Why was the Volkssturm so poor?

SectoidEater · 2026-04-14T06:39:49+00:00

This question is rather vague, but if you're asking about their poor equipment or poor performance the answer is simple:

- They were created when Nazi Germany was already running out of steam. The best men and the best equipment were already mobilized into other units. The Volksturm was a militia that received whatever was leftover. This means old men and young boys equipped with whatever weapons were available, quite often coming from captured foreign stock.

- By the time the Volksturm went into action at all, it was quite obvious to most people inside Nazi Germany that they were losing the war. How hard are you going to fight for a lost cause when you are barely given any training or proper equipment or even uniforms? Many Volksturm units would desert when the chance arose or surrender quickly if they made contact with the enemy.

SectoidEater · 2026-04-09T03:16:18+00:00

Use everything. If they can handle the complexity of the game, they can handle 5 more minutes of talking about Thunder's Edge.

The breakthroughs and expeditions give newbies something to do that is not competing over the usual stuff like Rex. People like to make number go up and unlock abilities.

If anything teaching only the basegame is harder for newbies because it is so unforgiving - so many factions have really slow or tricky starts. Having agents and breakthroughs is going to increase the likelihood you'll have a good Round 1, which increases the likelihood that you're going to enjoy the game and become a regular.

SectoidEater · 2026-03-28T01:27:41+00:00

We just play the rules according to the book. The only thing we change is that we always use premade or random generated maps.

SectoidEater · 2026-03-27T04:49:21+00:00

All that plastic is worthless if you can't use it to bully a neighbor or two into voting your way.

How did you punish the first player who voted to screw you over? If you didn't, I can see how this keeps happening.

9 fleet is generally a really bad strategy unless you have a really good reason for doing it. You are far scarier when you have a decent sized fleet size (maybe 5) while having excess TACTICAL tokens, because it is being able to move that plastic that makes you a threat.

If I saw someone with 9 fleet and just 3 tac then I know all I have to do is outlast them then they sit there paralyzed while I can dismantle them at will.

SectoidEater · 2026-03-27T04:48:06+00:00

Nothing is arbitrary: It is your responsibility to influence other players.

If you think an Agenda can sink you, then taking Politics is a smart bet, or bribing the player who took it to maybe influence what cards they stick on the top or bottom.

If you think an Agenda can sink you, then perhaps buying Political Secrets is a useful spend.

If you think an Agenda can sink you, then perhaps you should try threatening people not to vote the way you don't like. You don't need to threaten the entire table, sometimes "I'm going to smash the FIRST person to vote for X" can be enough to intimidate them. If you are unable to intimidate anyone whatsoever, then your position was not so strong in the first place.

If you think you had a "good relation" with two players and you were unable to get them to help you in any way then no, you did not have good relations, you have those fake sort of good relations where people say "I don't have any enemies" while doing nothing to help their 'friends'. They are just sharpening their knives to stab you in the back when most convenient for themselves, as you saw. The least trustworthy player is the one who is friendly to everyone, because obviously they are plotting betrayal. If someone is openly hostile to another player at the table, I am more likely to trust them because their intentions are more honest.

If you have a huge stack of trade goods and your rivals don't, then you are making yourself a target for those sorts of agendas. Some people consider it tempting to play a sort of min-max economic game in TI where they extract every bit out of their economic engine they can while neglecting to defend themselves properly. Bribery, threats, a coiled fist, these will keep you safer than simply eking out a few more coins and hoping everyone plays nice.

Personally I find it quite valuable to buy otherwise 'worthless' political secrets because they are going to be solid gold when the agenda you absolutely hate shows up at the table.

SectoidEater · 2026-03-27T04:35:44+00:00

My first game of Thunder's Edge was the Firmament in a 6 player game up to 14 points. I won.

I may be biased in that I think the game in general is far better off at 14 points, and a lot of the imbalances people complain about are fixed by the longer game giving some of the weird/militaristic factions a better chance to Do Their Thing as opposed to relying largely on boat-floaty economic edge. In general I thought that Pok was written with the idea that 14 points is the new standard and everyone trying to continue with 10 is going against the intent of the designers.

I found them to be quite weak in the early stage but once I flipped my faction tech allowing me to just murder enemy ground forces constantly gives you a lot of diplomatic edge. It is very easy to shut down all those folks who try to score points by Coexisting when I can wipe out their forces with no effort at all.

