On Sept. 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, the act that started World War II.
The New York Times article about the invasion included a report of the Gleiwitz episode as well as Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s proclamation to the German army, which portrayed Germany’s action as one of self-defense: “In order to put an end to this frantic activity no other means is left to me now than to meet force with force.” France and England declared war against Germany on Sept. 3, but neither country was prepared to fight and would not deploy a significant number of military forces until the next year, leaving Poland alone in its defense. Although it had an army of more than 700,000, Poland was unprepared for Germany’s blitzkrieg tactics. Its army could not deploy its troops quickly enough to defend against the more powerful German forces. As a result, many civilians lost their lives.
Any hopes of repelling the invasion were dashed on Sept. 17, when the Soviet Red Army invaded from east. By the end of September, Germany and the Soviet Union had control of the country. The last organized Polish resistance was defeated on Oct. 6. After the initial rapid attacks on Poland, things appeared to quickly quiet down. News was sparse from the front lines, and the American press started referring to the situation as the “Phony War.” During this time, however, German forces steadily occupied Poland and continued to focus on civilians, imprisoning and murdering thousands of the country’s residents.
The Wehrmacht is a fierce fighting machine but as it hands out contracts for Panzers, Tank Destroyers and Self-Propelled Artillery, your design firms will have to innovate and fight for the best weapons of war. The goal of the game is not to win the war--although this is certainly possible--but rather to end the game with the most Gold, which will be converted from Reichsmarks.
The New York Times article about the invasion included a report of the Gleiwitz episode as well as Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s proclamation to the German army, which portrayed Germany’s action as one of self-defense: “In order to put an end to this frantic activity no other means is left to me now than to meet force with force.” France and England declared war against Germany on Sept. 3, but neither country was prepared to fight and would not deploy a significant number of military forces until the next year, leaving Poland alone in its defense. Although it had an army of more than 700,000, Poland was unprepared for Germany’s blitzkrieg tactics. Its army could not deploy its troops quickly enough to defend against the more powerful German forces. As a result, many civilians lost their lives.
Any hopes of repelling the invasion were dashed on Sept. 17, when the Soviet Red Army invaded from east. By the end of September, Germany and the Soviet Union had control of the country. The last organized Polish resistance was defeated on Oct. 6. After the initial rapid attacks on Poland, things appeared to quickly quiet down. News was sparse from the front lines, and the American press started referring to the situation as the “Phony War.” During this time, however, German forces steadily occupied Poland and continued to focus on civilians, imprisoning and murdering thousands of the country’s residents.
The Wehrmacht is a fierce fighting machine but as it hands out contracts for Panzers, Tank Destroyers and Self-Propelled Artillery, your design firms will have to innovate and fight for the best weapons of war. The goal of the game is not to win the war--although this is certainly possible--but rather to end the game with the most Gold, which will be converted from Reichsmarks.
Merchants of Death
- Krupp (Heyitsjiwon)
- Established Industry: Begins the game with 4 Factories.
The Krupp family, a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, became famous for their production of steel, artillery, ammunition, and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. It was important to weapons development and production in both world wars. One of the most powerful dynasties in European history, for 400 years Krupp flourished as the premier weapons manufacturer for Germany. From the Thirty Years' War until the end of the Second World War, they produced everything from battleships, U-boats, tanks, howitzers, guns, utilities, and hundreds of other commodities.
The dynasty began in 1587 when a trader named Arndt Krupp moved to Essen and joined the merchants guild. He then began buying vacated real estate from families who fled the city due to the Black Death and became one of the richest men in the city. Over the next three centuries his descendants began producing small guns during the Thirty Years' War and over time gradually acquired fulling mills, coal mines, and an iron forge. During the Napoleonic Wars, Friedrich Krupp founded the Gusstahlfabrik (Cast Steel Works) and began producing smelted steel in 1816, turning the company into a major industrial power. The foundations were laid for the steel empire that would come to dominate the world for nearly a century under his son Alfred. Krupp became the arms manufacturer for the Kingdom of Prussia in 1859 and later the German Empire.
Krupp was also a revolutionary company that paved the way for workers rights. Alfred pioneered a system in which if the worker pledged loyalty to the company, he would be offered an unprecedented amount of benefits and social programs including on site technical and manual training, accidental, sickness, and life insurance, housing (sometimes free), recreational facilities, parks, schools, bath houses, and department stores. Widows and orphans were guaranteed pay if their husbands and/or fathers were killed.
- MAN (Skylar)
- Namebrand: All Rolls for Contracts are +1.
