ON company of heros 2....

[andrey12345]

I can sympathize Andrey.  The Western media does still like to portray Russians as bad-guys, I've lost count of the recent movies & TV shows where it turns out the evil Russians are behind everything.
It makes me laugh as it is ridiculous but unfortunately many people will just believe it & learn prejudice. 
Unfortunately a central function of Western Democracy is a need for scape-goats & witch-hunts.  How else do you 'learn' who is 'best'?

Russian - bad guys its ok, yes, like COD/MW or Red Alert manner. But here's just some kind of insanity, not "bad guys" as COD/RA, but it was some shit, who also issued for alleged realism.

[Txema]

Its a low budget rare films - his shot about his. We also do "good" is. This is normal. But this not AAA game/cinema in "realistic" manner.
But in films/games "about evil russians in WWII" this ugly things in each, w/o exceptions.

Of course, Andrey, you are right. This film is just a rare exception....


Txema

[chashka17]

I can sympathize Andrey.  The Western media does still like to portray Russians as bad-guys, I've lost count of the recent movies & TV shows where it turns out the evil Russians are behind everything.
It makes me laugh as it is ridiculous but unfortunately many people will just believe it & learn prejudice. 
Unfortunately a central function of Western Democracy is a need for scape-goats & witch-hunts.  How else do you 'learn' who is 'best'?

Russian - bad guys its ok, yes, like COD/MW or Red Alert manner. But here's just some kind of insanity, not "bad guys" as COD/RA, but it was some shit, who also issued for alleged realism.

As Julius Caesar showed 'History is written by the victors'.  E.g. "The Truth" should show the defeated enemy as evil to justify the conflict.  Editing 'reality' is endemic.  Don't think any of us can escape   

[andrey12345]

I can sympathize Andrey.  The Western media does still like to portray Russians as bad-guys, I've lost count of the recent movies & TV shows where it turns out the evil Russians are behind everything.
It makes me laugh as it is ridiculous but unfortunately many people will just believe it & learn prejudice. 
Unfortunately a central function of Western Democracy is a need for scape-goats & witch-hunts.  How else do you 'learn' who is 'best'?

Russian - bad guys its ok, yes, like COD/MW or Red Alert manner. But here's just some kind of insanity, not "bad guys" as COD/RA, but it was some shit, who also issued for alleged realism.

As Julius Caesar showed 'History is written by the victors'.  E.g. "The Truth" should show the defeated enemy as evil to justify the conflict.  Editing 'reality' is endemic.  Don't think any of us can escape   

Yes, but in this case the exact same Americans fought with the Germans, and were allies of the Soviet Union, it is not clear why as the greatest evil, it shows its allies. It's somehow even silly.

[chashka17]

I can sympathize Andrey.  The Western media does still like to portray Russians as bad-guys, I've lost count of the recent movies & TV shows where it turns out the evil Russians are behind everything.
It makes me laugh as it is ridiculous but unfortunately many people will just believe it & learn prejudice. 
Unfortunately a central function of Western Democracy is a need for scape-goats & witch-hunts.  How else do you 'learn' who is 'best'?

Russian - bad guys its ok, yes, like COD/MW or Red Alert manner. But here's just some kind of insanity, not "bad guys" as COD/RA, but it was some shit, who also issued for alleged realism.

As Julius Caesar showed 'History is written by the victors'.  E.g. "The Truth" should show the defeated enemy as evil to justify the conflict.  Editing 'reality' is endemic.  Don't think any of us can escape   

Yes, but in this case the exact same Americans fought with the Germans, and were allies of the Soviet Union, it is not clear why as the greatest evil, it shows its allies. It's somehow even silly.

At this point in time it is the Cold War that must be justified, it doesn't need to encourage logical thought in popular consciousness.
Yes it is silly, but politics don't seem to rely on truth or common-sense.  Better to have a disinformation strategy.

[Dane49]

After WW2 the western powers and defense industries needed a new enemy to justify the huge expense it would take to keep these industries alive and flourishing with free money from the government.
With Germany and Japan defeated,Communist Russia or any communists in general fit that bill as the most logical choice.

After the collapse of Russia(USSR) in the 1980s these industries and politicians who supported them needed to find a new enemy to direct their energies and govt. resources at.

