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Atlantic Friend, do you mind if I post our recent PM exchange in-thread? I think it might be interesting to readers.

Not at all! Though my suggestions as to how the plight of the Kriegsmarine could be alleviated wouldn't earn me a commission even in a rusty tugboat! ;)
 
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Pah! The seas will be flat, the Royal Navy will get lost and anything that goes wrong will be insignificant. This is Tom Clancy Germany, victory is assured! :D

I doubt it will, given the tone of the last update. The various branches of the HKK have yet to devise a common strategy, the Luftwaffe doesn't have the tools it needs, if I remember well my old job the Irish Sea in november isn't a stranger to a storm...

If I was a betting man, I'd say the forces ashore can, with support from the Irish Free State troops, grab Ulster. But then, they'd be unable to defend the island - that would require too much of an effort from Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe IMHO, hence the original idea to use Ireland as a deception. The Irish nationalists have been played, and might end up losing their 26 free counties.
 
Bah! Why were they even discussing this? The plan to go ahead in November was already settled the moment they invaded Ireland. All this discussion is just 'trying' to close a barn door after the horse is gone...mind you, these boys probably couldn't figure out how to close the barn door with out help from their staffs...

Nice update,
Good to see HKK and Hitler are as insane as always.
TheExecuter
 
Unfortunately, I've fallen a bit behind on reading the AAR... but Geier's latest chapter was simply incredible. Brilliant work.
 
Atlantic Friend (1) - If not a tugboat, then how about a Rhine Barge ;)? Or maybe one of those pool noodles kids use... Perfectly flat seas ahead, after all :D.

Atlantic Friend (2) - Very well put, sir!

TheExecuter - Thank you very much!

The plan to go ahead in November was already settled the moment they invaded Ireland.

It should have been. But to don my "business consultant hat" for a moment, I think I can diagnose a lot of "institutional disunity of vision" and "mission-oriented astigmatism" in HKK. All things considered, it's doing a pretty good job considering the circumstances, but they've still a long way to go.

All this discussion is just 'trying' to close a barn door after the horse is gone...mind you, these boys probably couldn't figure out how to close the barn door with out help from their staffs...
Allow me to propose a few additional reasons for your consideration, though. First, the Heer is prone to getting cold feet about operations that rely this heavily on other services (namely the Kriegsmarine). Second, it's entirely possible that not everyone in the Heer is exactly confident that Löwengrube will be a success. At least making a show of trying to close the barn door is pretty smart hedging, actually. Also, Himmler's reasons for preferring a March invasion date sound sort of flimsy to me. Any ideas what might be going on behind those round glasses?

Finally, never underestimate the enmity of von Rundstedt and von Fritsch (and Himmler!) towards Hausser. He may have won international fame for driving tanks down an undefended highway late one night, but as far as many of the Weimar-era generals are concerned, he's still tainted -- and to some, little more than a Brownshirt. The Officer Corps is not a forgiving lot, and even though von Küchler (who, although never in the SS, is himself considered too pro-Nazi) has a personal friendship with Hausser, that's not to say that he'll go to great lengths to protect him. Notice, though, his conspicuous silence when the subject came up.

Kanil - Thank you very much! Luckily that update is not too far behind, so not far to go!
 
Atlantic Friend was kind enough to share our recent PM exchange about events in Weltkriegschaft. He asks some great questions, and I do my best to answer them. I thought some readers might find the exchange of interest...



I feel Raeder's pain. That leads me to ask :

What is the current status of the French fleet, and where is it moored? And also, does the Kriegsmarine have enough cadets and trained seamen to handle extra ships?

If the French fleet is moored anywhere within Ju-52 flying range, I'm sure it could be seized by the veterans of Eben-Emael.

It might be too late for a 1936 Löwengrubbe, but it could offset Kriegsmarine losses during the invasion, and therefore allow a bolder German strategy.





I'm guessing you're referring to his pain over helplessness against British battleships...

The French fleet is an interesting thing to inquire about, as it's actually going to be discussed in the forthcoming update!

Here's the general picture. As we know, [battleships] Lorraine and Provence were sunk in June in the Battle of the Ligurian Sea.

[Battleships] Paris and Courbet, although antiquated, are still in service in the Mediterranean.

[Battleship] Bretagne and the carrier Béarn are in the Red Sea with units of the Royal Navy after evacuating personnel from Djibouti.

[Battleship] Océan, acting as an antiaircraft battery in still-free Corsica, was hit by Italian bombs in August and subsequently broken up.

