• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
boehm said:
so sad ...but nice ...

(...but ofcause, as always ... go skorzeny!! :D )
Thanks boehm, and he's about to.

cthulhu said:
Great writing Yog. It was sad but refreshing to take farewell of Master Johannes Liechtenauer. :( Not many men of his caliber in your magnificent story.
I was intrigued by the idea of a meeting of a 13th century european with the modern world. I figure his reaction would be very much like Master Johann's. They were very different people from us.

GeneralHannibal said:
To bad to see such an interesting character die. Seems like Finland is getting hurt, wonder what will happen there.
You'll know soon enough!

Simon_Jester said:
Wouldn't Fu remember how he got the elixir as Attila?

Fu is a vile man, but he's too clever to let himself get caught in a time loop.
Yes, and yes. Thanks for the amount of thought and commenting you're putting into this Simon_Jester.

Korppi said:
Great updates again.
End of Liechtenauer was really good.
Thanks old chap. I know all comments aren't in before yours is, and it rarely fails to appear.

VILenin said:
I wonder if Skorzeny will begin to re-evaluate his relationship with Duhrn after this. Probably not, though he does seem to respect the sword master a great deal. I think a rift between the two is inevitable, however, as sooner or later Duhrn will cross a line on his mad quest for power and force Skorzeny to take action. After all, Skorzeny is a patriot but Gunther certainly doesn't seem to have the Fatherland as his highest priority.

EDIT: And I look forward to the third and final(?) installment of your most sublime series! :)
You'll know some more about the dreams and aspirations of Duhrn in the next update. And I hope it will live up to your expectations!

Dr. Gonzo said:
Fantastic writing, and a very moving scene
Thanks!

All right, I have been working with one monster of an update, a tripple one that follows several events across the globe on a fateful date. But I need to proof-read something this long, so I'll post it tomorrow after rewieving it a bit. Before lunch time (12:00 CET). See you then!
 
Oops, it seems this update will not be in before the forums go down at 10 AM... well, it will be up ASAP, anyway.
 
Near Lvov, Poland
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Saturday June 1st, 1940


Russia1941-1FashPlanes.jpg

Russia1941-BatalMoscow.jpg


Sunrise. At five AM, while the sun glowed a dull crimson below the eastern horizon, a solid line of muzzle flashes made a competing dawn in the west. The massed artillery of the Wehrmacht, thousands and thousands of tubes of all calibres, opened up a devastating barrage on a two thousand kilometre front from the Baltic to the Romanian border. It was all the more destructive because it was concentrated on the relatively few Red Army forces in place along the Narew-San demarcation line, most of which had been spotted and plotted by aerial reconnaissance in the last few days. A tidal wave of sharp steel and scorching fire walked back and forth over troop concentrations, supply depots and command positions, smashing, fragmenting, burning everything in it’s path.

In the target areas, nothing could be heard but the shrill, ululating screams of incoming rounds and the endless succession of brutal detonations merging into an incessant, furious roar as from a monstrous beast. The panicked shrieks of dying men and panicked horses drowned inaudible in this localized apocalypse.

Where no shells fell, frightened Polish civilians could also pick up a dull, ominous droning from the dark skies; Reich Marshall Goering had sent his invincible aerial armada against airfields deep inside Russia. The fleet of medium bombers and heavy escort fighters would reach their more distant targets after the rising sun had illuminated them. Behind them, as the frontline airfields were vacated, swarms of Stukas and Bf-109 fighters climbed to assist the ground troops as they crossed the border in the wake of the preparatory barrage.

III Abteilung of the SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler motorised brigade was in the fire from the start as part of General von Klüge’s 4th Army, which was tasked with capturing the fortified city of Lvov. While Panzergruppe Guderian rushed around the city, the SS-Leibstandarte would advance inside it’s giant steel pincers to a blocking position astride the Lvov-Tarnopol railroad east of the city, where it could prevent any Soviet troops from escaping.

Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny stood up in his Sdkfz-251 halftrack, roaring at maximum speed along a forest track unworthy to be known as a road. The wind swept his face, and occasionally he had to dodge lashing minor branches, just as if he was riding a horse in a wild gallop through the dark, dense forest. It was exhilarating rather than frightening. He had never imagined war could be this way, but then again, only a fully mechanised unit like the SS-Leibstandarte (the ONLY fully mechanised unit in the Wehrmacht, even the Panzer Divisions had to transport their infantry in ordinary wheeled trucks) could have made such a lightning advance along such a pitiful rut, which with the ground more or less dry, was relatively easy going for the half-tracks and assault guns.

‘This is great!’ SS-Hauptsturmführer Meyer shouted, looking as if he was having the time of his life. ‘The Führer was right; all we had to do was to kick in the door, and now the whole rotten structure will come crashing down!’