War on drugs-that didn't go over too well.Toppling a couple small time dictators-There are only a few worth the effort.

War on Terror-After 9/11,that seems to work pretty well and justifies all sorts of new ideas for exacting huge expense and personal sacrifice from the population.
The govt. can get some long term mileage out of this war maybe even taking it a step further to eradicate Islam as a religion(In its present form) permenantly from the planet.

After that it would be interesting to see who our new enemies will be.I'm sure there will be some new segement of the worlds population or society in general that will warrant the puplic enemy #1 status,even if they aren't all that dangerous.

[Flashburn]

MUAHAHHA DANE.  MUAHAHAHAH.

Your take on needed boogie man is in line with my view as well.  But also a needed boogie man from the OTHER side as well. 

Hollywood makes its OWN history.  Average game company follows hollywoods history. 

[Dane49]

Yeah,Hollywood does for history what the mainstream media does for news.

Doesn't have to be factual,just interesting,entertaining and/or somewhat believable.

[chashka17]

Upcoming evil empires may be Oriental if the Red Dawn remake was anything to go by  http://www.movieinsider.com/m4854/red-dawn/, Kudos to China for forcing the Movie Studios to digitally edit out every Chinese element & replace it with N Korean.   
That must have been a MAJOR bitch job of digital editing, not to mention the dialogue getting switched to NK.
Obviously NK is the up & coming bad guy with global reach & so deserves to be demonized.

Maybe the Zhalanashkol is a more relevant conflict to be simulating than I'd previously imagined... 

[andrey12345]

Maybe the Zhalanashkol is a more relevant conflict to be simulating than I'd previously imagined... 

In a some sense, yes. In this DLC we will show events from all sides and even more. Therefore, anyone can compare and draw conclusions on their own, what like the truth, and where not.

[Shadrach]

My take on CoH2 - whenever I see screenshots of tanks firing at other tanks 20 meters away and this is how tank combat works in that game, I know it is not for me. Simple really

I am sure it will sell shitloads and make buckets of $$$, thats just the way the world is...

[Lemonade]

I'm reading this thread and I can't believe what you guys are writing here. Especially Andrew's words whose country (as well as mine) has been under soviet government's yoke for so many years. Do you really think the CCCP (USSR) couldn't be considered the enemy? It was the main, worst bloody enemy here, in Poland for over forty years. If it wasn't Gorbachev's Perestroika we, people behind the Iron Curtain would probably live in a place comparable to North Korea now.
Soviet apparatus murdered a lot of Polish people - that's a pure, non-deniable fact and that's why I'll always hate this f* regime.

Russian - bad guys its ok, yes, like COD/MW or Red Alert manner. But here's just some kind of insanity, not "bad guys" as COD/RA, but it was some shit, who also issued for alleged realism.

Not Russians, but soviets. They, with their nazi counterparts, were the worst enemies of the mankind.*

* - If not to count Mao, who has much, much more blood on his hands than Stalin or Hitler.

[andrey12345]

* - If not to count Mao, who has much, much more blood on his hands than Stalin or Hitler.

I think Churchill, under his leadership built the biggest prisons camps in the world, the genocide of the Indians and the people of Africa, even after the World War II. But I understand this is "inconvenient version", as it turns out that Western governments such as vile as those with whom they supposedly are fighting.

But it certainly never make films and do not make games about this. The preferred trample the corpse of the murdered bear.

[andrey12345]

Do not get me wrong, I'm not that there Stalinist, or a follower of communist ideals. But in the history of any country can be found both good and bad, if try hard, we can find more bad. But it is not clear in what sense? Stalin die there for 60 years, Soviet Union has gone 20. If you think it was all shit, so why stick to stir all the time? Live in the future, not in the past.

[Tanker]

I find the comments about the lack of historical accuracy/propaganda most interesting.  What particularly stands out?
I don't personally know anyone who fought in Stalingrad, so if you guys have any good local insights I'd like to hear about them.  I can see how misrepresentation devalues the reality of the times. 
& a bit further OT:-
You know that TV show Shtraf-bat (штрафбат)?  Didn't they show NKVD MGs placed to prevent any 'retreat'?  Been a while since I saw that show, but I can imagine that would be useful to control a penal battalion.
Was Brest Fortress (Брестская Крепость (2010)) way off?   Just wondering how far Russian film goes towards realism compared to Western productions.

