lecholas

To be called schizophrenic, egoistic from your mouth (fingers) it's a privilage to me. I'm really considering stopping smiling to my neighbours and starting to eat babies' blood and so on, just to fullfill your expectations concerning the liberals. I only once again say, I'm talking about the system here. If a state doesn't have some bonus compared to other states around (it can be natural resources, it can be good condition after the war like Sweeden), in longer term socialism (or welfare state) will ruin its economy and the state won't be able to help the poor. I agree that it would be nice if everyone was happy, healthy etc. but no state can guarantee it, welfare state it's not the way to go. End of story. The attempts to make such a state will end in a failure. It would be similar if you ordered everyone to be happy by the law. It just won't do. No, it wasnt. It was permanent. (I'm talking about Poland here.) (And what kind of explanation would be burning down of a factory? Do you imagine that burning down of one factory producing toilet paper can be a problem for a let's say 35 milion citizens country? And for several years?) EDIT Sorry, but I was looking for the sources in English and came across this: Cuba runs out of lavatory paper Indeed, strange coincidence... EDIT1 If anyone has heard about a capitalistic country ever had a problem with toilet paper. I'm not saying there wasn't such case, I don't know, I've never heard about it. If anyone knows please share it. (I think we should exlude the periods of exhausting wars, but if you wish please ignore that rule, just note that it's from the period of war).

Well, should I understand that you have no idea about what is liberalism about? Liberalism (in its economic aspect) is a recipe for state's welfare. Not guaranted by the law (which is commonly not backed up by reality) but the actual welfare. You think that social security is the only recipe for a broken leg? The answer is, if you don't pay the social security every month, you can save the money for an emergency. It's your call if you do it, and your responsibility (thats the moral aspect of liberalism). And look, I haven't broken my leg (and haven't been ill) for a long time, so all my money for social security form the last several years went for nothing (from my point of view). I could have saved the money for a flat, you know? The supposition here is this, that I should know better what is good for me, than the state's clerks. If I'm poor and want to educate my family I don't want to pay more for it's education by paying the civil servants who collect the taxes, distriubue them, invent more and more stupid reforms of education system and taking for it a lot of my money. Is that really that hard to understand? I just want to earn my money not to receive them for nothing (from the other people's work) and decide what to spend them for myself. You can call it a schizophrenia if you wish. I know that's an uncommon desire. On a side note, of course you know that when there are a lot of worker's rights employees don't want to hire people because they won't be able to fire them? Or will have to pay them for not-working? I have a friend who was a socialist a few years ago. Now she opens her own business and she knows how difficult and risky it is. She becomes more liberal than I sometimes. If running your own business is difficult (and the state gives the businessmen more and more obstacles) less people care to risk their money to run a business and there are less offers of job (so the unemployment is bigger). Another thing is the quality of products and services. In a centrally controlled state there are civil servants who are to take care for the quality of products. So you have the quality guaranteed. But only on a paper. In the countries of Eastern Block there were clerks responsible for the control of quality. Did it work? No. What mechanism is much better to force the quality? Free market. And should I add that the human race didn't have social security and 'free' education for the most of its existence and... it survived and progressed? And when it comes to education it progressed a lot. Was Copernicus educated by the state? Columbus? Newton? Well, it's simply not true that people don't have money for washing machines. In the relatively free market we have if people don't have money for some products the products are not produced by owners of factory who are egoistic and want profit (no sells = no profit). So if there are washing machines in the shops, people have money to buy them (it allways puzzles me where do they take them from, but that is the fact). Are there now people who don't have money for toilet paper? I'm not talking about 1980. Im talking about late '80. It wasn't dependant on the strikes, you surely know that?