MAN traces its origins back to 1758, when the "St. Antony" ironworks commenced operation in Oberhausen, as the first heavy-industry enterprise in the Ruhr region. In 1808, the three ironworks "St. Antony", "Gute Hoffnung" (English: "Good Hope"), and "Neue Essen" (English: "New Forges") merged, to form the Hüttengewerkschaft und Handlung Jacobi Oberhausen, which was later renamed Gute Hoffnungshütte (GHH).
In 1840, the German engineer Ludwig Sander founded in Augsburg the first predecessing enterprise of MAN in Southern Germany: the "Sander'sche Maschinenfabrik." It firstly became the "C. Reichenbach'sche Maschinenfabrik", which was named after the pioneer of printing machines Carl August Reichenbach, and later on the "Maschinenfabrik Augsburg". The branch Süddeutsche Brückenbau A.G. (MAN-Werk Gustavsburg) was founded when the company in 1859 was awarded the contract for the construction of the railway bridge over the Rhine at Mainz.
In 1898, the companies Maschinenbau-AG Nürnberg (founded 1841) and Maschinenfabrik Augsburg AG (founded 1840) merged to form Vereinigte Maschinenfabrik Augsburg und Maschinenbaugesellschaft Nürnberg A.G., Augsburg ("United Machine Works Augsburg and Nuremberg Ltd."). In 1908, the company was renamed Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg AG, or in short, M·A·N.
While the focus initially remained on ore mining and iron production in the Ruhr region, mechanical engineering became the dominating branch of business in Augsburg and Nuremberg. Under the direction of Heinrich von Buz, Maschinenfabrik Augsburg grew from a medium-sized business of 400 employees into a major enterprise with a workforce of 12,000 by the year 1913.
Locomotion, propulsion and steel building were the big topics of this phase. The early predecessors of MAN were responsible for numerous technological innovations. The success of the early MAN entrepreneurs and engineers like Heinrich Gottfried Gerber, was based on a great openness towards new technologies. They constructed the Wuppertal monorail ("Wuppertaler Schwebebahn") and the first spectacular steel bridges like the Großhesseloher Brücke in Munich in 1857 and the Müngsten railway bridge between 1893 and 1897.
The invention of the rotary printing press allowed the copious printing of books and newspapers and since 1893, Rudolf Diesel puzzled for four years with future MAN engineers in a laboratory in Augsburg until his first Diesel engine was completed and fully functional.
During 1921, the majority of M.A.N. was taken over by the Gutehoffnungshütte Actienverein für Bergbau und Hüttenbetrieb, Sterkrade (GHH), (founded 1873).[1] Through well-directed equities and acquisitions of processing industries, e.g., Deutsche Werft (1918), Ferrostaal (1921), Deggendorfer Werft und Eisenbau (1924), MAN advanced to a nationwide operating enterprise, with a workforce of 52,000 by 1921.
At the same time the GHH's economic situation worsened. The causes for this were, among others, the reparations after World War I, the occupation of the Ruhr region and the world economic crisis. In only two years the number of MAN employees sank from 14,000 in the year 1929/30 to 7,400 in 1931/32. While the civil business was largely collapsing, the military business increased with the armament under the National Socialist regime. GHH/MAN enterprises supplied diesel engines for submarines, tanks (Panzers), cylinders for projectiles and artillery of every description. MAN also produced gun parts, including Mauser Karabiner 98k rifle bolts. Their Waffenamt code was WaA53, and ordnance code was "coc".
The MAN works in Augsburg, which produced diesel engines for U-boats, and the MAN works in Nuremberg, which built 40 percent of Germany's Panther tanks, were often the target of massive Allied bombing attacks during World War II.
- Porsche (Murtox)
- Ferdinand Porsche: Starts the game with a Talented Engineer.
Ferdinand Porsche founded the company called "Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche GmbH" in 1931, with main offices at Kronenstraße 24 in the centre of Stuttgart. Initially, the company offered motor vehicle development work and consulting, but did not build any cars under its own name. One of the first assignments the new company received was from the German government to design a car for the people, that is a "Volkswagen". This resulted in the Volkswagen Beetle, one of the most successful car designs of all time. The Porsche 64 was developed in 1939 using many components from the Beetle.
During World War II, Volkswagen production turned to the military version of the Volkswagen Beetle, the Kübelwagen, 52,000 produced, and Schwimmwagen, 15,584 produced. Porsche produced several designs for heavy tanks during the war, losing out to Henschel & Son in both contracts that ultimately led to the Tiger I and the Tiger II. However, not all this work was wasted, as the chassis Porsche designed for the Tiger I was used as the base for the Elefant tank destroyer. Porsche also developed the Maus super-heavy tank in the closing stages of the war, producing two prototypes.