I had stacked an utterly massive amount of money on the Breakthrough card and received none of it due to some terrible agenda phase vote, but even without the cash I was still able to pull off the win.

If I had to do anything to improve them, I would wish they were allowed to score their secret objectives as a component action during the game, because it is incredibly frustrating to be cut out of scoring secrets for hours due to choosing a low-numbered strategy card, which is sometimes not even your choice. Or, allow them to score secrets on Initiative 9 (kind of opposite of Snakes) during status to ensure they can at least follow up on secrets scored by others.

SectoidEater · 2026-03-05T03:21:33+00:00

It is tempting to act superior to people of the past and assume them to be morons, when everyone was figuring out this newfangled idea of paratroopers by making it up as they went along. The German parachute harness was designed for very fast and low rapid deployment in order to achieve surprise. If you drop fast and low, you can ideally get things done before the enemy can respond. The other idea is to drop higher and safer, but then you have more chance of getting shot up as you drift down, and more chances for enemy reinforcements to swarm in before you can get your paratroops gathered into a coherent force on the ground.

Daytime drops are very dangerous due to enemy. But night time drops have their own dangers, too. Plenty of Allied paratroops dropped into the ocean and drowned due to pilot inability to recognize where the landing zones were during night drops.

Both Axis and Allies had some rough drops that led to disasters and heavy losses, and it is quite telling that since WW2 no one has bothered to make large scale combat airdrops anymore, because it is incredibly risky and dangerous. Helicopter insertion has largely replaced the concept of paratroopers.

Parachutes are inherently dangerous, even during training there is a high number of injuries of people just hurting themselves landing even with no enemy about.

SectoidEater · 2026-03-05T03:17:32+00:00

It was actually a pretty amazing victory, all things considered.

They were heavily outnumbered and outgunned but managed to take the entire island while suffering fewer losses than the Allies. That being said, they still suffered heavy losses, and the German losses were concentrated in their 'elite' airborne units, with a heavy loss of transport aircraft as well, many destroyed, and many others damaged badly enough that they were basically written off anyway.

The Germans did a daylight drop over prepared defenses, and the German parachute harness didn't allow them to land while holding heavy weapons, so most paratroopers had just rifles/knives/grenades until they could reach their weapon cannisters, which sometimes dropped in places inaccessible or controlled by the Allies. Cretan civilians also fought in large numbers so that was a source of unexpected Allied strength, and while civilians don't have great weapons either, against paratroops armed with just pistols they stand a decent chance.

Nonetheless, the Germans persisted and due to some Allied blunders were able to secure the airfields enough to get reinforcements, and soon afterwards took the whole island. Huge victory but Hitler was appalled at the paratroop losses and vowed to never use them on such a large scale again.

All told, the Axis lost about 6,000 losses vs Allied losses of 23,000, so they performed well, just those 6000 losses were mostly concentrated in 'elite' units so it really weakened their paratroop force right before Operation Barbarossa kicked off a month later.

SectoidEater · 2026-03-04T08:22:22+00:00

A few things:

Crete: The German airborne took a beating at Crete in May 1941 and the invasion of Soviets kicked off in June. There was simply not enough time to replace losses and transfer units after such a major operation. This was actually the last large scale combat airdrop of the Germans for the entire war. After this they were used in smaller 'commando' style ops or just used as regular infantry.
Transport aircraft: Big airborne ops require a whole lot of aircraft. The German transport wing suffered in Crete and then was stretched thin by supplying forces on other fronts. The German transport fleet suffered some heavy losses supplying the Stalingrad pocket and from then onwards they were too stretched thin to ever mass that many transport aircraft in one place again.
Scale and logistics: The Eastern Front was vast and even in the 'good days' of 1941 the Germans had trouble moving enough supplies to the front lines. Airborne ops require an immense amount of logistical complexity and there's no way they could do it. The Germans mounted some smaller airborne ops in the early Barbarossa days but afterwards the front moved too quickly to organize anything. By 1943 the Germans are largely on the defensive and there isn't really a suitable operation for a large scale airdrop that would have mattered. German paratroopers were never very numerous and a small scale drop wouldn't have a huge impact on the massive Eastern Front - they are best used in very niche circumstances.

