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Empire of Fu Manchu

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I'm more into dialogue myself - but you've managed to give the document a very authentic impression.

Zhukov said:
It seems we have been overestimated them.
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Maybe the hardware and production, but the doctrines and air power is going to kick your commie arse back to the urals. :D
 
The Yogi said:
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!
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There's something ironic about Texas being invaded for the oil, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

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.
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Logically, wouldn't the Pan-Asian policy of slaughtering lots and lots of civilians and driving even more civilians in front of them as refugees make it difficult for them to staff the captured industrial facilities?

EDIT: At this time, the population of the western United States was still quite a bit less than that of the east. Only about 10% of Americans lived in the west, as measured by the 1940 census (easy lookup- they have a good search engine). So would the local industrial capacity really be pronounced enough to do the Pan-Asians much good? Most of the industrial centers are still back east.

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.
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Wow. That's a big disturbance.

As for Zhukov's confidence in the strength of his vaunted Stalin line, there is one critical thing he does not know:

Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs are all very well. And if Germany must make do with Czechoslovakian and French tanks, then I suppose it can. But it is only a matter of time before the Third Reich's industrialists begin series production of the dreaded...

Panzerfunkwagen!

A very nice little tank, indeed...
 
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I look forward to the first time the Panzer crews of the Reich run into the monster called T-34. :cool: That should be worth a double take at least. I hope at least some of Zhukov's confidence is well founded.
 
Joffee said:
very good : )
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Thank you!

cthulhu said:
I'm more into dialogue myself - but you've managed to give the document a very authentic impression.



Maybe the hardware and production, but the doctrines and air power is going to kick your commie arse back to the urals. :D
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Thanks, I used a few real German documents as model. The header doesn't look much like them (lots of obscure numbers and things in the real ones) but the overall feel is there.

Simon_Jester said:
Logically, wouldn't the Pan-Asian policy of slaughtering lots and lots of civilians and driving even more civilians in front of them as refugees make it difficult for them to staff the captured industrial facilities?

EDIT: At this time, the population of the western United States was still quite a bit less than that of the east. Only about 10% of Americans lived in the west, as measured by the 1940 census (easy lookup- they have a good search engine). So would the local industrial capacity really be pronounced enough to do the Pan-Asians much good? Most of the industrial centers are still back east.
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Yes, us IC hasn't taken much of a dent yet. But resources is another matter, and lack of oil most of all but also steel and coal is what keeping Pan-Asia back. Bringing in conscripted asian labour to run the oilfields and mines seems feasible, and safer than having pissed of Americans working there.

Simon_Jester said:
Wow. That's a big disturbance.
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You have no idea.

Simon_Jester said:
Panzerfunkwagen!

A very nice little tank, indeed...
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Eh... no. An armoured car, although admittedly a funky one. :D

Korppi said:
Nice update.
I hope we soon have great tank battles.
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That I can almost guarantee.


VILenin said:
I look forward to the first time the Panzer crews of the Reich run into the monster called T-34. :cool: That should be worth a double take at least. I hope at least some of Zhukov's confidence is well founded.
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Total number of t-34s in the Soviet inventory is currently: 2 prototypes!

First production vehicles came in september 1940.
 
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The Yogi said:
Total number of t-34s in the Soviet inventory is currently: 2 prototypes!

First production vehicles came in september 1940.
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NOOOOOOOO!!! :eek: Are none of my dreams safe? Can nothing stop the people I'm not rooting for? (for lack of a better description. After our discussion on evil I can't throw around the term "bad guys" anymore. :rolleyes: )
 
Simon_Jester said:
Darn.

The BT-7 was a good tank, but it just doesn't pack the punch of a T-34...

What about the KV? Those were tested during the Winter War.
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They should have a few KV-1s and KV-2s in service. But much fewer than they would a year later, in June of 1941.

Still, the Soviet main types during this period, the T-26 and BT-7 are OK vehicles, somewhat inferior to the PzKpfw-IIIG and PzKpfw-IVd, clearly inferior to the Somua-35 and Char-B1 but superior to the PzKpfw-II, PzKpfw-35(t), PzKpfw-38(t) and Hotchkiss light tank, which together make up the lions share of the Panzer Divisions. And as Stalin was fond of saying, quantity has a quality all of it's own, they outnumber the Panzers at least seven or eight to one.
 
The Yogi said:
...they outnumber the Panzers at least seven or eight to one.
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Sure, but with air superiority, those nasty swarms of Stukas will even the playing field pretty quickly. :cool:
 
Yeah, but we all remember how well numerical superiority played out for the Russians in our Barbarossa. :rolleyes: Still, you make a fair point about the average German tank being smaller and less capable. The moved up campaign affects what equipment they have as well. cthulhu has a big piece of it; if the Red Army wants to stay on the field the Red Airforce needs to put up a decent showing.
 
The Yogi said:
they outnumber the Panzers at least seven or eight to one.
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Briefly.

Of course, that reminds me of a remark a German panzer officer made about US Sherman tanks:

"One of our Panthers is worth ten American Shermans. The trouble is, they always seem to have an eleventh Sherman lying around somewhere..."
 
