In the WWII campaign the very first mission is an reenactment of D-Day. Once you past the beach and head into the bunkers you find German Soilders carrying around the Grease Gun and PPSH-41. how in the world can Germans be carrying the Russian gun? Could theyve been deployed during a battle with Russians and then sent to Normandy Beaches and they just picked up other weapons? I'm really questioning the historical accuracy in this campaign because I found more Germans carrying other weapons than the MP40 or the Kar98k.

About 2 months ago, I asked a WW2 question in one of the Saturday reading posts that never got answered. Though it doesn't have to do with the new CoD, it deals with the very first one.

A common setting in WW2 FPS games are small French communes and/or towns where you fight in skirmishes and/or small battles. For example, in the first Call of Duty game, you take part in the engagement at Sainte-Mère-Église What are some good books or articles that talk about WW2 engagements (such as Sainte-Mère-Église) which took place in small communes or towns?

And as a followup question, how accurate are Call of Duty's representation of these small town battles anyway?

At the start of the campaign, you run past multiple civilians who had clearly been hung by the Nazis. This is a war crime, and that is stated by one of the protagonists, but would anyone actually have been prosecuted for an act like that? [And did it ever happen?]

As well as that, one member of the French Resistance goes under cover as a German messenger who brought papers for the commander of a german controlled area. They snuck in, using this disguise, and managed to obtain explosives and then opened the gates with these explosives. US Army then entered and liberated the entire complex and that is the point the game claims that France is liberated. Did this actually happen in the war?

Just how widespread was the usage of the "reflex" sight on weapons?

Thanks for doing this ama.

Were there black nazis? Or how big role did women play in the war?

One of the iconic scene types of WWII movies (Saving Private Ryan is pretty famous for out) is where a platoon walks across a field in loose order bantering, and moving around a lot relative to each other. Is this representative of how platoons actually moved around or would they keep a more regular order? What about in dense forests or jungles of the Pacific?

Related: I often hear about German soldiers hiding behind the hedgerows of Normandy and popping up to get potshots on American forces. How common were guerrilla style tactics? Were their any battles that were really characterised by lots of small group combat? I'm particularly curious about the Hurtgen Wood, which I sometimes hear described as having a lot of firing from behind trees and the like.

Ok so I have a few questions, answer any you can. Thank you for doing the AMA.

• During the very start of the game, we see aircraft numbering in the thousands flying directly over the Normandy beaches. Is this accurate? Or just a trope made to look cool?
• Later in the game, you take control of an American aircraft pilot as he fends off enemy aircraft from bombers. How accurate is it for pilots to fly into enemy formations? Seems more like a suicide to me.
• Does flak really explode in a "poof of black smoke" like that?
• I recently read Bill Bellamys war memoir 'Troop Leader' and in it he's subject to a Nebelwurfer salvo. He is informed that these Nebelwurfers are so dangerous that they're crewed by Russians (Likely POWs but it never specifies). Is this true or likely to be a rumour? What made them so dangerous?
• And, because nobody has asked it yet, what exactly happened at the Battle of Kasserine Pass?

SPOILER ALERT!!

Gave you fair warning. At the end of the campaign, you soldiers who had been captured by the Nazi force, and taken in labour camps being executed by the assumable leader of the camp. Some try to run away, but are all shot until you arrive and kill him. As well as this, it can be noted that one of the characters takes photos of the camp, items including multiple nooses, and people that were tied up, and tortured to be made an example of.

My question is: Would any of the actually happen? i.e. would they be hung, tortured to make an example out of, and simply just shot?

In the first Call of Duty game, as a British Soldier, you infiltrate a German Dam to plant explosions and destroy anti-aircraft guns by yourself, and afterwards you get in truck with two other British officers and German Soldiers chase you in "Lorries" and motorcycles. Then you stop by an airfield where you take control of a Flak Gun until a plane comes to rescue you. The next mission has you [infiltrating a German Navy Ship](http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Battleship_Tirpitz_(level) to steal documents with the same two officers. Are these missions representative of any events in World War 2?

I hope I'm not too late for this!

My question relates to the ethics of historical advice, especially as it relates to videogames of this kind. I'm currently studying for a Public History MA, so this kind of ethical question is of interest to me.

Obviously, today is Remembrance Sunday in the UK and Commonwealth and Veteran's Day in the US; the soldiers who stormed the Normandy beaches or went over the top at the Somme were real, living, breathing humans, many of whom died during the war. Modern entertainment, especially videogames, tends to view these events as fodder for, well, entertainment.

Last year's Battlefield One and now Call of Duty are, in essence, taking the real sacrifices of these people and turning them into, well, a game, something mostly devoid of the emotional meaning and empathetic understanding of the people who fought and died.

What, then, is the ethical responsibility of the historian or public historian when dealing with projects like this? The broader question of whether it is ethical to make entertainment from these kinds of events, past or present, is probably outside of the historian's milieu. My specific question, then, is whether it is ethical, say, for a museum to offer its artifacts for photogrammetry so developers can create in-game models from them, or to give developers access to otherwise-closed archives so they can more accurately capture the experience of war as it pertains to shooting dehumanised simulacra of the very real dead.

I'm not sure of my own stance on this issue, and I will note that I play and enjoy Battlefield One and many other historical war games, although I haven't got round to playing the new CoD yet. I'm also not sure whether there is an ethical answer, and whether this particular ethical issue is merely a function of historical proximity to these specific events.