As for the still-unfinished modern battleships, Strasbourg was destroyed by retreating French troops while still on the slips at St. Nazaire, while Dunkerque suffered a severe fire during finishing out and and was sent to Brest for repairs just before the outbreak of the war. As Germans advanced toward the city, Dunkerque was towed first to Oran and then to Dakar, where she is presently undergoing repairs in anticipation of commissioning.

As for the minor ships, they're mostly in Dakar or around the Mediterranean.

And also, does the Kriegsmarine have enough cadets and trained seamen to handle extra ships?

There are always eager young Kriegsmarine staffers with big ideas, but realistically, no.

If the French fleet is moored anywhere within Ju-52 flying range, I'm sure it could be seized by the veterans of Eben-Emael.

It's not. At least not the range for that sort of operation.




Drat! So no airborne 'Fall Anton' on Toulon...(or Bizerte or Mers el Kébir). And this being 1936...the Commandant Teste (in case it ended up in German hands) probably cannot put Latécoère 298s to sea to take part in the invasion yet.

Ach! Der Krieg gross malheur indeed.

Ah, well, no quick and dirty way to expand the Kriegsmarine beyond what the German shipyards can produce, then. And no miracle solution to draw the Home Fleet away from the Irish Sea either.

Hmm... What about magnetic mines, BTW? They were the Kriegsmarine's one and only secret weapon in 1939, so if they are available in 1936 perhaps some of the British cruisers in Scapa Flow might be lured into a mine trap? If some French mine-laying subs like the Requin-class have fallen into German hands (I can't remember if the U-bootwaffe had specialized boats for this kind of task), Gunther Prien could lead a different kind of run against the Royal Navy?

With a RN ready to fence out Ireland and the Luftwaffe unable to establish clear superiority over the island, it looks like the German forces in Ireland are doomed, unable to move forward or to go back to French bases. Is it the end of these men?




Drat! So no airborne 'Fall Anton' on Toulon...(or Bizerte or Mers el Kébir). And this being 1936...the Commandant Teste (in case it ended up in German hands) probably cannot put Latécoère 298s to sea to take part in the invasion yet.
No such luck, I fear.

Ah, well, no quick and dirty way to expand the Kriegsmarine beyond what the German shipyards can produce, then.
The closest thing to quick and dirty is the acquisition program drawn up by Raeder and Schacht, aimed at increasing available shipping by acquiring existing neutral vessels through German or Austrian firms and converting them. A goodly number of Dutch merchantmen were also swept up in the invasion of that country.


And no miracle solution to draw the Home Fleet away from the Irish Sea either.
The miracle solution is invasion, if Bayerlein is to be believed . Getting the RN away from the landing areas is the much harder trick!



Hmm... What about magnetic mines, BTW? They were the Kriegsmarine's one and only secret weapon in 1939, so if they are available in 1936 perhaps some of the British cruisers in Scapa Flow might be lured into a mine trap? If some French mine-laying subs like the Requin-class have fallen into German hands (I can't remember if the U-bootwaffe had specialized boats for this kind of task), Gunther Prien could lead a different kind of run against the Royal Navy?
Magnetic mines are in development, but laying significant numbers would not be possible by either a November or March invasion date. No French submarines have fallen into German hands intact, but German submarines do have limited minelaying capability. At present, the minelaying operation revolves primarily around surface ships as minelayers. Several fields have already been laid in the Channel in preparation for Löwengrube, and two British destroyers sunk. The Kriegsmarine is analyzing the British minesweeping techniques through observation of how they handle these fields.


With a RN ready to fence out Ireland and the Luftwaffe unable to establish clear superiority over the island, it looks like the German forces in Ireland are doomed, unable to move forward or to go back to French bases. Is it the end of these men?
I didn't mean to imply that the air situation over Ireland has been decided yet -- merely that it cannot be surely counted in the Luftwaffe's favor. Time will tell! As it is, though, the RAF is unlikely to be able to interfere to the degree that the German forces would be unable to move more or less freely throughout Ireland.
 
Hello All,

It's alive! Sorry for the delays here, long-suffering and ever-patient readers, but the good news is that the next update should be out soon. It's a little bit shorter than some of the heavies that we've seen lately, so might be a little bit of a change of pace, while I await the arrival of some source material on the update to follow it.

TH1
 
No worries TH :) Looking forward to it!
 
