Well, now take Baku and Stalingrad, possible even Ukraine before Hitler. 
Defending Anatolia is not necessary.
Defending Anatolia is not necessary.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Hit April did it? Once again the hardcoded DOW fires when the declaring nation is in no position to prosecute the war they're declaring. Still, if you can get your troops across to Romania, and supply can catch up with them, you stand a chance of grabbing enough of Russia to get them to surrender to you rather than having Bitter Peace fire. But you've already played the whole year, so you know, doncha?
anweRU: Hopefully!
Baltasar: Hehe, we'll see what he does.
Maj. von Mauser: Indeed. Once the war is over, he'll have a lot to answer for!
Gladiator: Fairly sizable front, yeah.
Jemisi: Hehe, maybe, maybe not. We'll see.
Stuyvesant: My plan is to adapt to the situation.
VILenin: Hey friend, was wondering where you'd disappeared off to. Yes, a bit has been written and a bit more than that has been conquered. The Soviets are now my main threat, but not necessarily my main enemy. It'll be an interesting next few years, certainly.
Enewald: Well...without Anatolia it'll be a bit difficult to reach all those places.
womble: More or less, to some extent, I kind of know.
Baltasar: Hehe, we'll see what he does.
Maj. von Mauser: Indeed. Once the war is over, he'll have a lot to answer for!
Gladiator: Fairly sizable front, yeah.
Jemisi: Hehe, maybe, maybe not. We'll see.
Stuyvesant: My plan is to adapt to the situation.
VILenin: Hey friend, was wondering where you'd disappeared off to.
Yes, a bit has been written and a bit more than that has been conquered. The Soviets are now my main threat, but not necessarily my main enemy. It'll be an interesting next few years, certainly. Enewald: Well...without Anatolia it'll be a bit difficult to reach all those places.
womble: More or less, to some extent, I kind of know.
Heheheh. That's why I never annex Romania even if I want to. They would have 100+ brigades on the border, including tanks and it would be a much easier situation.
Time for the big SU? hardest opponent yet! by far! Good luck!
waiting on update as always!
waiting on update as always!
delra: Maybe. Still, I have a good choke point, between neutral Hungary and the Black Sea.
Tomatoes: Thanks! I may need the luck!
Jrog: Hehe, thanks.
thrashing mad: Yeah, it may be a bit difficult.
No update tomorrow unfortunately. It'll be Christmas Eve, so I'll be doing other things tomorrow! Next update will likely be Friday evening. *nod*
Tomatoes: Thanks! I may need the luck!
Jrog: Hehe, thanks.
thrashing mad: Yeah, it may be a bit difficult.
No update tomorrow unfortunately. It'll be Christmas Eve, so I'll be doing other things tomorrow! Next update will likely be Friday evening. *nod*
Happy Christmas then, I'll be looking forward to seeing how hard those Soviets drive.
No update tomorrow unfortunately. It'll be Christmas Eve, so I'll be doing other things tomorrow! Next update will likely be Friday evening. *nod*
A Christmas update?! Now I need to hurry out and get you something. Perhaps you'd accept effusive praise?
Jemisi: Oh yes, indeed, the spat with the Soviets will be interesting...
VILenin: Hehe, as a Latvian, I celebrate the eve more than the day.
Merry Christmas everyone!
VILenin: Hehe, as a Latvian, I celebrate the eve more than the day.
Merry Christmas everyone!
My stomach's growling, I'm hungry and waiting for pancakes but last night was very profitable. I got my hands on eight books!
The Making of Peace: Rulers, States, and the Aftermath of War, edited by Williamson Murray and Jim Lacey (2009)
Seapower and Strategy, edited by Colin S. Gray and Roger W. Barnett (1989)
War & Politics, by Bernard Brodie (1973)
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence (1926/1991)
Lessons in Imperial Rule, by Sir Andrew Skeen (1939/2008)
The Political Uses of Seapower, by Edward N. Luttwak (1974)
The Leverage of Seapower, by Colin S. Gray (1992)
Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age, by Geoffrey Till (1984)
Of which I had already read The Leverage of Seapower but I needed to own a copy, as I'll no doubt be using it quite a bit in the future.
As for whether I'll update tonight or not, we'll see! I'll give it a try.
The Making of Peace: Rulers, States, and the Aftermath of War, edited by Williamson Murray and Jim Lacey (2009)
Seapower and Strategy, edited by Colin S. Gray and Roger W. Barnett (1989)
War & Politics, by Bernard Brodie (1973)
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence (1926/1991)
Lessons in Imperial Rule, by Sir Andrew Skeen (1939/2008)
The Political Uses of Seapower, by Edward N. Luttwak (1974)
The Leverage of Seapower, by Colin S. Gray (1992)
Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age, by Geoffrey Till (1984)
Of which I had already read The Leverage of Seapower but I needed to own a copy, as I'll no doubt be using it quite a bit in the future.