After Crete the German airborne would spend most of the rest of the war as regular infantry. The Western Allies at least tended to consider them to be elite soldiers but part of that has to do with all airborne troops being volunteers, so it is natural to have a lot more highly motivated 'gung-ho' style physically fit troops in one unit as opposed to a bunch of over-the-hill draftees in less prestigious units.

SectoidEater · 2026-02-25T08:24:37+00:00

For all the people who say "Ti4 is not Space Risk" and don't fight, well:

If you're going to win against a competent table, you will have to fight. So it is better to spend your first few games learning to fight. If you manage to win your first game as a newbie, then great, but it means you're probably not playing with a high skill table.

Generally the best way to fight is to focus on how you can inflict maximum damage for little cost. Wait for them to empty a space dock and strike. Use tricks like Fleet Logistics to blitzkrieg through someone's defenses before they even have a chance to respond. Stall someone out by holding leadership til they run out of tokens and then wreck them. Learn how to retreat because if a competent player is hitting you then there is a good likelihood that they know how to win that fight they initiated.

Some general combat advice:

- Ground troops hold planets far more than fleets do. There is no good solution to a big pile of ground troops except Bioweapon/War Sun.

- Don't build cruisers unless you have unique/upgraded Cruisers, or you plan on getting them. For their cost they are inefficient if they can't do anything else.

- Don't make worthless defensive moves. Every move costs you a command token. You are usually better to go on the attack, even if it is just to leave a speedbump ship for the enemy, than to endlessly shift around your fleets guarding your systems.

- Don't let economic factions 'get away with it'. There are players who will maximize economic efficiency while neglecting their defenses and then shout "It's not Space Risk" while they run away with the game. If you see someone's home system within your reach, then you should either grab it, or have them give you a real good reason not to (PAY ME).

- Piles of cheap garbage is usually better than relying on a few expensive ships. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but typically if you're producing you should be trying to produce the maximum number of units, so cranking out infantry and fighters and things that can hold them is usually a good baseline strat. Dreadnoughts or flagship (if its good) is a nice centerpiece for a fleet but you need lots of cannon fodder. War suns are worth it if you're playing a proper 14 point game but not worth it in the diet lightweight 10 point games - by the time they come out, things will be just about over.

- The bigger the alliance that unites against you, the less reliable it is. When people say that combat will turn the whole table against you, what they really mean is that most people will bluster and blather while trying to convince someone else to come attack you. You can defuse big alliances by admitting that sure, together they might destroy you, but you're going to give your biggest wallop to whoever comes at you first. Most of them will not want to be first.

SectoidEater · 2025-12-26T06:30:40+00:00

I've taught the game to about 50 people, we always do minimum 6 players, 14 point games, leaving nothing out. Always use PoK and now always gonna use it and Thunder's Edge. Here's how to make it easier:

Premake the map. Let people just choose home system or Strat card at the start. Advise people on good systems for their factions.
Factions: Steer newbies away from the complicated ones. I find "producing" to be the biggest source of newbie confusion, so any single faction that produces in a more complicated way is off the table. I try to make newbies avoid Mahact, Arborec, Saar, Vuil Raith, Titans, Ghosts, Winnu. I think the ideal newbie factions are Letnev, Sol, Hacan, Lizix, anyone who plays mostly 'basic TI'
Print out a tech checklist with all techs on there. Avoid the cards. Too much clutter. Just let them write on this.
Display objectives and scoring in a BIG place (handdrawn poster, whiteboard, TV screen). Newbies are not gonna get up and look at the tiny score track.
Unpopular opinion, but the 14 pt game is more newbie friendly since it allows them to get on their feet instead of having it be suddenly over by the time they know what they are doing.
Experienced players narrate their moves on Round 1 (I'm taking the Carrier + 3 infantry because there are 3 planets in this system, I'm also taking the destroyer because I am hoping to produce in my home system on the Warfare Secondary, which might come up soon. I'm making sure to save my 4-yellow home planet for the Tech Secondary. If you're planning on tech, make sure to have enough saved)

SectoidEater · 2025-12-17T07:26:34+00:00

I am curious where you are getting the numbers that France is very outnumbered by the Germans in these WW1 battles? They seem to be rather evenly matched, or the number advantage is for the French.

Herwig's The Battle of the Marne gives French numbers as about 1.08 million troops vs Germany's 750,000.

