge), they felt safe to move troops from the East towards Moscow. Whether they would have done that anyway if Japan would have fought, is a matter of speculation. Maybe they would just have given up on that theatre in order to save Moscow - after all, the only real damage that Japan could have done, would have been the loss of a vast but sparsely populated and extremely remote part of Siberia that would have been a logistical nightmare to occupy.

January 2, 1942: 33 members of the Duquesne spy ring are convicted to prison terms in New York.

The Wikipedia lemma on Duquesne is worth having a look at. That man truly led a life of high adventure.

The US ‘Ghost Army’ was a unit specialized in deception: by building and operating mockups, they gave the Germans the impression of being a large army, drawing the enemy’s attention away from actual operations. They famously participated in Operation Fortitude in 1944, aimed at leading the Germans to believe that the allied invasion would occur somewhere else than it actually did. Later, they transferred to mainland Europe and continued to mislead the enemy.

Surviving veterans have now finally received their well-earned decorations.

October 10, 1945, saw the official abolishment of the Nazi Party. The Allied Control Council issued their Law #2 to formally end the existence of the NSDAP and 60 related Nazi organizations.

The full text of this law and other proceedings is available in this rather large scanned document.

Law #1, issued September 20, concerned the repeal of Nazi laws.

It’s a strange thought that Nazi law and Nazi organizations formally continued to exist for months after the war had ended, even if clearly inoperative.

C’mon, we can’t blame a man modeling himself after Charles de Gaulle for trying to make France a more important and interesting factor in the war! But now that we’re at it, let’s have the Dutch! and the Greeks, Yugoslavians, Poles! A separate Chinese communist faction, Indonesian freedom fighters, the resistance! And Finland of course, a separate Axis nation.

Seriously, from a gaming point of view, I agree that we don’t want to add more rules, and I also think that it’s slightly pointless to have France as a separate nation at all. It can never do much, and has no income…. no fun playing it. For simplicity, it could simply be removed, by just assuming that we would be a little bit further in the war.

They’re very nice, well done. But, a pet peeve of mine: the US flag is the current one. During World War 2, the 48 star flag was used because Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states.

Maybe my eyesight isn’t all that great, but I’m having a hard time seeing all the units at this resolution., especially the German ones. How many Germans are there in Eastern Poland? It seems to me like the Russians can hit that force, but I’m not sure, and I can’t readily distinguish the Russian planes either.
One thing I do see though, is a single Russian inf in Amur while there are also 12 Russian inf in Buryatia. I think that’s one too many?

@GrizzlyMan:

The Vikings were great at battling others and sacking villages, but they weren’t organized into empires, and their leaders made no attempt to form governments over the people.

On the contrary, Kings such as Harald Bluetooth and Canute the Great ruled large parts of Scandinavia and Great Britain. The last of the Viking kings, Harald Hardrade of Norway, launched a massive invasion of England, attempting to reconquer what he believed was rightfully his. He failed, but soon after, William the Conquerer was successful - and he was a direct descendant of the Vikings who had founded Normandy.
Men such as these definitely formed central governments and attempted to create empires, and often succeeded at doing so.
And how do I know all that? Well, apart from A&A, I also play Britannia!  :-)

@GrizzlyMan:

If they did form a central government, I’m sure they would have dominated Northern Europe and England for centuries

They did!

I have nothing against more realism, but in the end, it’s a board game. Game balance is extremely important because without it, the game can’t really be played. In a historically realistic setting in terms of forces and income, the Axis wouldn’t stand a chance.

So for a change like this to work, it would be necessary to avoid putting the Allies at a disadvantage, especially because consesnsu has it that they already need a considerable bid right now.

@Caesar:

What I want to test this by making Canada its own nation, combine UK’s income into one making London the capital. I want to buff the Canadian military by giving it a fighter, maybe one for two more infantry, putting one inf. in Hong Kong, two inf. in London. Canada will go last and France will go first, not sure on National Objectives yet.

So if I understand this correctly, you advocate abolishing UK Pacific in order to boost the UK’s income and compensate the UK for not having Canada’s 7 IPC? That change probably favors the Allies at least during the first few turns, but historically, it would ignore the significant contribution India made to World War II, so I’m not so sure about it from a viewpoint of added realism. And Canada would still need a bigger income than 7 - I suppose the easiest way would be to just upgrade a few of their home territories.

And by “France will go first”, do you propose that France will move before Germany, or just that France will move before Canada? France before Germany would be a major change and a big advantage to the Allies.

Natioanl objectives for Canada…. I’m thinking: 5 IPC for having a land unit in Normandy-Bordeaux. This would reflect Canada’s role in liberating Western Europe and from a game perspective, might provide the Germans with an extra incentive to kick the Allies out of Normandy-Bordeaux as opposed to just holding Paris.

Kudos to both of you for all your hard work and dedication over many years.