As for whether I'll update tonight or not, we'll see! I'll give it a try.
Italy will be strategic wizards after all that bedtime reading for Mussolini,Myth.Victory will be assured.Keep up the good work!
Jemisi: Oh yes, indeed, the spat with the Soviets will be interesting...
VILenin:...as a Latvian...
I hadn't realised that! My great-grandad was a Latvian. Jumped ship in Liverpool in the early 20th.
I celebrate the eve more than the day.
We're thoroughly anglicised, 3 generations on, though.
Merry Christmas to you too.Merry Christmas everyone!
IanClacher: Hehe, that's nothing compared to the reading I've already done!
Baltasar: I own Clausewitz already. And Machiavelli's Art of War. And have read The Prince and Discourses on Livy. This has given me an idea though--at the end of the AAR, I could provide annotated bibliographies on good works of strategy (that I have read) if people are interested.
womble: Hehe, I'm a Latvian-American. I hold two passports. It's quite handy.
And Merry Christmas again, to coolluigi007 and Maj. von Mauser, as well as everyone else!
Update coming up! But only because I realized I'd be busy tomorrow so it was either an update today or Sunday.
Baltasar: I own Clausewitz already. And Machiavelli's Art of War. And have read The Prince and Discourses on Livy.
This has given me an idea though--at the end of the AAR, I could provide annotated bibliographies on good works of strategy (that I have read) if people are interested. womble: Hehe, I'm a Latvian-American. I hold two passports. It's quite handy.
And Merry Christmas again, to coolluigi007 and Maj. von Mauser, as well as everyone else!
Update coming up! But only because I realized I'd be busy tomorrow so it was either an update today or Sunday.
The Year of Strategic Crisis
Part 6: Graziani’s Crusade I, April 7 – April 16, 1941
When the Soviet Union began its incursions into Italian territory, the Italian-Soviet border was longer than the German-Soviet border and was split in twain by the Black Sea. On the western side of that sea was the Italian province of Dacia, what had once been Romania. On the southern side lay Anatolia, a potential gateway into the Soviet Caucasus. The opportunities were obvious to all who could look at a map: the Regia Marina, if it could take the Black Sea, formed a lynchpin that offered Italian armies unprecedented mobility all around the Black Sea littoral. Mussolini, however, was wary of committing to such adventures on too large a scale: Russia had a strategic habit of swallowing and consuming the armies of invading powers. The Swedes lost themselves in the endless steppes of Ukraine; the French found that victory was much further away than defeat was. This was perhaps what the Soviet Union was intentionally inviting: the Dacian-Soviet border was bereft of Soviet troops.
Mussolini was, however, prepared to entertain limited commitments as a sort of strategic spoiling attack to throw the Soviets off balance and delay their own major operations, as at the moment their incursions were small affairs of single divisions nibbling at the border. Mussolini therefore conferred with Graziani, whose army was the only one of the three in the east not to have been shipped westward to deal with the Spanish crisis. Thus the 1a Armata was still stationed in north Dacia, near the River Prut. Graziani leapt at the opportunity to perform a limited, but still army-sized, incursion into the Soviet Union to create a sort of buffer zone to buy time for the armies in the west to be brought back east. Thus on the very day that the first Soviet border incursions were occurring, Graziani began deploying his two corps toward positions along the Prut, near the coast, with an eye for crossing that border himself.
Graziani moving his forces toward the Prut River and the border with the Soviet Union.
By the 10th, he was crossing. Zingales’ corps took the northern flank and Ambrosio pushed along the Black Sea coast. It was a limited push, the kind that Mussolini approved of. Ambrosio was to take Odessa, and Zingales was to take up positions to the north and hold the flank. Yet this in itself revealed the nonsensical nature of a limited incursion into the Soviet Union. Odessa was a limited objective but at the same time it was over two hundred kilometers from the Prut. A two hundred kilometer leap is hard to conceptualize as ‘limited.’ The Soviet Union was such a vast state that a pus two hundred kilometer into their territory on a narrow front such as the one Graziani was marching on covered only a miniscule portion of Soviet land and, indeed, had a nearly negligible strategic effect. Graziani may have realized this quicker than Mussolini, as his mind was dedicated to this question whereas Mussolini had to oversee the entire empire.
Graziani’s limited push into the Soviet Black Sea littoral.
The result of Graziani’s musings was an expansion of his limited incursion into the Soviet Union. Even with a Soviet armored division operating in his far rear, Graziani decided to expand the war enormously. Perhaps he was suffering delusions of grandeur, being the commander of the only Italian army east of Spain and north of Palestine. Perhaps he was aiming to strike the first major blow against the Soviet Union during the war. Whatever his motives were, his intentions were clear. He was going to not just cross the Dnepr River, but he wanted to at least cut the land road to Sevastopol, the main Soviet naval base on the Black Sea! He was going to throw his northern flank deep into the center of Ukraine west of the Dnepr. With two corps, six infantry and two mountain divisions, he was dashing, perhaps madly, into the endless, army-consuming space of the Soviet Union.