- Henschel & Son (Open)
- Underground Factories: Factories cannot be destroyed by Events.
Henschel & Son (German: Henschel und Sohn) was a German company, located in Kassel, best known during the 20th century as a maker of transportation equipment, including locomotives, trucks, buses and trolleybuses, and armoured fighting vehicles and weapons.
Georg Christian Carl Henschel founded the factory in 1810 at Kassel. His son Carl Anton Henschel founded another factory in 1837. In 1848, the company began manufacturing locomotives. The factory became the largest locomotive manufacturer in Germany by the 20th century. Henschel built 10 articulated steam trucks, using Doble steam designs, for Deutsche Reichsbahn railways as delivery trucks. Several cars were built as well, one of which became Hermann Göring's staff car. In 1935 Henschel was able to upgrade its various steam locomotives to a high-speed Streamliner type with a maximum speeds of up to 140 km/h (87 mph) by the addition of a removable shell over the old steam locomotive.
Early in 1935, Henschel began manufacturing Panzer I tanks. During World War II, the firm was responsible for license production of the Dornier Do 17Z medium bomber, and in 1939–1940 it began large-scale production of the Panzer III. Henschel was the sole manufacturer of the Tiger I, and alongside Porsche the Tiger II. In 1945, the company had 8,000 workers working in two shifts each of 12 hours, and forced labour was used extensively. The company's factories, which also manufactured narrow-gauge locomotives, were among the most important Allied bomber targets and were nearly completely destroyed.
- Daimler-Benz AG (Open)
- Foreign Labor: Can receive +1 Contracts than Factories owned.
Daimler-Benz AG was a German manufacturer of motor vehicles and internal combustion engines, which was founded in 1926. An Agreement of Mutual Interest – which was valid until 2000 – was signed on 1 May 1924 between Karl Benz's Benz & Cie. and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, which had been founded by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. Daimler had died in 1900, and Maybach had left in 1907.
Both companies continued to manufacture their separate automobile and internal combustion engine marques until 28 June 1926, when Benz & Cie. and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft formally merged - becoming Daimler-Benz AG (Aktiengesellschaft) - and agreed that thereafter, all of the factories would use the brand name of "Mercedes-Benz" on their automobiles. The inclusion of the name Mercedes in the new brand name honored the most important model series of DMG automobiles, the Mercedes series, which were designed and built by Wilhelm Maybach. They derived their name from a 1900 engine named after the daughter of Emil Jellinek. Jellinek became one of DMG's directors in 1900, ordered a small number of motor racing cars built to his specifications by Maybach, stipulated that the engine must be named Daimler-Mercedes, and made the new automobile famous through motorsports. That race car later became known as the Mercedes 35 hp. The first of the series of production models bearing the name Mercedes had been produced by DMG in 1902. Jellinek left the DMG board of directors in 1909. The name of Daimler as a marque of automobiles had been sold by DMG - following his death in 1900 - for use by other companies (Daimler Motor Company and Austro-Daimler). Since the new company, Daimler-Benz, would have created confusion and legal problems by including Daimler in its new brand name, it therefore used the name Mercedes to represent the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft interest. Karl Benz remained as a member of the board of directors of Daimler-Benz AG until his death in 1929. Although Daimler-Benz is best known for its Mercedes-Benz automobile brand, during World War II, it also created a notable series of aircraft, tank, and submarine engines. Daimler also produced parts for German arms, most notably barrels for the Mauser rifle. During World War II, Daimler-Benz employed foreign labor.
- Krupp (Heyitsjiwon)
- Established Industry: Begins the game with 4 Factories.
The Krupp family, a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, became famous for their production of steel, artillery, ammunition, and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. It was important to weapons development and production in both world wars. One of the most powerful dynasties in European history, for 400 years Krupp flourished as the premier weapons manufacturer for Germany. From the Thirty Years' War until the end of the Second World War, they produced everything from battleships, U-boats, tanks, howitzers, guns, utilities, and hundreds of other commodities.
The dynasty began in 1587 when a trader named Arndt Krupp moved to Essen and joined the merchants guild. He then began buying vacated real estate from families who fled the city due to the Black Death and became one of the richest men in the city. Over the next three centuries his descendants began producing small guns during the Thirty Years' War and over time gradually acquired fulling mills, coal mines, and an iron forge. During the Napoleonic Wars, Friedrich Krupp founded the Gusstahlfabrik (Cast Steel Works) and began producing smelted steel in 1816, turning the company into a major industrial power. The foundations were laid for the steel empire that would come to dominate the world for nearly a century under his son Alfred. Krupp became the arms manufacturer for the Kingdom of Prussia in 1859 and later the German Empire.
