Allied Invasion of Europe Strategy, Anzio, Normandy...

[Dinner]

Lots and lots of infantry solves the soviet's problems.

[faded glory]

Never solves mine. They just cut through my 40 stacks of Conscripts/Tanks in each province bordering poland. Then behind it I usually have 3 distinct "Revolutionary Gaurds" army groups with about 15 armored/mech divisions commanded in each by Zhukov, Chukov, Temshenko. And on each Star city I have 10 more infantry. And then leningrad usually has alot of conscripts too.

Usually what happens is they invade in march/april 1941
Cut up and incircle the whole armies bordering. I try to Counterattack With Gaurds armored I get some success. But they just envolope the gaurds to. Usually by winter they have Moscow.

edit i guess another factor is lack of good tanks. FYI, I usually have BT-5/7 about 41, only the gaurds with the 3 good generals have them (I havent figured out the TT for T-34 yet! More annoying aspects of the game) everyone else just has like T-27 and Pre war stuff.

[Ned]

In retrospect, we should have taken out Japan before taking on Germany. It would have been nice for Hitler to wipe out communism before we wiped him out.

[Dinner]

Hitler was losing quite well before we pushed him off a cliff.

Research infantry and field medicine then build stack after stack of infantry (not constripts) and fortresses if you can. Lastly, if he goes to sorround a group of forces then pull them back. Never let him cut off and destroy your forces. Make him fight them the hard way.

[Lancer]

How about invading in '43? Screw Italy, go into Normandy or Brittany.

Grab Brittany, lightly defended. Then when they pull the forces out of Normandy to reinforce Brittany, do a second invasion in Normandy.

An invasion in '43 would give time to liberate europe before the Russians arrived. Also, German forces were much deeper in Russia in '43, taking longer to redeploy west.

---

What game are you guys talking about?

[CerberusIV]

I haven't played HOI so I can only comment on the real shooting match.

Main reason for Normandy - airpower. Lots of airbases in southern england. If you have a copy of Panzer General try the Anvil invasion. The biggest problem is shifting your airpower close enough to southern France to get much from it.

Eastern Front. The Soviets relied on 500,000 trucks through the war to shift supplies to the front line. Don't forget they had to stockpile a lot of munitions before each major attack. 440,000 of those trucks came from the USA. If the Soviets had had to build those trucks themselves they would have had a lot fewer T34's and might not have been able to overcome the Germans.

[Lancer]

What does HOI stand for?

[Jeltz]

HOI = Hearts of Iron.

[Cruddy]

For D-Day, I would have insisted the US take some of the "Funnies" (AVRE's) to Omaha. Hell, I'm sure they could have improved the design and built much better versions - but they thought it was a dumb idea and stuck with just the Duplex Drive Shermans instead. A helluva lot of GIs died because of this. Preventable and tragic.

For Anzio - not enough boats and a slow break from the beaches. It wasn't a terrible plan, but they didn't have enough logistics to push off the beaches quick enough. I suspect they couldn't have got more landing craft there - so my observation probably isn't relevant.

[Myrddin]

Anzio should have worked, but General Mark Clark intervened - told the commander not to take risks, because the Salerno landing had nearly failed, except that Anzio really needed an aggressive push from the beaches to make it effective

Mark Clark also decided to captutre Rome rather than destroy the German army, so extending the war in Italy

All plans for invasion prior to'44 suffered from lack of landing craft; the original time for the '44 invasion was a month earlier and would have had 1 less divison because of the shortage of landing craft. If the May invasion had gone ahead it would have been much tougher and might even have failed

[Tattila the Hun]

I'd have given Market Garden the support it deserved.

[Serb]

Re: Allied Invasion of Europe Strategy, Anzio, Normandy...

Originally posted by Lancer
Remember, your beloved allies, the Russians, are fighting for their very existance...

I wasn't in aware that invasion of Normandy was in 1941. Oh ... you are an American. It explains everything. I bet you believe that you- Yanks saved our asses and that if not you Russians would spoke German now.

[TheStinger]

Of course some countries were helping the Germans invade Poland.

[Serb]

Originally posted by David Floyd
However, that aside, the biggest thing I would have done differently is driven across as much of Germany and Europe as possible to keep the Soviets from getting it.

You had opportunity for this, but for this you had to invade in 1941 and fight vs. the bulk of German forces.
But you preferred to seat across the ocean and watch how Russians and Germans weaken each other in bloody struggle. What have you done to grab entire Europe? Perhaps you defeated bulk of German forces? Perhaps you lost millions in this war? Perhaps it was your country which was completely burned by this war?
You disembarked only when it was clear that Russians will be in Paris if you wouldn't.

[Serb]

Originally posted by TheStinger
Of course some countries were helping the Germans invade Poland.

[Finnish defense mode on]
To return that part of Poland which Poles stole from us.
[Finnish defense mode off]