‘Enjoy, Meyer! Enjoy!’ Otto shouted back despite his misgivings, not wanting to spoil his subordinate’s fun. He felt certain that things would become progressively harder as they moved deeper into the yawning void that was Russia, where the bulk of the Red Army was surely lurking. But in truth, resistance so far had been negligible; a few machineguns had opened up on their StuG III assault guns as they led the charge. Their 75mm direct-fire guns blew them away in short order, the infantry didn’t even have to dismount to clear out any survivors. A few were machine-gunned from the half-tracks as they tried to run, that was all.

Skorzeny had chosen to ride with Meyer’s PAK-platoon immediately behind the assault guns at the head of the column. Ahead of them, an advance guard of armoured cars and motor-cycle riders scouted out the road. But of course, at the speed the column was advancing, that was not so easy, and there certainly was no time to properly sweep the terrain on either side of the road. Thus, it should not have come as a surprise when a 45mm Russian anti-tank gun, well concealed in the woods, fired on one of the StuG’s at less than fifty metre’s range.

The Red Army troops were not well trained; despite the extreme short range, they failed to lead their target enough and the shot screamed by behind the speeding armoured vehicle, swishing by just in front of Skorzeny’s halftrack.

‘Stop and dismount!’ he roared, while giving the same command with hand signs. Without hesitation, the heavy armoured vehicle veered off the road, with the other in the column following his example. Before they had come to a stop, Waffen-SS troops in camouflaged jackets and helmets were jumping out, brandishing Mauser rifles and hand grenades. The StuG’s, without prompting, turned off the road and rolled straight at the offending enemy AT-gun, firing their cannons and machine-guns as they went. Trees toppled, run over by the armoured behemoths, and green spring leaves sprayed in all directions. Now Russian MGs began to hack, sending streams of yellow tracers buzzing like angry insects and ricocheting between the parked vehicles. The Waffen-SS men immediately dove for cover. One of the StuG’s caught an anti-tank round full in the side and stopped dead, smoke pouring from the engine room as the crew bailed out. The shot had come from ahead, down the road, which meant they had Russians on two sides. It began to seem like III Abteilung had blundered into a full scale ambush.

‘They have us in an L!’ Skorzeny shouted. The classic ambush formation was shaped like an L, with the short arm of the letter extending across the route of advance of the enemy and the long arm parallel to it. That meant he and his men were now pinned down on a killing ground. There was only one way out now.

‘Fix bayonets!’ Skorzeny shouted, lifting his head from the ground and making the corresponding hand sign. He watched around, trying to get a feel for the situation. The StuG’s were backing up quickly, two of their numbers knocked out. Exchanging fire with concealed anti-tank guns at point blank range was a bad idea for any kind of armour, and doubly so for the turretless assault guns. The gunners on the half-tracks had not jumped ship, and were now pouring fire from their MG-34s back at the attackers, hopefully suppressing them. Skorzeny knew, however, that in a few moments, when the StuGs had backed into concealment in the forest, the enemy PAKs would shift their aim and slaughter the lightly armoured personnel carriers. It was now or never, the Austrian decided.

‘Up and at them boys!’ he yelled, drawing his sword and moving his Mauser pistol to the left hand.

The men of the SS-Leibstandarte answered with a hearty cheer, and rose with him, firing their rifles as they went.

‘Straight at them, kameraden! Chaaarge!’

The rush was short. Hand-grenades flew between Germans and Russians: sharp, high detonations, some desperate screams of pain and fear and the wave of camouflaged soldiers overran the Russians, screaming like demons. Their foes stood their ground though, and appeared fully prepared to go toe to toe with Hitler’s finest. Their long triangular Mosin-Nagant rifles had their integrated bayonets extended, and within instants, the forest was scene to a savage melee, where Waffen-SS and Red Army soldiers shot, stabbed, rifle-butted and kicked each other to death. No quarter was given, or asked for.

Skorzeny shot three men with his machine pistol as they charged him with bayonets. He then discarded the empty weapon and gripped his sword two-handed, just in time to stand face to face with a Russian Cavalry Lieutenant brandishing a sabre. Both men froze, perhaps realising the improbability of their meeting, and then, in the midst of the brutal free-for-all, the Russian took a second to salute Skorzeny by rising the hilt of his weapon to his face. Surprised by the gesture, Otto hesitated between returning the salute and attacking, and as a result was almost skewered when the Lieutenant lunged swiftly as a striking adder. Otto swore and parried, backed up, parried again and riposted, which won him enough breathing space to finally regain his balance. He adopted one of Master Lichtenauer’s favourite wards, the Aber, or “Fool’s guard”, with the point of the sword extended in front of him and pointing into the ground. The Russian smiled and shrugged, almost as if apologising for taking advantage of such idiocy and struck a deadly blow, aimed at decapitating the Hitlerite who had so foolishly lowered his defences.

