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I want to finish at least one of my AARs before I start on another one. I already have at least one, "The Age of Theodore Roosevelt" (DH, Mod1914), planned for after installing software on the new computer.
That was a great update, really showcasing the terrain of New England with great depth. I am surprised you didn't mention the Kennedy Compound at Hyannisport. Speaking of Kennedy, a fitting ending for him. I never liked him anyway.
Great update. Hope you can finish this and Siegerkranz (and perhaps work on Lion and Lily once more- really liked that one).
No promises, but I liked The Lion and the Lily too. I will say that the Hundred Years' War is somewhat less than a hundred years and is more accurately called King Edward's War.
EDIT - And Nathan, the reason I didn't include Hyannisport is because... I forgot it existed. No, really. My reaction to your comment was a facepalm and a "how did I miss that?"
EDIT - And Nathan, the reason I didn't include Hyannisport is because... I forgot it existed. No, really. My reaction to your comment was a facepalm and a "how did I miss that?"
11. Operation Serpent: Grossdeutschland
Like most of the elite formations raised in the War Years, the Grossdeutschland Division had suffered considerable bloat. Grossdeutschland responded by expanding incrementally; thus, in addition to Panzerkorps Brandenburg, comprised of Panzerdivision and Panzergrenadierdivision Brandenburg, which had contributed much of the manpower for the recently formed Gebirgsdivision Grossdeutschland, there were Panzerkorps Grossdeutschland 1, 2, and 3, each made of an armored and a mechanized division. The final addition had been the recent field-expedient mountain division grudgingly recognized by Heydrich over the summer. These divisions were color-coded by cuff title; armored divisions' "Grossdeutschland" was in gold thread, grenadier divisions in silver, and the color scheme was black-red-white for the three subordinate corps. All of this produced an esprit de corps that maintained Grossdeutschland's elan despite being a much larger formation than ever intended upon the establishment of the original regiment from Wachtbataillon Berlin.
Grossdeutschland also retained a largely symbolic value. Unlike most units, which were tied to a specific Wehrkreis for recruiting purposes, Grossdeutschland and Brandenburg recruited Reich-wide. Thus, Grossdeutschland acted in its own small way as a means to knit together both the newly acquired and traditional territories of Germany. For instance, the Alsatian Guy Mouminoux served in Panzergrenadierdivision Grossdeutschland from 1943 to 1949. Mouminoux remained involved in the divisional association after; he was typical of Grossdeutschland's recruiting policies and strong hold on its members. Grossdeutschland service became viewed as a prerequisite for higher promotion in the Reichsheer, bringing as it did connotations of a more cosmopolitan worldview. It became impossible, by the 1960s, for a Reichsheer officer to rise beyond Major without either South American service or a tour in one of the Grossdeutschland units.
This, then, was the force which General von Kleist had at his disposal to break into the American industrial country. The Alleghenies had been breached, and the more hospitable land between the mountains and the Great Lakes opened in front of him. There was very little formal resistance in this area. In the American heartland, rumors were that new divisions had organized and were being rushed willy-nilly to confront the German advance. To his front was the American 28th Infantry Division, a militia division which had the dubious distinction of being the oldest division in the United States Army, and whose shoulder patch had been called the "Bloody Bucket" in the first Great War. This division lacked active experience except in its very seniormost officers, some of whom had served with the elder Patton in the War Years. They were, in short, ill-suited to resist the Grossdeutschland advance. The 28th was augmented by fragments of the 27th and 29th Infantry brigaded with its native units, and the neighboring state of Ohio had fully mobilized its own militia division, the 37th Infantry Division. The equivalent of a German infantry corps was therefore concentrated around Pittsburgh, under the command of newly-promoted Lieutenant General Jonathan Seaman. Seaman chose to entrench his divisions heavily in the defense of Pittsburgh and Youngstown. This proved to be a prescient choice on his part; the Luftwaffe began operations to isolate the two cities in earnest at the beginning of July 1965. There would be no relief for his force, nor a likely escape once von Kleist began his offensive.
The Americans did not wait long; surprise was impossible here, so von Kleist spent two weeks hoarding supplies and fuel, then launched Brandenburg along the DuBois-Youngstown highway. They were stopped by determined resistance and an entrenched American defense north of Slippery Rock on 18 July 1965, after four days of combat. The Americans were momentarily cheered by this; however, they had neglected the other units of Grossdeutschland, which advanced in echelon after Brandenburg. Kittanning and Ford City fell to Grossdeutschland-1 on the twentieth; on the twenty-third, Gebirgsdivision Grossdeutschland occupied the outlying town of Greensburg and began setting up an artillery park. The ring around Pittsburgh had begun to tighten from all directions.
In response to the German noose, Seaman used his one combat engineering brigade to entrench heavily, and every time a building was flattened by advancing artillery, it was almost immediately honeycombed into a defensive network that rapidly engulfed the entire northeast approach to Pittsburgh. The great steel mills of the city were tapering off production, but remained targets for the Luftwaffe; the wreckage of the US Steel works became a linchpin of Seaman's defenses. Von Kleist was, of course, aware of the defensive preparations, though not of their extent. Both his own reconnaissance and Steinhoff's Luftwaffe reported constantly, but there was no way to know the depths of Pittsburgh's subterranean armoring.
