My first intention is to attempt to study & explore specifically the Winter War in its most updated Europa war game form, which is evidently in the SoS NTO Scenario. The goal here is to hopefully identify both the positive & negative features of the published SoS/AWW games, both in the context of the historical campaign and in the context of a “basic (read: historical)” Grand Europa schema. In using the term “basic Grand Europa” and it’s counterpart “advanced Grand Europa,” I will confess to trying to resurrect two perhaps archaic and currently frankly unused Europa war game terms which I believe will aid & abet the Grand Europa project in the 21st century war game market. To be sure, the concept of Western Allied intervention into the 1939-40 Russo-Finnish War War is a decent, worthy, and viable “advanced GE” project & concept. Western Allied intervention into Norway just prior to or essentially at the same time of the historical Nazi German invasion of Norway and/or a protracted Winter War dragging on to the same date may perhaps be a different kettle of fish. Perhaps more on this important topic later as (& if) the 1939-40 GE battle scenario project develops.
Right now tonight even more important than the angle of Western Allied intervention into the Winter War is the concept of the valiant and proud Finnish nation fighting against all challengers to their sovereignty, come what may, even against the demands of powerful Soviet hegemony under the leadership of the likes of Stalin & Molotov in their prime, who at that particular time followed a European foreign policy worthy of the early 19th century Tsar Nicholas I in his prime, and not at all of Litnitov, the recently deposed early 20th European representative of by then perhaps a more exquisite but definitely shattered and “long gone” epoch of “collective security” and the likes of the by then practically defunct LN. In this context Finland joins a stirring and rousing list of 20th century fighting nations like Poland, Greece, nationalist China, and even in the 21st century currently “politically incorrect” nations like Serbia/Yugoslavia who, in the WW II epoch, fought to the death for their national freedom and who immediately overthrew their government when they returned to Belgrade from Vienna after it servilely joined Tripartite in March 1941 because they evidently believed at the time that struggle and battle even unto death was the only road for oppressed nations of the 19th century to take to achieve genuine long term independence in the 20th century. I believe I could go on and on with particular examples. If Europa doesn’t carefully, faithfully, and accurately recreate these particular nationalist struggles for sovereignty against larger nations, like I think what is happening in the Winter War, then they miss the bus, I think, of one of the primary lessons of WW II and the 20th century for the 21st.
NOTE: Starting this turn at least, SoS NTO Scenario players playing the Winter War campaign might ought to take a look at and perhaps get acquainted with the SoS Master Sequence of Play Summary. It appears to me now after some study that both the SoS Rules & its one page Master Sequence of Play Summary is an early version of what was later refined into the much expanded & much thicker Wavell’s War Rules & its own enhanced two page Master Sequence of Play Summary.
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