Weltkriegschaft

[scio]

From the clue, I'm guessing the picture is of Admiral Sir Dudley Pound... and if so, that raises interesting questions about where he's currently assigned. Historically, he'd be in charge of the Mediterranean Fleet at this point (and still in good health).

[TheHyphenated1]

trekaddict, Juan_de_Marco - No, but both do have more than a passing resemblance!

ShadowMaster - Thank you very much! Yes, it is easy for the game engine itself to fade into the background, but that's my intent. Thank you again most kindly, and I hope to be able to continue to keep your interest!

scio - Correct! Pound was actually on his way to take over command in Alexandria (the move due to Italian bombing of Malta) in early July, when his Force G caught the Giulio Cesare in the Gulf of Sirte (cf. III:VII). By the time the smoke cleared, his task as C-in-C, Mediterranean Fleet looked a whole lot easier.

[Hardraade]

An entertaining update. Hopefully the Royal Navy can be weakened enough to allow for an invasion of the British Isles.

[TheHyphenated1]

Thanks! And yes.

[TheHyphenated1]

At long last, thanks to some very hard work by TheYogi, Brandenburg III, the Mods, et al., we can now vote in the:

Iron HeAARt Nomination Thread

I would encourage you to head on down to that thread when you get a chance to vote for the best HoI1/2 AAR completed in 2008. Some of the readers here have terrific AARs up for consideration, so take a look!




.

[Enewald]

Some of the readers here have terrific AARs up for consideration, so take a look!

What???

[dublish]

What???

TheHyphenated1 meant to say "One of the readers here has some terrific AARs up for consideration."

trekaddict must be so proud.

EDIT: Oh, Kurt has a couple of AARs up for consideration as well. My bad.

[trekaddict]

TheHyphenated1 meant to say "One of the readers here has some terrific AARs up for consideration."

trekaddict must be so proud.

EDIT: Oh, Kurt has a couple of AARs up for consideration as well. My bad.

It's only two!

[Kurt_Steiner]

EDIT: Oh, Kurt has a couple of AARs up for consideration as well. My bad.

One of them a half good AAR, the other... well, let's forget about the other. Skip them.

[trekaddict]

One of them a half good AAR, the other... well, let's forget about the other. Skip them.

+1. My writing back then was even more horrible than it is now.

[dublish]

One of them a half good AAR, the other... well, let's forget about the other. Skip them.

+1. My writing back then was even more horrible than it is now.

*tries to figure out which terrific AARs TheHyphenated1 was talking about*

[volksmarschall]

Dropping by once again just to say I'll be catching up with this as I have a little more time on my hands now!

Especially since I think this is by far, one of the better AARs in AARland!

[Atlantic Friend]

Atlantic Friend - Heaven forfend .

Soar, Latécoère seaplanes, and go torpedo some ships !

[TheHyphenated1]

Enewald, dublish (1), trekaddict (1), Kurt_Steiner, trekaddict (2), dublish (2) - The biggest thing that made them terrific was that they were actually finished. May I someday accomplish the same *bows head*...

volksmarschall - Thanks so much volksmarschall! Don't hesitate to ask any questions or share any thoughts you may have!

Atlantic Friend - Indeed!

[TheHyphenated1]

Next update tonight!

Which reminds me: I usually try to post towards the top of a page so that the update will show up for the greatest amount of time. Do you all look back at the start of a new page to make sure that you saw everything from the previous page? If not, the Index should be helpful.

[Slaughts]

Not bad updates. Although I'm doubting how the heck the Kriegsmarine is going to support any attack on the Shetlands or Iceland without being knocked out by the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow, even with the precautions being undertaken. Even if they somehow evade the Home Fleet, how are they going to resupply that base of operations?

Also, someone should be kicking Canaris in the high end to be doing some counter-espionage operations.

