"Simulating blitzkrieg" Topic

The essence of blitzkrieg was the ability of the Germans to communicate information up the chain of command and decision back down it more quickly than their enemies. I've thought of a possible way to simulate this. I'd like your thoughts on it.

The essential mechanism is a break between the players making the decisions and the ones moving the figures on the table. Then all you have to do is delay the movement of information and commands for the Allies more than for the Germans -- so that the Allied decision-maker is, say, getting last turn's info, and the figure-mover is getting last turn's orders, etc.

One way would be for a judge or game-master to actually move the figures and feed info to the "players," who would not have a view of the table. (This is, in essence, how a group of us run games online, but we have not incorporated the delay idea.)

Another way would be to have 2 players (or 2 types of players) on each side -- one type to actually move the figures on the table, but only in accordance with the orders they receive; and one type, out of sight of the table, to receive info from the others and to send orders back to them. The decision-makers would not even have to be in the same building. They could be connected only by phone or email.

This might not be appropriate for skirmish games, but definitely seems appropriate for battalions and up. Not sure about platoon and company levels. Also, it probably would not be appropriate for after 1942, as the Allies got better and the Germans lost their edge. You could also play around with exactly how long the delay is, both up and down the chain of command.

Thoughts?

There was a thread recently on the Napoleonic Discussion board regarding the playability of Waterloo as a scenario where one or more posters touched upon this very same issue, albeit in a different historical period.

One poster suggested, to simulate the differences between the French and Allied command and control, that the player taking the role of Napoleon should be locked in a separate room to the game, and the French players can only communicate with him by passing notes under the door. However, due to the time delay between Napoleon responding to the notes and the progression of the game turns, his information and orders would inevitably be out of date. Wellington on the other hand is allowed to be in the same room as his generals and game board, and can communicate with them at will.

Regards,

Paul F

I Ain't Been Shot Mum does a pretty good job given the limitations of "constraining the omniscient 100 foot tall general" inherent in any wargame.

You might want to look at their mechanism(s).

Spearhead (and probably some other games) uses the more conventional approach of written (or in this case actually drawn on a map) orders. Tactical flexibility of different sides is then represented by the ease of changing orders, with units continuing to stick to their orders until player manages to succesfully change orders. While players may have omniscient view over the gaming table, they may not know their opponents orders and may not be able to adjust their own orders as they wish. This approach of course requires gentlemanly approach (or a GM) to keep the orders secret.

Another approach could be a system where you can automatically change orders, but you will need to do it a couple of turns in advance – and this time difference could vary depending on the tactical doctrine of the army in question. This still gives players omniscient view over the battle, but they will still need to plan for what happens in future.

If you want to get rid of the omniscient view, then you will probably need to lock the commander in a separate room, though this might make the game pretty boring for him, not getting to enjoy any visual spectacle that might be taking place on tabletop.

Fairly simple idea. You mention Blitzkrieg so lets use French and Germans 1940. Prior to the start of the game have the French player write unit orders for turns 1 and 2. The French player moves first. Then the German player moves but not bound by written orders. At the end of turn one the French player now writes orders for turn 3, he will have to execute turn 2 order already written in the next turn. This would represent the rather inflexible system and lag between headquarters and units for the French and give the Germans the tactical flexibility.

One would use common sense. If, for example, the French have ordered an attack on turn 1 and it is thoroughly disrupted then should allow a retreat, within limits, instead of a turn 2 which had an order of continuing that particular units attack.

As Marc33594 says, have one side plot moves one turn in advance and have the other side move after side one has moved.

"The essence of blitzkrieg was the ability of the Germans to communicate information up the chain of command and decision back down it more quickly than their enemies. "

Nope this is NOT the essence of Blitzkrieg!
"The essence of a Blitzkrieg is the strategy of early decisive victory inorder to prevent a escalation of the war. " de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzkrieg

Very simple if you want to play a real blitzkrieg in 1940: give the allies a hexmap and the germans a area map for strategic movement. Let they allies hand in a gameturn every 3 day and the germans 2 turns per day.

Just play a campaign with two differant set of rules… This is the succesfactor if the blitzkrieg is executet beyond the realisation if the enemy… Therefore the speed must be for him unconsivable….

If the allied players walk away from the campaign and call it with worst game they ever palyed and the rules sXXX and you have simulated the essence if a blitzkrieg.

Greetings

Rudi may have it. You pick your most conservative cautious general and give him the allies and you most gung ho but able general on the other. You will get a realistic game but as rudi said not in the set of interesting games. The other issue is that the game needs to be accurate enough to actually model supply points so that the germans overun supply bases so that isolated troops become worthless. Many supposed big games do not adequately represent the supply situation which become an issue at battalion and higher games.

