Operational Name for the Summer Offensive

[simonmark6]

Quote from "The Free City of Krakow"

The operation was code-named Reset, and
Strike Zulu was hurriedly organized to coincide with the big offensive.
In some circles, the offensive was considered to be a
diversion for Operation Reset.

This suggests that in reality, Strike Zulu was tacked on to the operation rather than being the reason for the operation. As to the importance of Reset to the US Authorities, we'll never know though it is interesting to think that they sent a B Team with a few trucks and Hum Vees which were easily wiped out by a bunch of marauders to pick up Reset rather than the Armoured Cavalry Company under Captain (Major?) Dicks which were sent on the off chance that they could find the Black Madonna, an artifact that most thought to be destroyed might suggest that the mission wasn't important enough to risk a whole offensive to cover it.

The sort of rewards that the PCs are likely to get for handing in the papers are also paltry if the designer's considered it so important, a set of tools and fifteen units of anti biotics isn't what I'd hope for when turning in a major war-winning discovery even if the DIA were really in dire straits in Krakow.

The major issue of course is the GDW adventure structure which often focused around "the last" of something in order to give the PCs a feeling that they were in the middle of the action in their world.

As for the Soviet counter attack being specifically to defend Reset, I'm doubtful of that, canon tells us that it took the Ploesti oilfields several months to produce the fuel for the Soviet Divisions. If this was done specifically to protect Reset it would be logical that with a few months' foreknowledge of the attack, they'd have simply moved the Reset papers further away from the enemy.

The counter attack was bad luck, the Soviets had been preparing their own attack and were thus ideally placed to foil the 5th's attack, they were not there to protect Reset.

The quote mentions that some circles considered that the operation was a cover for the Reset mission but the previous sentence makes it clear that this was not the case.

That said, in your game, you can do exactly what you want and you can make whatever assumptions you care to.

In my opinion, however, whilst I feel that the Reset Papers are more than a footnote, they were obviously not the main reason for the Summer Offensive which was to gain as strong a position as possible for the NATO side of the bargaining table. The attack aimed to force the front line back to the Wisla and thus make the German Border safer. Given this objective the recovery of the Black Madonna becomes more important as it could be used to rally pro-NATO forces in Poland and create a friendly buffer state between the Germans and the Soviets.