Otto didn’t parry, instead trusting his Sinaju-conditioned reflexes to allow him to duck under the cut. He then stepped forward, rising the Rune Sword in a long thrust. The Russian Lieutenant had not even began to recover from his swing when the Austrian’s hilt smacked into his chest. The blade, dripping ghastly red, was already protruding from his back. Before darkness closed over him, the last thing he saw was the battle-madness raging in the Hitlerite officer’s ice-blue eyes and his maniacal lopsided grin.

The skirmish, their first real test of arms in Russia was over. There were no Russians taken prisoner, although a few were finished off as they lay writhing in agony on the blood-soaked ground. After a quick look-around, Skorzeny decided their casualties had been relatively light; even so, two precious StuG’s had been knocked out, at least temporarily, and two half-tracks would have to be dedicated to transporting the dead and wounded. If the Russians all fought with this kind of determination, Otto thought, the odds of him or many of his men surviving a long war were slim. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, both for his own sake and for that of the Reich.

****​

The Rub Al Khali
Kingdom of the Saudi

Saturday June 1st, 1940


rubalkhalisunrise.jpg


Sunrise. Due perhaps to some latent masochistic streak, Ghünter Duhrn had always been an early riser, and in the ice-cold desert nights of Arabia he had ended up developing this trait to ridiculous extremes. Most days, he’d be up and about at four in the morning, relishing the cold crisp air while doing his callisthenics. After sunrise, such profligacy of effort would have been prohibitive, and after sunset, he would be too exhausted to even consider PT – but in the still, ice-cold hours before dawn, Sturmbannführer Günther Duhrn could work out and let his mind wander aimlessly as he built up a sweat. He was fond of contemplating his glorious future as the undisputed leader of the Reich’s occult ventures; a national-socialist arch-mage, feared as no man had been since the days of the Great Inquisitors.

As Duhrn watched the sun peek over the black horizon through a haze of orange, scarlet and purple, he smiled at the thought of great ballrooms in Austrian 18th century palaces, brimming over with rich and powerful men and beautiful women, going suddenly still and silent as he was introduced. He imagined vividly how his steps would echo against the marble floors in the silence as he walked arrogantly through the hushed crowd, acknowledging their nervous and ingratiating smiles with small nods of his head.

Power was an interesting thing, Dührn thought, because just like money, you needed much to gain more of it. He would use his still limited occult lore to advance within the SS, and once he had grown as much as the Reichsführer-SS would allow him to, he could in turn use his position to wax also his occult power. With top ranks within the SS came undisputed power over other human beings – and if the plans for the occupation of Russia he had seen were even partially realised, then the subjects of his future private Empire would surely number in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions before he reached the apex of his career in the SS. They would form an inexhaustible currency reserve in his dealings with the things hiding beyond the geometry of ordinary reality; their deaths, their blood, their torn and quivering flesh, their screams of pain, yes, and their souls too would buy him whatever services he required.

Oh, the power he would have! With exclusive control over the use of magic in the Reich, no one would be beyond his reach, no one safe from the things which would visit his opponents in the small hours of the morning, awful things, things that chattered, crawled and howled as they went about their horrid tasks. He would be powerful enough to make or break any man or any position, and once the life of Adolf Hitler, the only man Duhrn had ever revered had run it’s course, he would make or break Führer’s too! Through the centuries, but always in the shadows behind the throne, Günther Duhrn would rule the Thousand Year Reich!

An Oberstürmführer approaching at a run broke Duhrn’s reverie.

‘Yes, what is it? Has the morning flight reported in?’ the head of Sonderkommando Hexen asked.

Nein, Stürmbannführer! We have lost contact with the aircraft!’

Instead of showing alarm, Durhn grinned savagely. ‘They’ve found it!’

‘What?’

Mensch, don’t you see? The powers that inhabit that place won’t so easily allow themselves to be discovered. I trust it’s well within their power to drop a single aircraft from the sky. Now all we have to do is sift through the plane’s intended search area on foot… well, on camel, I guess… and before long, we will behold The Nameless City!’

****​

West of Phoenix
Arizona, United States of America

Saturday June 1st, 1940


act15-bf110-crashed.jpg


Sunrise. For Hannah and Buck, covering in a small foxhole in the Arizona desert, the ball of blood rising behind them was not a welcome sight. The sun meant daylight. Daylight meant the return of Pan-Asian spotting aircraft, ground-attack aircraft and bombers. The Eagle Legion would not contest the airspace today; yesterday evening, it had been forced to relocate further east in a hurry as Terauchi’s spearheads banged on the gates of Sky Harbor Airport where it had been based. Only a desperate counterattack which had cost Rommel half of his Panzer’s had pushed back the enemy long enough for evacuation to be possible at all.

