I had an enjoyable exchange with OldCat some time ago.
In it he clearly articulated what I have thought for a long time about the importance of the Med and in particular the Oil & Egypt.
Any time I have the opportunity to explore the Allied and Axis options to go for control of the Med and therefore the Supplies and potential there I like to try it.
Here is what he had to say, and at the end if you care to share what games you think best highlight, present or provide an opportunity to explore this avenue?
I might try acquiring some and doing a series on this topic. Yay or Nay?
Oldcat States:
“The German army could sit on the canal, but the shipping to do much else was absent. Having Italy in the center pretty much blocked the Med as a shipping lane for transit, so convoys to feed England had to go around regardless of the state of the war. Once the war broadens from the one front in NA, even with success, the garrison requirements grow. The Brits could counter with a Torch operation, or by working up the Red Sea, or up the Persian Gulf though Iraq.
How is the DAK supposed to counter all of them?
With most of the Army busy in the USSR?
To do this, and/or a SeaLIon requires the Germans to build or fund quite a large navy and merchant marine. This effort would require other things to be scaled back, and time to get organized. And it would require risks of the kind that they didnt’ have much of a taste for – airborne ops and naval battles.
In the real war, the losses in Crete and Norway were too much to take.
But even in the case of a SeaLion, taking Med is a distraction. The forces would need to be on hand, not chasing about the Levant. Either you can swing the channel crossing or you can’t.
The loss of Egypt changes nothing either way.” Wavell himself realized that the Middle East was a center of Strategic gravity. He wrote: “Oil, shipping air and sea power are the keys to this war and they are interdependent”
Hitlers failure in his direct attack upon Britain, changed the line of operations. Hitler needed to conquer London, instead like Napoleon he chose Moscow! The direct attack upon London had failed.
My argument is that the indirect route to London lay via Egypt. This mitigates or even destroys the edge that Britain gains from her seapower. Without it she could conduct no operations. German control of NA, Malta etal, would enable her air power to bomb the daylights out of an Operation Torch. Torch was successful because the Axis failed to control the skies and the seas.
The British I think realized that NA was important, it took a while, but they developed an overall Med strategy so as to foil the Axis opportunity to ultimately control the air/sea and oil.
CNA was a battle ultimately of supplies. EVERYTHING had to be brought in. If full control of the North African coast was under Axis power then they could drive the agenda in other areas and ultimately press the British into a wholly reactive mode. The Allies had more to gain by being in control of the Northern coast. The Axis had a lot to lose by not being on control.
It lost flexibility, it had to now fight on another front, it had to supply under strain versus under control. If the allies had control they could regain some operational flexibility.”
Kev,
I am all for any content and gaming set in the Med as it is my favorite theater of the war. I would think Unconditional Surrender might be a good game to test the Med First theory or better yet Chadwick’s ETO series once the Med module is released.
That said, I don’t think Germany had the resources in 1940 after The Battle of Britain, a failed Blitz, and a cancelled invasion of England to pull off a Med First strategy. By then it was too late to ever negotiate with Britain. Germany’s air force was crippled, their aurora of invincibility was shattered, the English nation was incensed, and Britain had committed itself to a strategic bombing campaign. However, there might have been a better alternative.
Ultimately, Germany most needed to secure reliable access to food and oil to win a lasting peace. They could only get these through defeating either Britian or Russia. I don’t think they could have ever defeated Britian since it was backed by the Commonwealth and the US. However, a crafty statesman could have attempted to neutralized Britain.
If Germany had declared victory in June 1940 and then unilaterally withdrew from France, Norway, and the low countries, would Britian have been politically able to continue fighting or maintain a blockade? Particularly if the Blitz had never happened. This may have bought Germany a few years respite while it seriously prepared to face the real enemy, Russia, in 1943. If Stalin attacked Germany before that time, then so much the better. Russia would have revealed that they were more of a threat to peace than the Germans and would have forfeited the moral high ground.
Since a unilateral peace ploy never occurred in 1940, it may have been better to skip the direct cross channel war of terror with Britain and instead focus on a Med First strategy to help isolate Britain before facing a final showdown with Russia. It’s worth exploring!
AWESOME!
Good points.I agree in general. I suspect that Marks reaction did not help. Initially, he was very defensive. I don’t think GMT nor Mark are used to being called to account.
Marks got too used to releasing smart or clever games and being praised to high heaven – deservedly so. But this one is a hard-core gamers wet dream. The expectations were very high. Missing islands on the maps, a big no-no. The perfectionists and OCD got pretty spun up.
I do think the whole rage storm over artwork is silly. It’s a functional limitation of the then available artwork, but by the same token they did not seek art from anywhere else, and several free available sources have now arisen. So is that lazy, or not invented here syndrome? Or something else?
This is a massive game. excluding blanks 2598 counters. Over 700 [725-758 [i lost count] ] info markers of one type or another, loss markers, OSBs, base markers etc. That’s 27% of the counters. So if we take Marks declared # of erroneous counters and divide it by the net actual counters [ships, planes, infantry units] X/ 1873. That’s not a bad error rate.
The bigger issue is for me anyway the ‘3 rulebooks’, the scenario errors, and the obvious wording errors on some of the main bi-fold charts. Those just wont be fixed, and I simply stored the two spare rule books and set them aside, waste of paper for me in any case.
I think the storm in a tea cup has subsided, and errata stuff will be in C3i [which if I heard right will be very substantial, and beyond current expectations] . Thanks for reading!