This was the situation when von Kleist gave the order for a Grossdeutschland-2 thrust at the critical juncture of Wexford. Capturing Wexford would drive a wedge between Youngstown and Pittsburgh; it was the first and closest point for the reduction in detail of the two cities. Wexford was also a preview of things to come. The Americans used every device available, from improvised incendiaries to pits scrabbled out of their streets, to slow the armored advance, and the Grossdeutschland troopers found themselves relying on grenade, flamethrower, and assault gun, like a scene from Kharkov a generation earlier. The plan had been for the reduction of Wexford by the twenty-sixth. Instead, von Kleist received word on the very last day of July that the town had fallen. The one blessing hidden in this delay was that the road and rail network to the east was open to resupply his artillery, which was now consuming ammunition at a prodigious rate. This was when he issued his famous order to "make the rubble jump."
Of course, the concentration of air and artillery against Pittsburgh meant that the Brandenburg forces on the north side of Pittsburgh, which were expanding the wedge created by the capture of Wexford, labored without the benefit of these assets. Thus, they spent two weeks grinding forward against strong opposition along the Ohio River. The Americans' defeat was all but foreordained, but they sold themselves dearly, all to gain fifteen miles of river frontage and a foothold on the west bank at Beaver. Von Kleist, horrified at the high casualties sustained to secure the Beaver bridgehead, ordered a change of tack, returning to the approach which Grossdeutschland had used to cross the Alleghenies and seizing small packets of land wherever an opportunity presented itself. The Grossdeutschland advance slowed to a crawl, true, but it remained an advance, and the artillery continued to pound Pittsburgh around the clock.
Von Kleist had hoped, of course, to seize the first major American industrial centers by coup de main, and advance out into the more open country of the American Midwest where his armored forces could be deployed to maximum advantage. It looked like this was not to be, thanks to Seaman's defense in considerable depth. Even once Pittsburgh was isolated, the units in that city and Youngstown fought as if nothing had happened, taking advantage of every opportunity to snipe at Grossdeutschland. It must be said that during this campaign the American standard of marksmanship was remarkably high, and it took the direct intervention of the marksmanship training unit at Zossen to bring the sniper menace under control by the deployment of entire platoons of sharpshooters. The result was the creation of a field-expedient marksman training unit at DuBois, drawing again heavily from Brandenburg and now from Gebirgs-Grossdeutschland.
The main accomplishment of von Kleist at Pittsburgh was that he avoided the temptation to turn the area into a battle of attrition, which he doubtless would have won, but at the cost of crippling one of the major combat commands in the Americas. Instead, he contented himself with expanding the breach between Pittsburgh and Youngstown, transforming the breach into an encirclement and expanding the Beaver bridgehead with the transfer of much of his armor to the southwest bank of the Ohio. The ring closed around Pittsburgh and his focus shifted to encircling Youngstown in like kind to create two pockets which would wither on the vine. That, at least, was the theory. It perhaps neglected Seaman, whose dedication to the defense of Pittsburgh did not include ordering his soldiers to die in the city. Seaman was quite capable of ordering his forces to dissolve into the population or retreat at their own discretion through the Grossdeutschland perimeter, though he chose not to do so yet. He addressed his forces on 12 August 1965 to explain why they were holding in place. Seaman's speech was captured for posterity by Abwehr signals intelligence officers. Unlike Kennedy and his "Fortress Boston" speech, given at roughly the same time, Seaman did not quibble about whether Pittsburgh could hold. It could not, as he well knew. However, by resisting to the utmost, Pittsburgh and Youngstown could form a barrier to allow the American forces organizing in the interior time to train, equip, and organize, setting the stage for a grand battle for the great watershed of the Mississippi River valley. "As the Ohio flows to the Father of Waters," Seaman said, "so too does this battle set the stage for your brothers, your sons, and your cousins to defend this nation, and to avenge the sacrifices which we here make today."
This was overstating Seaman's case, coming as it did on the same day that von Kleist's soldiers penetrated Ohio and captured East Palestine. Grossdeutschland now fully encircled Pittsburgh, with Gebirgs-Grossdeutschland pressing toward Wheeling in West Virginia and Brandenburg in New Castle, so that fighting could be heard on all days from Youngstown proper. After six weeks of constant bombardment, von Kleist had decided to reapportion his artillery into a more reasonable deployment, save for the combined assault guns of his divisions, which he concentrated in a spearhead at Pittsburgh. With the Allegheny River anchoring their right flank, this makeshift brigade, and 1. Panzergrenadier Grossdeutschland in support, this makeshift brigade assaulted the city on 15 August. This assault was along the open, green spaces and upper-class neighborhoods along the river, which were most suitable to an armored thrust, and though the Americans made a spirited defense of the area which devolved to house-to-house fighting in the suburbs, at dawn on the sixteenth, the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers at the heart of Pittsburgh was in mortar range from all directions. Seaman began making preparations for the dissolution of his command.
He was hampered in this by the dispersion of the remnants of other commands; for instance, the remnants of the 29th Infantry Division operated south of the Monongahela River, while the New York 27th Infantry Division were north of the Allegheny. The Luftwaffe had reduced all of the bridges in the Pittsburgh area long ago, and made fording or bridging operations a near-impossibility even were Seaman to spare his engineers from the continuous reinforcement of the Pittsburgh defenses. It was these forces which Seaman released first. The New York militia division's few remaining soldiers were ordered to attempt a breakout using their remaining strength through the strong Grossdeutschland line to the north, and the Virginia infantry division's few holdouts were directed to attempt to infiltrate, or rather exfiltrate, through the German lines to the highlands of West Virginia. Seaman cold-bloodedly decided to hold the 28th Infantry Division, his strongest force, in Pittsburgh as long as he could, aiming for at least September before casing their colors and giving the order for every man for himself.
