Explorations in Strategy - Italy at War

loki100: Indeed, indeed.

Forster: That's a good idea for an AAR title. Strategic Stunts, or Stunts of Strategy. Or, referring to the Germans, Stunted Strategy.

Baltasar: Yep.

Moolle: Nope, nothing.

Stuyvesant: It will be an interesting effort for sure.

Baltasar: Yeah, the whole AAR would have been different. Starting with the AI's performance in Abyssinia.

Forster: Well, it's 1.4 with the baggage of 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3

walnutr113: Haha, maybe.

GrenadierSchube: Yes! Update! ...Later today?

Lamahorse: My plans? Victory!

GrenadierSchube: Four days ago? Really? Shit.

Stuyvesant:

Yeah, sorry about the lack of updates. Life turned really hectic on Sunday, hasn't stopped and I've been scrambling to keep up. I'll find some time to write today!

NERFGEN: I do have a few TAC wings, but mostly I use carrier aviation. I don't really use my Regia Aeronautica much at all.

Update coming up!

The Year of Ruin
Part 10: Operation Save-Ze-Germans I, May 30 – June 14, 1945

Clausewitz, in his discussion of centers of gravity, identified a number of potential vital areas, damage to which may collapse a belligerent party’s entire war effort. Among these he counted the armies of the belligerents, their capitals, their political leadership, a state’s stronger allies if they had any and even public opinion. In a war between dictatorships, public opinion was hardly of any significant importance. Two of the capitals were effectively inviolable at this point in time: Rome and Moscow. The Soviets would never allow the Italians to forge so far into their heartland again, not if they had any armed forces remaining. If the Soviets were not stopped, however, Berlin might find itself in serious danger of falling into Soviet hands. The political leadership of the Italy, Germany and Soviet Union followed the same pattern of distance, or potential lack thereof, from danger. Armies were, of course, vital for all three powers. Yet Italy faced another threat. Should Germany fall, Italy would be left unable to maintain its empire and would have to withdraw to the Alps and remain purely on the defensive. This was unacceptable. Germany was Italy’s great weakness.

This was the reasoning behind why Italy was going back onto the offensive. It was also targeting the Red Army, to finally, decisively and definitively destroy it or at least sufficiently incapacitate it that it could no longer pose a threat even to the Germans. With the Western Allies entirely passive, this would safeguard Italy’s hold on Europe. This same offensive, however, would need to fulfill a second function immediately, and that was to prevent the Germans from collapsing. The direction of the offensive was thus already determined, and any significant deviation from this template effectively precluded. Vercellino’s army found itself close to the Hungarian border, Pintor’s army north of it. North of Pintor, Bastico’s army was deployed with Graziani to his east. All armies were west of the Dnepr, far to the west. This would not be an invasion of the Soviet Union. It would be an offensive to follow the Soviet offensive westward. It would push into Poland, and destroy the attacking Soviet forces from the rear.


Italian formations entering their final deployment zones.

Finally, by the 9th of June, most formations were in place and Mussolini gave the order to launch the offensive. Graziani would push eastward toward the Dnepr. His task was to engage Soviet forces around the Dnepr and prevent them from rushing westward. The other three armies would embark westward. Vercellino’s immediate task was to catch as many Soviet divisions as he could against the Hungarian border and crush them. Pintor and Bastico would push onward, encircling formations where they could and generally closing the gap between the Italian forces and the German frontline. It was a simple strategic plan, but it was hoped that it would catch the Soviets by surprise. The Italians had been quiescent for a little while, allowing the Soviets to truly commit to pushing into central Europe, forgetting the need for security against the Axis partner which was clearly the most dangerous, even as the invasion toward Germany aimed to decimate Italy’s long term chances of victory.


The Italian offensive beginning!

The Soviets had not expected such an offensive at all and, although there were considerable forces arrayed around the lost areas of Ukraine, they were in no readiness for a sudden onslaught. The Italians began making quick progress, albeit this came at a cost. Casualties were already mounting swiftly, possibly even quicker than in the push on Moscow. Speed was vital, however, for the Germans had begun collapsing. Their formations had been drained by years of staring from trenches at Soviet trenches in front of them, leaving many bare shells of what they had once been. By June 13th, the Soviets proclaimed a liberated Poland, naturally a communist dictatorship despite the impotent wailing of the Polish government in exile in London. A small corner of southwestern Poland remained in German hands by this point, and much of northwestern Poland including Lodz. Yet the two greatest cities of Poland, Warsaw and Krakow, had been taken from the Germans. East Prussia was nearly entirely overrun. Even the Slovaks were being forces back slowly. It was a grim tide of failure.


The Germans were simply falling apart.

Fortunately for Italy’s larger but inept neighbor, the Italian armies in Ukraine were moving quickly. By the 14th, the vanguard of Vercellino’s army was only one or two hundred kilometers from the Polish eastern border. At least four Soviet formations had been encircled by Vercellino’s and Pintor’s armies and were under attack. The Soviet frontline had effectively been broken and only remnants stood in the way of the Italians’ victorious progress into southeastern Poland. Other Soviet divisions were becoming in danger of encirclement. They had already begun the process of adaption, shifting some formations westward, but these were formations already north or west of Graziani. The auguries were good, the Soviets were unprepared.


The Italians pushing onward toward Poland.

Success was in the air already, with an unprecedentedly easy breakthrough phase lasting a mere five days, instead of the period of up to two weeks that had been normally assumed from direct operational experience in previous years. The Soviets truly seemed to be putting their all into the offensive against the Germans, notwithstanding the continuing spat in the Caucasus, which returned after only a brief interlude, and only semi-relatively prudent security measures against Axis forces in Ukraine. Despite this, casualties had begun running high already: over two thousand six hundred Italians dead in but five days, along with over four thousand eight hundred Soviets. The contest would remain bloody to the very end.