Recommendations of the General Staff to the Fuhrer:
Fuhrer, first, we seem to have forgotten a look at our resource situation in our last report, for which we apologize.
At current, we have 112 IC, given our domestic goods production, this is our current resource situation, rounded as appropriate:
Energy: 26.9k in stock, +312/day
Metals: 13.2k in stock, +42/day
Rares: 6.6k in stock, +19/day
In terms of crude oil, we produce 1.5 units, and convert an additional 11.2 units from coal, which costs us 112 units of coal per day. We currently have 13k in stock.
Our refining capacity allows us to convert 70 units of crude oil into 70 units of Fuel per day, i.e a 1:1 ratio. We currently have 4.1k units of fuel in stock.
Obviously, our resource situation, especially in the crude oil department, is, shall we say, bad. Our metal and rares production will be rapidly outstripped by any industrial growth we experience as well. Since industrial growth is, in our opinion, necessary to achieve our objectives, we recommend devoting diplomatic efforts to trading for these resources while we prepare to aquire them for ourselves, which will require some rearmament, and therefore, time.
As previously stated, we are doubtful of the outcome of any war that should have us pitted against several great powers over any lenghty course of time. Given our objectives, however, we must begin preparing for exactly such an eventuality.
If we are to prepare, we must know what we are preparing for, and how long we have to prepare for it.
The worst resonable scenario our staff can imagine is being caught in a great power war against France, the UK, the US, and the Soviet Union all arrayed against us. Given that this is the worst case scenario, we will endevor to prepare for it, and as such if any lesser scenario occurs we will find ourselves more than sufficently prepared.
The other question that arises from this worst case scenario is the question of when this hypothetical great power war can be expected to occur. This, of course, depends mostly on our actions, as we are the parties attempting to change the status quo. We should note however that we do not have perfect control over the escalation of hostilities, we can to some degree use diplomacy to attempt to prevent war from breaking out earlier than we wish, but this is not guaranteed.
Discussions among the various armed services branches and among the general staff have lead to the following generally accepted statements:
1) We do not want war to start before 1938, any earlier than this, and we will not have the time to properly prepare to face our potential opponnents.
2) We do not want a war with Russia to begin much later than 1944. The Soviets are currently engaged in a serious industrilization program that has already made their state the second most powerful indsutrial state in the world, behind the US. Their resources will continue to allow them to continue this industrial expansion. Furthermore, the soviets possess a advantage in manpower over us. If they are given too long to build up, there is a risk that they can overwhelm us.
3) We do not want to tangle with the United States at all, it has the manpower and industry superior to the Soviets, a good technology base, unlike the Soviets, and is protected by a wide ocean and a world class navy. Estimations this far in the future are very sketchy at best, but our estimate is that the *earliest* we could begin focusing on the US would be in 1944, and it would require that all our *other* strategic areas were secure.
4) We can easily outpace the British and French alone.
Given these fact, our strategists 'best case' scenario if we must face all of these enemies goes as follows:
1) War with France and the UK as early as 1939 or as late as 1941.
2) Conquest of France within the year of the DOW. The UK is a complex question as to when and how to invade, but we can permit them to exist as a force in being in our rear for 2-3 years.
3) A choice of building up to invade the UK, or defending along the Atlantic coast and preparing for war against the soviets.
4) War with the soviets as early as 1940 or as late as 1942 with the offensive being concluded within a year of the DOW.
5) If the Uk has not yet been conquered, it should now be invaded.
6) Preparation for a cross-atlantic war with the US, hopefully with Japanese help on the Pacific.
The General staff is aware of the ambitious nature of this plan, but it strikes us as the only way to thread the needle of the various forces arrayed against us. The better we can keep the US out of the war, and the better we can manage the seperation of activity on the eastern and western theatres, the better of we will be. We will not have much room for mistakes, and building a proper navy to challenge the Americans will in itself be an expensive, risky venture.
Given these realities, we have set a target date of being ready for a war by mid 1939 with the Allies. Given that timeline, these are our recommendations:
Replace Armaments Minister and Minister of Security. Plan to replace Chief of the Navy.