Chapter III: Part XXXIII

Chapter III: The Lion’s Den

Part XXXIII


November 16, 1936

The Berlin offices of the Völkischer Beobachter were under siege by ten in the morning, following an early announcement of the fact the government had been vigorously denying for four days: German soldiers had invaded Ireland. Although there were a handful of pushy foreign journalists present, most of these were at Goebbels’ Ordenspalais. Rather, it was principally Germans who crowded outside, spurred on by reports that two men in generals’ uniforms had pulled up in a black limousine and entered the building just minutes before the first radio announcement. von Rundstedt? Bayerlein? No, some were sure that it von Küchler. The few eyewitnesses seemed to insist that Hausser himself had been one of them.

Ernst Trommler held open a slit in the blinds with his fingers, turning to the two bored lieutenant-colonels watching the scene with him.

“Is that all for us, Herr Trommler?” the taller one asked.

“I’m afraid so. Which is ironic, since none of our information on what’s going on is from you.”

The Oberstleutnant smiled modestly. “But you have still gotten enough information. It seems,” he said, walking toward over-editor Sassen’s open door, “that you have very little trouble getting information.”

“Perhaps not, Oberstleutnant. The trouble is that the information we are getting is not as encouraging as we typically like to print.”

The Emerald Isle was in flames. By sunrise on the second day, November thirteenth, German soldiers had taken most of Derry -- where Hausser had spoken over Londonderry Radio proclaiming that a British invasion of the Free Counties was in progress, and that German troops, whose only quarrel was with the English, had arrived as friends to drive them out. In the Free State, the uprising had spread rapidly from Galway, where the First Infantry Battalion had allowed the wayward German force to dock, and throughout Connacht and then Munster, where vacillating Irish Army officers had been reassured by the sight of tricolour-draped panzers rumbling toward Castletownbere and Cobh.

All the while, a mixed Wehrmacht-IRA column drove ever closer to Dublin, ostensibly to secure the capital and President against a British incursion. It had seemed for a time at midday that President de Valera would, even despite the uninvited invasion at Galway and bitter personal differences with the IRA leaders, make a calculated bid for a United Ireland and fall in with the Pact -- and all over Dublin, the ancient blue harp-flag had appeared in windows and from balconies. Even Moss Twomey cabled his sometime enemy with a plea to make a proclamation that would halt the scattered IRA-Irish Army fighting that had flared throughout the country: “Irish must not spill Irish blood now of all days.” At the same time, the Crown’s representative in Ireland, Governor-General Domhnall Ua Buachalla, was busy being arrested and un-arrested half a dozen times at his mansion on the south side of Dublin by troops confused by contradictory orders. Just as the inscrutable Dev dithered at his offices in the old College of Science building, two ships flying the White Ensign arrived in Dublin Bay. Sailing under the harbor guns, the British light cruisers HMS Danae and HMS Dauntless signaled that the Irish Free State had one hour to capitulate; otherwise, they would begin bombarding the city. With fifteen minutes to go, de Valera lost his nerve and ordered his men to stand down and allow two battalions of Royal Marines to land.

MP090.jpg

British cruisers charging through heavy seas off Ireland, print after painting by A. Cull. Danae and Dauntless are in foreground.


The counterblow was just beginning to fall. In the smallest hours of the fourteenth, two British fleets had gathered off Ireland’s Atlantic coast. The first battle squadron, under Vice Admiral John Tovey, had steamed brazenly into Lough Swilly with the rising sun. Sleepy German lookouts at Lenan Head had scarcely registered an odd silhouette when the light cruiser HMS Colombo came sheering out of the seaward mist at flank speed. She sliced through the makeshift boom across the mouth of the lough bow-on, the mines attached to the boom detonating in her wake in tremendous white pillars. The batteries at Dunree had quickly ranged Colombo as she ventured deeper into the lough’s cramped channel, though, battering the old ship cruelly for fifteen minutes until the fog bank shrouding the northern approaches began to flash yellow, as if lit by sheet lightning. Seconds later, the old fort began to disintegrate as the battlecruiser Hood and three heavy cruisers plastered the Dunree promontory at close range. The British proceeded deeper into the lough, until they began to take potshots from 150 mm guns set up on the heights overlooking Buncrana on the eastern shore. As marines from the Dorsetshire rowed toward the docks, three salvos from Hood put an end to any more firing from the heights, and in so doing, the last remaining heavy artillery in Lough Swilly. Tovey had brought his force to within sight of Letterkenny before ordering his guns onto the German ships sheltering there. In just twenty minutes, three of the world’s great liners -- Europa, Paris and Berlin -- had been sent to the lough’s stony bottom. The Europa, lying on its side and bleeding fuel oil from gaping wounds, was the largest ship ever sunk in war. Five other, smaller ships sat smashed or scuttled around the great liners as the Free French cruiser Jeanne D’Arc sped up to the docks and discharged two battalions of Royal Marines to retake the city. It fell within hours.

