""National Characteristics" for WWII?" Topic

Starfury Rider, here is some interesting information on this matter:

link

When I was in Ukraine hanging out with Westerners that are fighting they said the Ukrainian Nationals early in the war were great at defending but very poor at conducting recons and patrolling. Their offensives were mostly hastily planned and poorly coordinated. Some were very motivated and some did the minimum and then went back home.

The Kharkiv "Offensive" was planned and spearheaded by Westerners that had former US Military SigInt professionals and drone operators which was new in Sept 2022. The Westerners (Team Synthians) conducted numerous contact patrols and recons in force which showed the Russians pulling troops out of the Kharkiv AO and were unprepared for an offensive. They convinced the Ukrainian Legion commanders to let them lead a probe to see how far it would go.

The offensive was a success because the Russians were surprised and routed back to the Oskul River as there was very little fighting because they were too busy running away. That does not mean the Russians' morale is low, they were just caught off guard, which can happen to units at any training or experience level.

Balakliya was the first village liberated in the offensive. It was the only one I was able to tour. My escort that spearheaded the offensive said when they liberated Kupyansk, women were thanking him with tears in their eyes, describing how they had been gang raped by the Russians and watched as they tortured and killed her husband and sons.

The Ukrainians are learning fast and I've been told that technically they are on par with the other Western militaries and ahead in the use of drones.

So as Cuprum said, it depends on what time of the war.

Wolfhag

In writing my own WW2 ruleset I've come down on the side of no "National Characteristics". Instead, I've pulled a bunch of attributes that I think are appropriate for the scale (main maneuver units are battalions comprised of 10-15 platoon stands like Command Decision or Spearhead), and applied a 3-tier system to each side. Something like

Quality (affects how much support a BN can take advantage of, and how much command flexibility): Poor, Fair, Good

Casualty Tolerance: (a multiplier for victory points at the end): Low, Medium, High

etc., etc.

And assign the values at the beginning of the scenario.

Now, will the USSR's Casualty Tolerance almost always be High, the Germans Medium, and the UK Low? Probably. But if you want to the The Battle of X where the Red Army was concerned about manpower and the Germans were fully commited to the battle and had strong reserves? Switch it out. US 90th Division in June and July? Quality is Poor. By September? High.

That seems like a good way to do it for me.

Air support obviously followed a pattern. Early Germans had it, pretty much nobody else did. And of course reverse early war.
There was some mention of British arty rate of fire. The reason the 25pdr was selected over a heavier gun such as a 105 was due to studies on ww1 arty effects. The theory was you needed very heavy arty to do significant damage once troops had gone to ground but the 88mm 25 PDR was sufficient to suppress and more rounds would suppress a wider area longer than less heavier rounds.