why antwerp is a fortress and stalingrad not ?

[afalarco]

escuse my bad english, the question is the allieds capture very easy the antwep port in september of 1944 but in the game the city became in a fortress. on the other hand
stalingrad resisted many months the german attacks but in he game is a normal city. i thing antawerp no became in a fortress and stalingrad yes became a fortress

[joerock22]

The Germans actually managed to occupy most of Stalingrad during the battle. They definitely would have captured it fully if not for outside help. The problem for them was that the Soviets launched Operation Uranus and completely cut off the German 6th army, trapping it inside the ruined city. So to me, Stalingrad behaved more like a "true" city than a fortress.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Germany built the Atlantic wall fortresses after the fall of France. Antwerp can be seen as one of those. Antwerp is a regular city in 1940 when the Germans invade Belgium.

[Morris]

Stalingrad was never a fortress .it was only a city which axis failed to take it by it's own mistake !

[afalarco]

Stalingrad was never a fortress .it was only a city which axis failed to take it by it's own mistake !

but is the same thing as posen, this city never was a fortress but the red army can not taked in the war and in the game the city was a fortress for historical facts

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Germany made the cities in eastern Germany into fortresses. They were called festung Breslau, festung Königsberg, festung Posen etc.

Read here about the Posen fortress:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozna%C5%84_Fortress

[GogTheMild]

The Allies (British XXX Corps) captured Antwerp on 4th September 1944 (with all of the dock facilities intact). You are quite right: it was not a fortress. However, Antwerp is some 80km from the sea and the Germans had strongly fortified both banks of the Western Scheldt. Just one part of these - Walcheren Island - was considered one of the strongest parts of the Atlantic Wall. It took a series of major assaults by Canadian 1st Army to clear these, which was done by 8th November - or slightly over 3 turns in game terms. (It then took 21 days to sweep for mines and clear obstacles and the first convoy sailed into the port on 29th November - 86 days after the city and undamaged docks were captured.) It is this I think which causes it to be classed as a fort in CEaW.

[afalarco]

Germany made the cities in eastern Germany into fortresses. They were called festung Breslau, festung Königsberg, festung Posen etc.

Read here about the Posen fortress:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozna%C5%84_Fortress

the denomitation of fortress is only hitlers order no one step back like stalyn orders to no evacuete satalingrad and fight to last man. no diferencee betewen stalingrad and the oriental festung citys like posen. this city never was a fortress really

[afalarco]

The Allies (British XXX Corps) captured Antwerp on 4th September 1944 (with all of the dock facilities intact). You are quite right: it was not a fortress. However, Antwerp is some 80km from the sea and the Germans had strongly fortified both banks of the Western Scheldt. Just one part of these - Walcheren Island - was considered one of the strongest parts of the Atlantic Wall. It took a series of major assaults by Canadian 1st Army to clear these, which was done by 8th November - or slightly over 3 turns in game terms. (It then took 21 days to sweep for mines and clear obstacles and the first convoy sailed into the port on 29th November - 86 days after the city and undamaged docks were captured.) It is this I think which causes it to be classed as a fort in CEaW.

the german required three months to take the city an the russian need a similar time to re-take the city, i thing this city should be a fortress in the game in 1942

[GogTheMild]

You're entitled to your opinion, but the fact is that - in military terms - Antwerp was a fortress; ie it had fortifications and quite serious ones. Stalingrad wasn't because it didn't.

The British 2nd Army planned to capture Caen on D Day (6th June 1944). It took them 44 days longer and paratroops, naval bombardment, the use of both the British and American strategic bombers and 50,000 casualties. That doesn't make Caen a fortress. It just shows that built up areas - even small ones like Caen - can take a long time to capture. (Stalingrad had approximately 7 times the population of Caen.)

[afalarco]

You're entitled to your opinion, but the fact is that - in military terms - Antwerp was a fortress; ie it had fortifications and quite serious ones. Stalingrad wasn't because it didn't.