That's why I don't see a point in arguing with you. Because you know better who I am (and constantly misinterpret my, or anyone else's, words) and draw very far-reaching conclusions from that fact. Just to answer some of your questions. - I didn't say that pre-war Poland was a paradise. I said that compared to its eastern neighbours it was not a bad country to live in (especially if you remember that it was a very young country, after being occupied for the last hundred of years by three occupants). If compared to western countries from that period of time it was a poor country. - My family in pre-war Poland was a very poor family living in the country. I understand that you are a supporter of marxist view that an economical situation of a person determines her views completely, but I'm not a marxist. I think that you can be poor and not be a socialist. And I have an empiric evidence supporting that claim ;) - before 1989 my family didn't have a flat of their own, of course, it wasn't so easy to get a flat, you must know that? - my parents of course payed a lot of money for medical care. Where do you think medical care comes from in socialistc countries? From the heaven above? No. From the taxes, and from low salaries for state-workers. And you pay no matter if you're ill or not. And I remember clearly that the level of medical care was below all the norms. Doctors and nurses treated patients as trashes (why? because their clinics didn't have to compete with the other clinics for the patients - they had to come anyway), the medical equipment was all rubish etc. (Of course it was not the case if it comes to hospitals and clinics for the members of the party or the interior ministry workers - police, security services etc., and for soldiers and their families or members of selected proesions such as miners; of course the latter clinics and hospitals were also much below the level of similar Western clinics and hospitals but still much better than the clinics and hospitals for the 'true rulers of the country' - the working class). - Yes, I was only seven when the Eastern block collapsed. But I still remember some things and I r e a d a lot about it and t h i n k about it for m y s e l f. I remember for example that before the '89 it was very hard to buy a vacuum cleaner (not a specific model, any one) or furniture or... almost anything. I remember how hard it sometimes was to buy some toilet paper. What can be said more? A paradise in which people queue for several hours (for Westerners - it's not a joke) to buy ten rolls of toilet paper (the seller couldn't sell you more, it was ten rolls for one person)? I love that way of thinking. It's simply beautiful. "If you're not in the majority, then shut up". Of course, only if your views aren't politically correct. But one thing, you know vilas, the most of Poles are catholics, so you're in the minority, so maybe you should shut up? (I bet that you will misinterpret that bit too ;) ). Anyway, yes I'm a liberal one. So I agree that the Polish system is a bit less socialistic than that of the Western Europe. So what? But I'm convinced that even so, it's much too socialistic. For those not familiar with the Polish political scene I explain. Janusz Korwin-Mikke is a Polish devil in himself with views similar to the American devil in himself Ron Paul, or Britsh devil in h e r self Margaret Tatcher. He is a supporter of such a devil in himself as a Noble price winner Milton Friedman. I can't help myself quoting this. Yes, too big demands. People demanded toilet paper! How did they dare! :j: I wonder what all those Modern Europeans fighting for women rights (especially in middle-eastern countries) think about that joke(?). I, as a liberal and conservatist, find if quite unfunny. That's of course right. I don't want to start a discussion about the fact here, but you may argue that some of the political/ecconomical systems aren't suited for human nature. E.g. I could say that communism is not suited for humans because people are egoistic and they don't care for the property that is not theirs. So the workers won't care for the enterprise they work in. So won't their directors. Subsequently, if every property is the common property (noones property) noone cares for it. So you don't produce much goods. So the state don't have goods to take from you to redistribue them equally to everyone. So the system collapses. Others, of course, may say that egoistic nature of people leads to even more problems in capitalistic systems or that people are angels and will care for the common property. Of course you may also argue that there's no such thing as unchangable human nature and you can make people grow up to live in e.g. communism (Pol Pot seemed to be a strong supporter of that view). But as I said it's a different and not easy discussion. Generally, it's true. But some countries have better and some have worse history. If you don't agree with that, you won't be able to condemn Nazi Germany more than the US, so then, e.g. you should treat the US symbols the same way you treat the Nazi ones. If you treat them differently you implicitly agree that some countries have a 'better' history than the others. Sorry, but AFAIK this generally is historically incorrect. There were no human rights in gulags. People in gulags were slaves and their life even didn't mean anything to the gulag's commanders (because they were not the commander's slaves). Maybe there were some gulags with lighter discipline or more human commander. But that was generally not the case. I don't know, maybe the official propaganda ditribued some bills of rights of gulag workers but it doesn't mean they were respected in the reality. The alternative for gulags was not only 'the final solution'. It was 'no gulags at all' or at least 'much, much, much, much less gulags'. So you I would initially agree for: the final solution < many gulags < few gulags