You also need to model air power. Many of the French tanks were destroyed by dive bombers while still on train cars.
But as Rudi says, the main thing is decision loop time; the Germans had a much shorter decision cycle, so the French and British were constantly trying to fight a battle over a place that had already been overrun.

'Bitzkreig' is more of an operational concept than a tactical one, so you need to be looking at formation level actions (division and up) to really pull it off.

As above, the simplest mechanism is to impose an order-execution delay for the slower side. It works very well and is exactly what Jim Wallman did for his France 1940 megagame.

An alternative approach is just to give the formations differing capabilities, which is what AHGCs 'France 1940' did.

As UshCha says, you need to be able model the dislocation caused by the indirect approach, otherwise all that exciting breakthrough & cut off stuff becomes a little pointless.

Boardgames have various mechanism to model this, which are all applicable to higher level miniatures games. In my own operational rules, isolated formations can only stay where they are or retreat, once they have exhausted they inherent supply capacity. The latter is measured in days though, not hours.

I once played a France 1940 game with Command Decision, we had a division on each side and one player from each team sat in a room opposite us with maps of the battle, and little fridge magnets to represent units. At the end of each turn we reported our progress to our commander and he issued new orders using his info from the players alone and the map. The Germans reported every turn. The french every 2 turns. It was really really cool and gave an interesting take to the game. It was fun for one game, but I'd get bored fast if it was every game.

Blitzkrieg Commander does a pretty decent job of simulating the effects of blitzkrieg in a miniatures game. The early war Germans typically get multiple moves/shots to the early war Allies one.

It seems at the small scale tactical level most gamers enjoy that Blitzkrieg era battles don't work right. The German Army is not enough better technically or in morale and experience than the better French units.

My impression is that as you move 2-3 levels up to regimental or brigade level that the German edge really kicks in.

It's difficult to game in part because the Allies don't want to fight with the historic problems and many players who like to use German units don't like having inferior tanks (in some ways at least) and no big advantages at the tactical level.

It ought to be interesting but it seems never to work terribly well with typical groups of gamers.

"The essence of blitzkrieg was the ability of the Germans to communicate information up the chain of command and decision back down it more quickly than their enemies. "

Nope this is NOT the essence of Blitzkrieg!
"The essence of a Blitzkrieg is the strategy of early decisive victory inorder to prevent a escalation of the war. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzkrieg

You are talking about what it was meant to accomplish; I'm talking about how it did it -- which, everyone seems to agree involved getting inside the Allies' CCC loop.

Skarper: Good point. Perhaps the solution at tactical levels it to not give the Allied player( s ) any tanks or anti-tank weapons ( or, at least, not many ) , as those haven't got the word yet. To a guy with just a rifle, even a Pz I looks pretty mean.

Indeed – I played an SL scenario once and the Germans had two Pz I with MGs only while the Poles had a lone ATR!

Is that the one with SS LAH running across to the hill from the woods?

I suppose that is one of the ironies, at company level there isn't much to choose between a French or a German infantry company, let alone a Somua vs a Pz 38.

Bump it up to division level and suddenly you've got 300+ panzers supported by two rifle regiments and half the Luftwaffe attacking on a 4km frontage against one hapless French infantry regiment with the same thing happening to their mates on each flank and before you know it the panzers are all over the gun line and on their way to Paris.

Concentration of immense violence on a narrow front and over the full depth of the enemy position, to paraphrase Guderian.

donlowry wrote:

Rudi the German wrote:

donlowry wrote:

"The essence of blitzkrieg was the ability of the Germans to communicate information up the chain of command and decision back down it more quickly than their enemies. "

Nope this is NOT the essence of Blitzkrieg!
"The essence of a Blitzkrieg is the strategy of early decisive victory inorder to prevent a escalation of the war. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzkrieg

You are talking about what it was meant to accomplish; I'm talking about how it did it -- which, everyone seems to agree involved getting inside the Allies' CCC loop.

The Germans did not achieve greater tempo through faster message-passing, though -- one of the things consistently misunderstood in recent British and American attempts at digitization of the battlespace. They did it by means of "Auftragstaktik", that is, stating overall missions to be achieved, and leaving the subordinate commander to decide for himself how to achieve the mission. As characterised in Martin van Creveld's book "Command in War", this means higher commanders tolerating greater uncertainty at the higher echelons of command so that the junior commanders can operate with less uncertainty. Since the junior commanders are being trusted to get on with it, a lot of communication that would occur using "Befehlstaktik" ( telling people how to do everything, as well as what to do ) becomes simply unnecessary.

How to show this on the wargame table is a bit of a puzzle, at least until our toy soldiers can develop some initiative of their own.

All the best,

John.

