Explorations in Strategy - Italy at War

Forster: Screw launching my offensive earlier, the Germans deserved it for being so incompetent! And nothing's happened in the far east in six years now.

soulking: No, I meant sixty hundred thousand men! Oops.

Maj. von Mauser: Yep.

alvaro: Hard to say.

Avatar018: Hehe, perhaps.

Jorath13: I will pick it up eventually, though I don't know whether or not I'll play another Italian AAR with it.

Jemisi: Indeed, something to hope for.

dublish: Inquiring minds will be satiated, as now there's nothing to distract from Balkan operations.

Enewald: Yeah the Finnish army is larger than mine. But I know how to use mine better.

Peasant-at-war: Well, with Finland now covered, there's nothing interesting going on outside the Balkans.

Traceur: Yes that's true. I didn't give it enough thought when I was writing but on reflection, yeah.

LOLKATS: That too.

Palmyrene: Yeah, next update is back to the Balkans!

bbcrackmonkey: Nothing's happened for years there. The Japanese hold Korea and Manchukuo remains their puppet. They hold Shanghai, Taipei and a couple other port cities, but can make no inroads into China.

BlitzMartinDK: Not quite.

Update tomorrow!

Surt: Yeah. I loaded up as Japan and they've got 0 rares and just about 0 supplies, and their metal is dropping as well. So they're basically screwed.

Update tonight!

BlitzMartinDK: Yeah, that's a clever idea with that plague of German locusts tearing through my supply stockpile faster than a hot knife through butter. Besides, the Japanese aren't worth it. They'd never do anything for me.

Update coming up!

The Year of the Masters of War
Part 8: The Great Gamble of the War III, July 11 – July 23, 1944

Simultaneously with the Soviet and Finnish reconquest of central Finland and the splitting of the German forces there into a handful of different pockets and fronts, Italian forces were on the move in the Balkans. Mussolini’s forces held the advantage in Southeastern Europe but everyone was unsure how long this inequality would last and so the Italians had to act quickly and aggressively to retain the imbalance in their favor. The Italians were in their favored position, on exterior lines and able to concentrate in time rather than space. After all, of these two dimensions, the space could be constantly won and lost ad infinitum but time, once lost, could never be regained. At best it could only be bought, but the cost was usually high in terms of both space and manpower. Italy had to use its advantages of being able to hit the Soviet theater, already in chaos, at every point on the compass.

This the Italians were to do highly successfully. Baistrocchi’s army was pushing into Europe from Istanbul, and Vercellino’s army was cutting across Dacia’s relatively vulnerable neck. In Illyria, heavy battles were on-going as five Italian armies were throwing their full weight against the Soviet, and various random Allied, formations that remained on that front. The campaign promised to be even bloodier than that of the previous year for all combatants, in large part due to the sheer larger numbers engaged: Italian and German forces numbered perhaps six hundred thousand, and Soviet and Allied numbers were broadly equal. The Soviets had begun a minor counterattack against Vercellino’s army by the 13th, sending their nearby armored division against Bergonzoli’s motorized infantry and armored cars, which resisted gamely. The fight was truly on. The increasing intensity of the fighting meant that Baistrocchi’s third corps, which had been demonstrating in Greece, was to evacuate their foothold there. The distraction was done, and the need of their presence elsewhere was growing. Thus, the corps was sent to land at Constanta, about halfway between Visconti Prasca’s corps pushing out from Istanbul and Vercellino’s army in northern Dacia. All around Constanta, there were numerous Soviet formations, though many of them were headquarters.


Further Italian landings at Constanta.