Bloomberg should step down as armaments minister, altough his services as Fieldmarshal should be retained if possible. Our practical and theoretical knowledge of infantry is already superior, and it is likely we will be building and researching a significant amount of infantry, as such we are better off with a generalized IC bonus. Bloomberg will be more useful in the field in an case. We can also take this oppurtunity to finish consolidating our armed forces by creating the proposed 'OKW' as the supreme command for land, sea, and air forces, whereas currently this function is filled by Blomberg as Head of the Dept of War. His connection to the army, however, has meant that the OKL and OKM tend not to listen to his commands, which is a dangerous precedent.
Wilhelm Frick's primary use is boosting our party's popularity. It's popularity is not currently in any danger however. Mr. Karl Sack is not exactly stunning in his abilities, but he lowers our neutrality value, which will allow us to up our draft laws faster, which will give us more leadership to devote to our various needs. If we change our mind, we have other ministers that can achieve the results we had previously.
There is still some debate within Naval circles on this point, but it is extremely likely that our near term tactical needs at sea will be primarly met by submarines. Replacing our current Minister of the Navy with one with a more appropriate skill set at the nearest opportunity should be considered.
Institute the Two Year Draft, Full Economic Mobilization, Big Education Investment, and Specialist training.
The Draft will allow us to meet our needs for officers, spies, etc more easily, and begin preparing our army for war. The three year draft should be instituted as soon as possible thereafter. Full Economic Mobilization will allow us to produce more goods in preparation for the war. Closer to the war we may consider gearing up to a full war economy. This and our minister changes will mean we will begin losing rares and metals, which means we will have to trade for them. The education investment will help us fill out our leadership, we especially need to focus on staffing our universities and laboritories as much as possible to research as much as possible in prepration for the war. Specialist trainign will maximise the experience of our troops during the peace time period. As soon as war is clealry drawing near we should drop this back down to advanced training so that units are more quickly produced.
In terms of technology, we should focus our efforts technologies that boost our industry, resource extraction, manpower growth, and so on. As war draws near weapon systems will become more urgent, so now is the time to invest in the technologies that will pay dividends over a long period of time.
More specifically with Land doctrines, we should focus our efforts on the mobility doctrines while trying to develop the other noted doctrines as well. Tactical Command structure and Mechnzied offensive will boost the organization and moral of our motorized and mechanized units. Another critical area is Operational Level Organization, which will enable our units to organize themselves more quickly for subsequent attacks.
As an aside, note that we currently have a surplus of officers for our current army.
For our airforce we should strive to acheive air superiority by challenging the enemies fighters and have CAS brigades focus on the front line to help acheive breakthroughs. We should focus on Fighters and CAS with Tactical bombers as a secondary concern.
Here is our proposal for the basic organizational structure of our army. Divisions will tend to have three brigades, and corps will tend to be composed of three divisions. Armies will in turn tend to be composed of three corps. Our eventual goal is to have every army have one mobile offensive corps as part of itself, consisting of motorised infantry and armour divisions. On the tree on the right you can see we have created just such a situation.
Our current strength allows us to create most of our plan for 1., 2. and 3. Armee, although the armored corps will require filling out for all three. Currently, each has one armored brigade, we recommend a second armored brigade and a motorized brigade.
We propose each army in white be given responsibility of the area directly around it, yellow armees will need to be created from scratch.
Thus, 1. Armee will be chargedwith defending Prussia and attacking into NE Poland, 2. Armee will be positioned to attack into Danzig and Lodz, 3. Armee into southern Poland, heading towards Grodno.
4. and 5. Armee will protect the broder with France.
7. Armee will concern itself with Luxembourg and Beligum, while 8. Armee concerns itself with the Netherlands and possibly Denmark.
6. and 9. Armee, meanwhile will handle the Czech border. Its unfortunate that the border is divided along two theaters, but it cannot be avoided.
Air support will be attached at the army level.
In order to finish filling out our present armies and the proposed new armies, we will need the following production:
This ends our proposal for immediate reorganization, a memorandum on short term strategy will follow in the morning.
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APPROVED- Fuhrer.