As for Hannah and Buck, they were not relocating anywhere at the moment; their Bf-110E was a wreck littering the centre of the platoon perimeter. They had been shot down by a Fu fighter the previous evening as they were trying to lend some ground support to the hard-pressed soldiers of the US 78th Infantry Division who held the front ahead of the city. Their emergency landing brought them right on top of the position of an American platoon under heavy infantry attack, and Buck had been quick to salvage the MG17 from his rear gunner position to give some much needed fire support. Hannah had quickly recovered an M-1 from a fallen soldier and chipped in too. At the very least, her very presence had done wonders for the morale of these frightened Arizona boys, who had a hard time deciding if they wanted to watch the enemy lines or this German Air Force Colonel, stunning even in a flight suit and a GI steel helmet too big for her.

‘I wouldn’t bee surprised if they attacked right about now!’ Buck mumbled as he finished cleaning the barrel of his MG17. Inside their tiny foxhole, it was easier said than done.

‘Why is that?’ Hannah wondered, managing to look haggard and adorable at the same time. There was something very sexy about a beautiful woman looking sleepy and somewhat dirty, Buck thought. Come to think of it, a beautiful woman looked sexy in most any situation. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, annoyed with himself.

‘Eh, well… I mean, we have the rising sun in our backs so they’ll have it in their eyes. And they know we know that, so they’ll think we won’t expect an attack right now. So…’

Hannah chuckled wearily and checked that her semi-automatic rifle was loaded and ready to fire, for what time in a row Buck didn’t know. ‘Thinking that way can drive you mad, you know. If we know that, won’t they know that we know… and so on?’

‘No, I usually stop thinking when I’ve arrived to the conclusion that I have to be extra careful, Hun’, Buck said, resting the MG on a flat stone that he had pressed into service in lieu of a tripod.

‘Hah, that would work I guess. Shhh.’ Hannah raised a small gloved hand, putting it to her full red lips – she had heard something.

‘I hate it when I’m right!’ Buck hissed between clenched teeth, when after a few moments, they had identified some unmistakeable sounds from moving soldiers; weapons and harnesses jingling, the dry hard ground crunching under the pressure of crawling bodies, muted whispers… the enemy was close, very close.

‘No you don’t!’ Hannah whispered back, briefly smiling before sinking into that ice-valkyrie mood that always came over her before battle.

‘Do we warn the others?’ Buck wondered, pressing the stock of the MG against his shoulder as he put his finger on the trigger.

‘Too late, we’d just give away our position’ Hannah decided. ‘When we open fire, that will be their warning.’

When the Pan-Asian officer leading the infiltrators decided that his men were close enough to the entrenched Americans, he gave a blood-curling war-cry and jumped to his feet and his men, a full company of them imitated him. He was instantly cut down, together with a dozen others as Buck fired and swept his MG back and forth like a hose. At such short range, the machine gun fire all but cut the Pan-Asian troops in half. Hannah rose to her knees and began picking off enemy soldiers with her M-1 rifle.

Within instants, they had wiped out the better part of two Pan-Asian infantry squads. With the Pan-Asians diving for cover and the US troops in the line engaging the enemy, Hannah and Buck ducked down into their hole again to reload.

‘Got the suckers!’ Buck shouted! ‘We got them pinned down!’

‘Calm down, Captain!’ Hannah ordered. ‘Listen!’

They could hear another Pan-Asian officer shouting orders in Chinese. The returning affirmative was a chorus of voices far too numerous for comfort.

’Verdammt!’ Hannah hissed.

’What’s the matter?’

’That guy said something about “Lung”!’ Hannah whispered back. ‘That means “Dragon” in Chinese, James told me that.

‘Are you afraid that officer just ordered his men to pop a dose of “The Soul of the Dragon”, Hun?’ Buck wondered, frowning.

‘That is correct, Captain, and don’t address me as “Hun!”’

‘No ma’am.’ Buck wasn’t fazed by her sudden change of character. He fought enough along Hannah Reitsch to know that this hard-ass officer persona was second nature to her, which she donned like a suit of armour before combat. Very likely, she wouldn’t even be fully conscious of the fact that she had just bitten his head off.

There were a few more instants of relative quiet, when a intermittent smattering of gunfire from Garand rifles was all that could be heard. Then, suddenly, from the enemy lines rose a cacophony of savage, almost animal screaming and a howling mob, seemingly made up of homicidal maniacs in uniform charged the American lines. They were shot down in droves, but the rest kept coming. Even the severely wounded crawled on, mutilated, bleeding, howling with hate, some dragging their shredded guts behind them. If a hit didn’t kill, it didn’t stop its target.

‘Christ almighty!’ Buck breathed, going white as a sheet at the sight. Then he forgot about anything but trying to annihilate a group of enemy soldiers charging straight at him with bayonets. They were actually foaming at the mouth. He dosed them with the MG and killed most of them; but two diehards kept coming, one of them hardly noticing a fatal gut shot. Bucks MG clicked – the ammunition belt magazine was exhausted. He discarded it and reached for a fresh one. The howling grew in intensity as the enemy soldiers charged closer. Buck went for his Colt.