How many grenades did an infantryman usually have? They seem almost infinite in games.

Generally when I have read about refugees in WWII, it has been about "ethnic" refugee groups, such as Jews who fled from the Nazis. What about "ordinary" refugees, such as French people whose homes were destroyed? Did they just group in cities, or were there "refugee camps" anywhere?

As a sort of secondary, what were the civilians of, eg Carentan doing during the battle (or any other town that became an iconic battle site)? Were any of these towns evacuated?

One of the hallmarks of the Vietnam war was the tremendous amount of bombing that was carried out basically on jungle terrain to try and stop supply trains.

Was a similar strategy used in the Pacific/Burma theaters to isolate Japanese garrisons?

Like almost any media making entertainment of the war, the Call of Duty games pick out a series of "exciting" or "heroic" scenes.

Is anyone able to comment on how this sort of scene has changed over time, in the events or type of events depicted, the action involved, and the messages drawn from them? I hope this is not too nebulous a question.

Edit: I guess maybe another way to put what I'm asking is "how has what is fun changed?"

For example, I have reprints of a few British comics from the war, all of which emphasise small teams working together, particularly across class boundaries. That, obviously, is not something the Call of Duty games emphasise.

Towards the end of WW1 the Spanish Influenza epidemic raged across much if the world killing millions of people. Were there similar epidemic outbreaks at the end of WW2?

Can we ever get past the "accuracy" debate when discussing historical games?

I haven't played the game but I would be much interested to discuss things like player agency within the biggest conflict in human history. is that something you guys think about when seeing these games?

Not related to the game, but one I've been curious about.

I've read several times that the Japanese cautioned against an invasion of mainland USA because there would be a "rifle behind every blade of grass." How accurate is this?

I assume that the War Department made plans for this anyways- what response would Civil Defense have in this situation?

To what degree did the former French armed forces and civilians collaborate with the Germans after Case Anton?

One thing that strikes me about the current scholarship around the M4 Sherman and its effectiveness is that had the US designed Tiger and Panther, it would have been rejected by Army Ground Forces, or certainly not fielded the way they were by Nazi Germany. What were the key weaknesses of German tank design as a whole and where were their shortfalls?

If the Normandy landings failed did the Allies have enough time/resources to create another force to retake France before the Soviets could reach the Atlantic?

/u/bigglesworth_ how effective were fighters acting as bombers? A few years ago thechieftain of World of Tanks made a claim that fighters were highly inefficient at bombing, but if that's the case why would they even put in an initiative to do so? Was it because thousands of them were flying above Normandy anyway so they might as well drop a bomb on the way? Or were they actually effective in that role as well?

/u/TankArchives how close were tank battles? In CoD they were usually portrayed as death machines that rampage through towns destroying everything until you stop it, in War Thunder and World of Tanks you often camp about a quarter of a km away and wait for a tank to pass through your sight, and in Steel Division you usually stay 500m-1.km away lest they get close enough for a flank, while probably none of these depictions are probably accurate would tank on tank engagements (or Tank Destroyer and Assault gun against a tank) be very far apart or rather close?

At one point in the most recent game, you find a group of German civilians and your lieutenant requires you to send them to the rear of your lines, even saying something like "this is what we do". Does this in any way represent how the western allies treated civilians?

How much customization would a soldier have over what they took into battle? I assume that a soldiers primary weapon is not up for discussion, but what about a side arm or bayonet?

What about appearance? Again, I don't think anything crazy, but in Call of Duty 2 there is a Scottish soldier that wears a tartan bandolier.

Not sure who this question should go to. /u/nate077 or /u/rittermeister perhaps? Sorry for the pings if this wasn't your field.

Why did the Wehrmacht send the brunt of their tank divisions (both the XXXXVIIth Armored Corps and the I SS Corps) to the British sector rather then the American one?

Was the OSS created because of WW2? Were there any predecessors to it?

One for /u/Bernadito and /u/calorie_man There's a series of questions that can perhaps be covered in one answer.

In Malaya/Singapore and to a lesser extent Burma in 1941-2, the British seemed to fail completely to concentrate their forces, allowing the Japanese to defeat their divisions in detail on various lines of defence, each force retreating in disarray into and indeed over the next position.

Was Percival considered a capable officer? Was he in Singapore as a cast-off? If his strategies were a failure, how much was this symptomatic of the general failure of British officership at the time? Why were the British, so effective in 1918, so awful in 1940-43 (and often after)? Did Percival have the co-operation of his subordinates (I'm aware of the odious influence of Australian Gordon Bennett)?

Not about the game, but with the recent crisis in Burma, I've read a few times now that the Muslim/Buddhist divide in that country traces back to Japanese-sympathizing Muslims and British loyalist Buddhists during WWII. What precisely happened between these communities during WWII and why did the divide trace religious lines?

How accurate is the arsenal provided to players?

Are weapons/attachments and their effects (relatively) accurate?

/u/thefourthmaninaboat In CoD:WWII (and to a another extent Steel Division: Normandy 1944) Naval battery artillery observation is something that can be done and called upon (Germans however get railroad artillery), would this be done (and on what level of command? company/division/corps), how effective was this, what ships would be used for this task and would the same ships be used on both sectors of the front or lets say I'm American would I have to wait for an American ship was ready for it?