An excellent free web based version of Frank Chadwick’s classic intro war game, Battle for Moscow. Simple, but not simplistic, it is a depiction of the German advance on Moscow in Operation Typhoon in November and December of 1941. You can play solitaire with all rules enforced or command the Germans against Soviet AI. Go here to play it. Enjoy!
As a side note, I knew a German immigrant, since deceased, who as a very young man served as a landser in a German army scouting unit. He recalled vividly seeing the spires of the Kremlin through his high powered binoculars in December 1941. He was subsequently captured by the Soviets and escaped before they could execute him. He was eloquent, and profane, as to how Hitler managed to lose the War in the East.
USSR and Nazi Germany at war: “Too bad they couldn’t both lose!”
In our small rural Michigan county there were five fascinating figures who resettled there after War:
1. A Wehrmacht radioman and his German wife, both sweethearts whenever I checked them out at the grocery store;
2. A Polish cavalryman and his Russian wife who met at a German prison camp in 1942. I talked to him once. He pulled out a picture of his cavalry company in full kit from the late 1930s. He pointed to where he was in the picture, and then in heavily-accented English said “Seven out of seventy.” I will never forget that. His Russian wife was a formidable swim instructor who brooked no nonsense from children (I was afraid of her, and far from alone). But those who saw her gentler side said she was a wonderful lady, through and through.
4. Finally, a Japanese war bride who married an American Marine. I can only imagine the culture shock she went through coming from Japan to rural America in the 1940s. We had a small but growing number of Mexican laborers who were settling in around that time, but otherwise it was lily-white. Her bravery and composure, not to mention their mutual love, had to have been off the charts.
Thanks for the link, Don! This looks like fun.