The 27th Infantry Division's breakout faltered early, its officers instead deciding to disperse homeward rather than fight their way out. They set a precedent by doing so, and many of them slipped into the population to form partisan units in the rural areas of New York. This was similar to the order which had been given to the 29th, but the 29th's officers did so under orders, rather than dispersing of their own accord. The 28th and Seaman himself watched these developments carefully and prepared against the inevitable breakthrough offensive. It was not long in coming. On 24 August, the combined weight of the three Grossdeutschland grenadier divisions assaulted Pittsburgh, where the 28th was low on ammunition, fuel, and batteries. Heartened by the makeshift assault brigade's success a week earlier, they overran the outer defenses of the American 28th Division, then pressed them back to the juncture of the rivers and finally broke organized resistance in Pittsburgh proper on the twenty-sixth.
Von Kleist was deprived of the satisfaction of a large bag of prisoners or Seaman himself, however; like rats deserting a sinking ship, the Americans fled the city or blended into the populace. Seaman was spirited from the city in a small wooden spotter aircraft and flew to Youngstown, where the defense continued in the same vein. With the reduction of Pittsburgh and the transfer of responsibility from frontline forces to Feldgendarmerie, von Kleist hoped to repeat the pocket reduction strategy against Youngstown. However, the American steel belt which began at Pittsburgh was more densely populated to the west, and it quickly became obvious that in addition to Youngstown, he would have to capture Akron and Cleveland for the offensive to do any good. That, then, was the plan which von Kleist developed in the late summer of 1965: an effort to cleave off the easternmost portion of the American "Steel Belt." The first stage of this was a difficult fight for New Philadelphia - difficult not because of resistance, but because eastern Ohio was crisscrossed with wooded ridges and draws that Grossdeutschland was as ill-suited to as they had been the streets of Pittsburgh. Of organized resistance in this sector there was almost none, but fugitives from the eastern campaign, and local partisans, combined to slow the Grossdeutschland advance in this critical area, with the result that it was not until the first of September that they reached the wide-open farming country beyond, and von Kleist transmitted the order for an all-out dash to the coast of Lake Erie. Ironically, the distance from their jump-off at Steubenville (named after a Prussian who taught the Americans proper military discipline in their rebellion against England) to New Philadelphia was half again as far as the distance from New Philadelphia to Sandusky, the endpoint of von Kleist's "rapier thrust," but the open-ground time was a third of the total operational timeline. On the fourth of September, Grossdeutschland-1 reported that it was firmly in contact with Lake Erie and was spreading out its perimeter.
Again, Seaman found himself trapped, though with a much larger pool of resources than merely Pittsburgh, and the painful business of grinding away at his outer defenses began once more. This time, Grossdeutschland had a much longer perimeter, an exposed open flank on the southwest side of the Sandusky salient, and the casualties which it had sustained in the past three months. However, American morale in the region was plummeting, Seaman's ammunition supply was extremely slim, and the Grossdeutschland soldiers, like Hohenstaufen and Das Reich in New England, smelled blood in the wind. Perhaps most importantly, the Americans, too, had an open flank: Guderian had breached the Bluegrass.
Like most of the elite formations raised in the War Years, the Grossdeutschland Division had suffered considerable bloat. Grossdeutschland responded by expanding incrementally; thus, in addition to Panzerkorps Brandenburg, comprised of Panzerdivision and Panzergrenadierdivision Brandenburg, which had contributed much of the manpower for the recently formed Gebirgsdivision Grossdeutschland, there were Panzerkorps Grossdeutschland 1, 2, and 3, each made of an armored and a mechanized division. The final addition had been the recent field-expedient mountain division grudgingly recognized by Heydrich over the summer. These divisions were color-coded by cuff title; armored divisions' "Grossdeutschland" was in gold thread, grenadier divisions in silver, and the color scheme was black-red-white for the three subordinate corps. All of this produced an esprit de corps that maintained Grossdeutschland's elan despite being a much larger formation than ever intended upon the establishment of the original regiment from Wachtbataillon Berlin.
Grossdeutschland also retained a largely symbolic value. Unlike most units, which were tied to a specific Wehrkreis for recruiting purposes, Grossdeutschland and Brandenburg recruited Reich-wide. Thus, Grossdeutschland acted in its own small way as a means to knit together both the newly acquired and traditional territories of Germany. For instance, the Alsatian Guy Mouminoux served in Panzergrenadierdivision Grossdeutschland from 1943 to 1949. Mouminoux remained involved in the divisional association after; he was typical of Grossdeutschland's recruiting policies and strong hold on its members. Grossdeutschland service became viewed as a prerequisite for higher promotion in the Reichsheer, bringing as it did connotations of a more cosmopolitan worldview. It became impossible, by the 1960s, for a Reichsheer officer to rise beyond Major without either South American service or a tour in one of the Grossdeutschland units.
This, then, was the force which General von Kleist had at his disposal to break into the American industrial country. The Alleghenies had been breached, and the more hospitable land between the mountains and the Great Lakes opened in front of him. There was very little formal resistance in this area. In the American heartland, rumors were that new divisions had organized and were being rushed willy-nilly to confront the German advance. To his front was the American 28th Infantry Division, a militia division which had the dubious distinction of being the oldest division in the United States Army, and whose shoulder patch had been called the "Bloody Bucket" in the first Great War. This division lacked active experience except in its very seniormost officers, some of whom had served with the elder Patton in the War Years. They were, in short, ill-suited to resist the Grossdeutschland advance. The 28th was augmented by fragments of the 27th and 29th Infantry brigaded with its native units, and the neighboring state of Ohio had fully mobilized its own militia division, the 37th Infantry Division. The equivalent of a German infantry corps was therefore concentrated around Pittsburgh, under the command of newly-promoted Lieutenant General Jonathan Seaman. Seaman chose to entrench his divisions heavily in the defense of Pittsburgh and Youngstown. This proved to be a prescient choice on his part; the Luftwaffe began operations to isolate the two cities in earnest at the beginning of July 1965. There would be no relief for his force, nor a likely escape once von Kleist began his offensive.
