Wow, this seems like a great AAR to learn the game. I'll have to actually load the game up tomorrow and play through (bought the game ages ago, but couldn't get into it), but it makes a great read, even without the game running.
I had tried to play HoI2, and just couldn't figure things out. Then, a year after I bought the game, I found this AAR. I'm having a blast now! I'm up to November 1940, using my TACs to level England, and just waiting for the mud to clear in 1941 to go to war with the Soviet Union If I had been ready, I could have even done Sealion in 1940, as England doesn't have very many units on their island at all.
One of the nice things about this AAR is that you have some wiggle room in 1940. In my game, Nationalist Spain beat Republican Spain, and after their war, I invited NS into the Axis. The idea was for NS to take Gibraltar, although I didn't MC them. Unfortunately, France and the UK were beating them up pretty badly, and I had to go help them after the Vichy France event. But that also let me take Gibraltar away from the UK, and it was fun watching all the Italian ships head out into the Atlantic after that
So I didn't go to war with Yugoslavia until August 1, but annexed them on August 18, which was only a little over a month's time from Ironhead's annexing of Yugoslavia. Since there is that wiggle room, I'm still on track for invading Russia in May 1941
BTW, be sure to read this thread from after the last of Ironhead's instructions (page 13 or so I think?), since there are a lot of questions answered, for example why Romania won't ally with you, and when they finally will. Also, you should be playing at least Doomsday version 1.3. You'll have problems if you just have vanilla HoI2. I'm using Armageddon version 1.2, and it's working out great going along with this AAR. The Hearts of Iron Anthology, which includes HoI, HoI2, Doomsday and Armageddon can be found online for purchase. Don't use the 1.3 patch for Armageddon with this AAR, as the patch changes things enough that I think it would be tough to follow this AAR.
We all hope that the only reason we haven't heard from Ironhead 5 is because he's busy in real life.