The story from Galway had been no better. While Tovey was laying waste to the ancient works of Fort Dunree, Admiral Betram Home Ramsey had brought an almost identical force -- led by Hood’s sister Renown -- into Galway Bay with battle ensigns flying. After signaling a demand for the surrender of the city, port and all defenders and receiving an incoherent reply, Ramsey had ordered a shelling rather less discriminate than Tovey’s. For more than three hours, the Renown, Kent, Cumberland, Calcutta, Achilles and a covey of destroyers had rained their fury on the city and the seventeen German ships caught sheltering there. By the time Ramsey landed his marines at the smoldering quays, thirteen of the seventeen had been sunk and all the rest were burning out of control.

rodney.jpg

HMS Rodney steaming toward Galway, Dawn November 14, print after painting by A. Cull.

045.jpg

”Galway Burns.” Print after painting by American student R.M. Gibney.


Hausser had, fortunately, recognized his own inability to defend the ports against determined attack and consequently ordered all the provisions, ammunition and equipment stripped from his ships ahead of time and brought inland. With this news, German fortunes had improved on the fifteenth. Almost all of the Free State except Dublin and Galway was in more or less friendly hands, and the aimless IRA-Irish Army brawling that characterized the first three days of the crisis had petered out amid the realization that there was a very real British invasion afoot. Still better, Generalmajor Nehring’s panzers were nearing Cobh -- this proved an endless source of excitement for the soldiers, who lustily sang “It’s a short way to Tipperary” -- and the Luftwaffe had begun combat sorties from Irish airfields.

A Staffeln of fighter pilots had set sail on the Europa with fifteen crated Ar-68s, only to learn after laboriously offloading the ship in Letterkenny that the secrecy attending the voyage had been their undoing. The shipping crates on the docks at Wilhelmshaven had, at the Abwehr’s insistence, been labelled according to a coded table. Each “Arado Ar-68, Parts Without Engine” was to be marked as a crate full of “Snow Shoes”, but some harried quartermaster had evidently mistaken “Snow Shoes” as the proper encoding for “Canvas Sheets, Batting” -- and loaded Europa with useless cloth. One pilot, chagrined that the Staffel had landed with only fifteen orphaned engines, half-jokingly contemplated razing a nearby stand of beech trees and, “stitching the canvas around the sticks better than the factory could.” Needing no black humor to make their situation more absurd, Hausser’s staffers soon deduced in horror that the real planes had been stamped “Wool Mittens” and sunk aboard the Stuttgart. A rain front in the Irish Sea had delayed the two dozen Heinkel He-51 floatplane fighters flown out to replace them for more than forty-eight hours. Nonetheless, three Staffeln of Ju-52 bombers, with their longer ferry range, had been flown with little trouble to friendly airfields in Limerick and Galway. They had by now begun bombing Belfast with only scattered opposition.

Sifting through a mass of censored reports, Lorenz Sassen was on the telephone with Wilhelm Weiss in Munich, filling in the redacted sections from the latter’s own classified copies of the bombing reports. “Ah, thank you! Cardiff! -- one moment Gruppenführer -- Clara, take this down, Line 48, ‘left Cardiff in flames’ -- I’m sorry, Gruppenführer -- so, Line 52 that is... It is? Well I -- couldn’t -- yes, yes, but then the next is -- yes, I’ll do that.” He hung up the receiver and announced smoothly to Fräulein Knabe that they were to print the presence of four full German divisions in Ireland.

“Over-editor?”

He didn’t look up. “Trommler?”

“The Oberstleutnants are wondering whether they are free to go.”

“Ostensibly we are being briefed on this devastating Cardiff raid by the two of them, so no.”

“Yes, over-editor.”

“On your way out, take these leaders and see that they’ve got the revised information from Weiss. And see if under-editor Ulrich can entertain these two fine officers.”

Said officers dispensed of, Trommler thumbed through tomorrow’s headlines, correcting them in pencil.

Panzers Lead Fight to Free Ireland

Four divisions of German soldiers are now fighting side-by-side with forces of the Irish Free State, to defend that nation from the aggression of Great Britain. Germany was concentrating its forces in a defensive role, when intelligence services learned that the British government had ordered the execution of a plan it has held in readiness since 1916. Deciding that the existence of a neutral country so close to its shores posed an intolerable threat, Stanley Baldwin coerced his king into invading the Irish Free State. Because this is both an outrage against international peace and a strategic threat to Germany, due to Ireland’s strategic ports, overall commander of the Armed Forces Field Marshal von Küchler ordered decisive action. The swift and sure tread of panzers now rumbles through the Irish countryside, putting fear in the hearts of the British soldiers who would oppress that island. Indeed, more than 85% of the island is now safe from this aggression.

