Book Review : Atlas of the Eastern Front 1941-1945

Give me a map, a moment, and I’ll wander the world.

Ok, so I’m actually kind of biased here. My Brother-in-Law, an awesome dude, happens to be a professional cartographer. So I’ve spent many a good hour browsing through high-end map coffee table books. Beyond that I spent hours of my youth studying maps, imagining the battles fought on those little squares and circles, and tracing history one page at a time.

My initial drive to get this book was actually from a video game. Sure, I’d read some basic books about the Eastern Front but my knowledge was pretty slim. I’d always been a Battle of the Bulge kind of guy. Then I started playing Gary Grigsby’s War in the East.

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War in the East : Support Units

Support units are essential in the War in the East. They are your artillery, engineers, rocket battalions, and anti-aircraft. By abstracting these units it saves you a ton of time shuttling them about. But there’s still some things to know in order to maximize your effectiveness.

“Nebelwerfer and Land Mattress”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nebelwerfer_and_Land_Mattress.jpg#/media/File:Nebelwerfer_and_Land_Mattress.jpg

Support Units come in two flavors. One is Combat Support Units like Artillery or Pioneers (Engineers). The other is straight up support, or Construction Units. We won’t cover much on the Construction side for right now. But on the Combat side there’s a lot going on.

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War in the East : Supply Basics

Supply in the War in the East at first seems incredibly complicated but is actually much simpler than it seems. Though like almost everything in WitE, it’s as complicated as you choose to make it.
In Road to Minsk, a 3 turn scenario, you don’t have to worry about supply at all. You can get a decisive Axis victory without ever thinking about it. But in the other Road to scenarios, and the full campaign, it becomes much more critical. But the good news, it’s not that bad.

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War in the East – Encirclement

War in the East – Encirclement

Encirclement is the most basic, and essential, tactic that the Axis armies have at the start of the game. Essentially you are using your fast mechanized and armor divisions to cut off the supply from less maneuverable pockets of Soviet troops. Without supplies they will surrender, saving tens of thousands of your own troops. As the Axis it is essential. As the Soviets, it’s essential to know how it works.

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Gary Grigsby’s War in the East – Basics

This is a quick introduction to the most basic of things in War in the East.

War in the East, or WitE, is a massive beast. The scale it latches on to is gargantuan. It can stretch from Finland to the Black Sea. Now I don’t recommend starting with the full war, start with Road to Minsk. But first, what the hell are we looking at?

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