Operation Lorraine-Alsace 1944 is a two-player alternative history wargame intended to investigate the operational parameters that would have been in place during the first eight days of fighting across eastern France had Hitler decided to launch his winter counteroffensive there instead of the Ardennes.
The primary goal would have been to cause sufficient casualties in US 3rd and 7th Armies so as to remove them as effective offensive forces for the coming 1945 campaign season. A secondary objective would have been to cause such embarrassment to Gen. Charles DeGaulle’s government as to paralyze it politically, and in that way also remove France’s rejuvenating combat power from the 1945 campaign season.
Such a German effort, if maximally successful, would likely have caused a three- or four-month delay in what we know as the historic timeline of the Western Allies’ advance into Germany. In turn, that would have allowed Hitler to concentrate greater forces in Poland to seriously slow, or even fully defeat, the Soviet offensive there in January, causing a similar delay in the Red Army’s seizure of Berlin.
Taken altogether, the ultimate result of a major German success in Operation Lorraine-Alsace could well have meant one or two German cities would have received the first atomic bombs, in place of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, late in the summer of 1945.
This game is the third volume of a series, the Alternative Battles of the Bulge Series. Each game uses a situationally adapted version of the same overall system to collectively cover all the various plans Hitler considered historically for his 1944-45 winter counteroffensive.
Each game turn represents one day (24 hours). Each hexagon on the map is five miles (8.1 kilometers) from side to opposite side. The maneuver units for both sides are primarily divisions but also include some separate brigades, regiments, battalions and companies. Allied air supremacy is – just as it was historically – hampered by the winter weather prevalent across the fighting front for most of the period covered by the game, and it is therefore represented only abstractly in regard to its effects.
22x34 inch game map and a sheet of 228 5/8 inch counters
Wargame, World War II · Hexagon Grid
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