Empire Military Mindset … a cross post

[lurker]

Ok, I’ve finished the lion’s share of my MA project (and am hitting a wall on finishing it) soooo I’ll take a break and do what jmanski suggested on the Golan thread.
What started my idea is the below

[CRMcNeill]

Well, the Imperial Sourcebook says this on page 84:

"As the war against the Rebellion heats up, a substantial part of the [Army] organization is improvised by field commanders who are trying to combat a foe who gains strength with each encounter. Old line commanders and COMPNOR officials do not approve of such initiative on the parts of local commanders, and these officers are often punished even if the results prove successful. It is not unknown for a commander to be summarily executed for his violation of Surface Operations Training Doctrine, and then have his methods evaluated and subsequently adopted as new doctrine.

Such pioneers are obviously a rarity in the Empire."

I don't think the German Army is the best analogy. Micromanagement and meddling by high command in the latter half of WWII was because Hitler's mental issues came to the fore, not because it was part of doctrine. A better example (IMO) would be the Red Army during the Cold War: effective but rigid doctrine and ironclad control from the top down.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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[Fallon Kell]

The ISB also tells the story of Veers' promotion to general. He disobeyed bad orders, won a battle, and murdered his former CO. That combined with the fact that many imperial commanders were promoted based on merit, implies that initiative was not unheard of, but was possibly dangerous when it became a power struggle, resulting in the execution of the lesser commander.

Pelleaon was worried, at first, about proposing a solution without running it by Thrawn first, but he still did it. I get the sense that making suggestions to superior officers was not frowned upon except by the most prideful, and initiative that did not contradict orders was likely welcomed.
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Or that excessively long "Noooooooooo" was the Whining Side of the Force leaving him. - Dustflier

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[CRMcNeill]

An important distinction: Veers didn't murder his CO. Although he acted against orders and saved the embattled troops from the native attack, his CO (General Irrv) was threatening to bring Veers up on charges of disobeying direct orders when the senior stormtrooper officer (Commander Grath) summarily executed the general, subsequently giving Veers a battlefield promotion from Lieutenant to Major. The reference is page 67 of the Star Wars Sourcebook.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Fallon Kell]

[jmanski]

I like the analogy of the Red Army, with a hint of meddling from the emporer.

The Imperial Army is usually left out of discussions. I think they should do the bulk of the fighting with the stormtroopers being used when more firepower is needed (but I don't go by the baseline stormtrooper stats, either).
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[CRMcNeill]

[lurker]

Guys, thanks for the replies

Without the source books, I was just assuming ... and you know what that leads to ...

From your posts, rgr on the army being more Red Army than German ... Even at its worst, the WW2 German army was far from that messed up. However, as Vanir pointed out, post WW2 Red army gutted itself and had paronied purges, arrests, etc. (I need to check on dates though, I thought there was a second purge under Stallen after the war too, but I might be off on that).

Soooo form that, I'd say the Army during the clone war and EARLY rebel era would be more Germanish, but through the rebel era very Red Army like.

[CRMcNeill]

Oddly enough, the Imperial Army is largely a WEG invention. In the films, stormtroopers / clone troopers do the bulk of the fighting, with occasional glimpses of other troop types (naval troopers on the Death Star) pretty much just filling space. Your argument about stormtroopers being elite forces makes perfect sense, but this RPG is often as much about the "feel" of Star Wars as it is about realism, and stormtroopers just feel more Star Wars than the Imperial Army.

As far as purges go, I'm sure that the Imperial Armed Forces have undergone purges that dwarfed any of Stalin's purges on a purely numerical level, but the Empire has a vastly larger population base over the USSR. I'm sure purges occurred, but Palpatine was also a master politician, who spun just about everything to make it look like the right thing to do.

The Imperial equivalent you are looking for would be the Imperial Security Bureau or ISB, which is a branch of COMPNOR. It is a rival in many ways to Imperial Intelligence, but the ISB tends to be the more heavy-handed of the two.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[vanir]

I can't disagree with anything posted. I do tend to on a personal level assert a more Nazi themed emphasis by sheer preference to the Imperials in our campaign, both the players and I simply prefer it so our Imperials do tend to shy away from Stalinist-soviet doctrine and more towards Nazism and Wehrmacht duality (there was a subtle civil war within the German military between the old guard Prussians and the Nazis, which extended politically in some areas like the midwest and northeast reich, the monarchists which were always only begrudgingly tolerant of the Nazis and only really placated by Goering's position being an aristocrat).