Krupp was also a revolutionary company that paved the way for workers rights. Alfred pioneered a system in which if the worker pledged loyalty to the company, he would be offered an unprecedented amount of benefits and social programs including on site technical and manual training, accidental, sickness, and life insurance, housing (sometimes free), recreational facilities, parks, schools, bath houses, and department stores. Widows and orphans were guaranteed pay if their husbands and/or fathers were killed.
- MAN (Skylar)
- Namebrand: All Rolls for Contracts are +1.
MAN traces its origins back to 1758, when the "St. Antony" ironworks commenced operation in Oberhausen, as the first heavy-industry enterprise in the Ruhr region. In 1808, the three ironworks "St. Antony", "Gute Hoffnung" (English: "Good Hope"), and "Neue Essen" (English: "New Forges") merged, to form the Hüttengewerkschaft und Handlung Jacobi Oberhausen, which was later renamed Gute Hoffnungshütte (GHH).
In 1840, the German engineer Ludwig Sander founded in Augsburg the first predecessing enterprise of MAN in Southern Germany: the "Sander'sche Maschinenfabrik." It firstly became the "C. Reichenbach'sche Maschinenfabrik", which was named after the pioneer of printing machines Carl August Reichenbach, and later on the "Maschinenfabrik Augsburg". The branch Süddeutsche Brückenbau A.G. (MAN-Werk Gustavsburg) was founded when the company in 1859 was awarded the contract for the construction of the railway bridge over the Rhine at Mainz.
In 1898, the companies Maschinenbau-AG Nürnberg (founded 1841) and Maschinenfabrik Augsburg AG (founded 1840) merged to form Vereinigte Maschinenfabrik Augsburg und Maschinenbaugesellschaft Nürnberg A.G., Augsburg ("United Machine Works Augsburg and Nuremberg Ltd."). In 1908, the company was renamed Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg AG, or in short, M·A·N.
While the focus initially remained on ore mining and iron production in the Ruhr region, mechanical engineering became the dominating branch of business in Augsburg and Nuremberg. Under the direction of Heinrich von Buz, Maschinenfabrik Augsburg grew from a medium-sized business of 400 employees into a major enterprise with a workforce of 12,000 by the year 1913.
Locomotion, propulsion and steel building were the big topics of this phase. The early predecessors of MAN were responsible for numerous technological innovations. The success of the early MAN entrepreneurs and engineers like Heinrich Gottfried Gerber, was based on a great openness towards new technologies. They constructed the Wuppertal monorail ("Wuppertaler Schwebebahn") and the first spectacular steel bridges like the Großhesseloher Brücke in Munich in 1857 and the Müngsten railway bridge between 1893 and 1897.
The invention of the rotary printing press allowed the copious printing of books and newspapers and since 1893, Rudolf Diesel puzzled for four years with future MAN engineers in a laboratory in Augsburg until his first Diesel engine was completed and fully functional.
During 1921, the majority of M.A.N. was taken over by the Gutehoffnungshütte Actienverein für Bergbau und Hüttenbetrieb, Sterkrade (GHH), (founded 1873).[1] Through well-directed equities and acquisitions of processing industries, e.g., Deutsche Werft (1918), Ferrostaal (1921), Deggendorfer Werft und Eisenbau (1924), MAN advanced to a nationwide operating enterprise, with a workforce of 52,000 by 1921.
At the same time the GHH's economic situation worsened. The causes for this were, among others, the reparations after World War I, the occupation of the Ruhr region and the world economic crisis. In only two years the number of MAN employees sank from 14,000 in the year 1929/30 to 7,400 in 1931/32. While the civil business was largely collapsing, the military business increased with the armament under the National Socialist regime. GHH/MAN enterprises supplied diesel engines for submarines, tanks (Panzers), cylinders for projectiles and artillery of every description. MAN also produced gun parts, including Mauser Karabiner 98k rifle bolts. Their Waffenamt code was WaA53, and ordnance code was "coc".
The MAN works in Augsburg, which produced diesel engines for U-boats, and the MAN works in Nuremberg, which built 40 percent of Germany's Panther tanks, were often the target of massive Allied bombing attacks during World War II.
