Been playing Steel Division 2 lately and i've been thinking how utterly horrible the terrain is. >How do you even make an half an offensive in marshes and succeed? I would assume their tanks would just sink in to the ground like the kraut panzers desu>The positioning of the germans was fine, how did they encircle vitebsk and overrun the top units of army group center?>Soviet command being legendarily shit, how did they not fuck up?>Why did mines work in Kursk and not in bagration?Why didn't the Nazis retreat on a strategic level ie. make proper fallback defenses in around minsk with a southern focus while keeping AG north with the shittiest mobile divisions the wehrmacht has to offer so that they can elastically defend until they retreat?>Why didn't the Nazis counterattack on a strategic level? Imagine an assault from the south towards kiev or north towards Velikiye Luki with whatever was available instead of defending the forlorn fronts of romania where the troops would be encircled the moment the romanians turn. Velikiye Luki seems most promising>How did the commies get so many planes and how were they not shit like in 1941 if there were so many planes? Seemingly the commies built up their airforce from 1942 onwards while the krauts were getting mauled by allied bombings but that doesn't explain the effectiveness of soviet air attacks, i'd expect 6-1 kill ratio or something even if the krauts were outnumbered due to pilot experience trumping basically anything else regarding air combatDid Rokossovsky get help from aliens to blackmail stalin? How else could commies possibly make a component battle plan that worked
>>65397363Because Hitler got high.
>>65397363Soviets were always garbage at a tactical level but by the end of the war they were good at strategic level planning.Concerning the Germans, they got bamboozled hard and didn't see the offensive coming. Busch was on vacation in Germany, the mobile reserves were mostly facing Ukraine, air power in the sector was insufficient and Hitler jumped in to give retarded orders. The fact that Bagration didn't result in an even worse collapse is largely thanks to Model arriving in time to pull off some more defensive magic tricks.
>>65397363>How did the commies get so many planes and how were they not shit like in 1941 if there were so many planes?Better planes, better pilots and better tactics than in 1941. 1943-44 is a mystical time during which the Soviet air force performed comparably well. They somehow returned to being shit in 1945 again.German air power in the East was stretched very thin already with the bombing of the Reich. Normandy began sapping even more resources. Whatever they had in Belarus wasn't enough numerically and quality wise.>pilot experience trumping basically anything else regarding air combatYou see the problem is that not every German pilot in the East was Bubi. As great as Hartmann was, he couldn't be everywhere at once and unlike the US and UK the German pilot training program sucked.
>>65397363Alas there was nothing that could be done, the Russians were rushing B.
>>65397379>I was gonna save the Reich, but then I got high
>>65397381>Busch was on vacation in Germany This wasn't the only time a top commander being on holiday, far away from his command post, fucked shit over for the krauts. Were I Dulfi, I'd issue an edict banning travel holidays (where they are further than, say 100 km from their command post) for top commanders. If anybody were to complain I'd just say "hartes Scheisse, Neger, you're on call 24/7; don't like it, I have 2 other lower-level flunkies ready to take the job".
They called it......Bag......ration?
