Vote: Shouldnt Finland-Sweden tree be on axis side in ww2 era ground simulator battles?

Game Discussion Simulator Battle
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I am not a mod (which are players like you and me) but if your post was flagged it was for sure by regular forum members due to the mentioned cooperation of Germany & the USSR.

Everything suited to question USSR actions are not welcomed in this forum.

Regarding the rest of your post:

Not bad, but imho too much conclusions based on assumptions.

Fully aware that this getting flagged, therefore short & sweet:

  1. Imho you focus way too much on the MR pact. Of course the USSR had imperialistic intention to spread their ideology (as proven within the cold war). If a neutral person reads your overall post it looks like that the MR pact (and therefore the Germans) enabled them to focus on Finland or the Baltic states. I found not a single source confirming this view; maybe you can share them with us.

  2. Regarding claims that Poland was responsible for getting invaded: Imho the Polish government is not that innocent as it is described in biased history writing for getting attacked. If they had granted the access to Danzig, they could have avoided the hostilities. Most of the guys are not aware that Poland was a kind of pariah from the mid 1920s to the mid/end 1930s - and it was ruled by a military dictatorship. Their behavior in general (several wars with neighbours) and their treatment of minorities within their artificially created borders was a factor almost erased from the history.

  3. From a very holistic pov i agree that WW 2 was inevitable - but imho not only based on the Versailles treaty (borders, territory loss, reparations), it was also a fight regarding supremacy on the continent - like in several hundred years before.

  4. If you see the efforts of the UK and the US to create a global war - fighting the Germans was logical. I do not agree that a clash with the USSR was based on this “Lebensraum” or " Generalplan Ost" nonsense as shown in a previous post - it was simply a economic need as without oil, there is no economy. So with the RN blockade there were no oil imports from outside Europe possible. If you see famous US or UK historians like Citino, House or Roberts spreading myths based on German sources (Guderian etc.) based on ideology “Lebensraum” it is rather disappointing as they do usually neglect the fact that modern warfare was impossible without access to oil.

  5. You see the same effects on Japan with the US oil embargo in 1940.

  6. From a pure political and economic perspective the US and the USSR managed to take out the former superpower UK (bankrupt after WW 2) and prevented the Germans to become one. At least in theory the USSR and Germany are natural allies as their economies combined could have dominated the world in the last century. That’s why US foreign policy was always eager to avoid any possible alliances of those two countries.

  7. That 2 dictators like Hitler and Stalin fought a war was imho mainly ideologically motivated. And placing 150+ divisions near the borders to Germany based on fear of a German invasion is rather nonsense - the main reason of the early success of the Wehrmacht was a total lack of fortified defensive positions. The USSR general staff was fully aware of that the USSR is “unbeatable” just based on the vast distances and superior man power (including reservists) - the limitation of the Weimar republic to have just a 100k men army prevented to build up a pool of reservists. So this defensive claim is like the “total surprise” claim debunked since decades.

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I think they shouldnt put any nations to the axis side. The lack of players on each side depends on Timezones and that GSB has this rotation lists. It also lacks of players bc of the fact that GSB get no “special” content.

If GSB would get more content like EC Battles with different objectives like in ASB and get rid of the rotation lists or make it so that everyone can play to anytime their fav brackets, then you would slowly see a growing on playerbase in GSB again and the brackets fill up with players.
But in the current state you only see the same players playing their brackets plus summer is here/near and people used to go outside over sitting at home playing WarThunder. Especially great games coming out too. So thats a bunch of reasons why playerbase is actual pretty low in GSB.

A different thing would be putting some nations to the soviet/chinese on the cold war era and high tier, bc there the queing times are double or x3 over the WW2 era.

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sweden was neutral.

finland was first on the axis side and then switched to the allied side.

the best solution would be to let the axis vehicles fight on the axis side and let the allied vehicles fight on the allied side. but unfortunately the tech trees were built for RB and not for Sim.

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Sure but Finland only really fought Soviets in full scale war while sweden and germany did supply Finland in this war. Does not make any sense to put Finland on side of Soviets no matter what for the I-III ranks sim battles. + there are already some tanks from Finland in german tech tree so the battle can basically be Finland in german tree vs Finland in swedish tree.

