AARmageddon - a European Soviets World Conquest

[Incognitia]

I’ve been meaning to start my own AAR for a while now.
However, I’ve not wanted to do anything I’ve seen done too many times before, and I’m not the greatest player, so most countries in DD are ruled out.

However, I finally realised that I’d never seen an Armageddon AAR using the actual Armageddon scenario.
It’s needed a little research to pull together an almost semi-plausible (so not, just as close as I’ll get without changing the scenario significantly) backstory…here follows my attempt at world conquest with the European Soviets.

Armageddon Scenario
Difficult: Normal/Normal
Nation: European Soviets

[Incognitia]

1. A Brief Overview of the Genesis of the Current Conflict

The European Soviets of 1936 were a curious beast.
A fractious mixture of territories, languages, and peoples, their predecessor the United kingdom had coalesced over the last two centuries or so.
Beginning with the ascension of Elector George Louis of Hannover as George I, Great Britain, as it was then known, began a steady accumulation of continental territory.
George IV, as he became on ascending the throne, was married off to Julianne of Denmark, in 1804. Their first child, a daughter, was born in 1805, and she was married off in 1818 to William of Orange-Nassau, Crown Prince of the Netherlands.
Through a bizarre series of ‘accidents’, much noted at the time, by 1830 William IV, George’s younger brother, was heir presumptive to the throne of the Netherlands,as well as king of the United kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Elector of Hannover, and close in line to the Danish throne.
In order to hold this putative dynastic block together, and against bitter opposition, the Salic Act of 1830 was passed, making the abrasive and extremely Tory Ernest August, Duke of Cumberland, the British heir apparent.

As Belgium burned, the British intervened. After all, it might soon be territory under the British crown!
The Belgians were crushed, and would remain cowed for a generation; the French were prevented from resisting so decisive a British intervention by the turmoil of their own July revolution; and the Dutch came to be wary of British military power.

In 1837 William IV died, and the rot began almost immediately.
Ernest August was not a man comfortable with compromises. Not only was he dead-set against the Chartist movement, and not prepared to budge an inch; he also wished to roll-back the electoral and poor-law reforms of the last few years before he ascended the throne.
As tensions built at home, a mere three years later William I died, leaving the Dutch-Belgian throne to Ernest. Some were uncomfortable with the fact that for all her empire, Britain was now a continental power, utterly committed to, and involved with, continental affairs.
They were shouted down by the Crown Loyalists, however, and an Act of Union 1841 was passed bringing the United Netherlands, along with Luxembourg and Hannover, into irrevocable union with the British Crown.
The immediate access to the markets of Britain and the Empire bought off many of the wealthier critics in the continental territories, as did their representation in the expanded Parliament at Westminster.
Britain’s industrial poor, however, felt abandoned and betrayed, as did their counterparts across the Channel.

In 1848 a wave of Revolution swept Europe.
Crushed heavily in the territories of the United kingdom, in France the deal between the monarch and people permitted them to intervene in Spain, which had descended into chaos as Isabella II, having clung to power, marginally, was turfed out by a coalition which immediately descended into infighting.
The end result, after the death in battle of most of the remaining heirs to the Spanish throne, was it’s absorption into a greater Bourbon realm.
Meanwhile in Austria-Hungary, the monarchy was equally unable to hold to power, and Prussia seized her chance to dominate Germany.
As the Austrians collapsed, they frantically withdrew troops from their southern frontier, a movement exploited both by the Piedmontese under their new monarch Victor Emmanuel II, and the resurgent Ottomans.
As a result the Prussians became the dominant German power, and would steadily absorb the minor German states until they reached the Hannoverian border; Piedmont, meanwhile, became something recognizable as a modern Italy, but didn’t stop there; they continued expanding south and east along the Adriatic Coast, occasionally coming into opposition with the Ottomans on the way.

In 1851 Ernest August, the old warhorse, died. He was replaced by his son George V as king of the United kingdom; however royal policy changed little.

In 1857 the Indian Mutiny erupted across the subcontinent, and raged for months. With no troops forthcoming from the mother country, as they were occupied putting down a bloody series of riots that started in Bristol over a starving foundling, the Governor-General threw off British rule, declared himself Ruler of India, and marshaled the East India Company and loyal princes to crush the rebellion. Bizarre as this outcome was, it was ultimately successful as the British Establishment in India ‘went native’ and thus both joined and was joined by the rising Indian middle class.
The British colonies of Australia and New Zealand, feeling isolated and abandoned at the opposite end of the globe, left the Empire also to form their own confederation of Australasia; and an opportunist Thailand seized Malaya and Burma.