I don't have time or strenght to argue with vilas, but I only want to say that I live in one of the poorest if not the poorest regions of the European Union and I know that to say that even some of things considering economy (macro or micro) were better during the communism than they are now you must be completely out of you mind. It's nice to say that before '89 everyone had right to medical care but in fact you had only a right to it. Practice was totally different. There were no homeless before the '89? Don't make me laugh. You just couldn't hear about it from the official TV (and there were no independen ones), sociologists couldn't research the scale of homelessnes because they worked on the state's universities (there were almost no other ones) which didn't allow them for that (as with a lot of historical research from modern history). If we base our knowledge on the official verison, then yes, People's Republic of Poland, as any other country from Eastern Block, was a paradise. I'm not saying that the current Euro-socialistic system of Poland is the ideal one but it's much better than the old one.

It's a common practice (started by BIS I think) to make a certain structure of visitor projects. On your P: drive you make a folder which is the main folder of your current terrain, let's call it 'JaskieraPierwszyTeren'. In that folder you create two more folders named 'Data' and 'Source'. In the 'Source' folder you create another one called 'Terrain'. Save there your Wilbur file as JaskieraPierwszyTeren.png. Next, you create a new notepad file in that folder and rename it to for example 'JaskieraPierwszyTeren.pbl'. It's important to rename the extension too (you have to have enabled 'show known files extensions' (or something like this) in windows). Then, you open the pbl file and paste there what Gnat wrote above and change the line PNGfilename="WilburExport.png"; to PNGfilename="JaskieraPierwszyTeren.png"; Save the pbl file. Then, you open Visitor and start a new project, and then choose Project->Import the terrain from picture, find your pbl file and you've got it. I think the exact folders structure described above is not necessary but it seams to be a common practice. And here you have links to an answer to almost any question regarding terrain making in Visitor.

Rotfl!

Very nice. You may want to add this thread to the creation of heightmaps section. Unfortunately the pics are gone (it would be worthy to reuploade them somewhere) but the way of making heightmaps (which can be very detailed if you have good maps and a bit of patience) can be very useful for the parts of the world which don't have easily available detailed DEMS.

Yes, full of partisan units, maybe not of those units shown on the pictures, but who cares?:j: Anyway, I think finding a picture of a pre-war Holy Spirit's Church in Staszów won't be that easy. Even Polish Digital National Archives have only two pictures from pre-war Staszów, not one of them shows any church. Do you have all the other resources for the map? There are some pre-war Polish military maps (1:100000 scale - big file!, i think 1:25000 was published but I haven't seen it scaned so far) of the area.

Can't agree more. I, myself, sometimes answer the phone while drivng and sometimes don't. It depends on my assesment of the situation on the road. Just like every other action I take during driving a car. Sometimes I won't talk to my passenger sometimes I will. Sometimes my girlfriend tells me: "Look, what a nice landscape". And I answer: "Sorry, I can't look right now", and I miss it. It's a shame that even in our country we still don't have more badly needed law restrictions (I mean those forbiding - as Studen Pilot enumerated - listening to a radio, eating food, drinking liquids, talking to your passenger(s), thinking about the day's events, fumbling around for cruise control, glancing at the scenery going by, monitoring your speedometer, listening for strange car noises, adjusting the climate controls. It all should be forbiden. And then it surely won't be the case that you "can die on road". And the peace will come to the Earth and the global warming will be stopped, etc... Seriously, you can't force everything by the law. You've got to think for yourself. And by making laws or traffic rules that almost noone respects you only promote disobeyng the laws. (It's just like some tax laws in my conutry that everyone breakes because they are ridiculus and breaking of which is usually not punished). When I see a 50 kph speed limit for a hundred of times on a straight wide road (and see nobody is respecting the limit) I don't believe the speed limits are there for a reason of security and I don't trust the next one is worth respecting. (Don't draw to far-reaching conclusions from what I'm saying, about what I think about drivers in my country. I think they're rather bad and often irresponsible. But making a new, more restrictive law won't make them responsible.)