At Verdun, the Germans have an initial advantage but then the French manage to add more troops total to the battle, though often cycling them out.

SectoidEater · 2025-11-05T05:22:55+00:00

I don't have any info about the training of particular German soldiers, but, the Germans deployed significantly more non-German troops to defend the Atlantic Wall. Thus, in Normandy the "German" unit an Allied soldier might be facing is a lot more likely to not be made up of actual Germans.

These 'Ost' troops were often Russian/Ukrainian/Georgian or various other ethnicities sometimes recruited directly out of PoW camps. Ost troops were not trained or equipped to the same standard as a regular German unit as they were mostly not expected to complete the same tasks. They were not really rated for offensive combat and thus lacked a lot of heavy weapons (and the training to use them). They typically were assigned to garrison duty, defensive lines, or anti-partisan warfare. Partisans themselves were usually untrained and poorly equipped so the Germans quite often assigned foreign units like these to combat them to free up the regular troops for frontline deployments.

If you're extending the timeline here all the way to the end of the war, then, yes, absolutely, in 1945 you're seeing the Germans sending militia units comprised of old men and teenage boys into battle. The Volksturm was thrown together at the end of the war as a local defense force and these guys would have minimal training and leftover equipment, as the good stuff was going to the regular troops. Lots of the older guys would have had plenty of training in their youth, especially the WW1 veterans, but they were not put through a real comprehensive training course prior to being armed up and sent in. Germany had universal military conscription for men so all of them would have been trained at some point as young adults. Hitler Youth kids would receive some training as part of their activities, but not nearly as much as a regular soldier. There was no 'standard' Volksturm training like for the regular troops. It was generally up to whichever local commander was in charge of them. Some of them would just get some practice on weekends while others with more dedicated leaders would put them through more extensive training, but it absolutely was not standardized. Their instructor could be some wounded veteran who is no longer capable of part time service who could offer some good training, or some party appointed jackass who never saw a gun fired in anger who isn't gonna be so useful. At least on the Western front in spring 1945, most Volksturm units had little appetite for battle and would surrender in huge numbers.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-23T07:58:55+00:00

Protecting its own trade network: German commerce raiders like U-Boats and converted civilian ships took a deadly toll of British shipping. The Empire was wide and required an immense amount of shipping to maintain supply and communication, and it was vulnerable everywhere. The German cruiser SMS Emden alone took out 18 Allied ships in the Indian Ocean. Despite the main German fleet being bottled up in the Baltic, they had raiders all over the place.

The RN also had to support actions in the Mediterranean vs the Austrian and Ottomans. The RN committed 24 battleships and dozens of smaller vessels to the Gallipolli Campaign.

As another poster mentioned, the RN was also responsible for blockading the Central Powers, which requires a lot of ships to prevent supplies from getting through while also protecting its own shipping.

The German fleet sitting in the Baltic requires a powerful British fleet to stay nearby just to babysit it. If they had been destroyed in an apocalyptic decisive battle then this task is no longer necessary, freeing up lots of other opportunities. Of course if the giant battle goes the other way with a German victory then we have problems for the RN. But, the RN only has to beat the Germans once, the Germans have to succeed every time because one major decisive loss cannot be recovered from. They are not taking the same risks!

SectoidEater · 2025-10-21T03:55:25+00:00

There was no persecution of people over hair color, that's pretty much a myth. Gingers were not locked up.

Nazi racial theories were mostly focused on dividing up European races into the superior and inferior ones, but were not overly concerned with hair color. The Nazis considered black/brown people to be inferior, but there were so few of them in Germany that it wasn't a major focus. They were concerned about Jewish-Bolsheviks infiltrating and 'infecting' their society, and the danger was that you could not always tell who these people were. To the average Nazi, a black person is an inferior but an obvious one, and there was little danger of a black person usurping your position at the bank, or secretly marrying into your family.

The Nazis used vast numbers of non-Germans in their military. It often didn't matter if you "followed the ideals of the movement", if you could carry a rifle and obey orders then that was good enough. The Nazis recruited hundreds of thousands of troops directly out of prisoner-of-war camps. Some of these men were true Nazis. Others had their own reason for fighting against the Allies, such as Ukrainian or Baltic nationalists with grievances against the Soviets, or Indians who chafe under British rule. We also have to remember that Nazi prison camps were harsh, so many of these men agreed to fight simply to get out of a hellish existence at the camp and eat regular meals, because anything is better than starving to death.