Graziani on his crusade into the Soviet Union.
The war between Italy and the Soviet Union, even if part of a greater Axis-Comintern struggle, was a new chapter in Italian strategy. No longer did Italy have the unfettered independence it had enjoyed prior to April 1941. It could no longer shift armies around to meet multidirectional threats, as it had only just recently done by moving Pintor and Bastico to Spain. Italy was now a captive of a front that would never go away, until ultimate victory or defeat erases its lines. Its only solution was to begin forming new armies, a step it had already begun taking the previous year, though it was never expected that new armies would be needed so soon. Italy’s strategic options would be limited until these armies could be created. 1941 would be dedicated to limited ventures. And Graziani’s crusade.
Part 6: Graziani’s Crusade I, April 7 – April 16, 1941
When the Soviet Union began its incursions into Italian territory, the Italian-Soviet border was longer than the German-Soviet border and was split in twain by the Black Sea. On the western side of that sea was the Italian province of Dacia, what had once been Romania. On the southern side lay Anatolia, a potential gateway into the Soviet Caucasus. The opportunities were obvious to all who could look at a map: the Regia Marina, if it could take the Black Sea, formed a lynchpin that offered Italian armies unprecedented mobility all around the Black Sea littoral. Mussolini, however, was wary of committing to such adventures on too large a scale: Russia had a strategic habit of swallowing and consuming the armies of invading powers. The Swedes lost themselves in the endless steppes of Ukraine; the French found that victory was much further away than defeat was. This was perhaps what the Soviet Union was intentionally inviting: the Dacian-Soviet border was bereft of Soviet troops.
Mussolini was, however, prepared to entertain limited commitments as a sort of strategic spoiling attack to throw the Soviets off balance and delay their own major operations, as at the moment their incursions were small affairs of single divisions nibbling at the border. Mussolini therefore conferred with Graziani, whose army was the only one of the three in the east not to have been shipped westward to deal with the Spanish crisis. Thus the 1a Armata was still stationed in north Dacia, near the River Prut. Graziani leapt at the opportunity to perform a limited, but still army-sized, incursion into the Soviet Union to create a sort of buffer zone to buy time for the armies in the west to be brought back east. Thus on the very day that the first Soviet border incursions were occurring, Graziani began deploying his two corps toward positions along the Prut, near the coast, with an eye for crossing that border himself.
Graziani moving his forces toward the Prut River and the border with the Soviet Union.
By the 10th, he was crossing. Zingales’ corps took the northern flank and Ambrosio pushed along the Black Sea coast. It was a limited push, the kind that Mussolini approved of. Ambrosio was to take Odessa, and Zingales was to take up positions to the north and hold the flank. Yet this in itself revealed the nonsensical nature of a limited incursion into the Soviet Union. Odessa was a limited objective but at the same time it was over two hundred kilometers from the Prut. A two hundred kilometer leap is hard to conceptualize as ‘limited.’ The Soviet Union was such a vast state that a pus two hundred kilometer into their territory on a narrow front such as the one Graziani was marching on covered only a miniscule portion of Soviet land and, indeed, had a nearly negligible strategic effect. Graziani may have realized this quicker than Mussolini, as his mind was dedicated to this question whereas Mussolini had to oversee the entire empire.
Graziani’s limited push into the Soviet Black Sea littoral.
The result of Graziani’s musings was an expansion of his limited incursion into the Soviet Union. Even with a Soviet armored division operating in his far rear, Graziani decided to expand the war enormously. Perhaps he was suffering delusions of grandeur, being the commander of the only Italian army east of Spain and north of Palestine. Perhaps he was aiming to strike the first major blow against the Soviet Union during the war. Whatever his motives were, his intentions were clear. He was going to not just cross the Dnepr River, but he wanted to at least cut the land road to Sevastopol, the main Soviet naval base on the Black Sea! He was going to throw his northern flank deep into the center of Ukraine west of the Dnepr. With two corps, six infantry and two mountain divisions, he was dashing, perhaps madly, into the endless, army-consuming space of the Soviet Union.
Graziani on his crusade into the Soviet Union.
The war between Italy and the Soviet Union, even if part of a greater Axis-Comintern struggle, was a new chapter in Italian strategy. No longer did Italy have the unfettered independence it had enjoyed prior to April 1941. It could no longer shift armies around to meet multidirectional threats, as it had only just recently done by moving Pintor and Bastico to Spain. Italy was now a captive of a front that would never go away, until ultimate victory or defeat erases its lines. Its only solution was to begin forming new armies, a step it had already begun taking the previous year, though it was never expected that new armies would be needed so soon. Italy’s strategic options would be limited until these armies could be created. 1941 would be dedicated to limited ventures. And Graziani’s crusade.