The battle of Prnjavor, concluded on the 14th of July, reveals adequately Italian operational skill and the motives behind distractions such as those in Greece. During that battle, one hundred and five thousand Italians assaulted positions held by a mere eighteen thousand Soviet troops. Normally, such odds in battle against the Soviet army were unthinkable. It is to be noted however, that the reports Mussolini received rarely made out much of a difference in who belonged in those numbers: the Italian figure probably included some proportion of German troops, and the Soviet number may have included British and Persian soldiers. By the end of the battle of Prnjavor, just one of the many being waged on the Illyrian front, it was estimated that of all the Soviet formations within the Balkan theater, perhaps half of them were in transit to face either Baistrocchi or Vercellino and their immediate operational utility was negligible, though their future impact probably great. The battle of Drvar, concluded on the 15th, was up to that point the single bloodiest battle of the campaign, and even compared to many of the bloodbaths of the previous year remained shocking in its carnage: in five days, nearly three thousand Italian and German troops died, as did nearly four thousand Soviet and British troops. If this were a typical slugging match, the Italians could not continue to incur such casualties, but the entire point of the operation was to avoid it becoming something so unskillful. On the Black Sea coast, two of Baistrocchi’s corps were working toward a link up, so that Constanta did not simply lay like a ripe fruit for the plucking. In the process, the final Black Sea port on that coast not yet in Italian hands would so fall to them. One difficulty on the Illyrian front, which the Italian forces to the east did not yet experience, was the incredible Soviet operational depth. This was not due to Soviet design, but rather to Italian design. One unanticipated result of the myriad of Soviet divisions shifting eastward was that, when still near the Illyrian front, they could be called upon in an emergency to stand firm. Thus, the five armies had yet to achieve a breakthrough by the 17th despite having advanced at some points over one hundred kilometers. They were, however, close to doing so.


The overall situation in the Balkans on the evening of the 17th.

While the Illyrian front was rocked by enormous and heavy battles that were leaving thousands and even tens of thousands dead, and as Baistrocchi was continuing his push into what was effectively still a vacuum, Vercellino had very nearly reached the Hungarian frontier by the evening of the 18th. Bergonzoli and one cavalry division were involved in a stiff fight against a Soviet infantry division at Onesti, but a second cavalry division was about to touch the Hungarian border and the final one was undertaking a wider outflanking maneuver to put itself in a position from which it could attack that Soviet infantry from a third direction. Vercellino was trusting to da Zara’s aviators to keep his northern flank clear, and thus far it appeared to be working. On the Illyrian front, the Soviets were on the verge of a catastrophic breakdown of their frontline by the 19th. A number of Soviet divisions in the north were about to be encircled, and only a thin screen of formations, half-comprised of British and Persian divisions, lay between Pintor and operationally empty space. In the center, there lay a gap in the Soviet lines not quite exploitable but almost so, and as well as further danger of encirclement. The southern areas of the front also suffered from possibilities of encirclement and wafer-thin frontlines. With Soviet formations moving east faster than Italian formations, the Soviet operational depth was dissipating. By the 20th, the Soviet theater in the Balkans was isolated, though Soviet formations were appearing in increasing numbers on Vercellino’s southern front. Baistrocchi’s third corps, which had been occupying itself in Anatolia, finally began moving westward into Europe—evidently the Soviets were not concerned with Anatolia just yet.


The overall situation in southeastern Europe on the morning of the 20th.

Due to the increasing concentration of Soviet forces on his southern front, Vercellino began running into heavy going. He was forced to call off the attack on Onesti and generally ordered his corps commanders to focus on securing the integrity of the blocking forces that stretched across Dacia rather than pushing southward. He did not have the strength to be able to shove at the Soviets, but he could at least prevent them from pushing him too far. He would have to rely upon other Italian armies to relieve the pressure on his front, at least for a while. Baistrocchi understood this, and of his three corps, only one was sent advancing westward. The other two were sent north or northwestward. Too far away to be of immediate aid, the Illyrian front was finally realizing the successes that had tantalized the five armies there for so long. In the north, six Soviet divisions lay encircled. In the south, the Italians and Germans were working on two envelopments: a smaller one of Zadar and a greater one, which was to reach the Adriatic at Korcula. This operational design was bound to bag another half dozen enemy divisions at least. The Soviet line was breaking and reeling back from the heavy Italian blows, though it was not yet broken. Many Soviet divisions in the center of the Balkans, realizing the plight behind them, were returning to the Illyrian front. Soviet pressure in the east would lessen after all.


Operations on the Illyrian front.

The Italians were meeting success everywhere, broadly speaking, save for their attempted beginnings of s push southward from the Dacian neck, as northern Dacia had begun to be known in Italy. However, this success was coming at a high cost. Already, in not even quite two weeks of active operations since the launching of the offensive on the Illyrian front, nearly ten and a half thousand Italians and Germans had lost their lives in battle all across the theater of war. The operation was certainly amounting to be far bloodier than that of the year before. At the same time, however, Soviet, British and Persian losses were even higher at over twenty-four thousand two hundred. These casualty totals together amounted to an average of just over one hundred and eleven deaths an hour during the thirteen days covered. How long can such carnage continue at such a high intensity?