Operation Barbarossa, Objectives of the Work

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Objectives of the Work, 'Operation Barbarossa: the Complete Statistical Collation and Military Simulation'

The objective of ‘Operation Barbarossa: the Complete Military Simulation’ is ambitious: to create the most historically accurate, advanced and comprehensive quantitative model yet, of the first six months of the largest and costliest military campaign in history. This includes:

A full analysis of the belligerents’ military, economic and logistical capabilities, as related to their war effort on the East Front in 1941.
A large ‘data warehouse’ of historical data. This includes extensive data on available personnel, all weapons used, transport, logistics, economic production of war materials, and the replacements available and used during the campaign.
The most comprehensive computer based military simulation of Operation Barbarossa yet.

The work’s pedagogy is best described as a combination of:

military history.
analytical methodology (relating to modern military simulations or war gaming).
applied physics and mathematic.
operational research and statistics.

The key rationales behind this work are:

The application of quantitative analysis to military history, and to demonstrate the power of modern military simulations in the study of military history. The purpose here is to demonstrate why military simulations provide one of the most powerful (and underused) methods of studying military history available today.
To bring an in-depth quantitative analysis to bear on the most probable outcomes resulting from different historical operational and strategic decisions by the German and Soviet high commands in 1941. For the first time, a single work presents the advanced student of this campaign with a mechanism to quantitatively analyse in-depth, the actual forces involved, and much more significantly, to examine the probable outcome of various ‘what if’ scenarios. In so doing, many of the historically accepted myths surrounding Barbarossa are exposed, while other less appreciated historical factors are shown to have been far more significant than commonly perceived.
To provide a generic methodology and structure for researching, cataloguing, building and running a simulation of a historical military event.
To bring together an immense amount of information from disparate sources, and present it in the form of a large data warehouse in a single work. The professional researcher or amateur scholar of WWII is provided with a comprehensive data source, containing the details of all the armed forces involved on the East Front from 22nd June to 31st December 1941. Currently there is no single source detailing the actual land, air and naval forces involved in Operation Barbarossa.
To fully analyse the belligerents’ economic and logistical capabilities, as related to the East Front in 1941 and in the strategic context of their overall war effort.

‘Operation Barbarossa: the Complete Military Simulation’ does not assume the reader has detailed knowledge of the history of the East Front in WWII, experience with military simulations, or extensive knowledge of the various disciplines mentioned. The approach includes an entire analytical methodology for creating a mathematical model of a country’s armed forces and its overall war effort. In addition, the principles and concepts behind military simulations are defined and discussed in detail. The methodologies defined in this work are designed to be generic, in that they can be employed to create a military simulation of a campaign other than Barbarossa. In this sense ‘Operation Barbarossa: the Complete Military Simulation’ is also a complete guide to designing, building and operating military simulations, as used by many military forces both historically and today. One of the distinguishing features of this work is that it is one of the first to formalise and document an entire military simulation methodology.

The bulk of the work then applies these methodologies to the various belligerents involved in Operation Barbarossa in 1941. By selecting such a massive military operation as the historical case study, it is able to demonstrate the methodology and full power of military simulations in studying military history. In addition, ‘Operation Barbarossa: the Complete Military Simulation’ produces a new and unique perspective on a very famous, immensely important and tragic historical event.

The final part of the work includes the actual simulation which the reader can run on a (reasonably powerful) PC. This encompasses the methodologies and most of the historical data revealed in the preceding parts. Using the book and data in the simulation as a historical reference (even if the simulation is never run), the reader is able to wander through this momentous historical event, changing variables if desired, and still be in context. This allows close examination and analysis of almost all the military aspects associated with Operation Barbarossa, something arguably unique in currently published military history books.

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