The philosophy of the British Empire, which had led to such a vast territory being administered by a tiny number of civil servants and soldiers, was thus shown as the terrific gamble it in fact represented; as long as all went well, the Empire could be very economically run, and any crisis handled by combination of the other colonies and the Mother Country. However when crisis hit across the Empire, the whole edifice came crashing down like a house of cards.

The Empire was thus reduced to merely African holdings, and the dissent caused by this series of disasters would haunt the government in years to come, especially as the African colonies began to combine under the pan-African banner, and the white minorities across the continent became more afraid of their black countrymen than their colonial masters.

Declining to intervene in the American Civil War, the government watched in consternation as the able troops of the Confederacy raced through Mexico and Central America while only holding the line against the Union’s forces, and the Union turned itself inwards against the Canadian and New England territories which had seceded soon after the Confederacy.
The eventual stalemate in 1864 as each nation secured it’s rear and focused on the other was finally recognized in the peace of Havana as war weariness outstripped the principles driving the conflict on both sides.
In fear of their new northern neighbour, the Spanish successor states in South America began drifting towards a defensive union.

In the meantime a half-crazed, German in origin, political philosopher sought refuge in liberal Paris from oppression elsewhere.
He was engaged in writing a tract which would change the world; and he predicted the standard-bearer of his ideals would be the United kingdom.
His name was Marx.

The next crisis to shake the Great Powers was in 1905, when the failure of Russia to prevail in her war against Japan brought revolution to one of the Great Powers. The revolution was initially successful, and in the carnage the Cossacks of the Ukraine threw off the Tsarist yoke. However a retrenched monarchy reasserted itself as the months wore on, with support from their Prussian neighbours, more afraid of revolution than the Russian Bear. The Prussians drew the line, however, at crushing the new Ukrainian state, and the Tsar had to accept this as he still required Prussian support to maintain his control over the rest of the country.
By the time he was able to act independently, the Ukrainians had put together a capable army, and an alliance with Sweden, who now held most of the Baltic coast, along with Norway and Finland as far as the kola peninsula…close enough to threaten St Petersburg, which was the unofficial reason for moving the capital to Moscow.

Finally in the early 1910’s matters came to a head in Britain. The working class, capably organized by the followers of Marx’s revolutionary ideas, fulfilled his prophecy by forming from the ashes of the United kingdom the first dictatorship of the proletariat, the European Soviets.

The new state was immediately threatened by the bourgeois Bourbon and Swedish regimes and the authoritarian Prussians.
However the people mobilized proved a sufficient force to hold off the reactionary assaults on the new state,and it wasn’t too long before the Italians, exhausted from their conflict with the Ottomans (and ably encouraged by veteran British agitators) threw off the royal yoke and joined the ProlIntern, or International Organisation for Advancement of the Proletariat.

Over the following two decades the authoritarian monarchies of Persia and Japan also threw off their chains and joined the proletarian revolution.
Equally the chaotic bourgeois republics of South America, and the lonesome colonies of Africa were swept by internationalist movements resulting in successful Communist revolutions establishing revolutionary governments.

The world thus became by the 1930’s divided into three vast armed camps. The bourgeois liberals of the Bourbon, Sweden, the Cossack republic of Ukraine, Australasia and the USA trumpeting the benefits of a moderation which benefitted only the capitalists and fat cats.
The authoritarian, traditionalist regimes which held power based on old social orders, consisting of Prussia, Russia, the remnant Ottoman Empire, the republic of India, the expanded kingdom of Thailand, and the Confederate States of America.

And finally the true hope of the downtrodden proletariat, the friend of the workers, the Communist International, ProlIntern, led by the European Soviets, joined by Roma, the Peoples’ Republic of Persia, the Peoples Revolutionary Republics and Soviets in old Japan, the Libertadores in South America, and the African Peoples’ Republics.

___
The war starts next; also pictures to follow as soon as I've reactivated one of my imagehosting services.

[Deus Eversor]

lol dude i <3 u
tell me now
will you create soviet union we know or iwll all of russia inherit as the russians are (partially as they created their own unique kin) europeans?

