Can you work within a Command Hierarchy with both Superiors and Subordinates when strategy and politics often conflict?





Grey Dawn. Murky ersatz coffee not doing it’s job. Bustling headquarters. Oberleutnants pinning army dispositions on the wall map. Markers relentlessly pushing eastwards. It’s a big map. Ostland. A nagging, slow burning, realisation of just how big it is. Bottom corner of the map flapping in the draft. Bolshevik cold overwhelming a proper Germanic wood fire.

Sipping mud. Pondering army realignments. Squinting suspiciously at the growing pile of reports on your desk. Staffers spiking ever more teleprints and summaries. In competition with a second pile. Requests. Arbitrations. Judgements. Something to do in between incessant phone calls. Berlin demanding you drop everything. The Führer has called a conference. Again. Colonel Rattus Facius, currently in dispute with your Quartermaster General, is impatiently waiting for you next door, striding up and down in his black, SS, leather boots, demanding that you intervene.



People. Strongly defined personalities. Under pressure. Fighting a war. Fighting for their own corner and agenda. Equally capable of helping or hindering. Decisions. Delegation.



AND CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHY THE HECK F.M VON BOCK WANTS TO SANCTION THE 10th PANZER DIVISION?



Because you ordered them to make a hasty attack, 30 km’s southwest of Smolensk, low on fuel, in poor visibility with limited reconnaissance. Because they unexpectedly ran into three dug in Soviet Divisions. Because GenLt. F. Schaal, their commander fumbled the assault, ColGen. Guderian declined to cover for him and now F.M Von Bock is on your back demanding an official sanction.



COMMAND. It’s this gnarly, gritty experience of front line, Operational Command that the game seeks to capture.