Europa Games and Military History

Tag: links (Page 1 of 3)

RKKA-WW2

Since 2003 RKKA provides a host of information on the Soviet Forces in World War Two: Formations, Force Structure, uniforms, Losses, Weapons and Maps. The Design hasn’t changed much since then, and the site hasn’t really been updated since 2010, so the website structure belies the sheer amount of information available, which definitly could use a more accessible navigation, and a lot of the maps and individual documents would profit from context.  But the amount of material presented makes RKKA one of the reference points for the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War. Since Alex, the site’s webmaster, is russian, many items are based on original research and russian sources.

Date: April 6th, 2018

URL: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/rkkaww2/

 

Rounding up

While the generals talk I’ve slowly reached the limit of this years ideas and plans, and/or the limits of what I can post online without running afoul of copyright laws.

This is probably a good moment to repeat my mantra: This website lives by its contributors. If there is anything online you think violates any copyright laws, I would be very grateful if you let me know, and I will immediately remove the offending content. I do not make a single cent from this website, so I would very much like to avoid legal issues.

So, probably the last news for a bit untill the jubilee comes around (Generalstab turns 20 next year!):

  • Line of Communications pages online – Luiz Duartes fanzine, despite folding after only six issues for the want of submissions, was the indian summer of Europa and the best attempt of putting the game system on a footing without a publishing game company. Seems so long ago.
  • Two more links, one a more self-referencial (and incomplete) bibliography of publications by the Great General Staff (obviously none of them related to World War Two, but some still excellent sources, most of them available online), the second one to a similar, but way more sophisticated project collecting links to books available online about german and prussian history. And Prussian history comes with a lot of military history, so even though the books are german, even some of the map sections alone are worth a look.
  • Referencing the games is mostly done, means most games have a section listing all articles devoted to the game.

Be safe!

Sources for German Military History Online

Note: This months link leads to german books and sources exclusively, so you might want to skip this link tip if you cant read german.

Markus Maria Hof is a historian and publicist, and he found the time to scrounge archive.org for books related to german and especially Prussian history. And since Prussia shaped more than a century of European military history, his findings are a treasure of sources on that topic, all of them available online. Due to copyright only old books end up at archive.org, so you’ll miss out on the most recent scientific consensus, which in a lot of cases has significantly evolved since the days when writing military history was done to instruct and motivate soldiers for the next war. However, some of the works reach a level of detail unsurpassed since.

A last grain of salt: Hofs political writings place him firmly on the conservative side of conservatism (to put it mildly), elsewhere on his blog he extensively discusses Spengler and Carl Schmidt, and his language as well as choice of topics echoes the national conservatives of the Twenties and Thirties. Still – I appreciate the bibliographical work, and reading Spengler and Nietzsche in my twens didn’t stop me from developing emphathy.

Bibliographies of (german) books on Prussian and German history online

The Belgian Army in 1940

For this Link credit goes to Peter Page from the fantastic Yahoo group “TO&E”, which is to my knowledge the best place in the internet to search and inquire sources and information about the organisation, structure and the equipment of any modern army (“modern” being used here in the classic sense of “after the medival ages”). The TO/E group not only shares news and updates about armies around the world, but also is able to point you towards archival records and rare books available only in selected libraries.

In this case, someone pointed out a small treasure trove of digitalized documents, regulations and TO/E information mostily about the Belgian Army between the wars and up to 1940. The website is heavy on equipment and weapons and their history, but together with a small but carefully selected collection of images the authors manage to create a solid picture of the state of the Belgian Army up to the Second World War. Google Translate is only marginally helpful, since the website seems rather old and still uses frames, but the content makes it well worth a visit!

URL:  www.abbl1940.be

 

One Two Three Four!

