Armageddon: The state of things in T2K

[Raellus]

On the old board there were lots of discussions and debates about the state of things c. 2000- militaries, cities, civilian populations, industry, fuel production, etc.

For answers, I think we need to look no further than Germany in late '44 & early '45.

I'm re-reading Armageddon by Max Hastings and the annecdotal material contained therein is a fantastic resource for GMs and T2K world builders.

Compare Germany in the last few months of the European war to the Poland of T2K.

By January of '45, Germany was in a complete shambles. Her cities were devastated by conventional bombing, her countryside was populated by frantic urban refugees trading in their last earthly possessions to peasant farmers for food and shelter. Town and villages on the battlefront were shelled to rubble.

Germany's military was in tatters. Armies and Corps more or less ceased to exist, replaced instead by ad-hoc Kampfgruppes (battle groups) made up of odds and ends from various shattered units. Centralized command and control was breaking down. Desertion was endemic in some units while others fought fiercely to the bitter end. Almost the entire country's remaining available manpower had been mobilized by the military- teenagers, pensioners, mildly disabled veterans. Some combat units had casualty rates well over 100%.

The flow of mlitary supplies- food, weapons, ammo, vehicles, replacement parts, etc.- slowed to a trickle. Artillery tubes were down to a handful of rounds with no promise of resupply. German troops increasingly made use of captured Allied weapons, vehicles, and equipment.

Industry was finally beginning to grind to a halt under the weight of the allied strategic bombing campaign. The targetting of Germany's oil production and refining facilities meant that units had to scrimp and scavenge fuel for their few remaining vehicles. Some units had to use a volatile mixture petrol and alcohol which wreaked havoc on their vehicle's engines.

Miles of German territory was occupied by the soldiers of several different armies. The Soviets, in particular, were brutal in their treatment of German prisoners and civilians.

There are so many parallels here with the T2K world, especially the combat zones in Central Europe. The only major difference is the bulk of the devastation of cities, industry, and fuel production would be caused by nuclear weapons instead of conventional, strategic bombing. With EMP, radiation, and the like, the devastation would be even more widespread.

And, in the Twilight War, everyone's army would be in a similar position.

Anyway, I recommend the book for any WWII buff or T2Ker who wants to add realism and atmosphere to his/her campaign. It's full of first hand accounts by German civilians as well as the combatants of the various armies involved. Check it out.

[Nowhere Man 1966]

Good points there. There was also a movie made a few years after World War II where the story was an American Officer who basically fostered a Jewish orphan while using his spare time to find his mother. Eventually, they do find his mother but in the movie are a lot of longshots of block and block of rubble in the city they were in, ot looked very Twilight to me. It took place just after VE Day.

I just can't remember the title.

BTW, there were a lot of ad hoc projects to "help" the Volksturm to fight like the "People's Rifle" and so on. One of our insurance agents, he passed on, but he served in the Wehrmacht in World War II at the very end. He was kept out of service because he was color blind but in the end days, he was drafted and given a weapon out of a museum, something like a '73 Winchester, to fight with. He wrote a book and told his story, very interesting. It is called "From the Snow Fields of Moscow to the Cornfield of Iowa" and his name was Kurt Willibald. At first when I said he fought in World War II, I thought it was on our side but when he said he was in the Wehrmacht, my ears really perked up because it is an interesting thing to hear the view from the other side.

Chuck M.

[Adm.Lee]

Same subject, different title: "Endgame: 1945" follows about a half-dozen people as they cross parts of wrecked Germany, Austria and Italy.