The German board game that changed the face of war
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https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-sunday-telegraph-sunday/20240609/281711209799870
On January 10 1940, Major Helmuth Reinberger of Hitler’s 7th Airborne Division was hiding behind a hedge, frantically trying to burn some documents, when Belgian soldiers noticed the rising smoke and arrested him. Fog had put Reinberger’s plane off course and forced his pilot to land in Belgium, still then a neutral country; he had, against regulations, been carrying the plans for Hitler’s invasion later that month. The Nazis planned to move through Belgium to neutralise France and Britain so that Hitler could move east without provoking an Allied attack – but Reinberger had only destroyed parts of the plans when the Belgians seized them. The invasion had to be postponed, and the Nazis had to plan an entirely new strategy. In the meantime, when he learned of Reinberger’s flight, Hitler had the major tried in absentia and sentenced to death.
Hitler was especially furious because he’d always preferred gut instinct to his advisors’ strategies. This aborted invasion, like many of their plans, had been workshopped using Kriegsspiel (“war game”), a battle simulator. The game was played on scaled maps of actual territories. Planning officers were divided into two teams, controlling painted lead-block troops representing German and enemy forces. Each turn represented two minutes of warfare, and the teams could do anything real forces could do in that time – move their troops, send scouts, initiate an attack. To simulate the fog of war, teams couldn’t see their opponents’ full positions, and so sent commands through a seasoned umpire who estimated outcomes for each action.
