VolgaFront - East of EastFront 1942-43

On January 31, 1943, the German 6th Army, isolated and starving, surrendered to the Red Army at Stalingrad. With hindsight, this was the turning point in the epic German-Russian war, 1941-45, if not the entire war in Europe. Needless to say, this military disaster was not Hitler's goal.

After barely surviving the bitter Soviet winter of 1941-42, the Wehrmacht launched a surprise thrust to the southeast with two main targets. First was the capture of the Soviet oil wells at Baku south of the Caucasus. Second was to seize Stalingrad, then sweep northeast up the Voga River behind Moscow. Although the first goal was over-ambitious, the second might have worked if Hitler had not been distracted by trying to accomplish both tasks. A successful Volga plan would probably have led to Russian defeat, and short of dropping an atomic bomb on Berlin, a one front war would have brought certain stalemate to the war in Western Europe.

VolgaFront allows players who own Columbia's EastFront to simulate the planned Volga campaign of 1942 to defeat Russia. The VolgaFront mapboard joins to the eastern edge of the EastFront mapboard and extends play to the foothills of the Urals. This extension radically alters how the German player views the region east of Moscow and Stalingrad, and forces the Soviet player to defend against this potentially fatal thrust.