September Campaign: Poland in Flames preview 1

For various reasons work on the second part of my September Campaign containing the historical campaign and operations section has been slow. But I've made some progress and thought I could share some of it and talk a little about what you can expect in this second half of the invasion of Poland focused "Early-War" Flames of War supplement.  This preview will cover the historical section, in the next preview I will talk more about the scenarios and campaign itself. As always, these preview pictures may be "fuzzy" because they are print screen's.

First of all, the content of this half will be more interesting and more open to gamers and Early War interested people outside of the immediate Flames of War sphere. While you could enjoy the information in the Orders of Battle section it was in the end written with Flames of War in mind. The campaign section will contain historical information, scenarios and a hobby section that is a lot more general.

And while I will reference forces and army lists from the Orders of Battle section in each scenario profile I'm fairly certain that you will still be able to take 80% and translate it into whatever game you are playing (Bolt Action, Victory Decision, etc).

The first part of the Poland in Flames book handles the historical background of the nations involved, you got a fragment of background about the Polish 2nd Republic in the Orders of Battle section, but here I try to explain the international relations, schemes, interwar conflicts, diplomatic decisions and reasoning behind certain decisions. It's not super heavy weight material, as this is no history book, but I do feel that it makes for interesting reading and expands the understanding of events leading up to the outbreak of WW2 and gives some insight into how how the allies reasoned about their alliance with Poland, how Poland reasoned about it's situation, how Germany and the Soviet Union played everyone and the indications of their future decisions.

The historical section also include biographies of Polish, German and Soviet commanders so that you are able to connect a name with a face later on when you command specific armies under the command of these men. It may also be interesting to read the background of the military commanders and their exploits prior to WW2.

One thing  that I expanded greatly, from 1 to 4 pages, is the geographic location and summary of (most) battles between the Poles and German/Slovaks and Poles and Soviets. They are arranged chronologically and provide a small snippet of information on what happened, where and what date. This was you will be able to have a timeline reference and geographical understanding of where a scenario takes place. Having a way of locating the locations on a map should provide additional information for those interested.

The last thing in the historical section is a operational map section showing the actual movements of armies during the invasion of Poland. Again, this is meant to provide a frame of reference so that you can connect commanders with armies, armies with movements, movements with battles and dates.

I hope this preview have been interesting, and I hope that you will stay tuned for the next one.  Since there is a lot of things going on at the moment, I don't have a set release date. Though I do hope to release this book as a standalone download and as a compilation with the Orders of Battle section this month.

For those of you wondering about the cover picture (which will be the cover of the standalone book, and the picture dividing the compilation of OoB and Historical Campaign sections), it's the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein shelling the Polish Westerplatte depot at Danzig/Gdansk.

I also want to thank everyone for their support and kind feedback on the September Campaign v.2 Orders of Battle section, and I hope that everyone have downloaded the latest "2.1 update" which include changes big and small. Changes that were inevitable, and after which I think the content has stabilized and will remain as it is.