[TheHyphenated1]

Chapter III: The Lion’s Den

Part XXVII

October 28, 1936

“It is a bad stroke, Paul. No one could have predicted this.” Generalleutnant Walther von Brauchitsch sat stiffly at his desk in Marseille’s Hôtel de Ville. He was serving as Interim Military Governor of France’s most vital Mediterranean port, and had invited his old friend and colleague Paul Hausser to stay with him in the city. von Brauchitsch’s term as military governor was set to expire on the first of November, and Hausser was on leave and awaiting his next orders, so the two men had already been talking two hours into the night, sharing the burdens of an uncertain future.


Marseilles, France.


“A bad stroke, yes. But I had heard from a friend in the Foreign Office a week ago that people saw this coming.” Hausser sat across from his host, legs crossed. “I don’t expect that lessens the sharpness of the stroke, though.”

“No.”

“This was always the risk in confronting a naval power such as Britain.”

“But still.” von Brauchitsch stared at the full glass of cognac in front of him. “All in one week. It is morale in Germany that I worry about more than anything.”

“Will they be more distressed by Italian misfortune or the sudden unavailability of chocolate?”

von Brauchitsch’s lips curled into a smile. “The chocolate, I’m sure.”

Western Europe was under blockade for the second time in twenty years. Great Britain had declared that its Royal Navy would interdict all goods bound for Germany, the Low Countries or occupied France. British patrols had already turned back an Argentine-flagged ship bound for Bordeaux with vital rubber. Yet just as in the last war, the declaration promised, even foodstuffs would be interdicted. “We will choke off the means of production,” Stanley Baldwin promised, “and cut the sinews of war.” Everyone in the Wehrmacht seemed at once to realize the implication of this: Konteradmiral Dönitz’ small and unready force of U-boats would soon be committed to unrestricted submarine warfare. The government estimated that the material surpluses ordered lain away by Dr. Schacht would last through the beginning of February. After that, the German autarky called for by Hitler in the Scholl Memorandum would be slowly suffocated.

“The chocolate shortage won’t be felt until winter, Walther. And the Swiss will surely get their cocoa somehow so they can sell it to us. What worries me, speaking more seriously, is the loss of confidence in the Italians. I have seen it in the men on the street here in Marseille.”

Hausser referred to the second misfortune wrought by Britain’s navy in the past week. Whitehall had evidently at last realized its peril in Egypt when Cairo was shockingly overrun. The Royal Navy units defending the Suez Canal had been powerfully reinforced, and all possible ground forces thrown into the path of the advancing Italians. General Kirke, at once blamed for the recent disasters, had been sacked and replaced with the incomparably more vigorous Carton de Wiart.

As Bastico pressed ever closer to the Canal, it became clear that the amassed Mediterranean Fleet, combined with the cream of the Home Fleet, much of the Reserve Fleet and anything that could be scraped together from Gibraltar, Malta, Haifa and Aden, was the last great hope to prevent Italy from severing Britain’s vital link to the Orient.


British battleships steam in line toward the Suez Canal, HMS Nelson at the head. Pound sought to duplicate her namesake’s success in Egyptian waters almost a century and a half before. Print after painting by Frank Watson Wood.


By evening on the twenty-fourth, six battleships had gathered under Admiral Pound’s command: Royal Sovereign, Royal Oak, Ramillies and Resolution, and the newer “Treaty Battleships” Nelson and Rodney. They were joined by three battlecruisers: Renown, which had been serving in the Mediterranean since May, and Hood and Repulse, which had steamed in haste from the North Sea to reinforce Pound’s fleet. Nine heavy cruisers -- six Counties and three of the earlier Hawkins class -- rounded out the big-gun units at the Mediterranean C-in-C’s disposal. Out to sea were three aircraft carriers -- including the limping Furious, which had taken hits from an Italian cruiser in the Levant Sea -- whose air wings would be tasked with keeping Pact bombers at bay. Under cover of darkness, the largest fleet gathered in war since 1918 slipped into the Suez.