The Germans did not achieve greater tempo through faster message-passing, though -- one of the things consistently misunderstood in recent British and American attempts at digitization of the battlespace. They did it by means of "Auftragstaktik", that is, stating overall missions to be achieved, and leaving the subordinate commander to decide for himself how to achieve the mission. As characterised in Martin van Creveld's book "Command in War", this means higher commanders tolerating greater uncertainty at the higher echelons of command so that the junior commanders can operate with less uncertainty. Since the junior commanders are being trusted to get on with it, a lot of communication that would occur using "Befehlstaktik" (telling people how to do everything, as well as what to do) becomes simply unnecessary.

How to show this on the wargame table is a bit of a puzzle, at least until our toy soldiers can develop some initiative of their own.

I think that's where the gamer needs to fudge a bit. If you are playing a game that doesn't necessarily allow every unit on the table to move and shoot every turn, I think you will need to give the German more 'orders' than the French/Polish/Soviet opponents.

And then on the flip side, after mid-1944 you can give the Allies lots more orders than the Germans.

I'd probably run with roughly equal numbers of orders for the 1942-43 period, and start giving the allies more orders than the Germans with Operation Husky.

Valid point, John D, but wasn't part of it also the German commanders' tendency to lead from the front instead ensconcing themselves far in the rear? And greater use of radios, at least in the panzer divisions.

donlowry wrote:

Valid point, John D, but wasn't part of it also the German commanders' tendency to lead from the front instead ensconcing themselves far in the rear? And greater use of radios, at least in the panzer divisions.

There's that too -- obviously it's easier for the Division Commander to tell his lead company what he want them to do if he's right there with them. I think a lot of what is described as Situational Awareness, when it works, is not having fingertip control of the whole battle from main HQ, but appreciating where the crunch is going to come so that Sir can place himself at the critical point to exert personal command. As John Keegan has it in "The Mask of Command", "Forward to command, backward to control".

Of course having Sir off roaming at the sharp end means that you have to have crash-hot staff officers to run things while he's away.

All the best,

John.

If you want to represent it as a tactical concept then don't allow the allies to move for the first couple of turns and delay their reinforcements arrival times. The German player would be aware of these penalties. The Germans should also outnumber the allies. This should allow the German player to concentrate his forces. The overall German commander should give more broad orders while the overall allied should be required to give very specific ones.

I'm currently reading The Rommel Papers edited by Liddell Hart, and most of the time Rommel was pushing through at the start of the French campaign his wireless was out of communication.

He could direct the units he was with, but had no real idea of where the rest of his division was. In his drive to Le Cateau (17th May) he assumed the rest of the division was following his lead elements (one Panzer and one Motorcycle batttalion), but in fact they were well behind and when he realised this had to form up a hedgehog defense. He then backtracked (in his signals vehicle with one PzIII as escort), all the way back to Avesnes (the PzIII dropped out with mechanical trouble before the reached Maroilles), dodging French forces all the way.

At one point, later, he gets shelled by his own heavy artillery (and narrowly avoids injury) and there are a lot of close run tank battles. Everyone on both sides is running out of ammo and petrol. French are surrendering in droves, to the extent that there aren't enough German soldiers to guard them and a lot of them just run away.

It's far less organised than most people think. But the Germans are much better at dealing with it, and THAT's the key. Rommel is very aware that the other side has no idea how many forces he has or how relatively weak his tanks are, and he uses this brilliantly, using rapid maneuver to appear a bigger presence than he is.

We use a very simple mechanism. Use order chits (like Command Decision), the side with the higher troop quality may decide to execute movement first or second.

It represents greatly flexibility and battlefield awareness. It sure beats locking a player in a room or having the umpire move your stuff.

TomT

Of course having Sir off roaming at the sharp end means that you have to have crash-hot staff officers to run things while he's away.

Which the Germans did, on average, at least in the elite divisions (panzers).

I just read a book about Kursks, and it says that Model, commanding the northern German thrust into the salient, spent too much time micro-managing at the front and thus lost touch with the big picture, so, yeah, maybe that sort of thing could be overdone.

It seems to me that, in the early years, the Germans excelled at the tactical level, with excellent NCOs and jr officers, and at the middle levels, especially in combined arms operations, and their real forte' was at the operational level (divisions and corps), but they got weaker as they went up from there, at the levels of strategy and especially grand strategy (where they had a rank amateur in charge). By 1941 they had 2 successful, and not too bloody, campaigns under their belts; but as the war wore on more and more experienced leaders were killed and/or promoted too quickly, while the Allies were learning on the job and getting better and better.