Here's what frustrating. Punishment battalions (shtraf bats) were in all armies of the world. Defensive (barrage) squads in the same way in the Wehrmacht appeared in 1941 (during Moscow battle), and in the Red Army only in mid-1942 (and first came up with them in the days of the Roman Empire). The prison camps were in all the countries of the world, the largest in the world created by the United Kingdom for example. But what the heck, there is no game or movie about the prisoners in the camps of the UK, there is no game about German or US barrage and punishment battalions. But damn the same things about the Soviet Union and strive to stick in every hole. WTF
NKVD iss analogous to the military police in the U.S. Army + border guards in the same department. But where I can see games about evil US MP what murder US Army soldiers?

You may be frustrated because you have some serious misconceptions.

The Punishment battalions, as you call them, did not exist in the US Army, or the British Army in the same form they did in the USSR.  

The POW camps in Britain and in the USA were like Club Meds compared to those in Germany and the USSR.  Ask any soldier from the WW2 era, which country's POW camp he would rather be interned in if he had the choice.  I'll bet a month's pay 90% or more would say USA.  The German and Soviet(as well as Japan) camps and thetreatment of POWs stand out because they were brutal.

Neither the US nor the British army had anything like the NKVD troops stationed behind the front lines to shoot anyone leaving their position.

The NKVD is not analogous to the US Amy's MPs.  The NKVD, on Stalin's and Beria's orders liquidated and sent to the gulags Soviet soldiers who were captured by the Germans and who had starved in German POW camps.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called that one of the greatest crimes the Soviet government ever perpetrated on it's citizens.  Where did you get the idea that MPs, as a matter of state policy, murdered US soldiers?

[Tanker]

* - If not to count Mao, who has much, much more blood on his hands than Stalin or Hitler.

I think Churchill, under his leadership built the biggest prisons camps in the world, the genocide of the Indians and the people of Africa, even after the World War II. But I understand this is "inconvenient version", as it turns out that Western governments such as vile as those with whom they supposedly are fighting.

But it certainly never make films and do not make games about this. The preferred trample the corpse of the murdered bear.

Exactly what prison camps are we talking about here?  Are you talking about Prisoner of war camps or what?  He would have had to go a long way to exceed the numbers of citizens in the gulags Andrey.

[Dane49]

Where did you get the idea that MPs, as a matter of state policy, murdered US soldiers?

I'll bet it was that often seen picture of American troops executing these German soldiers captured during the Battle of the Bulge for wearing American uniforms.

My guess is it was subtitled for public consumption in the Soviet Union as American MPs executing American soldiers for cowardice and desertion.

[chashka17]

I had the impression Andrey wasn't defending the excesses of the USSR, just saying that popular portrayals weren't the whole story.   
That is a disservice to 'ordinary' people from the former USSR, (in the same way that automatically treating all Germans as Nazis would be.)
It is bad to devalue the sacrifice of all those millions in the GPW by showing only a politically convenient fraction of the story. 
The idea that the genuine bravery of your troops was in fact just fear of a bullet in the back from your own side is pretty demeaning.
Given that 'evil' is present in all times & all regimes, it's not a fair portrayal but it is still the predominant view.

Anyway that was how I understood what Andrey & Rostov were saying. 


**

& while I think of CoH2 I have to say I really hated the camera!!  The terrible weapons ranges modeled seem to have caused the camera movement range to be painfully restricted, meaning that if you want to see the whole battlefield you can't see anything like a panoramic view.  You effectively only see what is within range more or less.  That was what it felt like.  Don't recall CoH1 camera being so horribly constrained.
It's a relief to get back to having my M113s shot to hell from a kilometer away....   

[Krabb]

The POW camps in Britain and in the USA were like Club Meds compared to those in Germany and the USSR.  Ask any soldier from the WW2 era, which country's POW camp he would rather be interned in if he had the choice.  I'll bet a month's pay 90% or more would say USA.  The German and Soviet(as well as Japan) camps and thetreatment of POWs stand out because they were brutal.