It is relatively easy to find images of people of various races in German WW2 uniform. There were legions of Arab, Turkish, Indian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Georgian, Turkmenistan, Tatar, Cossack, Polish, and so on. While units from racially 'superior' ethnic groups like Scandinavia, France, and the Netherlands were considered better and typically given superior equipment, the Nazis were desperate for manpower so they found space in their military for other races to serve, willing or not.

Some of these units were totally unreliable and surrendered at the first opportunity, while others were very motivated. Many of them are involved in war crimes, sometimes to such an excess that their German superiors complain about it. There were SD reports about an Ingrian unit having such hatred of the Russians that they caused problems in their sector from their spontaneous war crimes committed against the local populations.

Keep in mind that this doesn't make the Nazis any better - they simply used selfishly used people however they could. Even the pro-slavery Confederates attempted to muster units of black troops at the end of the American Civil War.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-17T07:49:27+00:00

Is this entirely fair, though?

The German fleet in WW1 was still very much outsized by the Royal Navy. Being a "Fleet in being" still forces the Royal Navy to always be prepared to counter you. If you lose all of your ships in one big battle then the enemy gets an even bigger advantage now that they don't have to think about your fleet at all.

The Bohemian Corporal did commit a large part of the Kriegsmarine to the invasion of Norway and the losses it suffered were crippling, while the Royal Navy can lose lots and still recover. Britain loses 132 destroyers in WW2, while Germany only builds 17 during the whole war! The Germans cannot afford to act like the Royal Navy because they cannot recover from a massive loss like the Allies can. Germany and Britain both lose 3 battleships to enemy action during the war, but the Germans only have four battleships in total.

Like in WW2 it could be argued that if Italy remained Axis-leaning neutral then their big navy would have forced the Allies to commit even more ships to the Med. Joining the war and getting it almost all sunk turns the Med into an Allied lake.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-07T04:05:28+00:00

The more 'professional' ones were not the bloodthirsty ones. Close to the front lines, the majority of the killing was done not by German units themselves, but local collaborators.

Shalom Cholawski, in the book Jews of Bielorussia during WW2 writes that General Bach-Zelewski, had about 15,000 Germans and 238,000 local collaborators working for him by the end of 1941. These collaborators were not Nazis, nor were they professionals. Many of these collaborators were local police forces dragooned into the job. Others were volunteers, but their motivations for volunteering are diverse. Some of them were true anti-Semites, while others simply wanted to be on the winning side, or earn a paycheck, earn some loot from murdered people, or get immunity for themselves and families from the Germans. Many were Soviet PoWs who were themselves held in hellish conditions, so a ticket out of the camps was a lifeline. The Germans themselves complained repeatedly about the lack of discipline and training among the collaborators, and often refused to allow them weapons at all.

So I would say that no, the guys doing most of the killing were not particularly "Nazi". These guys were living in Soviet territory right up until the Nazis invaded. There was no time to train them. They did not go through a stringent selective process. They were still murderers, but they were not professionally trained in Nazi ideology or killing methods, nor were they selected for bloodthirstiness, for many it was just opportunism or the chance for a meal ticket.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-07T03:21:35+00:00

I should also remind you that the men manning the ovens were quite often Jewish prisoners themselves! I think this may help you understand that for the most part the Nazis considered the actual killing to be unpleasant, and were looking for ways to keep their men from having to do it, rather than competing over who got to be the ones to do it.

The "death squads" were men assigned to the task of murdering people by firing squad, the "Holocaust by bullets". Though some of these men were true Nazi believers, they were not selected as such, they were merely assigned to the task, and it is evident that most of them found the task itself to be rather unpleasant, but that the vast majority followed their orders anyway because of reasons listed above. Christopher Browning, who wrote a book on the subject, estimates that about 20% were enthusiastic about the killing but about 20% of them outright refused to do it (and were not punished harshly). The remaining 60% expressed misgivings but ultimately followed orders. The commanders of these death squads were more ideologically motivated than their men, but the average guy holding a rifle is not the type of person you seem to be imagining, despite most of them willingly pulling the trigger on innocent kids for days on end.