- Porsche (Murtox)
- Ferdinand Porsche: Starts the game with a Talented Engineer.
Ferdinand Porsche founded the company called "Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche GmbH" in 1931, with main offices at Kronenstraße 24 in the centre of Stuttgart. Initially, the company offered motor vehicle development work and consulting, but did not build any cars under its own name. One of the first assignments the new company received was from the German government to design a car for the people, that is a "Volkswagen". This resulted in the Volkswagen Beetle, one of the most successful car designs of all time. The Porsche 64 was developed in 1939 using many components from the Beetle.
During World War II, Volkswagen production turned to the military version of the Volkswagen Beetle, the Kübelwagen, 52,000 produced, and Schwimmwagen, 15,584 produced. Porsche produced several designs for heavy tanks during the war, losing out to Henschel & Son in both contracts that ultimately led to the Tiger I and the Tiger II. However, not all this work was wasted, as the chassis Porsche designed for the Tiger I was used as the base for the Elefant tank destroyer. Porsche also developed the Maus super-heavy tank in the closing stages of the war, producing two prototypes.
- Henschel & Son (Open)
- Underground Factories: Factories cannot be destroyed by Events.
Henschel & Son (German: Henschel und Sohn) was a German company, located in Kassel, best known during the 20th century as a maker of transportation equipment, including locomotives, trucks, buses and trolleybuses, and armoured fighting vehicles and weapons.
Georg Christian Carl Henschel founded the factory in 1810 at Kassel. His son Carl Anton Henschel founded another factory in 1837. In 1848, the company began manufacturing locomotives. The factory became the largest locomotive manufacturer in Germany by the 20th century. Henschel built 10 articulated steam trucks, using Doble steam designs, for Deutsche Reichsbahn railways as delivery trucks. Several cars were built as well, one of which became Hermann Göring's staff car. In 1935 Henschel was able to upgrade its various steam locomotives to a high-speed Streamliner type with a maximum speeds of up to 140 km/h (87 mph) by the addition of a removable shell over the old steam locomotive.
Early in 1935, Henschel began manufacturing Panzer I tanks. During World War II, the firm was responsible for license production of the Dornier Do 17Z medium bomber, and in 1939–1940 it began large-scale production of the Panzer III. Henschel was the sole manufacturer of the Tiger I, and alongside Porsche the Tiger II. In 1945, the company had 8,000 workers working in two shifts each of 12 hours, and forced labour was used extensively. The company's factories, which also manufactured narrow-gauge locomotives, were among the most important Allied bomber targets and were nearly completely destroyed.
- Daimler-Benz AG (Open)
- Foreign Labor: Can receive +1 Contracts than Factories owned.
Daimler-Benz AG was a German manufacturer of motor vehicles and internal combustion engines, which was founded in 1926. An Agreement of Mutual Interest – which was valid until 2000 – was signed on 1 May 1924 between Karl Benz's Benz & Cie. and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, which had been founded by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. Daimler had died in 1900, and Maybach had left in 1907.
Both companies continued to manufacture their separate automobile and internal combustion engine marques until 28 June 1926, when Benz & Cie. and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft formally merged - becoming Daimler-Benz AG (Aktiengesellschaft) - and agreed that thereafter, all of the factories would use the brand name of "Mercedes-Benz" on their automobiles. The inclusion of the name Mercedes in the new brand name honored the most important model series of DMG automobiles, the Mercedes series, which were designed and built by Wilhelm Maybach. They derived their name from a 1900 engine named after the daughter of Emil Jellinek. Jellinek became one of DMG's directors in 1900, ordered a small number of motor racing cars built to his specifications by Maybach, stipulated that the engine must be named Daimler-Mercedes, and made the new automobile famous through motorsports. That race car later became known as the Mercedes 35 hp. The first of the series of production models bearing the name Mercedes had been produced by DMG in 1902. Jellinek left the DMG board of directors in 1909. The name of Daimler as a marque of automobiles had been sold by DMG - following his death in 1900 - for use by other companies (Daimler Motor Company and Austro-Daimler). Since the new company, Daimler-Benz, would have created confusion and legal problems by including Daimler in its new brand name, it therefore used the name Mercedes to represent the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft interest. Karl Benz remained as a member of the board of directors of Daimler-Benz AG until his death in 1929. Although Daimler-Benz is best known for its Mercedes-Benz automobile brand, during World War II, it also created a notable series of aircraft, tank, and submarine engines. Daimler also produced parts for German arms, most notably barrels for the Mauser rifle. During World War II, Daimler-Benz employed foreign labor.
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