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This was part of the secret protocols of the MR pact. Europe was effectively divided between the two powers, with the Germans declaring complete “political disinterest” with the regions of Eastern Poland, the Baltics and Besserabia. Look familiar? That’s also a list of the places the Soviets invaded after the MR pact was put into place. Finland is never explicitly mentioned AFAIK, but I presume it was simply a case of it being so obviously in the Soviet sphere there was no point making it clear.

Either way, the MR pact was the lynchpin that allowed the Soviets to freely invade their neighbours without immediate risk of Germany jumping them while they were busy.

This is very questionable. Hitler made his views on an independent Polish state very clear in 1930, stating that they (And the Czechs) were a “rabble not worth a penny more than the inhabitants of Sudan or India. How can they demand the rights of independent states?”

Even if we don’t take him at his word, you need only look over at the Sudetenland to see what happens when you give Nazi German the small territorial concession they want.

And while Danzig itself might be majority German and in favor of annexation, the overall Polish corridor was not.

And finally, as already mentioned above, the MR pact explicitly divided Poland between Germany and the Soviets. I doubt they’d simply blow off the Soviets so directly even if they did get Danzig.

Wars often have more than once cause. Yes, Germany Barbarossa’d for resources needed to fight the allies, but it wasn’t the only reason, or even arguably the main one. The MR pact (yet again) provided Germany with substantial raw materials from the Soviets in the form of trade deals. And this did include oil. Huge amounts of it. Attacking the Soviets hurt their oil income substantially, and that wouldn’t have evened out until they hit the Caucases.

No, the primary factor for attacking the Soviets was ideological. Hitler hated communists, and slavs, and most of all communist slavs. He also wanted to expand Germany, literally to make it bigger, and where better to expand than the vast, resource rich territories of Russia, whilst also eliminating one of his most hated rivals.

What does that have to do with anything? Stalin mobilized his troops because his closest territorial rival had just finished eating two European states and was eyeing up a third right on his border. The rather obvious conclusion being that the second Poland falls the Soviets would be squarely in the Nazi’s sights. Moving troops around serves two purposes, readiness in case the worst happens and deterrence to prevent said worst.

And the horrific losses the Soviets suffered during early Barbarossa had many causes, but I assure you a lack of bunkers was not one of them. Horrible doctrine, being filtered down through inexperienced officers, to underequipped troops, relying on horrific logistics that basically collapsed the second any strain was put on it, under complete German air dominance, accounts for most of it.

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Wdym are you still talking about simulator battles? Simulator sides are suposed to be based on who realistically fought who (in case of ww2) or who would teoretically fight who (in case of after ww2 and modern vehicles) + higher Br simulators are basically USSR+China vs everyone.

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Sweden can be on both red and blue team in sim EC? Makes sense to me

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@Aegis270 @Uncle_J_Wick guys thats cool and all talking about Barbarossa, Hitler ideas and German-Soviet relationship. But it does not really matter all that much in discussion about Finland. Finland simply has to be aggainst Soviets like said earlyer and Sweden did not really fight anyone.

Exactly. Sweden was basically on both sides while Finland only had full scale war with soviets (while having mainly german gear and swedish supply and every other game puts them on axis side).

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Well no? Swedish-Finland tree is only aggainst Axis rn in simulators.

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This is air sim, I don’t know about ground sim though

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Well those are top tier and its air battles. We are talking about ww2 mainly 1-3 rank in which Finland actually fought something. + does not make sense to talk about Axis vs Allies at 8.7-9.7 as thats rally just cold war era.

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Nation-sets are the same for all BR’s, I can choose all these sets for any BR 1.0-12.7

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Hmmm well I could not really tell as I dont play air sim battles. Does not look very “simulatory/historicall” for ww2 era BRs if there can be set ups such as germany+france+china vs italy+israel+japan. But yeah in ground sims its always Axis vs Allies (like shown in original post with sweden-finland on allied side) until end of ww2 era tanks and then its everyone vs Soviets+Chinese. Thats the issue we are facing. Never noticed air sims are even more unrealistic.

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Well, it’s necessary for top-tier. Air Sim would essentially die overnight if Axis didn’t have some help on their team

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I mean in top tier we are no longer talking about Axis as thats just ww2 thing.

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I’m aware, I’m just referring to that team as axis. “Red team” is probably better.

