Freikorps is a strategic war game based on an Alternate History in which the Soviets defeat Poland following the Russian Civil War. The Soviets decide to press on and spread the Revolution into Germany. The game map is Poland (From Warsaw west) to Germany (ending at Berlin/Dresden). The German Army not being much of a fighting force, the Freikorps takes up the banner to stop the Bolshevik Hordes. Helping them (at least in the base game) are the Entente (France, England, US) and Polish National Army under Pilsudski. The Soviets are the Red Army, the Konarmiya, German Spartacus Militia and the Polish Red Army.
The game plays quickly once you get rolling. Some rules are tough to remember (each force has a different Cadre level, having a higher cadre level in battle means a column shift) but it isn’t a game breaking deal. The random events at the start of every turn can really turn the game around. On the 2nd turn the Soviets had to send 6 Brigades back to fight Wrangel. On the next two turns German towns went into revolt, destroying the Freikorps morale. The back breaker was the US withdrawal from the war as their units were defending the flank of the Freikorps making a stand against the Konarmiya trying to cross that way. It also didn’t help that nearly all the Freikorps depending the center of the map took a pounding from the main part of the steamroller, and the Polish National Army was crushed.
For what it usually costs, I can definitely recommend picking up Freikorps. It does a good job of recreating InterWar warfare. I would also love to see the system transferred to North America, to create a game based on the Turtledove Southern Victory series. A few tweaks for the trenches in the eastern theater, and the west tends to really play like the wide open plains of Germany/Poland. I’ve heard people bash these games because they are cheap, but they definitely aren’t poor. I wouldn’t recommend a bad game just because it had a good price. This game is worth every penny.
This upcoming movie is the biggest joke of history since Disney’s version of The Alamo. Tom Cruise stars as Claus Von Stauffenberg who realizes that Hitler “is a monster” and decides to take part and lead a coup attempt following the assassination of Hitler. I am going mostly by what I have seen in the trailers, so if I am wrong, I apologize as this is my interpretation of what I have seen.
First off, what you must realize is that Von in German usually denotes that the person is part of the aristrocratcy. So Claus believed that what had become Polish lands in the east deserved to be back under German rule. Its never said if he agreed with how Hitler went about adding those lands back to Germany. It should also be pointed out that there had been many plots to remove Hitler from power. Every major event leading up to the German victory in France had detractors who disagreed with Hitler. These groups would grow or shrink in size depending on how things worked out. Even when Hitler was planing the Anchluss there were groups of Military men who were against him. They believed that they weren’t strong enough to challenge the Allies and Hitler was leading them to a war without victory. Claus was even brought to a few of these earlier meetings and refused to go through it because they had pledged an oath of Loyalty to Hitler. But these groups would die down after victories. Lets also be clear here, its not as though these military guys had a vision of a Democratic Peaceful Germany. For the most part they were fine with a dictatorship, as long as the military could run itself without interfernce.
Lets look at the situation for Germany that finally lead to the July 20th plot. The Allies had landed at Normandy. Italy was all but out of the war except for a puppet regime setup in the area of Salo that was run by Mussolini. Africa had also fallen to the Allies. In Russia following the defeat at Kursk, the Germans could not regain the inititave. The allies had control of the skies and were raining death on German cities. It would be a blight on humanity if no one tried a coup against him. But even with all that going on, it is questionable whether the civilans would have accepted military leadership. Also as Rommel pointed out he feared another “Legend of the Stab in the Back” which was one of the causes of WW2.
Instead, I reccomend taking the time to read up about White Rose. A group of college students spontaneously gathered together against the German goverment following the defeat at Stalingrad. While the officiers could sit back and debate all they wanted about bringing down Hitler, the White Rose college students had no such protection. Knowing that if they were caught, they were dead, they still went out and fought the only way they knew how. In the end most of the members of the movement were caught and executed, but every single one of them is easily worth twenty Claus Von Stauffenburgs.
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Freikorps is a strategic war game based on an Alternate History in which the Soviets defeat Poland following the Russian Civil War. The Soviets decide to press on and spread the Revolution into Germany. The game map is Poland (From Warsaw west) to Germany (ending at Berlin/Dresden). The German Army not being much of a fighting force, the Freikorps takes up the banner to stop the Bolshevik Hordes. Helping them (at least in the base game) are the Entente (France, England, US) and Polish National Army under Pilsudski. The Soviets are the Red Army, the Konarmiya, German Spartacus Militia and the Polish Red Army.