Have you asked any of these soldiers? Are you really sure Brits, or US camps were so good?
http://cyberussr.com/hcunn/for/us-germany-pow.html

Someone's quote:

...my uncle survived a US PoW camp. Starvation and exposure were not the only problems he faced, regular beatings and filthy living conditions helped assure a healthy casualty rate. There was more going on than "a couple of accidental deaths".

And a bit different topic, but somewhat related: https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/quwby.

The NKVD is not analogous to the US Amy's MPs.  The NKVD, on Stalin's and Beria's orders liquidated and sent to the gulags Soviet soldiers who were captured by the Germans and who had starved in German POW camps.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called that one of the greatest crimes the Soviet government ever perpetrated on it's citizens.  Where did you get the idea that MPs, as a matter of state policy, murdered US soldiers?

Sure, Solzhenitsyn is a great historian of the Soviet Union. Does he got some numbers how many soldiers freed from German camps went directly to Gulag? I mean real numbers, not his usual BS.

Most countries have a system of some sort for interrogation of returning POWs. There were a lot more of returning POWs in the case of Soviet Union than in the case of other allies. That's why many camps had to be built and interrogation took longer.

Someone's translation of a relevant part from Zemskov, V.N. Gulag (historical-socialogical aspect) Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, nos. 6 and 7, 1991:

The inmates of the "verification filtration camps" of NKVD belonged to so called "particular contigent".

The particular contigent consisted of 3 categories of people:
1.POWs and servicemen encircled by the enemy.
2.German police servicemen collaborators and other civilians suspected of collaboration.
3.Civilian men of draft age who lived on the German occupied territory.

From the end of 1941 to 1 October 1944 they received 421.199 persons (1st category - 354.592 ; 2nd category - 40.062 ; 3rd category - 26.545 ).
For the same period the following number of people left the filtration camps: 335.487 (319.239, 3.061 and 13.187 respectivly).

Of the mentioned 354.592 of the 1st category (POW and enemy encircled servicemen) background was checked and then send to:

•249.416 - sent to Army units for service.
•30.749 - sent to civil and military industry.
•5.924 - sent for service as NKVD servicemen.
•11.556 - arrested by NKVD (of which 2.083 for espionage charges)
•5.347 - left for various reasons (to hospitals, deceased, ect).
•51.601 - still undergoing background check.

In 1944 - 1946 - 4,2 million repatriants arrived to USSR.
6,5% (app. 273.000 people) of those were regarded as "particular contigent" and were assembled in the "verification filtration camps" of NKVD for background check.

You Westerners are full of old (and modern so called liberal Russia) anti-Soviet propaganda. Don't watch Shtrafbat, and don't read Solzhenitsyn.

[andrey12345]

* - If not to count Mao, who has much, much more blood on his hands than Stalin or Hitler.

I think Churchill, under his leadership built the biggest prisons camps in the world, the genocide of the Indians and the people of Africa, even after the World War II. But I understand this is "inconvenient version", as it turns out that Western governments such as vile as those with whom they supposedly are fighting.

But it certainly never make films and do not make games about this. The preferred trample the corpse of the murdered bear.

Exactly what prison camps are we talking about here?  Are you talking about Prisoner of war camps or what?  He would have had to go a long way to exceed the numbers of citizens in the gulags Andrey.

There is a country called India (now three countries India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). It was a colony of the United Kingdom during the Second World War and before, and what did the British there in this time. Typical "civilians in gulag" but during 100+ vs 10 years and in biggest scale.
Search by keyword Nehru Jawaharlal.

The famous picture of the topic:
http://dic.academic.ru/pictures/wiki/files/51/300px-vereshchagin-blowing_from_guns_in_british_india.jpg

But I understand that uncomfortable topic, and suddenly it turns out that Stalin compared to Churchill and UK in whole and almost no one tyranny.

An I can still remember where in the U.S. since the beginning of the war (1941) of all local civil Japanese. Are they planted in camps indiscriminately?
Where are the games and films about the horrors of the bloody Roosevelt?

Behold, now is the Poland. What happened in the early '20s with the Russian prisoners after the end of the Soviet-Polish war. Is the democratic Marshal Pilsudski gave them to die of starvation in the camps?
Or what happened with German civilians in the 1945-46 years in the territories of Germany, who were transferred to Poland?

As we can see if it is good to dig, you can find in every state a lot of very unsavory things.

P.S. The question arises. And why bring up the past?