I always wondered why did BIS go the way with the clutter. There are different ways of rendering grass. If you've seen some islands from mods for OFP you know what I mean (Inv44, VTE, still-not-released-yet WWIIEC Caen etc.) The grass on those islands wasn't as nice as the grass near you in the clutter way, but it added a lot to the gameplay. The other way of implementing useful (but not so nicely looking) grass were Novalogic's old voxel engines. They didn't look great, but they simulated grass very well.

Maybe those are concepts of the new faces for models. :rolleyes:

Of course, every army has its military police. Every army fights with desertertions. But the scale of that phenomenon in the Red Army was on a totally different scale than in the Western countries (even if you compare it to WW1). I don't care what would he agree with. It's a fact that great famine at Ukraine was caused by his decision. It's a fact that many of his trusted ("his own people") commanders during the years started to be a threat in his eyes and he got rid of them. It's a fact that he deliberately orderd to kill millions of the Russian people. Again, I think it's not the same scale (or not the same time, in case of Indians). I think we can agree that every country in this world began on the basis of some conquering. Joining some tribes (not without some bloodshet). What you can compare is the scale. You can compare if the Cuban or Chilean regime is worse than the Khmer Rouge's regime or not (the last one is one of the most horrible crimes I've ever read about IMHO). You can compare the scale of the US or UK regime to the Soviet one (provided you compare the status of the countries in the same point of a timeline). I'm not sure about it. Were they extermination camps? Maybe the British people loved Stalin (BTW Churchil didn't love Stalin at all, he often didn't agree with Roosvelt about him, but he couldn't force his opinions on his own). But it was thanks to the British propaganda and not revealing Stalin's crimes. It was of course motivated by the wish to win the war with the Soviet's hands. It's easier to sheed your allie's blood than your own (especially in a society who can vote on its leaders - you have to care about the public opinion, you can loose your seat; Stalin didn't have to care about it, his secret police cared about it for him). And I can asure you that it would have been very different for us and a lot of other people in the east without Stalin.

Of course it's true. I think, if I remember it correctly, there were much, much more dead Russians that were burried in one of that sites of execution than the Poles. Like I said, Stalin caused much more suffering, pain and deaths to the Russian nation than to any other nation. Stalin didn't expect it. There were reports of the Soviet inteligence and Soviet border guards indicating the invasion but Stalin ignored them because Hitler was his 'best allie' (as a title of one of the books on the relations between the Hilter and Stalin in the years 1939-1941 says).

The Britts aren't innocent. They didn't help. But also they didn't murder their allies in thousands. The Soviets did that. That's a big difference. And if there was no Uprising and the Soviets came and 'liberate' Warsaw they would do with the soldiers of the Home Army in Warsaw the same as they did with them in different places (arrest, deport, or execute). You can't say that the responsibility for lifes of the Poles that died in the Uprising layed on both political forces in the same degree. The Home Army fought for rebuilding their country they lost in 1939. Also only independance of Poland would guarantee them that they will not be opressed, tortured, executed, imprisoned. They didn't want to end in another Katyń. [quote name=Andrey Y. Vyshinsky' date=' First Assistant to the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, message to Ambassador Harrison in Moscow ;)] Aug. 15, 1944 Andrey Y. Vyshinsky, First Assistant to the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, message to Ambassador Harrison in Moscow The Soviet Government cannot of course object to English or American aircraft dropping arms in the region of Warsaw, since this is an American and British affair. But they decidedly object to American or British aircraft, after dropping arms in the region of Warsaw, landing on Soviet territory, since the Soviet Government do not wish to associate themselves either directly or indirectly with the adventure in Warsaw. source: http://www.warsawuprising.com/doc/Roosevelt_Churchill_Stalin.htm

This time I have to agree with vilas in the most of his last post. As I said earlier: Warsaw Uprising was aimed against the Germans in the military respect, against the Soviets in political respect. Some historians add to that that it was also aimed against the Western Allies in moral respect. The first point is obvious. But what are the second and the third? The Home Army subordinated to the Polish Government in exile (after the Germans conquered Poland in 1939 the Polish Government operated in the UK) had orders to cooperate with the Soviets comming to Polish lands (in 1944) and if possible to clear cities and vilages from the Germans before the Soviets come and to welcome them from the position of hosts, legal representants of the Polish Government. In reality the situation was different in different regions of the country. Some Home Army units fought arm to arm with the Soviets for clearing cities from the Germans, some managed to clear some cities before the Soviets came, some (and it was against the orders of Home Army's command) allegedly received wepons from the Germans to fight the Soviet partisans. In most cases after the fighting with the Germans was over the officers of the Home Army who revealed themselves to the Soviet commanders were executed, arrested, deported. You have to understand this correctly. The Home Army was an enemy for Stalin because it was subordinated to the Govenment in exile and it wanted to return the government after the war. And Stalin wanted to place his own puppet government in Poland. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Soveits were allies of the Polish allies - the Western countries. And the Western countries wanted to win the war with the Soviet hands, by their blood (I agree that in the military respect the USSR had the decesive role in beating the Third Reich), so they didn't want to provoke the conflict with the USSR because of that unberable Poland. So the Warsaw Uprising was politically aimed against the Soviets just as the previous actions of the Home Army. It was to show that Poland is an independent country with the legal Government in exile and to win recogition of the fact among public opinion in the other nations. It was morally aimed against the Western Allies not to allow them let Poland's fate in Stalin's hands. To move the hearts of Western Allies' citizens so they pressed on their politicians to stand for Poland. When you understand that, you will know that it wasn't in Stalin's interest to help the Uprising. It was against his plans. So he did everything he thought appriorpiate to let the Poles bleed. Well, maybe I overgeneralised a bit. But I'm sure the situation in Western nations and the Soviet nation was totally different. You forget that the Western societies were totally different from the Soviet one. The western govenments didn't commit such crimes on their own people as Stalin did (Great Purge, the Hunger at Ukraine, gulags, NKVD and constant and surrounding from all the sides invigilation). They did not love Stalin even if they said that they did. Saying that they didn't was already a crime. Suspicion that they did not love him could be a crime as well. The difference between the Western and the Soviet societies can be seen it the second line of their armies. The Red Army's front lines were followed by NKVD which didn't hestitate to shoot their own soldiers who fell back. Soldiers of the Red Army feared not only the enemy but also their own officers and commisars. The Western soldiers were treated like individuals. The Soviet soldiers were just the numbers (just as Ingeneer wrote about the Dukla Pass operation - the Red Army soldiers there, often Ukrainians or Lemkos were sent in the fights just after two weeks of training. Their death was nothing to their commanders.) Soviet POWs taken to captivity by the Germans didn't recive and packages from the Soviet "red cross"-like organisations because they were betrayers. Many of the POWs served in the German auxillary service because the were treated there much better than in the Red Army. RONA and ROA were established so late only because Hitler was strongly against it till the time he really needed them. The nation that suffered the most because of Stalin was without a doubt the Russian nation. ---------- Post added at 10:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:48 AM ---------- I'm not sure if the drops of supplies would change anything. Maybe the anti-tank weapons but that's the topic for different discussion. But the forbiding refueling the planes is a fact. BTW Allied flights to Warsaw had very high casualities rate and weren't very efficient. I've also read that there were also plans of dropping the 1st Independent Parachute Brigade to help the Warsaw Uprising but I think they weren't very realistic. Anyway the Brigade took its part in Market Garden Operation while the Uprising was still on. http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/daviesnorman/rising44 I can't give you a page number because I've only read the Polish translation of the book. I'll search for it some more on the net.

Dear Vilas, thank you for sharing with us your stream of consciousness but I really don't see a way to argue with it. "An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition." (source: Monty Python's Flying Circuss episode Twenty-nine). Your impressions aren't a connected series of statements to extablish a definite position. Also I'm really under impression that you attack not my position, which I try to define clearly, but your imaginations about who I am and your frustrations from RL. That's not the way to discuss.

Compare it to Holodomor or Great Purge. Is there a diffrence? You can't be serious? Do you know what the people who lived between the Soviet Union and Poland (i.e. the Poles, Lithuanians, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Chechs (I mean Chech settlers in those regions)) hoped for when the Germans came in 1941? That they may be not worse than the Soviets (who occupied the territories since 1939) but they will maybe disband the kolhozes. They wished it. Why do you think it was? Yes, most of them didn't realize that. Why? Because they weren't allowed to travel to see for themselves.

Dear vilas, you love to use collective arguments. To attack your opponent with a lot of non connected sentences to leave him without a major thesis he can argue with. And you love to bring non important things. What has Yac's Grom addon to do with it? You said it by yourself. Nothing. Why you mention it? I can't argue with all non connected statements you wrote, so I have to choose some of them which are important in my opinion. You say that I judge prewar Poland from today's point of view? Well, I'd say it's the other way round. You do it. You say, from today's perspective, that prewar Poland was bad because it didn't provide social care etc, etc. Let's agree for a moment that social care is good. Compare the prewar Poland not to today's countries but to other prewar countries. Let's agree for a moment that disproportion in welfare is a bad thing. Compare disproportion in welfare in prewar Poland to other prewar countries not to today's countries. Do the same with regards to mentality of reach people, etc, etc. But remember then that Poland was a very young and poor country it couldn't affort social care (wich actually is totally ineffective way of spending public money, but let's not go into this discussion). You think that prewar Poland's neighbours had better social care? Maybe in USSR? Right?:j: I know this attitude you present, that simple Russians were heroes who fought to take a revange for their families etc. The truth is much more complicated. USSR was a big country. It had very diferent citizens from a lot of nations. Some of them were, as you say honest simple people (but remember that USSR system produced so called homo sovieticus - honesty wasn't promoted by it). Some of USSR's citizens were almost wild. It depended on commanders who was promoted and who not, which units were used on the first line, which were not. It is a fact that the Red Army commited a lot of warcrimes, raped not only German women but women of all 'liberated' countries, killed resistance members of all 'liberated' countries, killed and tortured the 'nobles', 'rich ones' (the method of distinguishing the rich one i.e. bad one from the simple-honest-poor-good one was by looking at his hands - if they were white it meant that the person is to be killed, deported to siberia etc.). A lot of those crimes were commited without an order, spountanously. Of course there were noble exceptions (just as on the German side). I for example read about a Red Army soldier who warned a Home Army patrol and saved it from an ambush prepared by Peoples Army (Armia Ludowa - Polish pro-communistic resistance movement). But we are not talking about exceptions. We are talkin generally. As a sidenote. Some of Soviet soldiers were very poor and were looting the 'liberated' countries a lot, because they didn't see such a welfare in their lifetime before. That was hidden by the censorship as much as possible. Do you know the photo of putting a Soviet flag on the Reichstag? On original photo one of the soldiers has two watches. It was 'photoshopped' ;) by the censors. Original picture 'Photoshopped' one Don't you see some inconsistency in this? If usual Russian didn't know what NKVD did why he was as afraid of it as "we"? The only possible answer is: because he knew what NKVD did as good as "we". He only was doublethinking because in the USSR even thinking that the system is wrong was forbiden and was a crime. That's what I said. The third option was 'clean' but commited to failure. It was the best one from the moral point of view, but not from the pragmatic point of view. Weather you should choose the moral one or pragmatic one is out of scope of this discussion I think ;).

Well, if you don't accept that USSR occupied Poland I don't know what can I say more. And yes, USSR 'gave' Poland some German land, but at the same time it took away from Poland a lot of lands in the East (Wolyn, Podole, Podlasie, including two major cities - Lwów and Wilno - if anyone could argue that those are not Polish cities that could be Lithuanians and Ukrainians, not the Soviets, who occupied both the Lithuanians and the Ukrainians). Helped to restore destroyed cities? When the Germans occupied Poland they also restored destroyed cities. Why? Because, just as the Russians after war, they were rulers on those teritories. They considered themselves at home. So they cared about their lands as they could. (There's a Russian proverb: Kura ne ptica, Polsza ne zagranica). And Sandomierz. That gave me a bit of laugh. Look where Sandomierz was on a prewar map: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/RzeczpospolitaII.png (look to the south- W E S T from the center of the country ;).

I'll quote myself: I didn't say that neither Czechs, Slovaks (BTW Slovakia was the third agressor of Poland in 1939 next to Germany and USSR) or Hungarians, Romanians or Balts were without a sin. I didn't say that Poland, UK or USA (carpet raids of German and Japan civilian targets, nuclear bomb) was without a sin either. It all boils down to the scale. The Middle-Eastern Europe was the theater of war between two major powers: the Third Reich and the Soviet Union (which at first, from 1939 to 1941, were allies). The nations which were between these two powers had to make their choice. There were three options. To make an alliance with the Third Reich, to make an alliance with the Soviet Union, or to rely on the Western Allies and to fight with both Germans and Soviets. As far as I read in most of the Middle-Estern European countries there were supporters of every of those options. On the German side there were Baltic or Ukrainian SS units, the Russians had ROA and RONA, Slovakians had Tiso's state, Romanians and Hungarians were for the most of the war allies of Germans. In the main libmod topic someone enumered even more nations that fought along with Germans (some Spainish people, some Belgians, French...). Those were allies of a great evil power. There's no doubt about it. But let's consider the other options. Making an alliance with the Soviet Union. There were a lot of supporters of that option. Because of the USSR's politics the most of the soldiers from countries different than the Soviet Union who wanted to fight the Germans fought in Soviet formations. But of course there was Polish LWP, "Chechoslovaks", in the second half of 1944 Romanians who fought the Germans together with Russians. My point is that theye were also allies of a great evil power. Both the options weren't good choices. The Russians, as well as the Germans wanted to conquer these countries (eventually the Soviets conquered them for almost 50 years). Both the Soviets and the Germans to reach their goals killed the elites of these countries (officers, univeristy profesors, policemen etc.). Both the powers commited unimaginable warcrimes and genocide (the Germans were inspired by rasist ideology, and the Soviets by the class struggle ideology and pragmatics, but the numbers of their victims are comparable). But there was a third way the "clean" one. The third way was not to ally with anyone (and rely on Western allies). But they failed their allies (I don't judge here wether they could not fail or not, that's not our topic). On the example of Poland we can see that the Home Army (one of the biggest if not the biggest underground army in the WWII Europe) which fought for the Poland's independence was treated as an enemy both by the Soviets and by the Germans. The victory of any of the Powers meant the failure and occupation. This option is the "nicest". I like it the most. You don't ally with any evil power (though, as I said above, Western countries weren't without a sin during WWII; but they e.g. didn't have concentration camps or guags, you can't compare camps for Japanees in the USA to them). Unfortunaltely this option was not effective. You could call it: fight and die with honor but without a hope. That was my point. And tpM is right. The Hungarians helped the Poles not only during the Warsaw Uprising. In Poland usually the Hungarian ocupation was a bliss. They protected local population from Germans from Soviets and in Wolynia from UPA (Ukrainians). They also sold weapons to the Polish resistance and sometimes gave it away for free.

My grandfather with his two brothers, my grandmother (as a nurse) were in Home Army (Armia Krajowa - Polish resistance) during WWII. They operated on Polish grounds that were captured in 1939 by the Soviets. (Don't forget that from 1939 to 1941 USSR were allied with the Germans). A lot of my grandfather's commanders were executed, assasinated, or imprisoned by the Soviets (was it NKVD, Russian partisants, regular army or Polish units subordinated to the Soviets (Armia Ludowa, Ludowe Wojsko Polskie)) when USSR started to conquer those regions of Poland for the second time, in 1944. After the war the most of the commanders (and a lot of officers and soldiers) of Home Army were sentenced to prison or executed in so called judical murders. Quite a few of members of the Polish resistance (but also Balts for example) remained in conspiracy, frequently in forests till the death of Stalin. The last of so called Cursed Soldiers was killed in 1963 near the city where I live (you can compare it to the Japeneese soldiers hidding on some forgotten islands on the Pacific Ocean). The history of the IIWW in the Middle-Eastern Europe (and the period after it) could not be objectively researched in Middle-Eastern countries untill 1990 (e.g. until this year the official version of history said that it was the Germans who were responsible for the Katyń massacre and teachers who tought their pupils the real version were repressed) and the history was replaced by propaganda. The most of Western historians either weren't interested in it or couldn't get the needed sources (e.g. they couldn't just go to Katyń to make their researches, they couldn't talk to the ex-Cursed Soldiers who were hidding their identity in fear of repressions etc.). For the Poles, especially for those from the eastern part of Poland (but not only for them, let's ask the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Hungarians, the Romanians, the Fins, the Balts; see for example this link in wikipedia) it's not an easy answer to the question who was the greater enemy during the IIWW - was it the Third Reich or the Soviet Union. And what was worse - making alliances with the Nazis or the Soviets. The nicest way wolud be not to ally with any of those forces but that meant being alone between two great powers willing to crush you (the Warsaw Uprising can be regarded as aimed against the Nazis in the military respect and against the Soviets in political respect; it ended tragically for the Polish resistance and civilian population of Warsaw). I don't have the answer for that. But surely seeing USSR as the allie and liberator as opposed to the Third Reich as the enemy and oppressor is TOTALLY untrue. I won't continue this topic here. But I encourage everybody to read more about the IIWW in the Middle-Eastern Europe. And I don't mean wikipedia. I mean books. Historical books written by accademics (especially those published after 1989). As it goes for Staszów region I've already looked for some photos of the Holy Spirit's Church in it's prewar form but couldn't find any. I'll ask if anyone has such photos on the Staszów's forum. There are also some sites with old photos of the Polish cities and towns which doesn't have any interesting photos from Staszów right now but are constantly updated with the new ones so you can look at them from time to time. Here's one of such sites: National Digital Archive

Well, you say you will have Staszów in your map. That's not the 'regions of Russia that the Wehrmacht overran'. ;)

You can make put any script in X:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\ArmA 2\scripts (where X: is your windows drive) and execute it from any, even unsaved mission.

fabrizio_T, do you use setSkill array command? You can set different types of skill with that command and for me it gives a huge difference at least in terms of aimingAccuracy, aimingShake, aimingSpeed. Sorry if that is a silly question and you're familiar with this command (which is most likely), but really, setting the above components of skill to 0.1 in my experience changes the gameplay a lot (much longer firefights, sometimes ridiculusly low accuracy of the AI). I didn't make any tests but I think that amingShake affects the accuracy the most, just like it did in OFP times (it could be achieved by using setDammage command to a negative value). Anyway your work looks great and I can't wait to try it out. (And I'm also a great fan of crouch run in Arma2, maybe we should form some kind of association ;) ).

Mission crashes the game for me every 1-5 minutes without any message. Other missions work well. It's a pitty because I like the idea very much. Especially the options to have no map and/or compass. I think Arma2 engine and Chernorus island, while not perfect at simulating combat, are perfect at simulating navigation through a terrain in many ways (i.e. map, compass, stars, sun and watch etc.).