The next morning at dawn, the nine British capital ships opened fire. At signal from Admiral Pound, the thunder of seventy 15 and 16 inch guns rippled over the water, soon joined by the main batteries of the cruisers and a bevy of field guns brought up from Palestine. Pushing forward under the deadly barrage, General Bastico’s hard-charging spearhead had been battered blunt. Through twelve hours of vicious fighting, they were unable to dislodge Nichols’ New Zealanders from the line they had fortified some 20 kilometers west of the Canal along a series of irrigation trenches. By day’s end, the Italians had withdrawn outside the range of the British naval guns, leaving more than four thousand dead on the field. It was a humiliating defeat for Mussolini, who was greeted the next day with news that a heavily-escorted supply convoy bound for Rashid had been broken up by the cruisers Norfolk and Diomede and subsequently ravaged by a swarm of French submarines.


HMS Royal Oak fires on Italian positions.


In Berlin, faith was badly shaken. Although the Italians dominated great swaths of barren Algeria, the greatest strategic objective on the continent lay just out of reach. Ambassador von Hassell had done his best to urge redoubled effort, but it was evident to Hausser and the Army that the Italians had played their hand. Significant material and numerical advantage had been diluted by too many offensives at once. The result had been decidedly mixed fortunes. Although Tripoli and Zuara still held out, it was clear that the Algerian campaign had been a success. The other two campaigns in Africa had been failures. Khartoum had now consumed almost thirty thousand lives and still remained in British hands; Bastico’s army in Egypt was spent and paralyzed.

von Brauchitsch had watched it all from the other side of the Mediterranean with growing horror. “And so it is a bad stroke. The war will again fall to us to win and to win decisively, if at all.”

“Yes. And no doubt soon enough.”

von Brauchitsch closed his eyes. “Were you in Berlin, Paul, on the night of the Fire?”

“Yes. I came to the Air Ministry Building late that night, after the alarms had gone out. According to the City Police, the Gestapo had arrested people and interrogated them already and had concluded that they were Danish communists. No one could seem to get through to the Gestapo directly, and everyone was already certain that that story was nonsense.”

Exhaling quickly, von Brauchitsch looked Hausser in the eye. “If that had been any other neighborhood, I would have resigned my commission. But Wedding was the last painful red scar across the face of the city. If that was what had to be done, I won’t pretend I would have had any objection.”

“The SD or Gestapo did it then, you think?”

“Possibly, Paul, but it could just has easily have been someone working for Canaris.”

“Impossible. No. No... Impossible. If it had been Wehrmacht, we would have known about it.”

“Not necessarily.”

“I spoke to von Küchler that night myself, Walther. He was as surprised as anyone.”

Marseilles’ military governor frowned, churning over the complexities of the event in his mind. “Maybe so then.”

“You know Gestapo men, Walther. Those are their tactics.”

“True. But the Canaris solution better explains the Belfast explosion, yes?”

Hausser hadn’t considered that. “I am divided on the possibility. But it is all too possible that overworked Irish ammunition handlers would make a mistake.”

On the afternoon of October twenty-third, dock workers in Belfast had been loading merchant ships with ammunition bound for Egypt. Somehow, reports had indicated, a small fire had started on the MV Port Fairy. In their haste to remove the volatile munitions from the vicinity of the fire, newspapers said, the loaders had somehow dropped one of the bombs onto the deck below. The shock-sensitive explosives detonated -- in an instant tearing apart the Port Fairy in a massive explosion that killed 398 and devastated the port.

Surviving dockworkers, ordered to continue loading ammunition the next day, rightly feared another accident and refused to work until the cause of the disaster had been determined. Police were sent to force them back to the docks -- confrontations which soon turned violent. Riots continued to grip the city well into the fifth day of the crisis, escalating occasionally into armed clashes between the Royal Ulster Constabulary and various paramilitary groups in the city.

“No matter who was behind the explosions,” von Brauchitsch said, “the momentum for war in Scandinavia is now terribly strong. For the past week week, they’ve been stripping the south of France of barges and anything that will float.”

“That only makes it clearer. Do you imagine you’ll command a corps in von Blomberg’s army group?”

“I -- I imagine so. You?”