The ISB and Ubiqutorate relationship is another one I find a distinctly WW2-era German parallel. The SS-SD (sicherheistdeinst) being ISB and the Ubiqutorate being Abwehr. They're even named similarly as allegorical.
To give an idea of their priorities, the SS were very political of course (membership of the party a prerequisite for SS membership), one of the SD projects during the war was investigating proof that Jesus wasn't really Jewish but an aryan.
Abwehr had very different projects. The Östfront intelligence gathering network was the framework used by the postwar CIA (by giving immunity from warcrimes charges for certain German military and SS), to set up its cold war Soviet counter-intelligence network. It was that effective.

So I do run them a bit like that. The ISB from among the "Golden Pheasants" (German term for SS leaders that weren't qualified for their rank/position or the number of medals and adornments on their uniforms, not uncommon), of the COMPNOR branches, buffoons that make up for their inequity with sheer brutality.
Whilst the Ubiqutorate I run like Abwehr, more professional and dangerous, more James Bond like, more like the CIA. But less popular with senior political officials due to being outside the "party" in this case COMPNOR ranks.

Some branches of the ISB I run like the Gestapo, one should use the complex tables in the Imperial Sourcebook for the various COMPNOR/ISB departments however. Like the SD, SS-verfuegungstruppe, SS-polizei and other branches they came from different stocks of recruitment and training. The Gestapo was set up originally by Goering as a private army from within his personal efforts to become Lord and Master of the Nazi-Prussian empire in the northeast reich. He stylised himself as a contemporary or peer of Hitler rather than a subordinate, he brought the aristocrats and Hitler brought the fanatics.
Goering created the Gestapo from his personal security force created within the Prussian police, which Goering modified along the lines of Nazi policy with his own personality brought heavily to bear (this made him at one point the most feared and powerful man in Germany next to Hitler).
Hitler handed it all over to Himmler, some say fearing Goering's power.
They became the Gestapo, but Goering retained personal influence, you wouldn't want Goering as an enemy in those days, they'd still take orders from him privately and without involving Himmler if he called them.

So ISB insofar as internal security goes and aside from external Intelligence efforts, becomes a slightly different animal more in line with Gestapo and less buffoonery.




As an aside, fairly recently, from the late 90s some genuine interaction between US/NATO and Russian military speculators (eg. coordinated anti-terrorism forums and subsequent reports by military personnel spending time with each other), some old school Cold War beliefs about the Soviet military doctrine have been challenged directly as propaganda and misunderstanding.
One finding, which is published around the web military forums about the place, is that Soviet military doctrine and modern Russian military doctrine was in no way "robotic" or dehumanised as previously believed or asserted (anti-communist cold war propaganda mostly), and highly dependent upon individual initiative and qualitive training.
In this respect the quality of Russian military training, the example given of fighter pilots in its air force is perfectly equivalent to NATO training and in no way dependent upon strict adherence to ground based instructions and lack of pilot initiative as had been previously asserted in the west.

This state of strict doctrinal adherence was isolated to GCI doctrine within the PVO-Strany which was no different to US GCI strategic defence squadrons using the F-106, which is even flown remotely during the bulk of its mission. The pilot is just there to oversee a firing solution and fire the weapons. It was a type of weapons system technology common to both US and Soviet strategic militaries and not related to general VVS doctrine, which is run directly from field commands with full autonomy and highly dependent upon pilot initiative and training doctrinally.

Currently the Soviet cum Russian air force's fighter pilots are regarded as equally well trained and capable as NATO ones and had always been. Much of a muchness, I guess what works, works for everyone.


The Soviet-communist theocracy is a particular bend but shouldn't be confused with a dictatorship. The ideology is paramount and beyond all authority, but the personality of the Chairman is invariably stamped upon how it is to be interpreted. Stalin asserted "Soviet Realism" and was extremely conservative. Kruschev or say Gorbachev reformed a lot of Stalinist political doctrine and reasserted Lenin's philosophy of "Progressive Socialism". The two primary Soviet political doctrines, depending upon who is in Chair, then should be divided into Soviet-realism or Progressive-soviet. Respectively conservative or liberal.

A lot of the real stifling throughout the Soviet era was generated within communities, the Soviet system giving say, all local political power to the regional unions, means people like wharfies and trade-thugs are running the show, running the police force, running the job markets.
Most people in the 70s say, sent to Gulags were sent there by their neighbours out in Kharkov or wherever, not by secret police in Moscow. They just signed off on it, because that's the system.
Bolshevism means literally "majority rule" (menshevism means representative democracy, they were ousted in the second revolution a couple of months after the first).