The Americans did not wait long; surprise was impossible here, so von Kleist spent two weeks hoarding supplies and fuel, then launched Brandenburg along the DuBois-Youngstown highway. They were stopped by determined resistance and an entrenched American defense north of Slippery Rock on 18 July 1965, after four days of combat. The Americans were momentarily cheered by this; however, they had neglected the other units of Grossdeutschland, which advanced in echelon after Brandenburg. Kittanning and Ford City fell to Grossdeutschland-1 on the twentieth; on the twenty-third, Gebirgsdivision Grossdeutschland occupied the outlying town of Greensburg and began setting up an artillery park. The ring around Pittsburgh had begun to tighten from all directions.
In response to the German noose, Seaman used his one combat engineering brigade to entrench heavily, and every time a building was flattened by advancing artillery, it was almost immediately honeycombed into a defensive network that rapidly engulfed the entire northeast approach to Pittsburgh. The great steel mills of the city were tapering off production, but remained targets for the Luftwaffe; the wreckage of the US Steel works became a linchpin of Seaman's defenses. Von Kleist was, of course, aware of the defensive preparations, though not of their extent. Both his own reconnaissance and Steinhoff's Luftwaffe reported constantly, but there was no way to know the depths of Pittsburgh's subterranean armoring.
This was the situation when von Kleist gave the order for a Grossdeutschland-2 thrust at the critical juncture of Wexford. Capturing Wexford would drive a wedge between Youngstown and Pittsburgh; it was the first and closest point for the reduction in detail of the two cities. Wexford was also a preview of things to come. The Americans used every device available, from improvised incendiaries to pits scrabbled out of their streets, to slow the armored advance, and the Grossdeutschland troopers found themselves relying on grenade, flamethrower, and assault gun, like a scene from Kharkov a generation earlier. The plan had been for the reduction of Wexford by the twenty-sixth. Instead, von Kleist received word on the very last day of July that the town had fallen. The one blessing hidden in this delay was that the road and rail network to the east was open to resupply his artillery, which was now consuming ammunition at a prodigious rate. This was when he issued his famous order to "make the rubble jump."
Of course, the concentration of air and artillery against Pittsburgh meant that the Brandenburg forces on the north side of Pittsburgh, which were expanding the wedge created by the capture of Wexford, labored without the benefit of these assets. Thus, they spent two weeks grinding forward against strong opposition along the Ohio River. The Americans' defeat was all but foreordained, but they sold themselves dearly, all to gain fifteen miles of river frontage and a foothold on the west bank at Beaver. Von Kleist, horrified at the high casualties sustained to secure the Beaver bridgehead, ordered a change of tack, returning to the approach which Grossdeutschland had used to cross the Alleghenies and seizing small packets of land wherever an opportunity presented itself. The Grossdeutschland advance slowed to a crawl, true, but it remained an advance, and the artillery continued to pound Pittsburgh around the clock.
Von Kleist had hoped, of course, to seize the first major American industrial centers by coup de main, and advance out into the more open country of the American Midwest where his armored forces could be deployed to maximum advantage. It looked like this was not to be, thanks to Seaman's defense in considerable depth. Even once Pittsburgh was isolated, the units in that city and Youngstown fought as if nothing had happened, taking advantage of every opportunity to snipe at Grossdeutschland. It must be said that during this campaign the American standard of marksmanship was remarkably high, and it took the direct intervention of the marksmanship training unit at Zossen to bring the sniper menace under control by the deployment of entire platoons of sharpshooters. The result was the creation of a field-expedient marksman training unit at DuBois, drawing again heavily from Brandenburg and now from Gebirgs-Grossdeutschland.
The main accomplishment of von Kleist at Pittsburgh was that he avoided the temptation to turn the area into a battle of attrition, which he doubtless would have won, but at the cost of crippling one of the major combat commands in the Americas. Instead, he contented himself with expanding the breach between Pittsburgh and Youngstown, transforming the breach into an encirclement and expanding the Beaver bridgehead with the transfer of much of his armor to the southwest bank of the Ohio. The ring closed around Pittsburgh and his focus shifted to encircling Youngstown in like kind to create two pockets which would wither on the vine. That, at least, was the theory. It perhaps neglected Seaman, whose dedication to the defense of Pittsburgh did not include ordering his soldiers to die in the city. Seaman was quite capable of ordering his forces to dissolve into the population or retreat at their own discretion through the Grossdeutschland perimeter, though he chose not to do so yet. He addressed his forces on 12 August 1965 to explain why they were holding in place. Seaman's speech was captured for posterity by Abwehr signals intelligence officers. Unlike Kennedy and his "Fortress Boston" speech, given at roughly the same time, Seaman did not quibble about whether Pittsburgh could hold. It could not, as he well knew. However, by resisting to the utmost, Pittsburgh and Youngstown could form a barrier to allow the American forces organizing in the interior time to train, equip, and organize, setting the stage for a grand battle for the great watershed of the Mississippi River valley. "As the Ohio flows to the Father of Waters," Seaman said, "so too does this battle set the stage for your brothers, your sons, and your cousins to defend this nation, and to avenge the sacrifices which we here make today."
