Issue 70 (Fall/Winter 2011)

TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

WORLD WAR II ON THE EASTERN FRONT

Objective Sevastopol: A Review of GMT’s Barbarossa: Crimea, 1941-1942
by Jim Werbaneth

A Blitzkrieg of Quality: Tactics and Command in Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear, Russia 1941-1942
by Jim Werbaneth

Going Beyond the Classic: Eastern Front Grand Strategy in Russia Besieged
by
LTC Robert G. Smith

Big Box of Barbarossa: Early Great Patriotic War Tactics in Panzer Grenadier: Eastern Front Deluxe
by Jim Werbaneth

Ratifying Stalingrad: Why the Decision on the Volga Needed More to be Truly Decisive
by Jim Werbaneth

 

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The Bully Pulpit

by Jim Werbaneth

This is not just the seventieth issue of Line of Departure; it is the twentieth anniversary issue.  That is twenty years starting with dot matrix printers, CGA graphics, WordPerfect 5.1, 5.25” floppy disks, Zip Disk backups, and then working toward what you see here.  It has been that proverbial long, strange trip, sometimes with fits and starts, but one I consider well worth taking.
 
To mark the anniversary, I decided about a year ago to publish a special theme issue, on World War II on the Eastern Front.  Call it that, or call it the Great Patriotic War, it was the world’s largest and worst war, even without all the other theaters of the Second World War considered.  In addition, it pitted the two of the worst dictatorships of the twentieth century against each other; only Communist China compares to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in terms of long-term, mass murdering evil.
 
Yet the democracies of the West were forced into a Faustian bargain: To oppose one of the warring powers, they had to hold their proverbial noses and support the other.  It was not made more palatable by the fact that the USSR and the Nazis had spent a year and a half as allies, partners in the conquest and partition of Poland first.  Then came other aggressions, as each tried to expand its power in Europe.  Finally, on 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany turned on its erstwhile partner with Operation Barbarossa.  This did not exactly put the Soviet Union on the side of the angels, but at least it was forced into opposition rather than collaboration with Hitler.
 
Furthermore, the Eastern Front was the decisive one.  This is where the Wehrmacht committed most of its strength, won major victories, and then suffered its worst defeats.  Not just Stalingrad, but the failure of Operation Typhoon, the failed offensive at Kursk, and the great battles that eventually broke into the Reich’s borders, and then Berlin itself, all occurred in the East.
 
There is no doubt that the Great Patriotic War gave wargamers some of their most important games.  Like many others of my generation, Panzer Blitz was my introduction to tactical gaming.  Then Squad Leader began with battles in the streets of Stalingrad, played and replayed over the years.  When Advanced Squad Leader came out, it was with the Beyond Valor module and with it more urban combat on the Eastern Front.
 
On the operational scale, my entrée into this theatre of war came through SPI’s Karkhov, in Strategy & Tactics in 1978, practically wearing out my issue.  I returned to Avalon Hill for The Russian Campaign and Russian Front, and with them the Eastern Front on a strategic level.  Only later did I go back and play Stalingrad and the original SPI Barbarossa, and found them wanting.  Others have happy memories of these games, but I probably found them too late in life for that.


For all the wargame memories that we have, it is essential not to lose sight about what the Great Patriotic War was really about.  For the Soviet Union, it was a war of survival, pure and simple.  At the top it was certainly about the survival of the Communist regime, and its own network of gulags, torture and murder.  For the soldiers and civilians, it was no less of a literal struggle for survival; in the Nazi vision there was no place for such “inferiors” as the Slavs, even those predisposed to support the Germans against their own Communist oppressors.
 
On the German side, the war in the East was for living room, lebensraum, and against the Slavs, Communists, and Jews.  In Hitler’s vision, it was a struggle to exterminate one set of people and replace them with another.  War in the East was intended to make Germany’s future marches safe for genocide, and then German settlement of the now-empty black earth and industrial heartland of the former Soviet Union.  Any remaining Slavs would be present only as slaves.
 
Then there are the Jews.  I find it impossible to separate World War II in the East from the Holocaust; the first greatly facilitated the second.  I have said it for years, I will say it again: In Nazi Germany, killing Jews was Job 1.  Everything else either served that purpose, or came in second to making Europe judenfrei.  For all the avowed aims of the Nazis― restoring German power and pride, even peopling the plains of Poland, Ukraine and Russia with sturdy Germanic settlers― came back to the goal of exterminating the Jews.
 
As much as anyone, I enjoy games on the Eastern Front.  At the same time, I find it impossible not to see what was at stake.   Along the way, I grew a certain abhorrence of the Nazi glorification that has arisen in some quarters, an implicit agreement that it was ultimately a conflict of civilized Europe against the semi-Asiatic hordes of the East.  More accurately, it was a war of genocide and aggression against other civilized peoples, who happened to suffer under the yoke of their own monsters.  Even the monstrous nature of the Soviet system, and the great Stalin himself, does not change this, let alone excuse it.  Even so, one might hear a kind of wistfulness in some conversations about the war, regretting that the good guys did not win, as though there were any good guys on the Axis side.
               
So while we can all enjoy games on Russo-German war, it is doubly important to remember the history.  It is never value neutral, like some eighteenth-century contest between absolute monarchs.
 
I planned for a World War II Eastern Front theme issue of Line of Departure for a long time, years even, and with an idea of putting it into print to commemorate one of the magazine’s important anniversaries.  It was not in spite or in denial of the savage, deeply disturbing contest of the conflict.  Rather, it was because of it.  We can play games on the Eastern Front, we can have fun with them, but we should always remember what, in the end, they are really about.
 
So welcome to the twentieth anniversary issue of Line of Departure, and the seventieth as well.  I will admit that it took me a little longer than usual to get this into print; much of that was due to my determination to focus on one subject.  Most unusual, this is the second theme issue in a row; it is unlikely that that will happen again, not for a long while.  In the meantime too, I updated the Line of Departure Online Features web site (http://www.jimwerbaneth.com/online_features/index.html), and will continue to do so through 2012.  Last year I started adding more academic, serious features, written due to my teaching jobs, and growing out of history assignments in the graduate courses that I’m taking at American Military University.  I am not only a member of the faculty there, but pursuing a second MA degree, this one in military history, concentrating on World War II.  When I was in the banking industry, we used to call using the company’s own product as “eating your own cooking.”
 
For me, that means getting an advanced degree that I’ve wanted since I was in grade school, and as part of the benefits of my job, I can do that at no cost.  For you the readers, there are some benefits too.  The first is that I intend to share the best and most appropriate material with you, the readers.  In 2011 that was two articles based on papers submitted as class assignments, one on the historical accounts of the Battle of Shiloh, and the other an examination of how Winfield Scott’s Mexico City campaign of 1847 reflected the theories of Jominí and Clausewitz.  There is a third article too, this one on teaching military history in an undergraduate environment.  That was not written for a class, but was founded on my own experiences teaching at La Roche College.
 
I expect more of this in 2012.  More than that, the new features will be on World War II as well as other subjects.  Along with the new academic articles too, I expect to put more game features too; it’s been a while since I covered real time strategy games in Line of Departure Online Features, and perhaps it’s time to return to that genre.  Plus, there is always a call for scenarios, for everything.
 
So that’s where things stand right now.  What’s next?  Besides all that I mentioned above, I’m planning on at least another twenty years of Line of Departure.

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