[Midge]

What!!! Man I love you never ever stop this ARR subscribed! I Have always wanted to see a Armageddon ARR!

[Incognitia]

The theatres of war:

Pin[ is European Soviets, Deep Green is Roma. The other six nations visible split two ways; both Blues and Beige are the Bourgeois 'Allies'; Russia, the Grey Prussian Blob and Ottoman Light Green are the Authoritarian Axis.


Here my friends are the PRRS in yellow, and Republic of Persia in Red. Who wants to see red cover Russia? All along the northern and southern edges of this map are Axis. Only the Chinese Republic and the Australasians (not seen) are Allies.



And this is nice and simple; the dirty capitalists are in the North, the Axis are in the middle, and the friends of the people are coming up from the south.


@Deus Eversor
Not sure; clearly I can't garrison all of Russia. Probably the Supreme Soviet in London will decide it is best to permit the people of each Russian region their own voice in the central assembly (i.e. split them into multiple puppets rather than permit an opponent to London's power )

@ Midge: Welcome Aboard! I haven't got too many screenshots, or too much detail, from my first struggles; but Prussia and the Bourbon (France and Germany) never caused anyone any trouble, right?

Next: The Early Stages - War with Equal Armies on Three (3) Fronts

[rcduggan]

Armageddon AARs are always fun, good luck exporting the revolution.

[The Wookiee]

Armageddon scenario AAR, brilliant! European Soviets, even better. Hope to see you stand your ground in continental europe, it can be tough...

[Incognitia]

“So class. It was less than a year ago, so some of you should remember: how did the war start?”
Cue silence. Mr. Johnson never did get much response to his questions, as if answered incorrectly they would meet with a fearsome put-down.

“Smith!”
“Um, them bourgeois wanted to steal Luxembourg.”
“If by ‘them bourgeois’you mean His Most Catholic Majesty Louis XX, his Cabinet and advisers and the Estates General, and by ‘steal Luxembourg’ you mean demanding that the European Soviets withdraw recognition from the Luxembourg Peoples’ Soviet permitting Bourbon troops to march in and seize so-say traditionally French territory, this would be correct.”
Little Tommy Smith relaxed; he’d made it through that one.
Of course Mr. Johnson’s eagle eye caught him relaxing and so he got a follow-up.
“What state were the People’s Armed Forces in at this point?”
“Nobody’s sure, sir. They’d been mobilising, that’s when me dad got called up, but his unit was still on Salisbury Plain when the war started.”

“Good enough Smith. Sit down.”
Johnson sighed to himself. He was naturally inclined to teach the oldest pupils, those whose minds could be expanded by his insights into politics and modern history. However, the young Mr. Jones had volunteered for the Army, and so here he was, lumbered with a bunch of 11-year-olds.

The thing was, Tommy Smith was depressingly close to correct. Tensions had been building since the end of the Revolution Wars in 1917, but the trigger had been the Bourbon demanding that the European Soviets recognise the right to self-determination of little Luxembourg.
The Soviets had of course refused; Luxembourg’s resources were integral to the industry of the entire Continental Belt, and there had only been a few riots…there’d been as much in Toulouse a few years ago.
When Versailles’ ultimatum expired, the Proletarian International had of course declared in favour of their ally the European Soviets…he could only imagine the cursing in Teheran when the Persians realised how surrounded they were.
The Prussian-Russian Axis had realised they would not survive against the victor between the bourgeois and proletarians, and so they had joined the war against both.

The Soviets had transported the entire Armoured Spearhead to the Continent, and had also stripped a good half-dozen divisions from the British Isles, leaving a bare minimum to defend against invasion. As the slogan went, "The People In Arms Need No More Defence." The odd fact, for a propaganda slogan, was that it was being put into practice...



The initial intention had been an immediate thrust to reach Roma’s northern border, allowing a direct co-operation with the proletarian brothers in Italy, and ensuring that they would hold out…High Command had little faith in their capacity to withstand Prussia, the Cossacks, the Ottomans and the Bourbon.

However the steady offensive of the Soviet Army, which had crowned reasonable success with the capture of Paris by the 30th January, had come at the cost of a seesaw conflict in which the eastern front was barely holding against the Prussians, and the loss of Arlon and Luxembourg to the Bourbon.


