I have just been challenged to play this game by an anglophile who will certainly insist on playing Churchill, His Most Quotable Expectancy.
The fun part about playing World War Two games is that everyone secretly wants to be the Germans at squad to division level games, but the guys who really want to win always opt for playing the allies, because it’s like being the good guy in a movie—getting your ass kicked and then inevitably winning.
The fellow that designed this game, Mark Herman, is the best in the field—by far. The average age of simulation tabletop gamers is now over 50, so he will probably also be the last. If you have not played a game of this type, they really help you understand things from the perspective of the antagonists.
Note, that this grand strategic game gives away the fact that WWII was not in any way competitive, or ever in doubt from a global perspective. The only question was who would come out looking better: the Soviets or the Americans? While there are many games depicting close fought battles that could have gone either way, at the level of the major heads of state, the Axis powers were nothing more than the Globalist Thanksgiving roast beast that had been laid upon the table of destiny, with Churchill eying the great smoking carcass with an olive fork, while Uncle Joe Stalin sharpened his butcher knife, and that rich Yankee faɡɡot in the wheelchair had Ford Motors busy adapting a chainsaw that could be handled by the wait staff…
I’m a Joe Stalin fan myself. However, you have to love Churchill, who famously quipped that the Royal Navy was kept together “by rum, buggery and the lash,” and once wrote a poem about shooting Islamic negroes in the head with an automatic pistol from the back of a horse—which he actually did while taking part in the relief of Khartoum!
Note, that in the unit and marker setup phase about 14 minutes in, that the German Navy does not even get a marker—a sure sign that you are not a global force. The thing I like about this game design the most is that it confirms my long-standing suspicion that the War’s outcome being in doubt was something that only existed in the mythological realm, not the geopolitical one. Any member of the German General Staff could have run some industrial production and manpower mobilization calculations in an afternoon and known without a doubt that there cause was doomed back in 1937. Which begs the question: were the Nazis stupid, or insane?
Note: for those of you interested in the Middle East, take note of those two clandestine British influence markers in the Middle East and Persia. I think they represent the college graduates with a pencil, paper, and a bottle of gin that drew the map of that region at the end of WWI.
My pet rule is the Soviet general staff character who get to send other generals to the gulag!
Another thing to love about this hobby, is it is the last place other than boxing where racist assumptions are still tolerated in the public sphere, for, at such a scale, "national characteristics" really matter.
“To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!…Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.” - Winston Churchill
“What kind of people do they (Japan) think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?”- Winston Churchill
“Had I known they had as many tanks as that, I would have thought twice about invading.”- Adolph Hitler, (Speaking about the Soviet Union)
“Who are these Americans? All the others were such frightened children.”- Entry in Japanese soldier’s diary, Philippine Islands 1942
“Saying you want peace is inviting evil people to come kick your ass!”- Rush Limbaugh
Good question. Were the Nazi’s stupid? Not organically so, they simply believed their own mythology and propaganda too much. Like Leftists today do. The Nazi’s imagined their opponents to be decadent, cowardly, and not politically unified. As such their material advantages would be of little help to them against the Nazi’s technical skill and revolutionary zeal. The German’s initial victories certainly confirmed this notion in Hitler’s mind. The Japanese militarists were even more delusional. They believed that the Sun Goddess, Amerterasu, created the Japanese people to rule the world. Therefore they were unbeatable. They likewise believed their enemies were all decadent and cowardly. Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, tried to convince the Japanese ruling council that America would be no push-over once mobilized for war. However, they decided Admiral Yamamoto had gone “native” after living among the Americans for so many years as a naval attaché to Japan’s embassy and therefore was no longer an objective observer in that regard. Of course the Americans lacked heart! Their Congress had only reinstated their country’s first peacetime military draft after one year by a single vote after all. Such people, unwilling to serve their own country as they were, would surely capitulate after being given a bloody nose. Well in just about every war there ever was one side greatly over estimated its chances at winning.