USA players massively outnumbers all other nations at top-tier, there’s already issues at top-tier of the Russian team not having enough players whilst at the same time being stomped by western jets due to them being superior.

A big reason to this is obviously the greater appeal for that tech-tree, but also the fact that Gaijin decided to give them like 5 top tier jets (3 F16’s, 2 F14’s) before nations like Sweden and GB even got their first one above 11.3 with the addition of the Gripen.

There was a period before air superiority where Blue team players for months kept 95-100% win-rates, I only got my first win in the 29SMT after 22 games IIRC. It’s a bit better now thanks to Su27 and nations like Sweden being on Russias team, but win-rates are still overwhelmingly on blue-teams side afaik

‘Realism’ is good and all but it won’t work simply due to the player distribution between nations alone, and that’s not getting into Blue-side having far greater avionics and Flight performance on top of that.

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yes, for example, a Finnish Panzer IV should fight on the Axis side. I fully agree with you.
as I said, the problem is that the tech trees are designed for AB and RB and nobody at Gaijin thinks about how the tech trees affect Sim!

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As detailed very well by Tooze in “The Wages Of Destruction”, there was a simple reason for the USSR to support the MR pact. It had the potential to upend the balance of power in Europe. Doing the opposite and siding with the western powers would only reinforce a status quo that Moscow already found stifling and dissatisfying. From a purely material point of view, Germany would always have more to offer. This was explained in cold logic to British ambassador Cripps by his Soviet colleague who said that Britain would count air losses in the Battle Of Britain as two opposing columns of entries, whereas the Soviet Union would just add them up.

Also at the same time, supporting the weaker party in the war - Germany - fostered inter capitalist war. This made it less likely that Stalin’s nightmare scenario of an anti communist alliance between the western powers and Nazi Germany would ever materialise.

It’s also important to note that the MR Pact always operated on the spirit of bilateral imperialism, with spheres of influence clearly defined between the two powers. In that sense, yes, Finland and the Baltics were assigned to the Soviets by the pact. Initially Lithuania was supposed to fall in the German sphere, but this was later exchanged to the Soviets in return for a larger share of central Poland to the German “general government” administration in Krakow.

Both sides had very good reason to pen the deal when they did, but it’s important to keep in mind that over time, the economic aspect of MR was making the Soviet position relative to Germany stronger and stronger. Hitler always intended to break the pact, but one of the reasons it happened with the timing of OTL is because Hitler understood that the pact would soon start benefiting the Soviets more than the Germans, if it wasn’t already.

Hitler never cared about Danzig specifically. At multiple times during his tenure in office he expressed his disdain for the way German nationalists would fixate on, for example, the borders of 1914. Symbolic lines on a map were not what Hitler was after.

Ever since the very first draft of Mein Kampf, Hitler’s interpretation of the balance of power was this: the European powers were being eclipsed by the “flanking powers” (USA and USSR) because the latter had been able to create territorially contiguous colonial empires, which were immune to blockades, economically self sufficient, and with an internal market large enough to hit critical mass and benefit from mass production in full.

Hitler believed that the only recipe for Germany to compete was to carve its own contiguous colonial empire in Europe, and that obviously this would have to be in Eastern Europe, which naturally implied genocidal policies on a vast scale towards the local population. When Hitler made his famous quote about “who remembers the Armenians today”, he wasn’t speaking about the Jews, but about the Poles.

Maybe even more importantly to the Danzig argument, the logic of rearmament put massive pressure on Hitler. He was perfectly aware that Germany did not have the industrial resources to compete on an even footing with all of its enemies. It had an initial advantage because of early recovery from the Great Depression and early rearmament, but Allied rearmament after the fall of Prague in March 1939 was going to erode that advantage, so it becomes a matter of “use it or lose it”. Which is why Hitler greatly accelerated his plans, and over the summer of 1939, would tell anyone who would listen that Germany had nothing to gain by waiting.

When I was still living in Germany, I had the privilege to directly research the development of the Nazi economy through both primary and secondary sources, so there’s a lot that I could recommend in terms of reading material, but I think Wages is a really good place to start. Imho still the best book on The Thord Reich I’ve read by any historian.

As for War Thunder, the only reason Sweden is in the Allied camp is to manage queue times for simulator. It’s sad, but true, and unless someone has a serious solution to address that player imbalance issue, that’s unlikely to change any time soon.

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