Atomic Express

I was watching the Second World War homoerotic romance “Enemy at the Gates” the other evening with my fiancé’ who hadn’t seen it before. She wondered if Vassily Zaitsev was a real person or a construct of the Soviet wartime agitprop machine. We went on line to see the latest views on this and were able to see both arguments after looking through a few websites. We stumbled across a Russian website that negatively reviewed the film. The bile and vitriol on this site against the Hollywood film industry for daring to portray the OGPU/NKVD as ‘bad guys’ rivaled Lenin-era denunciations of ones enemies in front of a Checka kangaroo-court. The repeated use of the term “The West” “Western” this and “Western” that reminded both of us that there are still people out there in the former fragments of the USSR that are as stuck in the Cold War as I am. But its not MY fault that the local Blockbusters [oops…that’s gone now] didn’t carry the 1950s and 1960s Soviet classic war movies, so I really can’t comment on any comparison.

I am sure, however, that the commentator on this site would have enjoyed some of the games that were available back in the 1980s. As I continue my monumental clean up job at the house, I stumbled across another little Cold War gem. Back in 1976, Jim Dunnigan of SPI produced, in its characteristic plastic folio pack, a game called “Invasion: America, Death Throes of the Superpower.” This wasn’t “Red Dawn” emotivism exactly, the map was strategic and covered the entire North American land mass and pitted the “European Socialist Coalition”, the “South American Union” and the “Pan-Asiatic League” against Canada and the United States. Hmmmm….given the problems in Eurozone, the Castro-Chavez axis, and the fact that China is co-opting and taking over everything in Asia makes this 1976 game set in 1997 very topical. Jim Dunnigan always was creative.

All SPI games had a “Game Notes” section explaining to the players the premise behind the game. “Invasion: America” ’s notes make for interesting reading:

“One of the questions left unanswered in the game itself is the historical justification for the game. As work on the game progressed, it became evident that everyone had their favourite fantasy of what exactly occurred to put the United States in these straits. Sell-outs by liberals, sell outs by conservatives, sell-outs by the military, secret weapons, someone finding out that nuclear weapons just don’t work, etc….As the game stands, three things are necessary to postulate an effective future history. 1. A socio-economic picture which leads to the formation of the three great coalitions postulated in the game. 2. A hypothesis of the development of the art of war to the state where the assembly of the massive armies depicted does not simply destroy economies through weight of support. 3. The destruction/removal of the United States Navy and the nuclear deterrent as viable forces.”

And there was Ira…err… Af….errrr, Vietnam:

“The US finds itself pouring millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives into a very expensive and ill fought war using weapons and tactics that are ill-suited to the nature of the conflict. The war will gain the US nothing: it can only lose.”

I mean, there was enough in the game notes to mobilize everybody preparing for Armageddon in the mountains of Idaho:

“Consolidation of the non-American world. Formation of the European Socialist Coalition, and the Pan Asiatic League. South American, an awakening super power itself, is encouraged by the giant coalitions and the US is economically blackmailed into complicity….An enraged United Nations (now controlled by the ESC/PAL and meeting in Zurich) declares war on the US….”

I wonder if our counterparts on the other side of the Iron Curtain had similar games depicting an Islamic/Japanese/NATO assault on the USSR? I suspect that only if the combat resolution table was skewed towards the inevitable victory of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Comrade!

Peace on Earth. OPE. POE. EOP

Quiet Flows the Don Valley: