I think it is nice that the game let's you play as the nazis and the Soviet union. Games are also about playing out our dark sides, and the possibility of alternate history in WW2 is both exiting and very scary.
A good way to spark more life into these games is to listen to period music or other music that you think fits.
Lili Marlene is a great song that quickly went very popular with both allied and axis soldiers.
It has been recorded in numerous versions in many different languages. I'd especially recommend the german version sung by Marlene Dietrich (in support of the allies) and a finnish version (sung in support of the axis) that is used as a first track on the album Der Sieg des Lichtes ist des Lebens Heil by Der Blutharsch.
Lili Marlene was a very comforting song for the common soldier expressing the hope of returning to that special girl, or any girl at all.
Prokofievs film score for Alexander Nevsky, a movie about a grand Prince of Novgorod that made peace with the traditional enemies the Golden Horde (the mongols) and repelled the invasion by the (german) Teutonic Knights was commissioned by Joseph Stalin and is great piece of music that is inspiring when playing the Soviets.
A lot of Prokofiev's music as well as that of Shostakovich comes highly recommended.
For playing the Axis, Wagner is an obvious choise, though Wagner most probably would not have been pleased. In the Hall of the Mountain King by Grieg would be very fitting for a blitzkrieg.
Beethoven is good background music for both the Axis and the Allies, though his sympathetic character makes him more fitting for the Allies.
Famously during World War II, the BBC used the four-note opening motif of Beethoven's fifth to introduce its radio news broadcasts, because it evoked the Morse code letter "V" (for "victory") (dot-dot-dot-dash).
Perhaps it also was used because Beethoven was a German composer and the four-note motif that the symphony opens with has since Beethoven's death been looked upon as a symbolic representation of Fate knocking at the door. The motif do sound very ominous to me.
(Once during my kindergarten work, a girl walked around all day whistling this eight-note motif, she had probably heard it in some cartoon. I found it very amusing.)
Beethoven's fifth is available in it's full glory in two versions on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._5_%28Beethoven%29. Perhaps the most bombastic, though not neccesarily the version recorded by Herbert von Karajan & the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1963.
For wargaming I would especially recommend the whole of Beethoven's fifth.The ninth and third is also good for this.
If you are feeling more adventurous there is some neo-classical industrial music that I would recommend heartily. Death in June's Operation Hummingbird has some great tracks like Kapitulation, Winter Eagle and Hand Grenades and Olympic Flames.
These songs are samples of classical music and other sounds with spoken poetry on top.
All of Der Blutharsch's albums prior to their recent psychedelic output is very good background music for playing WW2 games.
Both Death in June and Der Blutharsch are somewhat controversial because they have been using imagery and samples from World War II. For Death in June it is their own fault for being deliberately ambiguous and mythical. Douglas Pearce has only recently revealed himself as homosexual and an Israel sympathizer.
In fact there exists a whole subgenre of martial industrial music that mostly deals with militaristic and totalitarian themes. Most of these artists are either anti-fascistic or ambiguous, and only two smaller artists that I know of appear to be fascist sympathisers.
Since this is a forum on the website of a polish company I'd like to express that I do under no circumstances sympathise with Fascists nor Bolsheviks. The fight against Nazism was the best example of a just war (not that there are that many) in history.
Though goodness and reason did triumph against one of the worst ideologies there ever has been, and our civilization has become better and better since then, one should always be alert against the dangers of totalitarianism. It will not rise again with banners adorned with the swastika, but it will, most probably rise again.
History do (contrary to popular opinion) not repeat itself, but there are patterns that are hard to evade and this is one of them.
Sorry for going completely off-topic and over-the-top!