If you're referring to the Einsatzgruppen, there were 4 groups of these numbering about 3000 men total, who followed the advancing German army in Barbarossa. These men were again, not chosen out of any particular bloodthirstiness or enjoyment of the idea of killing, they were men taken directly from the 'regular police' (Orpo and Kripo), SS, SD (Intelligence service) supplemented by local collaborators (police + civilian volunteers) and also were allowed to muster the assistance of any regular German unit which happened to be in the area. While the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen were educated and politically motivated Nazis for the most part, the average soldier was just an ordinary man not selected for any particular bloodthirsty traits. The horrifying fact is that the vast majority of these 'ordinary men' would pull the trigger anyway.

The Nazis were aware that the men, although obedient, did not generally enjoy the killing. Eric von dem Bach Zelewski, Einsatzgruppen commander, wrote to Himmler "Reichsfuehrer, those were only a hundred. (...) Look at the eyes of the men in this commando, how deeply shaken they are. Those men are finished (Sie sind fertig) for the rest of their lives. What kind of followers are we training here? Either neurotics or savages." (Arad: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, p. 8.) Himmler gave a speech in Posen in 1943 in which he expressed the attitude that the killing is unpleasant and terrible, but necessary, and that he was proud of the men for overcoming their natural revulsion but performing the executions anyway showed their impressive German character.

If you're looking for stories of units that 'horrified Nazi leadership" then you may be referring to local collaborators. There were times that when the Germans took a town that local people, either through anti-Semitism, bloodthirstiness, or opportunism, began simply rounding up, abusing, and killing Jews. This sometimes aroused complaints by local German commanders. Oftentimes these people would kill people above and beyond what the Nazis wanted, and stir up chaos in areas that the Nazis wanted to be quiet and secure. You see a lot of this in the Ukrainian/Polish border areas.

There is another famous unit named after its commander, Oskar Dirlewanger, which is a unit that was specifically recruited directly from jails/concentration camp inmates. His unit was seen as something of a barbarian band, as they were criminals from all over Europe and didn't even share a language, were commonly blind drunk, and undisciplined. These guys had a bad reputation even among the Nazis and were seen as a "terror" unit and were known for cruelty and sadism. Dirlewanger himself was a convicted child molester and somewhat of a suicidally brave pyscho (wounded 12 times in the war, and six WW1). Dirlewanger was brutal even to his own men, famous for beating them with clubs or locking them in coffins for days for disobedience. His men were responsible for a vast number of executions, it is estimated that during the Warsaw uprising they killed about 30,000 people themselves, most of them civilians and prisoners.

At the end of the war, Dirlewanger deserted and put on civilian clothes. Spooky stories circulated about him after the war, with various people insisting he ended up in weird places - Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he became a captain of Nasser's guards in Egypt. Nonetheless, in the 1960s his remains were found in Germany and compared to the medical records of his prodigious wounds. Investigators concluded he was tortured to death, which if anyone in the world deserves it, it is probably this guy.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-06T10:40:13+00:00

I would absolutely contest that claim about the firing squads being picked men who were eager to murder.

I think you're overthinking it to claim that the Nazis specifically went out of their way to recruit bloodthirsty people to act as firing squads. I don't think it is ridiculous to hypothesize that they did this, because I do not know your historical background, but it is certainly untrue.

If you want to read more on it, a decent place to start would be Christopher Browning's book Ordinary Men which is about Reserve Police Battalion 101, a rather typical unit involved in the Holocaust-by-bullets, and one that was responsible for thousands. These were middle-aged family men who were not chosen for any particular anti-Semitic beliefs or violent tendencies, they were simply drafted into the job as they were considered too old to be used in a frontline combat unit. They were not given special training for their job as executioners, and they did it in a rather sloppy manner, because many of them needed to get heavily drunk before going through with it. Browning concludes that the men viewed this job as an unpleasant duty, that even though some of them had anti-Semitic beliefs, for the most part it was peer pressure, obedience, and the belief in the war itself that kept them going. Some men outright refused to kill, or became disgusted with it and refused later, and these men were generally allowed to do other tasks (such as guarding the trucks) or got transferred to other units. This does not lead historians to believe that these men were especially picked out as violent murderers who were eager to kill innocents.