Just as the drug-crazed Pan-Asians were about to skewer Buck and her, Hannah coldly shot each one of them in turn through the head. As the last one crumbled, her Garand rifle ejected the empty clip with an audible metallic ping.

Another group of maddened Pan-Asians charged them.

Buck raised his Colt and felled three men with his seven rounds. All shots were hits but only instantly fatal wounds counted in this nightmare battle. Buck saw as in a dream a screaming enemy soldier come at him with his bayonet extended. He wouldn’t manage to reload in time, he realised, but tried anyway, knowing it was useless.

Hannah was only half-way through reloading her weapon, so instead she threw herself at the charging foes legs, tripping him. He stumbled over her, crashing into Buck head first. Both fell grappling into the fox-hole while Hannah got to her feet and finished reloading the Garand. With brutal, inhuman strength, the Pan-Asian, ignoring Buck’s punches to his face, closed his hands around his throat and began to squeeze. To the American pilot, it felt like being strangled with steel cable. Despite fighting with all his strength to break the grip, he felt weak as a newborn kitten compared to the Asian berserker.

Hannah calmly stepped close to the two struggling men, carefully took aim and shot the Pan-Asian right through an eye.

After pushing away the corpse, Buck self-consciously closed his open-hanging mouth, staring in adoration at the aviatrix. The assault was petering out, and no enemies where in their immediate vicinity.

‘I love you!’ he blurted out.

Hannah arched an eyebrow at him under the rim of the helmet and smiled. ‘Nah, you just love to have sex with me. In fact, you hate my Nazi guts! But as lies go, it’s a very nice one, liebling!’

‘No, no!’ Buck insisted. ‘Nazi or not, it’s a very nice and firm gut you have there, with all sorts of interesting stuff in the neighbourhood. I do love to… well, what you said, but I love your gut too!’

‘That’s my belly, you moron! Just because I’m a foreigner, you think I don’t know the difference between belly and guts? Pah, men!’ she said, shaking her head, but she was smiling all the time.

Sergeant Patterson, the acting commander of the platoon came running. He sported a thin Clark Gable moustache and was a professional NCO old enough to be called “pops” by the privates. He would be twenty-nine in June.

‘Thanks for your help, Ma’am, Sir!’ he shouted. ‘Company just got a radio message from 78th HQ; the squints are in Phoenix, and we’re bugging out of here before the last roads north of the city are cut off. You’re welcome to tag along with us if you want. We’ll make sure you find your new airfield.

Buck swore. ‘Goddamn those yellow bastards! When are we going to stop them?’

Patterson shrugged. ‘Not today. They took Seattle during the night, we got told. They own the whole west Coast now, from Canada to Mexico.’

‘We are going to stop them!’ Buck raged. ‘Aren’t we?’ he added, looking forlorn.

‘I hope so, liebling’ Hanna said, taking his hand. ‘I really, really hope so.’​
 
Last edited:
woo a nice big update! a wonderful intense scene with Skorzeny, Duhrn got quite the ambition, and is it just me or do Buck and Hannah get shot down together alot :p
 
lifeless said:
woo a nice big update! a wonderful intense scene with Skorzeny, Duhrn got quite the ambition, and is it just me or do Buck and Hannah get shot down together alot :p
Well, this is the beginning of the Pacific War. Even if the details have changed, the basic reality is the same- the Japanese (or Pan-Asian) pilots were much better than any Westerners expected. So a lot of Allied pilots are getting shot down- 'allied' in this case being American and German.

The addition of the Fu fighters only makes matters worse.

No, I usually stop thinking when I’ve arrived to the conclusion that I have to be extra careful
Good one.

I'm curious as to the supply situation. I can't recall for certain, but isn't there a substantial combat penalty for units that are at the end of a long supply chain? Or is that the HoI 1 CORE version I'm thinking of?
 
great update ....nice to get a bit of an idea of whats happening along the various storylines :) ...now whats up with Indy and the Shadow? ;)
 
Duhrn picturing his own future with the Reich was somewhat chilling. Goes to show that even though Germany is an ally at the moment something will have to be done about the Thousand Year Reich once Fu is defeated. At best maybe a surgical strike at the top government but things could easily degenerate into war between one-time allies.

Reading about Hannah and Buck I couldn't help but think to myself "poor James." Maybe I just have a hard tme with the idea of him not getting the girl. ;) The openning of Barbarossa is going to put a serious crimp in the Eagle legion's operations, I think. Not so much equipment or manpower to go around.
 
Things aren't looking good for the old USA. Retreat everywhere seems to be the tactic. However, as the Pan-Asians get farther into the US, things will start getting harder I'm sure.
 
Ah, a very nice thing on a Friday to get a long update of my favorite AAR. Smashing writing.
+1 all the way. : )
 
Korppi said:
Great update once more.
Your description of combat action is great as usual :)
So US hasnt yet mustered enough troops to stop Pan Asian troops.