>>65397873After Prince Pyotr Bagration, a member of the Bagrationi Dynasty of Georgia, a very brave man but also notorious for losing his shit and famous for dying at the Battle of Borodino.Also fun fact, during the battle of Borodino the supposed commander of the Russian forces Mikhail Kutuzov and his deputy Levin von Bennigsen spent the battle in the village of Gorki where they took absolutely no part in the fighting. Tactical decision making fell the Pyotr Bagration and Barclay de Tolly, two friends who had a series of infamous screaming matches during the preceding campaign over strategy which lead to such a toxic environment the Tsar had basically no choice but to bring Kutuzov out of retirement, but were reunited by the need to save Russia and their contempt for Bennigsen*. Then the battle happened and it was fairly traumatic for all involved, not only did de Tolly's lose a good friend he had just settled an open wound with, but the Russian forces had suffered grievous casualties. The Russian army lost a third of it's strength killed or wounded in a single day with many divisions completely ruined by losses, almost all of their available ammunition had been fired off, and attempts by De Tolly to rally the army into a semblance of order were sabotaged by severe officer casualties. Unlike the modern army many Colonels and lower ranking generals in this crisis lead their troops from the front and stood their ground like General Alexander Kutaisov, the Russian chief of artillery, who was bayoneted at one his guns with a rammer in his hands covering the first retreat from the Great Redoubt until the last second. So at 1am an exhausted De Tolly finally limps in to Gorki to report to Kutuzov, and finds the fat fuck having a banquet with his staff celebrating a 'glorious triumph' that he, and definitely not Barclay or Bagration had won, which lead the poor man into an epic crashout that ended with him being physically dragged from the room and destroyed his career.
>>65397411>pilot experience trumping basically anything else regarding air combat>You see the problem is that not every German pilot in the East was Bubi. As great as Hartmann wasTalking about Hartman. When defending Romanian oil fields from USAF bombings he shot down two Mustangs and like in the third flight was chased down by Mustang squadron piloted by some noname American pilots.and was forced to bail out above his airfield. After he was transferred away from Americans, can't lose best ace, PR reasons.So no experience isn't everything, best fighter Ace in the world suddenly found himself hopeless when facing fighter crafts he couldn't outrun. These were not shitty Yaks and Laggs.
>>65397411>unlike the US and UK the German pilot training program sucked.Germany didn't have amount of avgas Allies had to deploy such large scale pilots training programs. Neither Germany had 100/130 avgas that allowed underpowered Mustangs to outrun enemies.
>>65398907Also to give some context as to why Bennigsen was despised by his commanders, he was an incompetent ass convinced that his shit didn't stink. He had a nasty habit of ordering units as small as an infantry regiment or up to an entire Corps to reposition on the day of or even during a battle without informing it's parent units leaving his subordinates wondering what the fuck happened to them, and had an extremely outdated idea of how battles should be fought. Armies under his command routinely had their reserves right up to the frontline which meant that any French cannon which missed the Russian front would send it's roundshot plowing through the columns waiting behind them, and in regards to Borodino specifically Bennigsen held nothing but contempt for entrenchments. It took De Tolly and Bagration days to convince Kutuzov to ignore Bennigsen and erect the entrenchments which would define the battle, and the only reason that the Battle of Shevardino had to happen was because by the time DT/P succeeded the French were at their doorstep. This meant that the Fleches and the Great Redoubt were pretty shitty since they were dug in haste and without shovels, the ramparts were barely waist high with embrasures so narrow that any gun placed within them were essentially fixed with no room to traverse, and were in fact were so bad that French cavalry were able to charge into both the Great Redoubt and the Fleches with barely any inconvenience. Even worse was that Bennigsen convinced Kutuzov that Napoleon would attack essentially from the North-East over the Kolocha River when they could see 7 of the 9 French Corps lining up at Shevardino to their East, and so the Russians began the Battle of Borodino with half their troops lined up along the banks of the Kolocha when almost all of the fighting took place south of them between Utitza and the Great Redoubt.
>>65398918>LaggYou could say the Russians were Lagging behind>third flightit took americans with superior planes, numbers, fuel and strategic initiative 3 flights of said superior planes just to force him to disengage. It's either that the 20th century French and German aces were so good that anyone else had to design specific ritualistic training just to hope to overrun them or just better pilots>>everything elsegiven the iranians managed to do a hit with F-5s and Mig alley after WW2 was skewed towards americans bleaching the opposition with mgs and worse acceleration, i'm on the latter
>>65398918>>65398907Quality Poastes like these make me think I should lurk /his/
>>65398930There were also fundamental flaws in its design stemming from pre-war ideas. The Allies would pull out experienced pilots and send them back home to train rookies in a safe environment. German aces flew until they died and were expected to pass on their experience under combat conditions. >>65397869If I recall correctly Busch even assured Hitler before his holiday that there was no chance the Soviets will attack army group center.
