War in the East - Turn 55

This is going well.

After a slogging winter fight, I was been able to use turns of clear weather to attack the Soviets and turns of mud to wait and let encirled units starve a bit. Now it's clear weather, and I'm on the attack. I'm aggressively using my panzer and motorized divisions to encircle Soviet units, then let my infantry crush them (with extra air support if they're tough.)

I'm trying to bite off as many units as I can, even if it's only 1-2 here or 6-7 there.

Overall . . . I think I have this won. Surviving the winter was the key for me. Digging in, counterattacking where I could, and giving ground where neither of those were good moves helped win the winter. Now it's campaign season and I'm crushing the Soviets.

My best weapons at this stage are Panzer IVG with a long-barreled 75mm gun (in tiny amounts), some Marder II panzerjaegers, Panzer IIIJ and IIIM, and BF-109s and the mid-end JU-87, JU-88, and HE-111 bombers. Nothing exciting. The first Tigers aren't due for another month or so (4-5 turns before they hit production.)

Casualties are nasty:

The Soviets have lost almost 7 million men - 1.8 million dead, 3.2 million captured (and let's face it - they're dead). That's 5 million permanent losses, to Axis losses of 1.6 million men, out of which 530,000 are dead and just under 22,000 are captured. That's .55 million permanent losses. I've managed a 10:1 loss inflicted ratio even after a harsh winter where combats were I lost 1:2 or 1:3 were common. I've wiped out over 300 division-or-larger units. It's just staggering. I barely have enough men on the entire field to suffer their losses (5.5 million total Axis) and they are still fielding armies. Sadly for them, they're going to die. I'm gobbling up all of those encircled units this turn, planning to punch a hole to Stalingrad, expand my ring arount Rostov, and keep pushing to cut the rail lines that keep their northern forces grinding away at the Finns.

Fun game, but it's just beginning to fell endgame-like.