The British 2nd Army planned to capture Caen on D Day (6th June 1944). It took them 44 days longer and paratroops, naval bombardment, the use of both the British and American strategic bombers and 50,000 casualties. That doesn't make Caen a fortress. It just shows that built up areas - even small ones like Caen - can take a long time to capture. (Stalingrad had approximately 7 times the population of Caen.)

ok i understand, but almost of the fortress are coastal fortress ? the allied take the city very easy . i thing antwerp fortress almost only have fortress useful against amphibios assault and dont have fortress useful against land attacks ( escuse mi bad english, i hope you understand me)

[Samhain]

Your English is pretty good actually.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Germany made the cities in eastern Germany into fortresses. They were called festung Breslau, festung Königsberg, festung Posen etc.

Read here about the Posen fortress:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozna%C5%84_Fortress

the denomitation of fortress is only hitlers order no one step back like stalyn orders to no evacuete satalingrad and fight to last man. no diferencee betewen stalingrad and the oriental festung citys like posen. this city never was a fortress really

I think you need to read about the Battle of Poznan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_ ... %84_(1945)

The descriptions here clearly indicates that the battle when the city fell to the Russians were about storming a fortress and not a regular city.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I think people should think about what a fortress really is in Ceaw. You only get the fortress bonuses as long as the city is stille entrenched. Once it drops to 0 entrenchment you don't get the extra defensive bonuses. Usually a fortress has about 4 entrenchments (more if city has higher production like Leningrad).

Each attack will reduce the entrenchment level by 1. So this means that the first attacks will get a bloody nose, but once the entrenchment is down to 0 you can take the fortress like any other city.

So the fortresses are not like invincible hexes where you can't expect to win. You just need more patience and keep on the attacks for a few turns. If you can only attack from 1-2 hexsides then it will take awhile to beat down the defenders. If you can surround them then you can expect to take the fortress in 1 turn.

One can discuss whether Stalingrad was a fortress or not. If you look at the city defenses there is nothing that indicates that the city really was a fortress. One reason the Germans never took the city was because they didn't capture the east bank of the Volga river. So Russia were able to reinforce losses every night by sending fresh troops across the river. Another reason was that the heavy bombardment of the city meant many houses were reduced to rubble. That meant even harder to vehicles to operate and lots of good places for defenders to hide.

This could happen to ANY city where the defenders would rather stand and die instead of retreating. So Stalingrad became a "fortress" because Stalin decided that the Red Army should not give up the city no matter the cost. I think the city survived only because it was on the Volga. Had it been on a more narrow river I think the Germans would have captured the east bank. On the east bank the Russians had artillery that could bombard the Germans in the city. Over 90% of the city fell, but it still didn't give up.

Fortresses in GS work well to simulate the real effects of the late game war. We saw that both the western Allies and the Russians struggled to take the cities that were called fortresses despite having overwhelming superiority. If we had just regular cities there then it's impossible to simulate the time it took to capture such cities. This is particularly important for Overlord because getting to a port city was the main objective for the Allies. Before the fortresses it was way too easy for the Allies to get a foothold.

[Morris]

Stalingrad was never a fortress .it was only a city which axis failed to take it by it's own mistake !

but is the same thing as posen, this city never was a fortress but the red army can not taked in the war and in the game the city was a fortress for historical facts

On the other side ,if Stalingrad became a fortress ,it will badly effect the Axis progress in 1942 , but whenever Red army arrive Posen , however Posan is fortress or not ,they will take it without any difficult since Ussr usually already have difficult to spend out their pps around that period

[Morris]

You're entitled to your opinion, but the fact is that - in military terms - Antwerp was a fortress; ie it had fortifications and quite serious ones. Stalingrad wasn't because it didn't.

The British 2nd Army planned to capture Caen on D Day (6th June 1944). It took them 44 days longer and paratroops, naval bombardment, the use of both the British and American strategic bombers and 50,000 casualties. That doesn't make Caen a fortress. It just shows that built up areas - even small ones like Caen - can take a long time to capture. (Stalingrad had approximately 7 times the population of Caen.)

ok i understand, but almost of the fortress are coastal fortress ? the allied take the city very easy . i thing antwerp fortress almost only have fortress useful against amphibios assault and dont have fortress useful against land attacks ( escuse mi bad english, i hope you understand me)

At least ,your English is better than mine .