The Committee of Military Subordination to the Supreme Soviet, 30th January 1936.

“Comrades!”
The room failed to quieten.
“COMRADES!”

Silence at last.
The Committee consisted of the Chief of Staff, Tom Wintringham, whose obsession with manoeuvre and swift conquest was the root cause of this meeting; the Chief of the Army, Borge Thing, whose belief in an Elastic Defence was being put into practice on the Prussian front, thus far successfully; Fokke Bosman, Chief of the Navy, was not required at this meeting as his ships had thus far seen little action so had sent an aide, and Aksel Larssen, Chief of the Air Force, was maintaining Air Superiority over Soviet territory, and so had come to the meeting intending to sleep.
There were also, of course, their respective aides and political officers, sat in the background.

“Comrades, thus far the war goes well. In conflict against the Bourbon, Sweden, and Prussia, we have lost Copenhagen, Arlon, and Luxembourg - in return we hold as far as Paris and Calais.”
“However, thus far we have made little to no progress in our original goal of linking up with Roma to bolster their defences.”

"Our gains are shown in red; our losses in green."


“Comrade Horner, the Armaments Minister, informs me we cannot expect the newly recruited divisions to be ready to deploy until the end of March, and so they won’t be able to fight on the continent until mid-April. For now, we must work with what we have. What strategy should we pursue?”

Wintringham continued “My personal belief is that we should focus on the Bourbon. If the Prussian front is quiet they can happily fight the Swedes or Cossacks, whereas if we leave the Bourbon breathing room they will be fighting Roma or the APR. We already hold Paris, and although resistance is stiffening, I believe we can be at the Pyrenees by Mayday.”
Borge then spoke up to contradict his superior, saying “On the contrary, the fact that the Prussians must focus elsewhere gives us the opportunity to overstretch them and crush them.”
For all that Thing was technically inferior to Wintringham, Borge had the ear of Saul de Groot, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet (Head of State), while Wintringham had as an ally Harry Pollitt, Executive Leader of the Supreme Soviet Prime Sub-Committee (Head of Government). However, de Groot and Pollitt had long since grown tired of adjudicating between their Chief of Staff and Chief of the Army, and so had told Larssen to hold a casting vote in their disputes.
“Comrade Larssen, what think you?”
“The Bourbon. We have already split through their initial defences, we should be able to make better progress; equally in line with our strategic aim of reaching Roma, the Bourbon are the ones invading Roman territory, the Italian peninsula itself.”
Really he just wanted the main theatre to be where his aircraft were concentrated, but that was a line of reasoning that would never be spoken aloud.

Next - the results of the Bourbon First policy.

[Incognitia]

@ rcduggan: At the current state of play, the Revolutionary Front of Euskadi is agitating for recognition in the Supreme Soviet, and Poland isn't far behind....
What I'm not telling you is how far ahead that point is

@ TheWookie: See above; I assure you it comes out alright, just how long do the peoples of Europe have to wait for their freedom from capitalist oppression?

[rcduggan]

@ rcduggan: At the current state of play, the Revolutionary Front of Euskadi is agitating for recognition in the Supreme Soviet, and Poland isn't far behind....
What I'm not telling you is how far ahead that point is

@ TheWookie: See above; I assure you it comes out alright, just how long do the peoples of Europe have to wait for their freedom from capitalist oppression?

hopefully the war with Bourbon will go well then.

[stnylan]

Not the best strategic situation. Looks good though.

[Incognitia]

It was now April, and the global conflagration was continuing unabated.
The Americas had two great bands of conflict, one stretching from sea to shining sea, from Maryland to California, the other from what had been Colombia to the former Peru.
In Africa conflict passed from the former Ethiopia all the way west as far as Mauretania.
In Australasia a vicious naval and island-hopping war was underway between the Australasian Confederation, India and the PRRS.
In Asia itself, every border of China was aflame, and Persia was the same, along all the borders she had successfully reached in the preceding 50 years. Similarly the Cossacks were fighting on all fronts against the Ottomans, the Russians, Roma and Persia.
Finally in Europe, Sweden was the only outright winner, it seemed, with progress against Russia and Prussia, nearly linking up with their Cossack allies, and having seized Copenhagen from the European Soviets.