This was overstating Seaman's case, coming as it did on the same day that von Kleist's soldiers penetrated Ohio and captured East Palestine. Grossdeutschland now fully encircled Pittsburgh, with Gebirgs-Grossdeutschland pressing toward Wheeling in West Virginia and Brandenburg in New Castle, so that fighting could be heard on all days from Youngstown proper. After six weeks of constant bombardment, von Kleist had decided to reapportion his artillery into a more reasonable deployment, save for the combined assault guns of his divisions, which he concentrated in a spearhead at Pittsburgh. With the Allegheny River anchoring their right flank, this makeshift brigade, and 1. Panzergrenadier Grossdeutschland in support, this makeshift brigade assaulted the city on 15 August. This assault was along the open, green spaces and upper-class neighborhoods along the river, which were most suitable to an armored thrust, and though the Americans made a spirited defense of the area which devolved to house-to-house fighting in the suburbs, at dawn on the sixteenth, the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers at the heart of Pittsburgh was in mortar range from all directions. Seaman began making preparations for the dissolution of his command.
He was hampered in this by the dispersion of the remnants of other commands; for instance, the remnants of the 29th Infantry Division operated south of the Monongahela River, while the New York 27th Infantry Division were north of the Allegheny. The Luftwaffe had reduced all of the bridges in the Pittsburgh area long ago, and made fording or bridging operations a near-impossibility even were Seaman to spare his engineers from the continuous reinforcement of the Pittsburgh defenses. It was these forces which Seaman released first. The New York militia division's few remaining soldiers were ordered to attempt a breakout using their remaining strength through the strong Grossdeutschland line to the north, and the Virginia infantry division's few holdouts were directed to attempt to infiltrate, or rather exfiltrate, through the German lines to the highlands of West Virginia. Seaman cold-bloodedly decided to hold the 28th Infantry Division, his strongest force, in Pittsburgh as long as he could, aiming for at least September before casing their colors and giving the order for every man for himself.
The 27th Infantry Division's breakout faltered early, its officers instead deciding to disperse homeward rather than fight their way out. They set a precedent by doing so, and many of them slipped into the population to form partisan units in the rural areas of New York. This was similar to the order which had been given to the 29th, but the 29th's officers did so under orders, rather than dispersing of their own accord. The 28th and Seaman himself watched these developments carefully and prepared against the inevitable breakthrough offensive. It was not long in coming. On 24 August, the combined weight of the three Grossdeutschland grenadier divisions assaulted Pittsburgh, where the 28th was low on ammunition, fuel, and batteries. Heartened by the makeshift assault brigade's success a week earlier, they overran the outer defenses of the American 28th Division, then pressed them back to the juncture of the rivers and finally broke organized resistance in Pittsburgh proper on the twenty-sixth.
Von Kleist was deprived of the satisfaction of a large bag of prisoners or Seaman himself, however; like rats deserting a sinking ship, the Americans fled the city or blended into the populace. Seaman was spirited from the city in a small wooden spotter aircraft and flew to Youngstown, where the defense continued in the same vein. With the reduction of Pittsburgh and the transfer of responsibility from frontline forces to Feldgendarmerie, von Kleist hoped to repeat the pocket reduction strategy against Youngstown. However, the American steel belt which began at Pittsburgh was more densely populated to the west, and it quickly became obvious that in addition to Youngstown, he would have to capture Akron and Cleveland for the offensive to do any good. That, then, was the plan which von Kleist developed in the late summer of 1965: an effort to cleave off the easternmost portion of the American "Steel Belt." The first stage of this was a difficult fight for New Philadelphia - difficult not because of resistance, but because eastern Ohio was crisscrossed with wooded ridges and draws that Grossdeutschland was as ill-suited to as they had been the streets of Pittsburgh. Of organized resistance in this sector there was almost none, but fugitives from the eastern campaign, and local partisans, combined to slow the Grossdeutschland advance in this critical area, with the result that it was not until the first of September that they reached the wide-open farming country beyond, and von Kleist transmitted the order for an all-out dash to the coast of Lake Erie. Ironically, the distance from their jump-off at Steubenville (named after a Prussian who taught the Americans proper military discipline in their rebellion against England) to New Philadelphia was half again as far as the distance from New Philadelphia to Sandusky, the endpoint of von Kleist's "rapier thrust," but the open-ground time was a third of the total operational timeline. On the fourth of September, Grossdeutschland-1 reported that it was firmly in contact with Lake Erie and was spreading out its perimeter.
Again, Seaman found himself trapped, though with a much larger pool of resources than merely Pittsburgh, and the painful business of grinding away at his outer defenses began once more. This time, Grossdeutschland had a much longer perimeter, an exposed open flank on the southwest side of the Sandusky salient, and the casualties which it had sustained in the past three months. However, American morale in the region was plummeting, Seaman's ammunition supply was extremely slim, and the Grossdeutschland soldiers, like Hohenstaufen and Das Reich in New England, smelled blood in the wind. Perhaps most importantly, the Americans, too, had an open flank: Guderian had breached the Bluegrass.
What's the Canadian Menace doing in all of this? Surely they cannot just stand by and watch... armored moose formations and elite Mountie stormtroopers may be gathering as we speak!
BS author reply: Well, they're fortifying a line along the Gulf of St. Laurence and preparing to defend the Great Lakes region, and resupplying American forces like Seaman's trapped corps as best they can with German air intervening in the Great Lakes.
Real author reply: That would require a knowledge of the Canadian military that I can't fake quite as well as anything in the US. Yet.
Real author reply: That would require a knowledge of the Canadian military that I can't fake quite as well as anything in the US. Yet.
Just think of the horses Guderian can round up when he reaches the Kentucky Derby. :laugh:
So kind of a good news-bad news thing...