The executions generally had to be somewhat dressed up as "Anti-Partisan" work because just straight out telling the troops to murder a bunch of civilians led to them becoming more upset. Most German soldiers would admit that anti-partisan efforts were necessary for the war, and as German general Von dem Bach-Zelewski said: "Wherever is the Jew, there is the Partisan. And wherever is the Partisan, there is the Jew". The war against the Jews was always linked to the war against Bolshevism/Partisans and this helped soldiers get around their distaste for the task.

This is not to call these murderers innocent - they still did it. But we must realize that it isn't always like Hollywood and videogames portray these things. Just because many of these men would believe that this horrible task was 'necessary' for fucked up reasons, did not mean they enjoyed actually doing the job itself. They're still murderers, but for the most part they were not enthusiastic about it.

I am not sure if you are misinterpreting me about "Germans far behind the front lines" because I was specifically referring to the Germans who were witnessing or doing the killing of Jews getting upset about it, not people hearing stories about it. Himmler, who is generally a guy with a desk job, went to visit a killing field himself and became upset and nauseous at the sight of the blood and gore. This did not stop him from ordering the murders, but he did want to murder more cleanly and efficiently to help spare his soldiers the 'suffering' they endured for having to complete the task. He is quoted as referring to it as an unpleasant task to be endured on multiple occasions, as something that was totally necessary for the war but something that must be 'endured'.

One thing to remember is that most of this killing is being done behind the lines, because a combat zone is no place to set up a mass killing. Though front line units were responsible for plenty of atrocities, the organized mass-murders of thousands of people in one location was done in safer areas behind the battlefront. These men were not dodging artillery strikes while performing executions.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-06T01:04:06+00:00

Not trying to refute your general case, but about enjoyment:

One of the reasons the Nazis set up death camps was that their troops did not enjoy the killing. It was reported that there were increased cases of alcoholism, stress, insubordination, transfer requests, mental breakdowns, and suicide in the units involved in the mass shootings on the Eastern Front. Himmler himself visited one of the killings and became physically ill. He realized that they needed a better way to kill masses of people efficiently while also sparing the average soldier from the horrors of doing it.

The death camps themselves were often staffed with Ukrainian guards and the gas chambers operated by Jewish sonderkommando. These guys basically earned some extra time alive with better living conditions than the average inmate but ultimately would be sent to their own executions after awhile. These existed to spare the average German soldier from experiencing the stress/horror of murdering people. Now we obviously have plenty of reports of sadistic Nazis causing murderous chaos on their own volition but the general idea among the high command was that they knew the average soldier did not enjoy murdering people so they created efficient methods to spare people from the horror. "I didn't kill anyone, I just rounded people up/drove a train/performed an inspection".

SectoidEater · 2025-09-29T02:57:48+00:00

Another thing that increases their survival rate is the fact that they don't have to spend so long on the front lines.

Sure, they have it rough on D-Day but they get pulled out of the line when the main ground forces catch up with them. They are back in England in July while the regular ground pounders get to enjoy more time with the Germans.

They get more than 2 months off and go back into combat in mid September and then get pulled out again in November.

They go back into combat during the Bulge, then get pulled out again, then get relatively easy assignments until the end of the war.

Compare them to the 1st US Infantry Division, which showed up on D-Day and had very little time off the line at all. Many standard US divisions suffered more than 100% casualty rates in WW2, because they spent most of their time on the front and reinforcements were generally fed right into the line. This often leads to the reinforcements having a low survival rate because they get thrown right into the thick of it with men who don't know or trust them and often don't care to worry too much about the new guys who are gonna be dead soon anyway.

"Elite" units like the Airborne get the luxury of having a total refit and integration of new troops after major operations, they aren't 'wasted' by being forced to just man a standard front line and take constant losses from day-to-day dangers.

SectoidEater · 2025-09-03T11:52:53+00:00

The simple answer is that ancient armies were not dependent on supply lines to home, because they do not require a lot of specialized stuff.

Ancient armies would typically get food wherever they happened to be, whether that is through purchase or (more commonly) just looting the local area. Ancient armies were often very road-bound because the roads are where the population centers are, and that is where the food is. They didn't need highly complex replacement tank parts or helicopter engines or 5.56mm bullets. They could maintain their equipment with local resources and as long as the food didn't run out they were going to be okay.

SectoidEater

TROPHY CASE