Europa Games and Military History

Tag: updates (Page 1 of 5)

Spit & Polish

In addition to the Combined Arms index mentioned yesterday, we were also able to add ETO #57 and #58 to the ETO index, thanks to information provided by Edmond (Thank you!). We’ve updated a couple of game pages to include the new references, and this should bring the newletter section indeed to completion – unless I have missed an important newsletter, in which case someone please point that out to me.

Also new are the History of the Second World War and Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, the two official histories of the Second World War from Britain and Germany, respectively. Some of the British volumes are available online at hyperwar.com and archive.org, whereas the German work is too new and not available legally.

I remain fascinated by the Turkish official military history. It seems that the work of the Turkish General Staff on the First World War has been updated since its inception in the Twenties and is still an ongoing project, currently spanning 27 volumes. However, no translations have ever been undertaken, and there are no digital versions available, or at least I was not able to identify any with the limited Turkish available to me. Which is a sordid state of affaird from several angles, not only because the Turkish and Muslim experience of World War One remains underrepresented in historiography, but also since access to the sources for Turkish military history remains limited. Even though the Turkish General Staffs work has a reputation for being nationalist and biased, the same can be said for most of other nations official histories, and in the least it could provide a valuable corrective on the western narrative. A first survey of available (i.e. English and German) literature seems to indicate both German and British sources underrate the Osman contribution to the war. See for example Erickson, Edward J, Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I: A Comparative Study, 2007)

Seasons in the Sun

We continue our publications from the rich trove of articles kindly provided by Carlos Perez from belliludi.com.  An excellent overview on the state of Spains Army at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, we have Alberto Arzaneguis essay on The Spanish Army in 1936 in the department of Order of Battle research.

Additionally, a kind gamer provided us with an Index of Gary Stagliano’s newsletter Nuts & Bolts, which we’ve also published today. The individual game indices are also updated, so you have comprehensive reading lists to every game. Enjoy!

 

The terribly beauty of wargames

Carlos Pérez was one of the most active spanish Europa-players. His historical interest mainly lay with the Spanish Civil War, and at his website belliludi.com he assembled an impressive collection of essays on the history of the civil war, written by internationally renowned military historians such as Brian R. Sullivan and Klaus Maier, to name but two.

Since Carlos does not have the ressources to keep his website updated, he recently gave permission to the General Staff to reproduce some of the essays and articles here, an offer that we accept with deep gratitude. So in the following weeks we’ll add the Europa-related articles as well as selected essays to generalstab.org. Make sure to thank Carlos if you see him!

First to go online is an essay by Williamson Murray titled The Consequences of Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War.

Plus, for Friends of knowledgable Europa variants: An Alternative Rule for the surrender of Italy in Second Front by Rich Velay

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!

Another one bites the Dust

Some days ago, while expanding the “Europa Online” page, I noticed the “one Week Europa” crowd also joined the landowners: The website is offline, and as with most things Europa, I doubt they’ll be back any time soon. My updating frenzy of the last weeks is slowly coming to an end (not because of lack of ideas or material, though). For the future I might slowly broaden the outlook of this website to maybe include some successor projects to sad Europa, lest this website becomes a purely historical documentation about some dead game.  Then again, I might have trouble updating for some weeks anyway, so don’t expect too much. Latest so far:

  1. Individual pages for The Grenadier. I maybe will add a vidual index like the one for TEM at some point.
  2. Speaking of TEM: Finished the TEM visual index and added TOCs for every issue.
  3. Started adding a reference section to most games with a list of articles about or with scenarios for the respective game, compare the entries for “Fire in the East” for example. Still loads to do, as always.
  4. Eric Pierce sent a new version of his Updated OB for the Soviets in AWW, so I replaced the download and the page.

Still working on: Uploading and linking some custom game charts made by Ken Newall for his awesome FWtBT-report, and adding more turns to the ME/ER-report by Greg Bartels.

In Memoriam Milo Minderbinder

Here’s this weeks updates so far:

  • Added TEM index pages up to TEM #71 – getting ahead of my own schedule
  • Added pages for the Grenadier and ETO as well, with potentially creating individual pages for issues, similar to the TEM pages, if can research enough information
  • Added more postings (and pictures) to Gregory Bartels Wavell’s War AAR. Obviously a work in progress, just like the TEM-pages
  • Created an Europa Modules page to better distinguish between Europa games and Europa modules, added a page for ¡No Pasaran! to it.
  • Reworked the pages for Balkan Front and A Winter War to improve layout and readability, added some images here and there.
  • Reordered post and media category trees to support the website expansion
  • Added Downloads – PDFs for the four Orders of Battle we have, and some for the Great War Ground rules. More to come.

In former times that would be enough updates to last me a whole month or longer… But there are some things I just want to finish up.

 

Scanning Europa, one chart at a time

A big thanks today goes to Stefan Farelly, who sent me scans of the War in the Desert Charts and Counters. Another gap filled on the way to a complete digital presence of Europa on the webs (minus the sensitive copyrighted parts, of course). Thank you, Stefan!

Also, I’ve progressed to No. 52 in the TEM index, and am done with uploading, renaming and tagging the images for Gregory Bartels newest game report – so I should be able to publish this in the next weeks. Aas far as I can tell now, after that there will be a break in available material, so do not expect too many updates ion the future.

 

New game report

To start the New Year properly we have a brand new game report of For Whom the Bell Tolls, written by Ken Newall and reporting from his solitaire game featuring a variable start to the revolution. Thanks to Ken who allowed me publishing his reports here. Enjoy the read!

More DJ05!

The epic Grand Campaign game of MtV/OT by Todd Jahnke reached May 1917 this Summer, with the Allied pounding furiously at the southern coust of Austria-Hungary while burning through their equipment at the Western Front. As usual, you find the reports for May I and May II in the Archive. Thanks to Todd, and enjoy your read!

Innofficial Innovations

Hi everyone,
thanks to the kindness of Eric Pierce, I was able to add his well-reasearched new Order of Battle for the Soviet Union in the Winter War (1939-40) to the Academy pages. Of course its inofficial (When did the last official material get published anyway – 2002?), but in Eric´s words its “pretty close to what A.E. Goodwin would produce”. Which means it takes into acocunt all the new research and sources that have been published in the past twenty years and should be up to date, and on the same level as the TW OBs (if they ever see the light).

I took this as an opportunity to clean up the War Academy main page and insert some pictures. Hope you like it,

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