“I imagine I’ll be wherever the panzers are most needed.”

The wail of a siren in the distance caught both men’s attention. They listened silently for several seconds as other sirens began to sound throughout the city. “Air raid.” von Brauchitsch calmly moved to the window and drew the blinds. He pulled the chain on the desk lamp that was their only illumination, sending them into near-blackness. Hausser heard von Brauchitsch turn around and handle something, then a familiar voice as a radio crackled to life.

“-- calls it an atrocity of the worst kind.

“Remember the thirteenth of October! Remember the blaze, remember the smoke, remember the terror!

“For these incendiary bombs on the Leopoldplatz did not only cause the destruction of nine city blocks, and the cruel annihilation of many people. Not only did these bombs destroy the birth homes of many artists and musicians of the past. Not only did these bombs present an attack on the German Nation as it wages war. No! The bombing of the Leopoldplatz is an attack on peace as well.

“It is to be expected that nations at war will bomb one another’s munitions factories, will bomb one another’s military installations. To kill the soldier and maim the shield-bearer is expected. These things have been a part of war since the beginning of history. To launch a terrorist attack -- not by soldiers, but by revolutionaries and gangsters -- against innocent people in their apartments is criminal. This is exactly what the communist radicals of the Stender Cell did in Berlin.”

The deep thud of anti-aircraft artillery could now be heard.

“Fifth, and finally, we must state most strongly our response to this terror. The Stender Cell acted with the full support and knowledge of elements of the Danish military and government. This is beyond dispute. The conspirators have admitted as much themselves.

“That the Danish government refuses to acknowledge these facts and punish those responsible can only mean that it is a supporter of this criminality. They are only too happy to see acts of war perpetrated against Germany, for the benefit of their own interest.

“And so, in defense of our own nation we must demand three things.

“First, that the Danish government solemnly states its refusal to allow British ships into Danish waters around Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes and Jutland in the course of enforcing the blockade, as they have done. To continue to do so would be to materially aid the British war effort, and would amount to a gross breach of neutrality, placing Denmark in the position of a combatant power.

“Second, the overflight of these territories by British airplanes of any kind for any purpose is, in view of the present situation, inconsistent with Danish neutrality.

“Finally, we demand that the Danish government fully acknowledge its responsibility for this crime and punish those in that country who ordered it, whoever they are. And so, let the burden of peace be shouldered by King Christian and his government, so that peace may prevail among their people.”

The flak guns had begun to rattle the window. Still the sirens wailed on and on. As Goebbels’ speech concluded, the radio cycled through a brief series of civil defense announcements, but there was no word of an air raid on Marseilles. Then, the start of a half-hour block of patriotic music.

They did not speak further, listening only to the sirens and flak bursts until they finally faded into the distance. von Brauchitsch turned his light on again and telephoned the police for a damage report. No damage.

After five minutes, there was a knock at the door.

“Enter.”

von Brauchitsch’s tall young adjutant entered and saluted. “Herr Generalleutnant, a telegram for Generalleutnant Hausser.”

Hausser accepted the envelope with an outstretched hand. Opening it, he saw who the sender was.

HKK, Berlin. It was from von Küchler. Hausser looked down and read the rest of the single page. “Well, Walther, these are my orders.”

[TheHyphenated1]

Slaughts - Great to hear from you. In fact, I've been sort of nervous about how these updates have been. But I suppose a lot of rising action is needed to get the biggest climaxes. Bear with me. Things may get exciting in fairly short order .

The "Leap Plans" are all with their attendant logistical problems. Halder and the higher-ups are all fully aware. But as that update mentioned, they estimate that the key to much of that is how well they would be able to rebase bombers and fighter cover for the islands.

Canaris is never idle. Don't you worry .

[Slaughts]

Ah I'm patient, just can't wait to get out of '36 finally

Hrm...with how the Italians are going, I wonder if Germany has to send a force over there to assist like they had to in '41.

[Metroid17]

Glad we're not going TOO anti-historical, at least in regards to Italian mishaps. Superb writing, as usual.