Quick question of Battle of France - no sickle cut tried

... I am referring to the first 1-3 weeks beeing highly intense, mobile, fought in open terrain and under luftwaffe controlled skies.

Been trying to figure that one out for over 25 years & the jury is still out. Game models are problematic in this case. A straight model of the forces makes it difficult to reproduce the historical outcome. To get that either the entire French army must be dumded down, or a bunch of special rules applied.

The Germans wargamed multiple plans monthly from the autum 1939 through April 1940. Both in the field and on the map board, and at multiple command levels. The outcomes were never favorable & strategic stalemate was the occasional best result. In March 1940 the officer controlling the French at one of Halders key exercises cheated & drastically slowed the French reaction time. That map game produced something close to a strategic victory for the German side.

The experience of the French 1st Army in the first week under unfavorable circumstances contrasts weirdly with the 2d or 9th Armies who had a eaisier task and better position.
 
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Archibald

Banned
I understand that the Germans were screwed if we consider a timeframe of many months. I am referring to the first 1-3 weeks beeing highly intense, mobile, fought in open terrain and under luftwaffe controlled skies.

I really don't know for the AdA. It was a quagmire from top to bottom.
 
The experience of the French 1st Army in the first week under unfavorable circumstances contrasts weirdly with the 2d or 9th Armies who had a eaisier task and better position.
It is a remarkable outcome, but maybe the fighting capacity is not the same after 4000 sorties dropping bombs on you. That was in a few days IIRC.
In an open moving campaign all the roads are blocked with refugees, they have to take cover all the time and in the meantime the Germans are taking decisions on the spot. Maybe the altered rules did apply well to actual conditions..?
 
In one game I found that removing the air forces did make a large difference in the outcome, but it was much less in others. Some so much less the air components seemed there more as 'chrome' or trimming than any important part of the game. I cant say which game model is correct. It seems to me the game designers were shooting from the hip in some cases, or fishing for a result in other cases. I've not yet found a usefuly detailed account of the bomber sorties made by the German AF vs the various areas, or is support of which corps or armies. The accounts I've seen suggest more were used vs one are or another, but its very difficult to judge the exact difference. ie: If anyone has information on the number of bomber sorties flown against the Fr 1st Army area on the 16-18 May, or the 9th Army sector on the 13-15 May it would be helpful. Knowing only that 4000 or however any sorties were flown total in X number of days does not really help to understand why one French group held together & another failed.

The German 'decision making' is not so much the question as is the French. The slow Fr stratigic & operational decision/execution is most marked at the top in the campaign, at the player level This makes it difficult to model & I've never seen any games that clearly mastered the problem of reproducing the handicap that existed at the level of Georges. The designers tend to focus on a few German tactical strengths & ignore other strengths or weaknesses on each side. ie: The French artillery was more concentrated at the tactical & operational level than the German. Where the commanders used it correctly this concentration, and a possible advantage in speed of action frequently suprised the Germans. ie: The action reports from the officers of the 3rd & 4th Pz Div have a lot of hyperboyle over the effects of the French artillery. One described the French artillery concentrations as worse than he had seen in WWI. In the engagements around the Belgian villages of Wasain & Thisenes the German reports seem as if the Germans were opposed by ten or fifteen battalions of field artillery. In reality the French only had five, four of which were light 75mm guns.

Its this sort of crude modeling that makes the games of my experience suspect vehicles for studying alternate decisions/stratigies in this campaign. By comparison games modeling the Brit/US/German campaigns in NW Europe or the eastern front function a lot better. That is you can closer to historical results without resorting to critical special rules.
 
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