Todays Generalstab Archive News:

  1. A new game report, published with the kind permission of its author, Brian O’Donnell. I long hoped he would be able to finish the write up – but even the existing reports of 1937 are much better than my own write-ups, so here you go: FWTBT game report No 5.
  2. A new game report from old times. Watch – or better read on – as your truly manages to see the mighty forces of the Spanish Army defeated by a ragtag rabble of anarchists and socialist militias, led by a complete Europa novice – game report FWTBT No 6. It took me so long to publish it because I truly got put to shame here.
  3. The Europa Magazine-pages are under construction as I have pulled out the old magazines to add the table of contents to each individual magazine page. So far, 10 have been done, so I should be finished somewhen around December.
  4. New Link entries, too – a tribute to Sturmpanzer.com and the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War. Their Write-up of the First one was so abysmal that I think they wanted to make extra sure no-one complained this time. So the resulting work with fifty volumes dwarfs that of some of the major combattants, not only by volume but of course also by the sheer level of detail.

I think I am gonna slow down in the next weeks again.

Sturmpanzer.com

The recent news that Richard Hedrick, the owner of Sturmpanzer.com plans to discontinue the site as more than enough reason to point your attention to this trasure of research material. Nearly as old as the General Staff, Sturmpanzer owes its existance to a much nobler cause: scientific research. From its inception, the website has been tool as well as display of historical reasearch, only superficially centered around the German assault tanks based on the Tiger chassis, the “Sturmbär”.

Pretty quickly the content broadened into archival and printed sources. However, Sturmpanzers main treasure trove are the extensive PDF catalogues of all things World War two contained in the National Archives in Washington, and a vast amount of German TO/E-Data, usually in the original form of the KStN. KStN is german and short for Kriegsstärkenachweis, which I would translate to “war/mobilisation strength rooster”. Before and During Second World War they served as the basic inventory and structure information of any german unit, and their continuous updates reflect the German Armys response to the requirements of war.

Last but not least, in the past years the research blog has been another rich source of Data, Insights and thoughts about – mostly – the german Army in World War Two. I highly reccomend a visit before its taken offline.

Date: August 23rd, 2017

URL: http://sturmpanzer.com

The charge of the burning camels

More work done: I’ve enlarged the Academy and created sub-pages for essays and documents. The library now contains links to nearly all available official histories of World War I, while the page about WW 2 is being built. The corpus of links has grown sufficiently I believe to justify converting it into permanent pages.
Also, the title of this post refers – of course, to the victory of the great Timur Tamerlan over the Indian Sultan in 1398.

Any man who must say “I am the king” is no true king

Yes, its this time of the year again. I’ve rummaged around in the underbelly of this website quite a bit, but the only recognizable changes are an enlarged website footer with two navigations, and some additions to the links to official histories of World War I. I still hope its usefull to have them all in one place.

Ken Newalls game report of FWtBT continues apace after a short break, and even though the republic has been on the defensive for a long time now things do not look good for the Nationalists, who are slowly exhausting the patience of their black-clad sponsors. But see for yourself...

The Official Histories of New Zealand in the First World War

No full official account of New Zealand’s participation in the First World War was ever published. Only four official volumes were published (1919-1923), and they were written by senior officers who had fought in the campaigns (Gallipoli, Sinai/Palestine, Western Front) but who generally had no training as historians. A useful summary on the genesis of the offical history can be found at Wikipedia.

Although providing detailed accounts of the fighting on the battlefields itself, they did not describe New Zealand during the war, its economy, politics or society, and the home-defence and patriotic efforts, New Zealanders in the naval or air war, and those serving with other British or Australian forces are not included. Despite this, the four official histories became accepted sources for New Zealand’s military effort in the Great War, and have never been updated or superseded.

The official history of the New Zealand Forces was written up in four volumes.

 

Additionally, the following volumes can be found at the New Zealand Electronic Text Foundation as official histories, which I presume constitutes some kind of endorsement as “official” works.

The Official Australian History of the Second World War

Not to be outdone by the detailed and sprawling history of New Zealands involvement in the Second World War, the Australian military undertook one of the longest and largest historical endeavours the nation has ever seen. The enterprise began in January 1943 with the appointment of Gavin Long as General Editor. The 22 volumes, written by 14 authors, were published by the Australian War Memorial over a 25-year period between 1952 and 1977.

Series 1 – Army

Series 2 – Navy

Series 3 – Air

Series 4 – Civil

Series 5 – Medical

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