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Don't get this wrong, this is as always an excellent read, but whenever I read this I have to urge to kick some Nazi butt. Thank god for Call of Duty 2!
 
Yes, well, as I've said before, Sane Hitler isn't the same as Good Hitler. I occasionally have an urge to write an AAR where Hitler is a deeply convinced man of peace who is trying to stave off the inevitable general European war, but this isn't it. In this one, the bad guys win on a mind-boggling scale. It's like the end of Hamlet, only Hamlet sneaks on stage before Fortinbras arrives and, twirling his Snidely Whiplash moustache, explains that he has been using a body double the whole time, then drops Fortinbras in a pit full of alligators.
 
Interesting comparision. Might I also suggest a raid to knock out the Panama canal to keep the U.S. Pacific fleet in the ocean it's named for?
 
What, and give U-flotte Jamaica nothing to do? Rubbish! Much better to park a nuclear wolfpack off the east locks and let the games begin!
 
Fish in a barrel
 
J.J. - That's the plan. Though you have given me... or, in this world, Otto Skorzeny, an idea.

Enewald - Sort of. I've played up to the end of 1964; I haven't played since because of Civ4 and more recently Sword of the Stars, because the beginning of the year is painfully slow.

Nathan - Yes. At this point, though, it's mostly Reinhard Heydrich prodding the bear. :p
 
Small update: The game's actually played through to December of '65; I kind of missed my planned invasion window accidentally. However, every recent attempt to play has resulted in a haywire AI around mid-December.

Good news: before the game crashes, I've established that Germany really is as dominant as I expected.
Bad news: Game crashes.
 
Small update: The game's actually played through to December of '65; I kind of missed my planned invasion window accidentally. However, every recent attempt to play has resulted in a haywire AI around mid-December.

Good news: before the game crashes, I've established that Germany really is as dominant as I expected.
Bad news: Game crashes.

I look at it this way: Germany is so dominant, it overwhelms your computer.
 
Yeah, Germany's so dominant that I can sortie the squadron with the Guderians in it from Wilhelmshaven to the Adriatic in less than twelve hours. By sea. That means they're going three thousand miles in twelve hours, or two hundred and fifty miles per hour. It's only slightly less ridiculous in knots, where it's 220. In metric, it's roughly 400 km/hr. To put it in perspective, the speed of sound at one atmosphere in normal air is about 700 miles an hour. The Germans have built nuclear-powered battlecruisers that can travel roughly one-third the speed of sound at an air/water medium interface, and still maneuver in North Sea conditions. Forget using conventional missiles, why didn't the Germans just fit them out with some REALLY stiff ram prows and use them like Nemo used the Nautilus? Air cover? No problem, by the time they launch, we'll have rammed the carrier in half!
 
Fund It!
 
Ramming is very neglected in the modern navy, so lets do it!
 
I said I'd go through and update all my AARs; however, RDD is so cripplingly slow that it crashes the game at this point. This isn't strictly speaking abandoned, but it's unplayable, so everything to come (and yes, I will be updating it, just that what I've written so far doesn't feel worth posting) will be game-inspired rather than game-based. To come:

- The Bermuda Missile Crisis
- The destruction of the US Atlantic Fleet between Genoa and Salerno (30 German ships versus 168 American; this took six game hours)
- Unternehmen Nebenattraktion and the capture of the Panama Canal
- Fall Cincinnatus and the capture of the Chesapeake watershed
- The impossible American campaign of spring-summer 1965
- The improbable Indian campaign of spring 1965
- The partition of the United States
 
Wonderful! I'm so glad this isn't dead, and I'm happy you seem to have taken my Panama adventure idea.
 
Part VIII: The Third Great War

1. The Bermuda Missile Crisis

In November of 1964, Reichsführer Heydrich stayed awake for the entire collation of the American election results. The military future of the Reich depended on the outcome of these elections, and, when the final totals were submitted, he decided to execute Cincinnatus in January of 1965. The immediate cause for war was the deployment of a peaceful rocket rescue force to the English islands of Bermuda, with the goal of observing and, in an emergency, retrieving members of the Reich's rocket corps who fell in the western Atlantic. The United States chose to view the deployment, announced in late November, as a provocation and deployed a squadron of the United States Navy's Atlantic Fleet to stop the deliveries.

407px-Captain_Hans_Langsdorff.jpg

Figure 164: Konteradmiral Hans Langsdorff, commander of the Bermuda delivery squadron (wartime photo, 1940)

Against this squadron, the Reich had a handful of escorts under Konteradmiral Hans Langsdorff, who had commanded the heavy cruiser Graf Spee during the war years. He had operated in American waters for part of this period, and was passably familiar with the area, and his old-guard naval background made the OKM staff believe he would be more acceptable to the Americans as evidence of their peaceful intentions. Langsdorff had two helicopter carriers - the old Zeppelin and Heinkel - and four new missile cruisers. Records indicate that much of the composition of the United States squadron in the area dated back to the same period as the two converted helicopter carriers, but had not been subject to the continuous updating process which the Kriegsmarine had accomplished. Thus, the Americans incredibly still fielded the Great War-era dreadnought Texas alongside the much newer battleship South Dakota. This placed the Americans at a significant tactical disadvantage in the coming contest. As a former Navy pilot, President Kennedy was of course aware of this problem, but the construction program which he had pushed had not yet come to fruition. It was also part of President Kennedy's emphasis on naval aviation, and the reason that the modernized American aircraft carrier USS Lexington was the flagship of the American squadron, under the command of newly promoted Rear Admiral George S. Morrison, one of the key servicemembers behind Kennedy's naval program.