Last Friday, my wife had to be hospitalized, and they did an emergency C-section Saturday to deliver our third and four children, ten weeks early. They're both fine, before anyone panics, and they're making measurable, visible progress from day to day. I won't bore you with the details, but it means that I have no time at all to write and barely enough time to do anything else for the foreseeable future. This isn't dead by any means, but commuting back and forth from the NICU takes precedence.
Last Friday, my wife had to be hospitalized, and they did an emergency C-section Saturday to deliver our third and four children, ten weeks early. They're both fine, before anyone panics, and they're making measurable, visible progress from day to day. I won't bore you with the details, but it means that I have no time at all to write and barely enough time to do anything else for the foreseeable future. This isn't dead by any means, but commuting back and forth from the NICU takes precedence.
Of course. No need to bother with this until that situation is well under control. Good luck to you and your family!
Good luck to you and your family!
Of course. No need to bother with this until that situation is well under control.
I agree. Besides, the Americans can use any break they can get right now.
12. Operation Serpent: The Cumberland Gap
The single greatest obstacle to any conqueror looking to advance from the sea to the plains in America was the Appalachian Mountains. These mountains, the steepest in the continent, were harder to breach than the Rockies far to the west, the passes harder to find, cut by deep river valleys inhabited by insular, clannish descendants of refugees from Scotland and Britain. They would have perhaps been a perfect place for Heydrich to test the loyalty of the Treaty Highlander divisions, but they were not to be committed here. Instead, in the summer of 1965, the younger Guderian proposed an operation inspired by American history and the Michael Offensive of 1918. Examining the American line, he chose the Cumberland Gap as the one place he could likely punch through, a broad enough valley that an American highway ran through it, but narrow enough that it could be sealed by an audacious thrust. Seizing the Gap, and neighboring Middlesboro, would grant access to the vital crossroads there and allow him to fan out into the interior plateau on the west side of the mountains. This was in essence the same plan the Americans themselves had used in colonizing the region. The part of it inspired by the Michael Offensive was the actual concept of the operation itself: the Luftwaffe would be used to create a large-scale box barrage, isolating the region, before plunging in an assault force as the bombardment moved forward. It was across territory unsuited to the armored forces he had under his own command, but suited well to the parachute forces under Steinhoff, who had acceded to the plan in Richmond.
Operations between the Richmond Conference and the execution of Fall Schwarzbär, the airborne seizure of the Cumberland Gap, advanced generally southeast along the convoluted valleys on the eastern side of the mountains. The goal was not so much the reduction of the American defenses in the region as jockeying for position for the great strike into the plains. Compared with the desperate fighting later in Ohio, and in Boston, the fighting between Bristol and Knoxville was desultory at best. Six weeks saw the Reichsheer advance almost a hundred kilometers and create a large enough reserve area to make the more daring operations planned to the north possible.
Three divisions of parachutists were committed to the operation, planned for 15 July 1965. Weather delays and coordination with von Kleist to the north led to a delay to 19 July. That did nothing to stop Luftwaffe operations: Rudel's fighter-bombers were already operating in the pine lands of eastern Kentucky. There they dropped incendiaries and defoliants to burn away every possible source of cover for the defenders, and to make it impossible to advance into the target area. This was Guderian's box barrage. The airborne assault in the early hours of 19 July at Middlesboro and the north end of the pass was coordinated with a sudden armored breakout. Finally Guderian transmitted the order: Schwarzbär.
The American highway running through the Cumberland Gap was razor-straight, laid along the valley created by a mix of meteor impact, natural fault, and river action. At the Virginia end was the small town of Harrogate, swelled to three times its population by Reichsheer troops who surged up and through the neighboring mountain pass; at the Kentucky end was Middlesboro. Between lay a twenty-kilometer stretch of road that traversed a hundred-meter rise and fall, easily covered by his mobile artillery and Luftwaffe action. Even so, there was tremendous concern when the first parachutists landed at the Middlesboro end of the pass. First reports were confused, fragmented, and indicated that the drop had scattered badly. Reports in Guderian's headquarters compared the drop to a notorious staff exercise, the Nijmegen Drill. Resistance was minimal, however, and the Americans were too shocked by Guderian's willingness to conduct an airborne operation in such difficult terrain to respond adequately. The parachutists regrouped fully in time to steal a march on the armored force, greeting the Panzertruppen high in the gap, where charges had destroyed the roadway and forced Guderian's engineers to work feverishly to reopen the road. Reportedly, the first greeting exchanged between the two forces was a parachute scout who saw the pioneers below and called down, "What took you so long?"
Seizure of Middlesboro was just the first part of Guderian's breakout, though, made more difficult by the steep valleys and, unexpectedly, the clannish locals. In many of these places, local loyalty trumped national or even state loyalty. During America's civil war, many of these men in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky had fought for the north despite being widely considered southerners. They had not fought so much for the north as for their clans, and for the chance to avenge themselves on neighbors. This had led to the infamous Hatfield-McCoy Feud after the war, and was just as true in 1965 as it had been a hundred years prior. Local militias organized by clan leaders and armed with bolt-action rifles, with names like the Alvin York Guards, all out of proportion to their size and training, provided Guderian with tremendous difficulties. The need for combat troops to be detailed to protect every convoy, the frequency of stopping such convoys to react to ambushes, and the ill-will generated by Rudel's indiscriminate bombing of the region lent credence to the American boast that any invader would be stopped by a mass rising of American riflemen. It lent credence, but not truth, for Guderian did not stop.
