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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While most of what you say is correct, the resource question tied to Barbarossa is way more complicated than this. I’m mostly replying here now to remind myself to expand on this later.
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As a fellow player above is correct regarding the relevance, i used a spoiler for my answer.
Summary
I was are of that Finland was not included, that why i asked :-)
As previously mentioned you might be too focused on the pact itself - that was, ofc, valid to the secret protocols too. So therefore i see the pact in itself just as a manifestation of already planned foreign “politics” (with or without weapons).
I do not know you well enough, but in case you have time: Try to find sources regarding diplomatic activities of Germany (“Auswaertiges Amt”) to find some rather interesting facts regarding the ultimatum for Poland, reactions of Britsh leaders and the willingness to cancel the attack (even in the last week before the outbreak). It boils down that the Polish leadership wanted the war too (as they had a very strong army), and trusted that they will get support from UK. Whilst the UK was not interested in supporting Poland.
This is imho also rather a conclusion, than an objective fact. It is not about concessions, it is about the general view on things.
So if you see the Silesia / Sudeten crisis we just had German majorities cut away by the Versailles treaty and nothing more. Just look up the land swaps and various referendums and you see that this was not a matter of concessions.
The corridor question was mainly a question of disrupting the enclave by the Poles with several measures, also almost erased from history. Based on common sense the German ultimatum to Poland was reasonable - even for UK leaders, that’s why they convinced British newspapers not to publish these points - simply because the public opinion would have not supported to go to war for a country that is unwilling to provide basic access to Danzig and the protection of all minorities within their borders.
Just show me the deviations from this quote:
Imho you simply forgot to take Romania into your general view on things. The strategic importance of Romanian oil plus several claims by Stalin regarding Romania as being part of the USSR sphere of influence is well documented.
I do agree that certain mental conditions and believes (purity of race, eugenics, untermenschen, etc.) might be a part of the ideological clash, but if you spend a few hours outside the internet you find a hell of well researched books regarding Hitler and Stalin and their mindset.
Imho our overall opinion is the same, we just took other paths.
Positioning that amount of manpower and war material without any defensive positions simply debunks any “defensive” character.
As a summary:
I respect your pov on certain aspects, but imho we are far away from being even close regarding our views regarding economic and geo-strategic aspects of inter- and pre-war period regarding European powers in this era.
So as initially mentioned, i try to the to see things from a holistic and neutral pov - so i recommend to close this exchange and agree to disagree.
Have a good time!
Say what-
Finland never fell to the USSR, neither were they occupied. The finnish story in WW2 is… interesting, to say the least. They fought against both to soviets and the germans. (Against the soviets in the Winter and Continuation wars, and against the germans in the Lappland war.) They were also very interesting in the postwar years, being somewhat close to the soviets (Not accepting marshall plan aid), but were still firmly independent.
Honestly Sweden/Finland are a wild card. If I could decide on this matter it would be to place them on the Axis side for WW2, and allied side post-war- especially since they are in NATO now.
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I guess so, but, technically speaking, the earliest Swedish tanks, are technically Cold War.
Nope. Strv m/31 is 1930, Strv m/38 is 1934, Lago I is 1935…
There are plenty of prewar swedish tanks, not to mention finnish tanks.
Finnish yeah, but they Op’ed those tanks untill the late-40’s and early 50’s
To be fair we also used shermans till '57, and T-34s were used as well for the USSR for a while.
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Yeah, my knowledge on that is somewhat hazy from the years between now and when I actually studied it, and I was trying to keep it condensed for a fairly off topic portion of a forum thread. Albiet I only studied this as a first year elective in a little university on the other side of the world, so I’m happy to be corrected.
As in my previous reply - i decided to use a spoiler (just in order to reply to a rather interesting exchange regarding flagging and historical side aspects of this debate):
Summary
Reading and analyzing your reply as as whole, i see lots of similar views, but also deviating conclusions about certain aspects. Without going into too much details i would like to focus on a few points.
Upfront:
I saw a general consensus regarding the main issues of Hitler: The combination of his crude race & nation theory with his rather narrow view on capitalism & communism as a whole - whilst combining them in his view on the main driver (from his perspective) for both: Jews.
Main reasons for WW 2 becoming a WW:
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Imho Hitler simply underestimated the willingness of certain powers to drag the UK and the US into this inevitable war with the USSR - if you do some additional research you might come to the same conclusions: You can’t earn money with weapons without a war - and every war has usually a massive (if not solely) political component which is strongly connected to economic interests.
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From the perspective of the UK there was in both WWs no need to drag a regional conflict into a World War - except keeping their status. That they went de facto bankrupt due to the lend-lease payments / debts helped to elevate the industrial superpower USA (with a very isolationist mindset of their citizens) to the leading military superpower - and to create the mindset of being Gods’ own country obliged to export “freedom” and “democracy” as soon as economical (oil), ideological (communism) or geo-strategical (sole global superpower) aspects create the necessity to intervene.
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Technically seen the US were the sole winners of WW 2 - whilst the actual winners, the USSR sacrificed 27-39 million people (depending on sources) whilst their country was largely destroyed. On top of that the former (just naval) superpower UK became a junior partner. Political chess - perfectly executed.
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We might disagree on certain aspects, but at the end of the day you might agree that Poland was just a pawn in this chess game - and the US supplies to the USSR were aimed to encourage the USSR to fight Germany in order to weaken both whilst minimizing own losses and maximize own profits. Just try to compare combat losses of “boots on the ground” and you can’t deny the logic of this assumption.
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I do not agree with your views regarding the need to use regained military strength - same as with Danzig, but imho deviating views on particular things are non-essential if we have a common understanding of the whole picture / result.
Have a good one!
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Added vote there ^
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It might end up becoming an idea for the future for both nations and sub-tree nations. Given they are doing split BR ratings. So you never know.
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They should be on Axis side, since they run German equipment mostly and that’s important in SB.
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Depends…?
At least WW2-era they run more russian stuff, ate least until you get to the 122s and leos and stuff
I thought there was no WW2 era?
WT does not do history or WW2 as we are constantly being told when we ask for era separation.
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The inventor of ground combat sim had history in mind when he developed Allies vs Axis and Dictatorships vs Nato lineups for us. it was a good idea and is much better than the mix chaos in AB and RB.
The problem is these heavily mixed chaos tech trees for AB and RB were simply carried over into the sim. that was the mistake.
the sim lineups would have to be changed and improved so that everything fits. improved balancing, an even clearer separation between ww2 and cold war vehicles, no captured vehicles, etc.
so the lineups are more independent of the AB/RB tech trees
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Well at least in simulators there should be some form of history present to simulate the conflict with correct sides etc.
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I think he meant the soldiers too not just vehicles in wt. Also we are mainly talking about the ww2 stuff I-III rank. The moust common uniforms used by finland are simply german unifroms and standard issue helmet for their soldier was also german helmet. They sometimes also used their own designed helmets or soviet helmets too and certainly used soviet weapons. They really just used any equipment they could. But we need to separate things given by their allies (axis) as military aid and things captured and reporpused from their enemy (soviets) in the ww2. Then decide what side they should be in not by the number of soviet vehicles in use.
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