Admiral_George_Stephen_Morrison.jpg

Figure 165: The American commander of the Bermuda blockade squadron, Rear Admiral George S. Morrison (last official photo)

The United States had the additional supposed advantage of air superiority in the area up to a thousand kilometers east of the American coastline. However, the majority of American long-range aircraft during this period were propeller-driven, and the majority of them belonged to the United States Army Air Corps, which had little interest in cooperating with the United States Navy. Against this, the Reich could count on carriers placed in the central Atlantic and squadrons of modern jets operated from the western coast of Europe, refueled mid-Atlantic, and deployed in constant rotation. This was obviously not announced to the Americans, but it was hardly a secret.

All of this primed the Bermuda squadron for confrontation, and confrontation is precisely what happened. At approximately two in the afternoon Berlin time, four days into 1965 and sixteen days prior to President Kennedy's second inauguration, the two squadrons made contact two hundred kilometers northeast of St. George, Bermuda. Admiral Morrison made a public statement, recorded by both Reich and neutral observers, that German interference in North American affairs would not be tolerated, and in pursuit of the American "Monroe Doctrine," he was required to stop and search the German container ships, and to turn them back if they were found to contain military materials. Admiral Langsdorff chose not to reply, but to proceed. At the same time, he requested Luftwaffe support.

USS_Lexington_CV-16.jpg

Figure 166: The American flagship, the carrier USS Lexington, in the months prior to her sinking

At exactly fourteen minutes and fifty-six seconds past three in the afternoon Berlin time, the American battleship South Dakota opened fire on the German squadron. This fire was ineffective, but sufficient to begin an international incident. Langsdorff launched his helicopters, Morrison his fighters, and the Luftwaffe pilots began a beyond-visual-range engagement, the first of its kind in history. Unlike in previous battles, the German fleet made no effort to turn broadside to the Americans; the newest generation of ships relied on missiles rather than gunfire for their effect, and the missiles did not require a broadside launch. The result was slaughter: for the price of one forty-centimeter shell striking the cruiser Prinz Eugen in its radome, the German fleet sank both American battleships, the two Essex-class carriers Lexington and Bonhomme Richard, and five cruisers in ten minutes. At the same time, the Luftwaffe Staffel assigned to air support descended through the cloud layer and, in a single volley of forty guided missiles, shot down the entire American combat air patrol which had left the decks by the time shooting began.

The German fleet steamed on to Bermuda, while the American State Department lodged an immediate formal protest. Langsdorff detached one of his carriers, flying a white flag, to conduct rescue operations among the American sailors. The rocket men began putting their equipment in place, and both the Americans and Germans began preparing for an immediate war. As will be seen, the German preparations were much closer to fruition.
 
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"Breathtaking" does not do this AAR justice.


However, whats up in China/Japan?

Really? From my end the word is "painful." And imagine how my wife feels about it. ;)

Events outside of Germany get short shrift in this AAR because Germany truly achieved autarky by overrunning literally anywhere with a land connection and resources they found remotely interesting. However, I can tell you that Japan has been involved in an endless land war on the mainland and a sea war in the Pacific. The Chinese Communists have achieved precisely nothing since the 1920s, and Chiang Kai-Shek is an uncrowned emperor. I suspect that this Pacific war meant that Joseph Kennedy's immediate predecessor was Douglas MacArthur, a man viewed as soft on fascism because of his Asiatic obsession. MacArthur's clerk never rose to prominence, and Patton, the only American to make an impression in Europe as I recall, isn't a politician by nature.

I think "We're screwed!" is an understatement.

Yes. It is. The general scope of Cincinnatus involves the seizure of the Chesapeake Bay, with secondary landings aimed at Boston and Charleston, with the objective of taking Washington DC in a coup de main, encircling and reducing New York, and reducing the United States (and Canada) section by section. Successor states in North America will be (roughly clockwise from Quebec):

- Free State of Quebec
- New England Republic
- The United States of America (greatly reduced, capital at Philadelphia)
- The Confederate States of America (to include Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, and Maryland, partly to compensate for loss of Texas)
- The Delaware Free Trade Zone (under direct German administration)
- The Republic of Texas (to include all Texas claims prior to 1845)
- The Republic of Deseret (to include Utah, Nevada, Arizona, western Colorado and non-Texas New Mexico)
- California Free State
- Cascadian Republic (to include Oregon, Washington State, Idaho, and British Columbia)
- Kingdom of Hawaii
- Free Nations Confederacy (a wedge running from Alaska and the Canadian coast south to Oklahoma)

This means the remaining United States will be...
- New York
- New Jersey
- Pennsylvania
- Ohio
- Indiana
- Illinois
- Wisconsin
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Iowa

"An entire squadron just got whipped in ten minutes sir"
Idiot land:
"WE MUST GO TO WAR"
Sensible people:
"Apologise, back down and let the AAR end!"

Also. Company of Heroes. That is all.

Haven't played it - been grinding my way through the Baldur's Gate games preparatory to BG Enhanced being released this summer. And in no sane universe would the United States be flying Meteor/262-era jets in the '60s. There's some chokepoint in tech research for the computer in RDD; because of this, and RDD's many other flaws which numerous versions since this AAR started have not fixed, I'm inclined to call it unplayable, especially in the late game.

And relax - the AAR is in its death throes, especially considering these last few posts are all going to be purely fictional, and unapologetically "Domination of the Draka" unbalanced.