It took Guderian two weeks to fight the twenty kilometers from Middlesboro to Pineville on the long Kentucky Ridge, a dominant feature that ran northeast-southwest and provided a hard stop to Guderian's force until he could find some way of breaking through. In the fast-moving pace of the American war, a two-week advance of twenty kilometers was unacceptable to the impatient Heydrich, though Hausser understood the complexities of the terrain. Guderian thus decided to change emphasis for a short period and struck hard to the southwest with his reserves, entering Knoxville on the third of August. From here, they continued the advance westward, seizing Oliver Springs two days later, and thereby finding a southern pass to the Kentucky Ridge and the difficult valleys on its far side.
The Americans, lacking a central command, put up little resistance. Trainees were rushed from the basic training center at Fort Campbell to the south, and local militia units did whatever they could wherever they could, but there was only so much that they could do to stop the tide. Here Guderian again showed his father's killer instinct, emphasis on mobility, and bureaucratic audacity: he had not yet relinquished the parachutists, and thus three light infantry divisions assaulted on the axis Pineville-London, across the steep-sided pine valleys and sharp river cuts of eastern Kentucky. Veterans from these units maintain that an unofficial order was given to depopulate the region; no official record of such order exists. However, it was certainly in keeping with the savagery of the mountain war. A survey of orders and awards from this period of the American war show an astonishing vagueness in citations and promotion orders for valor and merit both, even for awards which normally would be in the Reichsheerbericht.
It took three weeks for the parachutists to reach London, which declared itself open in light of the horrors unfolding to the north in the Steel Belt, and Guderian once again shifted his focus. London marked the transition from the arduous valleys of eastern Kentucky to the plateau, the Bluegrass Country, home of some of America's finest horses. Here, Guderian could begin maneuvering his armored forces freely. One last great northeast-southwest ridge stood before him, and then there was no high ground to mention between him and the Rockies. On the first day of September, Guderian massed the four divisions of 16. Panzerkorps northwest of London, ordered enough fuel and ammunition for ninety days' worth of normal operations to be stored in the town, and gave his famous General Order: "Soldiers of this force may seek their quarters in Lexington, and no sooner."
American accounts of the fighting in this region highlight the Cossack-like mobility of Bluegrass cavalry troopers. While it is true they fought with considerable elan, they were generally undisciplined and had more courage than sense, or they fought a cowardly war of sniping and running. Rudel had a great deal to do with this, as his order to "bathe Kentucky in fire" had far-reaching consequences in the region. Casualties in Guderian's units were roughly equal between front-line combat troops and support troops, and many support units found themselves awarding the Close Combat Badge in numbers never before seen. However, the outcome was never seriously in doubt. Two weeks after Guderian gave the order, exhausted soldiers of 116. Panzergrenadierdivision transmitted their position from inside the Kentucky state house in Frankfort, outside Lexington. Guderian was now free in the Bluegrass country, and looked north toward Cincinnati to relieve the strain on von Kleist, and south toward Memphis to reach the Mississippi.
The single greatest obstacle to any conqueror looking to advance from the sea to the plains in America was the Appalachian Mountains. These mountains, the steepest in the continent, were harder to breach than the Rockies far to the west, the passes harder to find, cut by deep river valleys inhabited by insular, clannish descendants of refugees from Scotland and Britain. They would have perhaps been a perfect place for Heydrich to test the loyalty of the Treaty Highlander divisions, but they were not to be committed here. Instead, in the summer of 1965, the younger Guderian proposed an operation inspired by American history and the Michael Offensive of 1918. Examining the American line, he chose the Cumberland Gap as the one place he could likely punch through, a broad enough valley that an American highway ran through it, but narrow enough that it could be sealed by an audacious thrust. Seizing the Gap, and neighboring Middlesboro, would grant access to the vital crossroads there and allow him to fan out into the interior plateau on the west side of the mountains. This was in essence the same plan the Americans themselves had used in colonizing the region. The part of it inspired by the Michael Offensive was the actual concept of the operation itself: the Luftwaffe would be used to create a large-scale box barrage, isolating the region, before plunging in an assault force as the bombardment moved forward. It was across territory unsuited to the armored forces he had under his own command, but suited well to the parachute forces under Steinhoff, who had acceded to the plan in Richmond.
Operations between the Richmond Conference and the execution of Fall Schwarzbär, the airborne seizure of the Cumberland Gap, advanced generally southeast along the convoluted valleys on the eastern side of the mountains. The goal was not so much the reduction of the American defenses in the region as jockeying for position for the great strike into the plains. Compared with the desperate fighting later in Ohio, and in Boston, the fighting between Bristol and Knoxville was desultory at best. Six weeks saw the Reichsheer advance almost a hundred kilometers and create a large enough reserve area to make the more daring operations planned to the north possible.
Three divisions of parachutists were committed to the operation, planned for 15 July 1965. Weather delays and coordination with von Kleist to the north led to a delay to 19 July. That did nothing to stop Luftwaffe operations: Rudel's fighter-bombers were already operating in the pine lands of eastern Kentucky. There they dropped incendiaries and defoliants to burn away every possible source of cover for the defenders, and to make it impossible to advance into the target area. This was Guderian's box barrage. The airborne assault in the early hours of 19 July at Middlesboro and the north end of the pass was coordinated with a sudden armored breakout. Finally Guderian transmitted the order: Schwarzbär.