Charles Messenger's seminal book the Art of Blizkreig, defines blitzkrieg as "victory by dislocation". Which is essentially using the speed and manoeuvre potential of air power and mechanized forces to chop off the enemies head before he knows about it, rather than going pound-for-pound with him in the ring, al la WW1. In 1935 Guderian described seven stages::

+ Surprise air attack to cripple enemy transport, military and government HQs
+ A strategic surprise ground attack with mobile forces to penetrate deep into enemy territory and outflank the enemy front line forces
+ follow-up attack by mechanized infantry divisions, to the verge of occupied territory – and then to hold it against counter-attacks.
+ In the meantime the attacker raises his mass army and chooses the weakest point for the next mass blow, rapidly concentrating mobile forces and hurling his air force at the enemy.
+ armoured divisions will not stop when the first objectives have been met, but complete their breakthrough to the enemies lines of communications
+ blow-by-blow will be launched ceaselessly in order to roll-up the enemy front
+ the air force will attack enemy reserves and prevent their intervention.

Well it did not quite go like that, but damn close in France. Radio was essential to coordinate such lrge forces at distance, as was combined arms tactics. Eventually the Germans ran out of the key to all of this though – mobility. Canada alone produced more trucks than Germany in WW2, and by 1942 they simply could not provide the essential prerequisite for Blitzkrieg – sufficient mobile forces. Operation Blue failed and led to Stalingrad bcuae the whole force was tied to the speed by which the infantry divisions could backfill the spaces cut out by the armour. Hanging around on the Don bend was fatal – by the time sufficient force could be brought up to the Volga the moment had gone, and the soviets had been able to put together a defence and build up forces around Stalingrad and to the north.

So for me the radio was essential – but Germany could make enough of those; but the truck was more so, and the Germans never had enough of those.

Mrinku,

Great book BTW: reading my father's copy as a kid is one of the reasons I got into military history and wargaming. I managed to get a copy signed my Rommel's wife Lu a few years ago on Amazon.

So here's an idea for simulating Blitzkrieg, or a mini (battalion level) France simulation.

First of all you need to achieve strategic surprise. Some rules like I Ain't Been Shot Mum use 'blinds' to help with tactical concealment…and they would be a good choice.

You could begin by having the defending player have to set up in full view of the attacker, but the attacker only set up once the battle begins – arriving on the table along – say any two of three facing sides.

For the board you can simulate Poland or France but at 'village level'. E.g. you could have a table that presented a France type challenge by having an open area on the left, a hilly wooded area in the centre and a heavily defended river with pill boxes etc. to the right. You could also restrict the allied set up by saying that only a single platoon of unsupported infantry could be placed in the woods – and all mobile infantry held as off table reserves.

The German force will need to be fully mobile with tanks concentrated into a single large company, a reserve force of motorized infantry and off table artillery and air support, the allied mostly footslogging infantry with very little off table artillery or air support, but a good amount on table direct fire weapons, but mostly in fixed defensive positions – with a small mobile reserve off table, and a few tanks parceled out individually with the infantry. You could give them a single suicidal fairy battle air strike if you like too.

The Germans can get to use blinds until they get into contact ranges to further provide surprise.

That should give you a table top game with some of the factors for German early war blitzkrieg.

Lots of good stuff so far, all worth thinking about. My method for the wargame table is just to allow the Germans more orders per turn than the Allies to simulate their better command and control. If your rules insist you order every unit each turn then make 20-25% of the Allies sit and do nothing.
You can still, if you wish, balance the game by giving the defenders 25% more points.

A neat OOB for the mini-France scenario could be based on 7th Panzer (taking the Rommel Paper as a reference):

+ 4 platoon tank company with 1 plt Pzkw IIC, 2 Pln Pzkw 38(T) and 1 Plt Pzkw IVD.
+ Motorised Infantry Coy of 2 platoons (1 armoured in 251s and one motorisied in Krupp trucks)
+ Recce unit – 1 troop ACs and 1 squad M/C inf.
+ On table motorized support platoon with 2 mortars, 2 HMGs and 2 Pak 36s.
+ Pz pioneer platoon
+ 1 x 88mm flak, 2 SP 20mm flak and a 75mm infantry gun

Off table
+battery of 105s, 4 82mm mortars and 2 Stuka strikes

Allies

+ French infantry coy of 2 platoons (dug in along river)
+ Dismounted cavalry platoon (in forest)
+ H35 tank platoon (on table one tank per French infantry platoon and one in reserve with force HQ)
+ 3 french pillboxes – 2 with HMG, 1 with 75mm field gun – plus minefields and wire (along river)
+ 1 x Brandt mortar (with french infantry)
+ British infantry coy of 2 platoons (dug in on open flank)
+ 2 x British 25mm ATGs (dug in on open flank)
+ 1 3" mortar (on table with British infantry)
+ 1 x Belgian pillbox, with HMG (on open flank)

Off table (activated on a 5-6)

+ British Matilda I tank platoon
+ British Matilda II tank platoon
+ British recce platoon (infantry in universal carriers)
+ 1 x Fairy Battle air strike
+ Pre-planned French 105mm bombardment (allied player can choose where)

Allies will need to set up within 12 inches of border (along river, forest edge etc.)

Germans can enter anywhere along all three table sides up to border from turn one.