Combat on the Russian Front

[Mad Russian]

I won't argue facts that you have ample access to, but would like to ask at what point does a soldier move from Green to Regular to Vet.? I feel that a fully trained soldier, even one that has not seen combat, should be rated Regular, not Green. It seems that some of the Hungarian forces assembled in '41 were not untried but had some combat experience, the ones that did not would have had some time to train so that is why I question the Green rating. Forces without time to fully train are Green as they are still willing participants, and avoid the Conscript rating. I am going by the standard that U.S. forces involved in the opening of the war on Iraq would not be considered a Green force by any means, they are highly trained and motivated and what they lack in experience would be made up for with the training they had at home. Therefore, a Regular rating.

All the scenarios I do are based on actual fights. What I normally do is to use the actual results of the battle to determine the experience levels of the units involved. If a unit fought well on a given day it wouldn't matter to me if they had never been in combat before. The comments I made about nationalities is just a starting place, not anything set in stone.

Generally speaking the Hungarians were at best regular troops compared to Germans and more likely would do no better than green German troops.

The main nationality troops are normally the yard stick I use. How did these particular troops respond in relation to average German or Soviet troops? Then comes my situational yardstick. How did they do in this particular battle, on this particular day?

Put the two of those together and you get a pretty good idea of what experience levels to use. All rules are made to be broken though and military small unit experience levels are highly subjective to the scenario designers feelings about the battle in question.

Having said all of that, I find nothing that shows the Hungarians in 1941, were anything other than a green combat force tagging along with the most experienced military force on earth at the time. Their motorized units had bicycle units in them. This is not conducive to what I would consider modern equipment. Their very poor showing at Stalingrad, after they had been in Russia for a year, tells me that the level or their training, leadership and weapons was never up to a par of either the Germans or the Soviets.

That of course is my own opinion. This has nothing to do with the fighting spirit of Hungarian forces as such. They were, as was often the case with the secondary military forces deployed in WWII, poorly lead, equipped and trained. What kind of results do you expect with that kind of a situation?

When making your scenarios you can put the experience levels of units at any grade you like. If you want them veteran then make them veteran. If you want them to be historically accurate it appears that few times in WWII would Hungarian units be rated better than average on their combat record.

Good Hunting.

MR