The ‘Bourbon First’kstrategy as approved by ComMil at the end of January had been maintained throughout February, with the one exception of an opportunist assault on kassel.
While it had met with some success - the Bourbon were no longer on Soviet soil, having been thrown out of Arlon and Luxembourg, and some territory had been captured…some towns had changed hands multiple times. Soviet soldiers were on the 29th of February entering Troyes for the fourth time, and they would be retreating from it again only three days later.
It was thus decided that the line should be stabilised in France - no more attempting to knock the Bourbon out of the war early. As one senior general was heard to note “That was always a very Prussian sort of plan, one of mechanical efficiency and ruthless ignorance of the realities of war.”
It was thus decided that in March more effort would be made to advance against the Prussians. Rather than continually exchanging territory with the Bourbon, the hope was that a sustained advance could be achieved against the Prussians.
The divisions on the Prussian front were supplied for a sustained offensive, and it began with an assault on Saarbrucken by 9 divisions on the 3rd of March.
Facing an opposition of only two Prussian divisions their assault was successful by the following day.
Only a week later a renewed assault onkassel was successful - intelligence hadn’t even guessed at it, but every province on the Prussian border had a mere two or three divisions garrisoning it where the previous month they had been graced with five or six apiece.
The attacks continued with Gottingen and Frankfurt-am-Main on the 15th and 16th of March, this time defeating two Prussian and one Russian division, quite far from home.
The following week Schweinfurt and Erfurt followed, then on the 23rd the active assaults ceased for the remainder of the month to consolidate control over the newly won territories.
In the meantime in France Borge Thing’s orders had been given, to instate an elastic defence and only advance against targets of opportunity. If the Bourbon wanted to bleed and die to run circularly around the same old territories, they could do it against prepared Soviet defences. This proved successful, with Troyes finally being hold onto for more than a few days, and advances into Strasbourg and Argentan.

As the ten new infantry divisions worked up into a state of readiness to be deployed, the only Soviet city under foreign control was Copenhagen, and Soviet troops were not much more than 100 miles from Berlin itself, spiritual capital of the Axis.
Morale was now sky-high within the Soviet Eastern Army, as they grew ever closer to the target they’d never really thought they’d reach.
The Western Army was recovering as they stabilised their front lines against the Bourbon and held onto Paris for once. After three months of covering the same territory time after time, of becoming ever more tired of the near-constant marching, just to stop in the same place was relief, even with Bourbon artillery coming in now and then.

With ten fresh divisions, with the army holding significant territories in both France and Germany, with the fleet intact even as they kept the Channel clear for the resupply of the armies…the only darkspots on the horizon were that Copenhagen remained in Swedish hands, and that the Bourbon were advancing into the Italian peninsula, seizing Turin and Genoa, and the Romans didn’t appear to be able to spare enough troops from the Ottoman front to stop them short of Rome herself.

Front Lines as of 1st April 1936:


Next: To save Roma!
(I'd played til November before deciding to write this, my earliest save is August...things will slow down a little once I get there as it's much easier to figure how things played out, step by step. The Swedish invasion of northern Germany should be fun, I was terrified...)

[Deus Eversor]

"@Deus Eversor
Not sure; clearly I can't garrison all of Russia. Probably the Supreme Soviet in London will decide it is best to permit the people of each Russian region their own voice in the central assembly (i.e. split them into multiple puppets rather than permit an opponent to London's power )"

i do not think of soviet union and soviet europe as opponents but as subdivisions of a greater WORLDISH SOVIET

[Incognitia]

@rcduggan, stnylan:
The strategic situation is stabilising, but at the moment I've built only ten more infantry divisions than I started with (for a total of 50, and 6 armoured); it's over two months until I can expect more; and until I actually reach the Roman border (some way off) my front lines are only getting longer...

@Deus Eversor
Clearly the Soviet in London is a lot more cynical than you are, my dear sir. In any case, any Russian puppets are a long way off, I've not even reached the Russian pre-war-border yet, leave alone Moscow.

[stnylan]

Well done on getting things stabilised. But I would not be surprised if those two months turn into 3.

[Incognitia]

---
The gap between posts is due to my having been in the field since Friday with the Officer Training Corps.
My return to 'soldiering' has inspired me to attempt (better emphasise that last word) attempt to show the war from an ordinary soldier's point of view.
This is a new one for me, and I'm going to need a little time to figure it out; the story will then continue.