And I missed few comments when I and my whole family was sick and my home network had some problems ;)
Thanks Korppi. Writing about ground combat, and especially infantry combat is a bit new to me; I've mostly explored aerial and armoured fighting before (the latter in TEATL). Which is funny really, because the only hands-on experience I have is from my own military service, which was in the Royal Swedish Infantry. :) So anyway, I'm glad you liked it.

Being sick is no fun. With two small ones, it happens to us all the time, this weekend and the one before too. Network troubles are no joke either.

cthulhu said:
Ah, a very nice thing on a Friday to get a long update of my favorite AAR. Smashing writing, Yog. :)
Thanks Great Old One, and thanks for the input on Duhrn. I hope you're satisfied with the result.

lifeless said:
woo a nice big update! a wonderful intense scene with Skorzeny, Duhrn got quite the ambition, and is it just me or do Buck and Hannah get shot down together alot :p
Together and separately. Lemmese, Hannah got downed at Wawre, Belgium, the Mojawe and now at Phoenix, Arizona. Buck got splashed in the First Battle of San Francisco Bay, voluntarily crash-landed in the Mojawe and now got downed with Hannah in Arizona. So yeah, these two are bad cases of equipment-wreckers.

On the other side, they've managed to live through it all. ;)

Simon_Jester said:
I'm curious as to the supply situation. I can't recall for certain, but isn't there a substantial combat penalty for units that are at the end of a long supply chain? Or is that the HoI 1 CORE version I'm thinking of?
No, that's HOI1. In HOi2, there is no such penalty, but on the other hand, you need to supply your troops for real, which is a bith with a war like this. Only Californian oil has prevented the Pan-Asian war machine from coming to a screeching stop, but there's still no Bonanza and naval operations are restricted to a minimum. Next stop: Texas!

boehm said:
great update ....nice to get a bit of an idea of whats happening along the various storylines :) ...now whats up with Indy and the Shadow? ;)
Oh, you demanding one!

VILenin said:
Duhrn picturing his own future with the Reich was somewhat chilling. Goes to show that even though Germany is an ally at the moment something will have to be done about the Thousand Year Reich once Fu is defeated. At best maybe a surgical strike at the top government but things could easily degenerate into war between one-time allies.

Reading about Hannah and Buck I couldn't help but think to myself "poor James." Maybe I just have a hard tme with the idea of him not getting the girl. ;) The openning of Barbarossa is going to put a serious crimp in the Eagle legion's operations, I think. Not so much equipment or manpower to go around.
Interesting points. At some point, some hard choices are going to have to be made about what the greater evil and greater threats are, but for the moment, the west is busy not getting brutally killed by Pan-Asia. As for the Eagle Legion, you're more right than you can imagine. Panzers, especially are in short supply, se below.

GeneralHannibal said:
Things aren't looking good for the old USA. Retreat everywhere seems to be the tactic. However, as the Pan-Asians get farther into the US, things will start getting harder I'm sure.
That depends a bit if Britain can lend a hand, extending the theatre to Canada and opening up a new front in India and Malacka. Otherwise, the more Pan-Asia takes of America, the more resources and Industry she'll have, and the less there will be left for the United States.

Sir Humphrey said:
+1 all the way. : )
So nice of you to drop in, Sir Humphrey! Glad to have you reading, +1 indeed... :)

QUESTION
For the moment, I'm at the end of the line, I've caught up with my game in my writing. However, since I am a very disturbed person, I spent some time preparing a plausible panzer reorganisation that would allow the Germans to invade the USSR in June 1940 with nine Panzer Divisions and have one in the USA. I ended up writing it as a post in which the Inspector General of the Panzertruppen, General Guderian, made a short presentation to the Führer about the new organisation of the Panzer forces.

Even before I wrote it, I realised this was not something that was appropiate in an adventure story like EOFM. Still, if you want me to, I could still post it, just for kicks. It should not be considered part of the AAR as such though.

What do you think?
 
The Yogi said:
QUESTION
For the moment, I'm at the end of the line, I've caught up with my game in my writing. However, since I am a very disturbed person, I spent some time preparing a plausible panzer reorganisation that would allow the Germans to invade the USSR in June 1940 with nine Panzer Divisions and have one in the USA. I ended up writing it as a post in which the Inspector General of the Panzertruppen, General Guderian, made a short presentation to the Führer about the new organisation of the Panzer forces.

Even before I wrote it, I realised this was not something that was appropiate in an adventure story like EOFM. Still, if you want me to, I could still post it, just for kicks. It should not be considered part of the AAR as such though.

What do you think?

Well.............................