>>65399854>it took americans with superior planes, numbers, fuel and strategic initiative 3 flights of said superior planes just to force him to disengage.By Hartman own accounts in memoirs he missed deaths by skin of his teeth. Not just meeelrely disengaged. He run out ifof ammo and fueil abdand couldn't shaje chasers iffoff . He felt back tito his airfileld covered by AAA, but has feeling if he tries to land he becomes easy target for chasers and would be shredded, so he bailed out over middle of the air field and and his plane crushed. Sure his skills played large role , less skilled pilot would be simply killed in air combat with Mustangs long before that.But you can tease the death so much and he was transferred back to clubbing Soviet baby seals.Other German aces weren't so lucky. Read biographies if top aces, most of them read like"blah blah blah many panes shot down, transfered to Western front to deal with USAF strategic bombings, quickly after killed I'm air combat with escort fighters". And USA pilots doing that to vest German Aces had very small air combat wins records.]> It's either that the 20th century French and German aces were so good that anyone else had to design specific ritualistic training just to hope to overrun them or just Mind you how far Romania is. USAF fought against Germans at German home turf. Your plane got damaged you combat POW loss. When Germans fought in similar conditions (Battle of Britain) they quickly exhausted their recources. And Britain was much much closer. USAF establishing air superiority at such range and killing cream if the crop of German fighter pilots force on the way was completely unprecedent.
The Soviets had a 2:1 advantage on the eastern front by this point, and by bamboozling the Germans into thinking the next attack would be in Ukraine, were ahead of that in Belorussia, and then in some sectors they could easily get to 4:1+. They were even further ahead than that in terms of equipment. A majority of the Luftwaffe was now trying to defend against the West, new tanks were being diverted there, etc.From there it was basically Uranus/Saturn again except the trapped Germans were scattered across a half-dozen cities instead of just one, the Soviets had enough force to completely destroy their supply lines very quickly, and the Wehrmacht had nothing to spare to help them (well, they tried, but the Soviets just launched the Ukrainian offensive as soon as the Germans denuded their defenses down there to stem the bleeding up north)As for why Germany didn't abandon Romania and the Balkans, it's because Hitler was worried about a scenario resembling WW1 where Austria-Hungary's surrender deprived the Central Powers of desperately needed manpower while also guaranteeing the opening of another front that the Germans couldn't muster resources to defend without withdrawing enough from elsewhere to guarantee collapse in overall fighting capability everywhere. Overlord alone was already having this type of effect.As for why the mud didn't work, the Soviets were better at fighting in it. Their tanks, vehicles (lend-lease trucks), and other equipment simply worked better than the German equivalents. And Soviet air superiority let them fuck up the German supply chain without even having to worry about it.
>>65397363>Why didn't the Nazis counterattack on a strategic level? With what? Like, ol' Model had to basically pull another miracle out of his ass just to gather up enough useable units from the chaos to finally stop the Soviets outside Warsaw.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwB1Njcw0jw
During the battles along the Dnieper River in the latter half of 1943, the Red Army suffered a million casualties, but Germany, too, exhausted its capacity for counterattacks. Even as tank production accelerated, there was no longer any fuel to power them or skilled crews to man them.
I always thought a box or a tin made more sense than bag rations yet here we are.
>>65399854No, it's worse enemies >>> everything else. If you're a super skilled warrior fighting mediocre but competent soldiers, yor may win a few times but you're going to die soon because they have the training to make their numbers relevant. You can't outskill a team game.If you're super skilled but fighting retards, then you can slaughter them all.Same concept as GWOT infantry combat versus conventional war. The Russians were retards so someone who would be above average but ultimately just a human being against the West was a god among peasants in the East.