Just to let you know I added a little bit of eye candy to the last post; a converted German Souma with lengthened turret and "Rommelkiste".
 
Nice eye-candy, Yogi.
But why again are the Germans getting bigger tanks and ahead of time? It's not as if they know what they'll eventually be facing in the SU.
Without large-scale tank combat they're not going to feel the need to replace some of those tanks you mentioned which would have been adequate during the thirties (apart from the Pz I :p ).
Now that they've faced the Asian armor, they're perhaps even prone to think that the Frenchies and their medium/heavy armor were an abomination and that light tanks like the Japanese have will be all they face.
 
GoforitPanzer said:
Nice eye-candy, Yogi.
But why again are the Germans getting bigger tanks and ahead of time? It's not as if they know what they'll eventually be facing in the SU.
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First of all, these upgrades actually were consistent with what the Germans did historically. The time scale has been moved up, but then the time scale for the entire war is being oved up.

After their experiences in France, the Germans figured out that any tank with less than a 37mm gun wasn't going to cut the mustard (which meant the end of the Panzer II line), and that any new tanks should have enough armor to have a chance of repelling antitank rounds. Historically, the Germans lost a lot of tanks in France, even if they were later able to salvage most of them. There's no reason to assume that their losses were any lighter here.

That being the case, the Germans have excellent reasons to adopt stronger, tougher panzer designs for future construction, even regardless of what they might run into in Russia.

Moreover, the Russians don't actually have a large heavy tank force yet, at least not if they were following the historical schedule. The T-34 wasn't put into production until 1941, and the heavy KV series is still in the battlefield testing phase. The Soviet tank corps is armed mostly with BT series tanks and other, lighter vehicles; none of which are dramatically stronger and tougher than the German panzers.

Without large-scale tank combat they're not going to feel the need to replace some of those tanks you mentioned which would have been adequate during the thirties (apart from the Pz I :p ).
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They've already had to deal with large-scale tank combat in France. They know Pan-Asian tanks are light, but they also know more or less where all those designs came from and that they are by no means a representative sample.
 
GoforitPanzer said:
Nice eye-candy, Yogi.
But why again are the Germans getting bigger tanks and ahead of time? It's not as if they know what they'll eventually be facing in the SU.
Without large-scale tank combat they're not going to feel the need to replace some of those tanks you mentioned which would have been adequate during the thirties (apart from the Pz I :p ).
Now that they've faced the Asian armor, they're perhaps even prone to think that the Frenchies and their medium/heavy armor were an abomination and that light tanks like the Japanese have will be all they face.
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What happened is that because of a Fu Manchu plot, the Manstein plan against France never got implemented, and the Germans met the allies head on in Belgium in late 1939. They won anyway, but suffered very great tank losses in the process, revealing the complete inadequacy of their older models against heavier tanks.

Then they had peace during half of 1940, which of course they didn't have in OTL. This gave them the breathing space and resources to retool their production lines for the Panzer III and Panzer IV, instead of keeping the Pz-I, Pz-II and Czech models in production. IRL, because of wartime neccessities, they could not afford the loss of production capacity this entailed, and kept the Czech ones while converting the Pz-I and Pz-II to other duties (JPz etc) but kept them building the same chassis. This, on the other hand, meant that here they had much fewer tanks in June of 1940 than they historically had in May of 1940. This was why they decided to use captured French tanks in the Panzer Divisions, which they never did in OTL - otherwise they'd never have enough tanks for ten divisions. Again, because they were at peace they had the free manpower and resources to convert these French tanks, which historically they did not. That is why they were historically not used except for rear area security.

As for knowing their enemy, Germany knows from the Finns that the Russians have some mighty large and heavy tanks, like the multi-turreted T-28 and T-35 and also they might have heard of the few KV-1 and KV-2 used there.
 
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Great Story Yogi. Looking foward to part 3. You going to change over to the USA for that? Easier then making events, although then you might have to explain the dumb AI....

There's no reason to assume that their losses were any lighter here.
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They should be even heavier since the Germany fought through the best Allied troops inside Belgium as opposed to run around them via the Ardenne.
 
discovery1 said:
They should be even heavier since the Germany fought through the best Allied troops inside Belgium as opposed to run around them via the Ardenne.
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On the other hand, the Allied troops in question only had about 40% as long to plan and equip before the Germans fell on them. There would have been fewer of the most modern types of Allied tanks and planes in service, too.

So while the casulaties would probably have been higher, they might not have been that much higher.

Yogi:
I take it that the Germans did not capture enough British armor to be of much use?
 
Simon_Jester said:
I take it that the Germans did not capture enough British armor to be of much use?
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British armor? British? :rofl: ;)
 
Simon_Jester said:
I take it that the Germans did not capture enough British armor to be of much use?
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British armour wasn't of much use. At least not this early.

cthulhu said:
British armor? British? :rofl: ;)
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There's one quote from Turtledove's world war saga that is priceless; Panzer Hero Major Jaeger is disgusted over the constantly failing fuel pump of a brand new Panther tank. His comment:

"This thing could have been designed by an Englishman!"

or something to that effect. It was not flattery. :)
 
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