August 8, 1918 and the Stab in the Back

[vtsaogames]

Illness prevented me from running an already long-delayed game set in the last years of the Western Roman Empire. I began reading some 20th Century history, which inspired the following historical post about Der Schwarze Tag 

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

[Sane Max]

all very nice apart from the Schicklgruber thing – a total myth. His dad was called Schicklgruber but Adolf never was. Allied propaganda just picked up on it ‘cos it was a funny sounding name.

[vtsaogames]

My bad. Checked the Toland biography. I see his dad was legitimized as Hitler in 1876, before Adolf was born. Sorry, last time I read the bio was in the 20th Century. Now to go correct my post. Thank you.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

[Guy Farrish]

Interesting although I think you are rather kind to the German performance in WWI.

In the West we have spent so much time beating ourselves up over the performance of our leadership in the Great War that we forget we won, and the Germans failed in all their initial objectives in 1914 and sat largely impotent on the defensive on the Western Front thereafter. Their one major offensive at Verdun failed and the last desperate throw of the dice, Operation Michael, their first attack on the British since 1915, petered out into failure and exposed them to the 100 Days.

The only failure of that last allied campaign was of political will, which, with fear of Communism, stopped the required complete destruction of the German army. That would have shown they had been soundly militarily defeated (which they has been) rather than betrayed by wiser German counsel.

(Sorry to hear you were ill, hope you are feeling better).

[vtsaogames]

I agree they were defeated, but they fed the troops a line about victories. And they had the eastern front to crow about, having driven Russia out of the war, chased the Serbian army out of Serbia, whipped the Romanians. Best to ignore the disasters afflicting Austria and the Ottomans…

 

The line about victories was wearing thin, with defeatist graffitti on the troop trains and such.

 

I’m not sure the Western powers had it in them to keep advancing until Germany was thoroughly beaten, once an armistice was on the table.  France and Britain had suffered quite enough losses already. Wilfred Owen was among the many killed in the final victorious pushes.

 

I have recovered (knocks on wood). At least one previous game was delayed when another player fell ill. Now to see if we can get a game together in a couple weeks…

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

[willz]

Thanks for a good read.

[deephorse]

Civilian cars might well have been produced into 1942, but I doubt that any civilian ever got their hands on one.  Certainly not one of the 330,000 people that signed up and started paying for a ‘People’s Car’ ever got one.

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[vtsaogames]

All true, but there wasn’t a serious attempt to fully mobilize the economy until Speer was put in charge, after 3 full years of war.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

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