It may not be adventure material - but the plans of the latest German Army reorg which is smashing into the Russians as we speak would be of interest to the Pan Asians, the Russians and even the British. So maybe you could wrap up the "hard" part of the story with some glitzy spy stuff from one or all sides telling how they obtained the info and/or managed to infiltrate a German Army staff meeting with the Fuhrer
 
To my regret I haven't read through everything (not even a small part) but the parts I have read were indeed EXCELLENT and I really encourage you to publish your writing through pocket-books or the like.
Cheers!
 
Well, I had originally written this as a conversation between Hitler and Guderian, but I thought Derek's idea was good. Now you'll get it as a written report instead... Here goes.
 
Leningrad
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Monday June 3rd, 1940


0Leningrad-siege1.jpg


General Grigori Zhukov flipped through the memo on his desk. As he read, his eyes, initially sunken and puffy from sleep deprivation gradually grew wider and wider and his eyebrows climbed to dizzying heights on his forehead. After a little while he put down the stack of papers on his desk.

Bozhemoi, how did you get your hands on this, Comrade Colonel?’

Colonel Pavel Sudoplatov of the NKVD foreign information branch shrugged, as if playing down his role. ‘I’ve got some people working for us in Switzerland, anti-nazi German exiles with connections back in the Fatherland, apparently. We still do not trust their information fully, since the people involved in it are so secretive, but according to all our boffins, this seems to be the real deal.

The Real deal indeed. It was a report from the German Chief of motorised troops,General der Panzertruppen Heinz Guderian to the Führer himself, in which the reorganisation of the Panzer troops between the campaigns in the west and the attack on the USSR was detailed out. With Hitler’s armies rampaging across Bielorussia and the Ukraine, it was invaluable stuff.

Shaking his head, still in disbelief, Zhukov sat down and began to read.

Oberkommando des heeres
Office of the Chief of Motorised troops
Subject: Reorganisation of the Panzer Troops
16.5.1940
TOP SECRET
For the Führer’s eyes only


I. SITUATION PREVIOUS TO THE REORGANISATION
During Fall Gelb, many shortcomings were made apparent in the Panzer troops. Among these, the most important were the inadequacy of the older Panzer models, especially the PzKpfw-I, against modern anti-tank weapons. The coordination and proportion of Panzer-grenadiers to Panzers was also proven insufficient. As a result, the Panzer Divisions suffered inordinately high casualties during the breakthrough phase of operations, especially in Panzers. During the latter fluid operations in the enemy rear, the Panzer troops acquitted themselves very well, but were left severely under-strength at the time of the armistice. Total irrecoverable Panzer losses were close to 40%.

An additional problem facing the Panzer troops was the heterogeneous organisation of the armoured formations. Due to wartime emergencies and stop-gap solutions, there were no less than three different types on the rooster at the outset of Fall Gelb;

a) Panzer-Divisions 1-5 organised along the “PANZER-DIVISION 35” TOE with a Panzer Brigade made up of two Panzer Regiments each of two Panzer Battalions, and a Panzer-Grenadier Brigade organised in the same fashion.

b) Panzer-Divisions 6-7 had only one Regiment each of Panzers and Panzer-Grenadiers, but with three Battalions each.

c) The three Light Divisions with a single Panzer Regiment with two Panzer Battalions.

Because of these deficiencies and inconsistencies, once the war in the west had been won, this office has embarked on a complete overhaul of the Panzer troops with aims of improving the quality of equipment, providing an adequate numerical strength and a standardisation of the OOB.

II. IMPROVED QUALITY OF EQUIPMENT

In order to achieve the goal of improving the quality of equipment, the Chief of Motorised troops, with the approval of the Führer, has ordered the following:

a) Effective January 1st 1940, the PzKpfw-I (all models) was withdrawn from service as a combat panzer in the Panzer Divisions.

b)As of the same date, production of the PzKpfw-I, PzKpfw-II, PzKpfw- 35(t), PzKpfw-38(t) and PzKpfw-III Ausf F was discontinued. The production lines for these models was retooled for the PzKpfw-III Ausf G and PzKpfw-IV Ausf D.

c)Existing models of PzKpfw-III with a 37mm tank gun, namely Ausf E and F have been shipped off to the 7th Panzer-Division operating with the Eagle Legion in the United States of America.

d)The latest model of PzKpfw-III approved for production is the PzKpfw-III Ausf G. This model is equipped with a 50mm L/42 Kwk 38 tank gun. Future models will be equipped with an improved 50mm L/60 Kwk 39 tank gun with increased muzzle velocity. This model, the Ausf H will enter service beginning in 1941.

e) The Anti-tank Battalion of the Panzer-Division is equipped solely with 50mm PAK 38s. The 37mm PAK is withdrawn from service in the Panzer troops.