The American highway running through the Cumberland Gap was razor-straight, laid along the valley created by a mix of meteor impact, natural fault, and river action. At the Virginia end was the small town of Harrogate, swelled to three times its population by Reichsheer troops who surged up and through the neighboring mountain pass; at the Kentucky end was Middlesboro. Between lay a twenty-kilometer stretch of road that traversed a hundred-meter rise and fall, easily covered by his mobile artillery and Luftwaffe action. Even so, there was tremendous concern when the first parachutists landed at the Middlesboro end of the pass. First reports were confused, fragmented, and indicated that the drop had scattered badly. Reports in Guderian's headquarters compared the drop to a notorious staff exercise, the Nijmegen Drill. Resistance was minimal, however, and the Americans were too shocked by Guderian's willingness to conduct an airborne operation in such difficult terrain to respond adequately. The parachutists regrouped fully in time to steal a march on the armored force, greeting the Panzertruppen high in the gap, where charges had destroyed the roadway and forced Guderian's engineers to work feverishly to reopen the road. Reportedly, the first greeting exchanged between the two forces was a parachute scout who saw the pioneers below and called down, "What took you so long?"
Seizure of Middlesboro was just the first part of Guderian's breakout, though, made more difficult by the steep valleys and, unexpectedly, the clannish locals. In many of these places, local loyalty trumped national or even state loyalty. During America's civil war, many of these men in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky had fought for the north despite being widely considered southerners. They had not fought so much for the north as for their clans, and for the chance to avenge themselves on neighbors. This had led to the infamous Hatfield-McCoy Feud after the war, and was just as true in 1965 as it had been a hundred years prior. Local militias organized by clan leaders and armed with bolt-action rifles, with names like the Alvin York Guards, all out of proportion to their size and training, provided Guderian with tremendous difficulties. The need for combat troops to be detailed to protect every convoy, the frequency of stopping such convoys to react to ambushes, and the ill-will generated by Rudel's indiscriminate bombing of the region lent credence to the American boast that any invader would be stopped by a mass rising of American riflemen. It lent credence, but not truth, for Guderian did not stop.
It took Guderian two weeks to fight the twenty kilometers from Middlesboro to Pineville on the long Kentucky Ridge, a dominant feature that ran northeast-southwest and provided a hard stop to Guderian's force until he could find some way of breaking through. In the fast-moving pace of the American war, a two-week advance of twenty kilometers was unacceptable to the impatient Heydrich, though Hausser understood the complexities of the terrain. Guderian thus decided to change emphasis for a short period and struck hard to the southwest with his reserves, entering Knoxville on the third of August. From here, they continued the advance westward, seizing Oliver Springs two days later, and thereby finding a southern pass to the Kentucky Ridge and the difficult valleys on its far side.
The Americans, lacking a central command, put up little resistance. Trainees were rushed from the basic training center at Fort Campbell to the south, and local militia units did whatever they could wherever they could, but there was only so much that they could do to stop the tide. Here Guderian again showed his father's killer instinct, emphasis on mobility, and bureaucratic audacity: he had not yet relinquished the parachutists, and thus three light infantry divisions assaulted on the axis Pineville-London, across the steep-sided pine valleys and sharp river cuts of eastern Kentucky. Veterans from these units maintain that an unofficial order was given to depopulate the region; no official record of such order exists. However, it was certainly in keeping with the savagery of the mountain war. A survey of orders and awards from this period of the American war show an astonishing vagueness in citations and promotion orders for valor and merit both, even for awards which normally would be in the Reichsheerbericht.
It took three weeks for the parachutists to reach London, which declared itself open in light of the horrors unfolding to the north in the Steel Belt, and Guderian once again shifted his focus. London marked the transition from the arduous valleys of eastern Kentucky to the plateau, the Bluegrass Country, home of some of America's finest horses. Here, Guderian could begin maneuvering his armored forces freely. One last great northeast-southwest ridge stood before him, and then there was no high ground to mention between him and the Rockies. On the first day of September, Guderian massed the four divisions of 16. Panzerkorps northwest of London, ordered enough fuel and ammunition for ninety days' worth of normal operations to be stored in the town, and gave his famous General Order: "Soldiers of this force may seek their quarters in Lexington, and no sooner."
American accounts of the fighting in this region highlight the Cossack-like mobility of Bluegrass cavalry troopers. While it is true they fought with considerable elan, they were generally undisciplined and had more courage than sense, or they fought a cowardly war of sniping and running. Rudel had a great deal to do with this, as his order to "bathe Kentucky in fire" had far-reaching consequences in the region. Casualties in Guderian's units were roughly equal between front-line combat troops and support troops, and many support units found themselves awarding the Close Combat Badge in numbers never before seen. However, the outcome was never seriously in doubt. Two weeks after Guderian gave the order, exhausted soldiers of 116. Panzergrenadierdivision transmitted their position from inside the Kentucky state house in Frankfort, outside Lexington. Guderian was now free in the Bluegrass country, and looked north toward Cincinnati to relieve the strain on von Kleist, and south toward Memphis to reach the Mississippi.
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Oh wow, it's great to see an old friend from long ago continuing his work! I'm going to have to re-read from the beginning because I don't have that great of memory! :glare:
Looks like HoI2 activity is picking up in light of the coming release of HoI4!
I'm going to have to re-read from the beginning because I don't have that great of memory! :glare: Looks like HoI2 activity is picking up in light of the coming release of HoI4!
I wish - I have a bunch of other Paradox products slotted before I pick up HoI4. I still don't have EU4, which has an expansion coming, I'm eyeing Runemaster, and I'm behind on expansions for CK2. No, what happened is I need to de-stress, and writing does that admirably for me, so I decided to revisit my babies (not the literal ones).
But still - I'm glad someone's still reading.
But still - I'm glad someone's still reading.
I hated HoI3, and I still play HoI2 (Doomsday/Armageddon) all the time. Although, EU4 is definitely well-worth the buy. Of course, outside of Paradox titles, I really love Don't Starve right now. Although I think I will wait to see how the reviews for Runemaster come out before looking into it, since this is a step outside the usual Paradox games.