Criminal Ramsey Against Peace

The British admiral Betram Ramsey is a criminal against peace and humanity. In retaliation for their support of Free State and German military forces against British military forces, he ordered cruel and illegal vengeance upon the population of Galway, on Ireland’s western coast. This untold suffering stands in marked contrast to the careful and human Luftwaffe bombing of Cardiff, Wales carried out the next night, which took great care only to target military installations in accordance with the established rules of warfare. May Ramsey and those who enable him be brought swiftly to justice before the eyes of the world.

Hausser at Gates of Belfast

General Paul Hausser, hero of the French campaign, is now ashore in Ireland. The decorated commander who seized Paris in a single night has now brought German panzers and their Irish allies to the very gates of Belfast, the capital of the British-occupied portion of Ireland. With the imminent seizure of this critical industrial center and port, the British will have great difficulty in maintaining the blockade which is presently affecting Western Europe. Speaking to the Irish people by radio, General Hausser expressed his wish that Great Britain make an honorable peace that allows all Irish to live independently. Irish President de Valera announced his --

Trommler struck out the last line. According to Weiss, the Abwehr wanted no mention of de Valera’s stance until it was truly final.

He paused, chuckling to himself. Truly final. Dev was keeping everyone in suspense after all.

Maybe then, just maybe, the under-editor mused, there was still hope of the old man coming around.
 
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I have a dark forebonding about the Irish enterprise...

Wonderful writting, as usual.
 
Yes, the Irish invasion is a big leap, the RN seem to be retaliating with record speed..
 
It's apparently official...

Thanks to the generosity of the readers, Weltkriegschaft has won 2009 Q2 Favorite Narrative in the AARland Choice Awards!



AAfs.jpg
 
I have a dark forebonding about the Irish enterprise....
Forebonding? Is that some strange form of S&M that I am (thankfully) unaware of? :eek:

If it's foreboding you have then I wouldn't worry; these are merely the small and unimportant setbacks that occur before the inevitable German victory. Lets face it after a constant and unending stream of German victories it would be most out of character for this AAR if anything serious went wrong! ;)
 
Kurt_Steiner - So do many. Thank you very much!

English Patriot - Well, based on their long-term plans for such an eventuality, it was pretty much just a switch that got tripped. As I believe Bayerlein noted awhile back, known British war plans made that pretty much inevitable going into it.

Enewald - :cool:

Atlantic Friend (1) - A fine ship! Tovey requested her because of her extra capacity for landing marines. Unfortunately Ireland is too far away, and a Dunkerque would be totally out of the question without canceling Löwengrube.

Atlantic Friend (2) - Charming folks, they are ;).

El Pip - You're just generally disgruntled at this point, El Pip, admit it! Nothing I say or do could change your perception. To you, victories confirm the "unending stream" of German success, while defeats are selectively ignored as "small and unimportant setbacks." By the way, a position for someone like that just opened up at the Ordenspalais :p.
 
To you, victories confirm the "unending stream" of German success.
Well Germany hasn't actually been defeated anywhere has she?

While defeats are selectively ignored as "small and unimportant setbacks."
Which they are (see above).

If Germany ever loses, and by that I mean doesn't end up conquering the country they invaded but is in fact defeated, then I'll be suitably contrite. Until then this AAR will remain Tom Clancy UberGermany but with better characterisation. :p
 
There have been numerous lost battles (primarily in the early stages of the French campaign), but you are correct that none of the four nations (including Luxembourg) yet invaded have successfully repulsed the Wehrmacht.

Success in France was through many factors including some good luck and the Maginot Line being outflanked. For the others, the question is not whether Germany could have realistically succeeded but whether Germany could have realistically failed. I would advance that the Netherlands and its seven operational tanks stopping the Wehrmacht cold would have added no realism to the AAR. Rather, when (and I do say when ;)) Germany gets its behind kicked somewhere, it will be by people who have their act together and have real means of resistance, not as a ploy to add an artificial level of uncertainty.
 
El Pip said:
Until then this AAR will remain Tom Clancy UberGermany but with better characterisation.

But I almost forgot! Something positive to say for a change :rofl:. Thank you most kindly!