III. PROVIDING ADEQUATE NUMERICAL STRENGTH

After the losses sustained during Fall Gelb and the withdrawal of the PzKpfw-I, the panzer strength was sufficient for barely two or three Panzer-divisions of the “PANZER-DIVISION 35” TOE. With this in mind, the Chief of Motorised troops, with the approval of the Führer, has ordered the following:

a) the new Panzer-Divisions have a reduced establishment of Panzers to a total of 213 units per Division, as compared to the 326 of “PANZER-DIVISION 35”. Of these 198 are combat Panzers and 15 command Panzers (301 and 25 respectively in the earlier TOE).

b) To fill up the regiments until sufficient numbers of PzKpfw-IIIs and PzKpfw-IVs are available, some 800 French-made Panzers captured or handed over as part of the payment of war indemnities have been pressed into service in Panzer-Divisions 8, 9 and 10. These models are the light PzKpfw-39H 735(f) with a 37mm gun, the medium PzKpfw- 35-S 739(f) with a 47mm gun and the heavy PzKpfw-B1 740(f) with a 47mm and a 75mm gun. These Panzers have modified for our use through the enlargement of the turret to accommodate a three man crew and the addition of a radio to each machine.


f20hotchkiss20h2039oc7.jpg
f20hv20charron20b120bisfc6.jpg

PzKpfw-39H 735(f) and PzKpfw-B1 740(f)

c) The PzKpfw-II and the Czech-made PzKpfw-35(t) and PzKpfw-38(t), although no longer in production will remain in service until phased out and replaced by PzKpfw-IIIs and PzKpfw-IVs. The PzKpfw-II will be distributed to Panzer-Divisions 1-5, equipping two of three companies in two battalions in each Panzer Regiment, plus three new independent Panzer battalions, the 101st, 102nd and 103rd.

d) Production of PzKpfw-III and PzKpfw-IV has been forced, using the new production lines converted from obsolete models and making use of the manpower and resources made available from demobilisation and the discontinuation of the U-boot construction program. As a result, from January 1st to May 15h 340 PzKpfw-IIIs and 220 PzKpfw-IVs have been built, an average total of 29 per week. Production has increased steadily with 50 built in the second week of may.


IV. STANDARDISING THE OOB:pANZER-DIVISION 40

The Chief of Motorised troops, with the approval of the Führer, has ordered the following: effective January 1st 1940, all Panzer-Divisions have been reorganised along the TOE detailed below. Also, the Light Divisions are abolished and converted into full Panzer Divisions with the numbers 8, 9 and 10. The new Panzer-Division TOE is named PANZER-DIVISION 40. It is similar to the earlier TOE PANZER-DIVISION 35 with the following exceptions;

a) Each Panzer-Division has a single Panzer Regiment composed of three Panzer battalions.

b) Each Panzer-Division has a single Panzer-Grenadier Regiment composed of three Panzer-Grenadier Battalions.

c) Each Panzer Battalion is composed of three Panzer Companies. At least one company in each battalion will be medium or heavy. As more PzKpfw-IIIs and PzKpfw-IVs become available, all companies will be assigned these models. The establishment strength of the Panzer Batallion is 66 combat Panzers and four command Panzers.

d)Each Panzer Company has a HQ element of two combat Panzers and a command Panzer and four Panzer Platoons. Each platoon will have an establishment of five combat Panzers. The establishment strength of the Panzer Company is 22 combat Panzers and 1 command Panzer.


V. DOCTRINE - COMBINED ARMS IN THE NEW ORGANISATION

Owning to our experiences of breakthrough operations during Fall Gelb, it has become obvious that Panzers and Panzer-Grenadiers need to cooperate more closely in the attack in order to deal with anti-tank guns as well as entrenched infantry. The new organisation is set up to allow the divisional commander to divide his forces into three regimental combat groups based around one Panzer Battalion, one Panzer-Grenadier Battalion and one PAK company each.


Heinz Guderian
General der Panzertruppen
16.5.1940​

Zhukov set down the paper, looking slightly dazed.

‘So, what do you think, Comrade general?’

‘Well, I’ll be sure to bring this to the attention of our tank commanders. This confirms a few things we had had doubts about, like that the Germans really do not have anything heavier than the Panzer-IV, except for the French tanks. Those are the most worrisome in their inventory. Also, the number of tanks they possess is ridiculous, and their production rates laughable. It seems we have been overestimating them. I’ll be sure to prepare a warm welcome for their vaunted Panzer Divisions once they reach the Stalin line. Russia will be their grave!’

‘May it be so, Comrade General! May it be so!’

soumapanzerfb1.jpg

In German service, the French Somua-35 and Char-B1 tanks were refitted with a larger turret. This was done by cutting the turret in half in front of the hatch, inserting slabs of armour to act as sides, floor and roof and then welding it all back together again. This larger turret allowed the typical German setup of gunner, loader and commander and larger stores of ammuntion. Undesireable consequences were increased weight, weak spots at the welds and larger target profile from the sides. On the picture the turret is also fitted with a "Rommelkiste", an unarmoured crew equipment storage box.
 
Last edited: