Paths of Glory, Germany 1938 MP AAR

[Forgiven]

Foreword;

While I intented to write really extensive AAR of this one day, I kept pushing it back, mainly because my original plan eventually stretched to over 50 chapters and I just never got around to writing it up, so this is somewhat, shortened, I'll skip the story writing part and just go over events and the thoughts behind them.

The game in question was Monday Game XIII, and while the link I'll shortly provide will shed some futher light to the game, it will also probably include heave spoilers, so you may want to skip it for now if you actually intend to follow the story as it unfolds, as the game has already been finished; Forum

This was also played with version 1.3 with no modifications. (Except 3(?) in savegames that will later be noted)

Prologue

If you get terribly bored by statistics, you may wish to skip this....

We'll now explored the situation in which we find ourselves in september 1938 after the Sudeten have been added to the reich.

The first table shows state of economies of various major and minor powers:

Nation                IC        Energy        Metal        Rares     Oil       Supplies   Fuel  Money   Manpower  Leadership Officers
Germany             163/224     30338+321     14882+12     7426-2    14652     13460      6452    49    1624+10,6  30,48       125%*
Italy                70/92      12488-56       6214+7      3151+1     6217     13318      7652    21     812+6.7   14,30       100%
Japan               122/201      9456-151      4760-60     2354-43    4704     10375      5100    16    1414+20,7  20,02       100%
Soviet Union        178/173     33521+589     16757+293    8351+136  16027     11480      6843    67    1114+9,2   16,50        60%
United Kingdom      161/100     29871+892(?)  14869+426    7419+201  14849     19273     18530    57     385+3,1   27,30       110%
France              108/62      21348+1850(?) 10717+951    5294+443  10564     16041      6853    38     968+8,0   14,30       100%
USA                 284/177     53151+1504    26197+318   12934+77   26066      9327     10436   106     214+1,7   33,75       100%
Hungary              27/36       3854-3        2484+27     1225+5     2401      1992       421     7     226+1,8    3,84        97%
Romania              35/17       6336+18       3164+7      1582+3     3174      2851      1404    12     158+1,3    4,68       100%

Short explanation, first number is the amount in storage, second is daily or monthly change, however, for nations with overseas posessions said numbers are awfully inaccurate, thus occasionally noted with (?).
As you can see, the Axis currently enjoys parity in effective IC, however, it is just as clear, that the moment war breaks out, that 'advantage' will be lost, also worth noting, that Axis manpower resources are way larger than those of their enemies, and as their recruitment laws are already rather high, they are also gaining lot more manpower as is. Soviet laws were upgraded to highest available before taking these numbers. We can also see how much more raw materials the allied and comitern have compared to Axis, luckily especially soviets were quite willing to trade said resources against supplies.

Next to military numbers;





From these we can observe the depressing state of German military, not only have we barely seventh largest army in the world, but our apparently hostile neighbors France and Poland have more than twice our strenght, in numbers at least, and especially french and british armies may well hold quality edge as well. Thus it is imperative we spend the next year pushing our military production as far as we can. Even so, at this point I expected I'd have to make some very agressive moves to convince my enemies, that I had the strenght to take and hold offensive, so they would not push too hard and attempt to turn the tables, in all honesty, I was half afraid the Wehrmacht would fail to conquer France...

[Forgiven]

First Chapter

September 1938 - September 1939;

The Spanish Civil war ended 22nd of september 1938, with definite Nationalist victory.

On 3rd of October '38 Germany finished annexing Bohemia and Moravia to the Reich, the french and brits tried to claim that no such thing had been agreed in Munchen but ministry of public information quickly dismissed such claims.

The war in Far East was progressing without anyone in west paying much of an attention to what was going on, so everyone was rather suprised to hear Japan announce they had annexed China on 5th of January '39. While some minor parts continued to resist, most of china was now controlled by the IJA.
Meanwhile Italy reclaimed it ancient territories in Albania.

The events were now picking up pace, as shortly after Italy had reclaimed Albania they sought to add Yugoslavia to the Imperium by declaring war on them on 29th of January '39. Germany knowing state of Yugoslavian military expected this to be fast affair, alas, the Italian advance suprisingly did get stalled for a while. Having had such good experiences in spanish civil war Germany decided to send few mountain divisions as 'volunteers' to reinforce the stalled italian advance. The decisive moment however only came three months later when Hungary also joined the war on Italian side backstabbing the yugoslavian troops that had by this time opened them empty road to Belgrad, leading to Yugoslavia beeing divided between Hungary and Italy on 29th of April.

Map showing main offensives of the war;

[Forgiven]

With us now having access to classified information of all sides, let us view how the state of respective nations had improved in last 11 months, as of 1st of August 1938 (yes, sadly I had no save game from month later, so this is what you'll get).

We shall start our review again with state of economy;

Nation                IC        Energy        Metal        Rares     Oil       Supplies   Fuel  Money   Manpower  Leadership Officers
Germany             177/269     87945+161     35368+44    29829+80   13101      9180     26247   366    1475+12,1  32,60       148%
  changes           +14/+45    +57600-160    +20500+32   +22400+82   -1000     -4300    +20000  +310    -150+1,5   +2,1        +23%
Italy                79/136     18640+21      10094-23     7717+8     5033     35356     12926   270     738+9,4   14,84       105%
  changes            +9/+44     +6000+77      +3800-30    +4500+7    -1200    +22000     +5300  +250     -80+2,7    +,54        +5%
Japan               139/232     29775-170     12458-140    1218-41       0     19008       753   166    1250+31,6  25,24        69%
  changes           +17/+31    +20000-20      +7800-80    -1100+2    -4700     +9000     -4350  +150    -160+10,9  +5,22       -31%
Hungary              36/57       4628+47       3226-7      2194+4     1439     23825      2924   759     203+3,3    4,15       103%
  changes            +9/+21      +800+50       +800-34    +1000-1    -1000    +22000     +2500  +752     -23+1,5    +,31        +6%
Romania              35/18      11265+17       5186+3      3329+3     5910      4872      4025   552     146+1,1    4,87        92%
  changes             0/+1      +4800-1       +2000-4     +1750-0    +2700     +2000     +2600  +540     -12-0,2    +,19        -8%
Soviet Union        178/235     67595+158     50357+91    10203-0    10577     24482     37898   509    1102+17,5  17,18        61%
  changes             0/+62    +34000-430    +36000-330   +3000-136  -6000    +13000    +31000  +450     -12+8,3    +,68        +1%
United Kingdom      161/221     39530-87      40880-150   76742-106  18001     11194     36121  1815      85+11,2  27,3        101%
  changes             0/+121   +10000-xxx    +26000-xxx  +68000-xxx  +4000     -8000    +18000 +1800    -300+8,1    0           +1%
France              108/159     34819+22      29482+40     7496-60    4956     22486      9918  2550     790+8,5   14,30        88%
  changes             0/+93    +13000-xxx     +3000-xxx   +2200-xxx  -5000     +6000     +3000 +2400    -180+0.5    0          -12%
USA                 284/184     99999+400     99999+300   21754+14   97689     23500     42740 13648     148+1,8   33,75        95%
  changes             0/+7     +47000-1100   +74000-18    +9000-53  +71000    +14000    +32000 +**       -66+0,1    0           -5%

This time there is second line named 'changes' after each country, this shows change to situation year ago...

As we can see, while Japanese resource situation is not great, the German Reich has been heavily trading with soviets to create high stockpiles for the upcoming war; We also note that while the Alliest are not yet in war, their industry already surpasses that of the axis. Axis manpower reserves are still rather high and especially german officer corps have grown extensively in this period, while Japanese have heavily drafted from China without being able to speed up their officer program at same rate.

Let's take a look into the Army numbers next;




While the German army has grown a bit, and heavily armorized, I might have actually considered futher had I known the French army had also grown by 100 brigades, while mostly garrisons, it was still impressive number, then again, Nationalist spain had joined Axis and french were now just as surrounded as I was. While somewhat irrelevant, at this point it was obvious only Germany and Soviets had started major armor buildup program, rest were relying in the good ol' infantry or not really building up the armed forces.

(If someone really wants I'll compile the Air and Navy numbers but it seems I don't have them prepared yet)

[Forgiven]

Chapter Three

August 1939 - October 1939

In August, Germany withdrew it's support to slovakian goverment after they stated getting too indepence minded, and allowed Hungary to claim those territories aswell, the hungarian army made quick work and annexed slovakia on 18th of August.
Meanwhile, the United States chose to abandon their non interventionist stance and declared alliance with the United Kingdom and guaranteed Polish indepence like the other western powers had already done earlier, this was major suprise to German leadership, who had assumed they would not take such agressive stance, at least not without a threath to France or United Kingdom, certainly they were not expected to make a stand for Polish dictatorship.
However the plans for invasion were too far ahead and no recall could be issued, after all the agreement with Soviets and Hungary for splitting Poland was finally coming to conclusion, and backing out was next to impossible, thus, on 13th of September, Germany declared war on Poland, to reclaim the freestate of Danzig and other german areas.

German Order of Battle on eve of the Invasion;

Armee F was the main formation for west front, assigned to hold back French forces and possible british landing or belgian/dutch invasion, assigned thus along whole western front.
Armee P, was the weak force assigned for Königsberg and later to take over eastern front and cover border with the soviets, as you can see, it was only made of italian style 2 brigade divisions, as the rifle production was still short of goals and it was deemed necessary to offer soviets some show of force in east, so they would not be tempted to take the opportunity for early invasion.
Armee G, with it's 3 armor corps was the main offensive force, with initial goal of crushing Poland and then sweeping across Germany to invade France.
Armee B, well, well, we'll get to that in a bit, thou you can do mental exercise about the letters meanwhile.

The Plan for Poland, while almost a complete success by german forces, left lot to be desired from Hungarian forces (which were still busy securing Slovakia) and Soviet forces, who apparently relied on runners and missed the invasion order by month, only occupying eastern part after Polish surrender.
Luckily Polish forces had redeployed to cover extented Hungarian front leaving the area in front of III. Panzerkorps almost totally uncovered, which was completely exploited by the fast corps. Only in Warzow did the german troops meet some resistance, but you must remember that the troops invading from Königsberg were mostly fresh recruits organised in light divisions.


Meanwhile...

The Hochseeflotte had sailed sailed from Kiel on 8th of August, taking roundabout route along norwegian Coast to wait for invasion signal near Iceland...
Having avoided detection it arrived at the Scottish coast around 16th and landed the whole force of Armee B to take over port of Scapa Slow and free the Scottish clans from suppression of English.
Sadly while the suprise was great, the invasion failed to accomplish it's main goal of taking scapa flow, or the secondary goal of taking any other port for supplying the force. This was mainly due to fast reaction of british admiralty that swiftly reinforced Scapa Flow via sea with fresh troops.
While it was indeed something of a dissapointment, it still served to draw away British forces from assisting French when it was time to move to the western front.

Situation in scotland short while before the German troops ran out of the supplies they had arrived with (6th of october):

[Forgiven]

Ok, I think that's enough for now, need to take a small break in this writing.

[Forgiven]

Chapter Four

October 1939 - May 1940

In case you couldn't read from between the lines, I highly value being unpredictable, if for no other reason than to make my opponents commit troops to defence, this timeframe shows that even more...

Meanwhile, in east;

While Germany was keeping busy with Poland and United Kingdom, Soviet Union pursued the territories agreed as it's frontier by Ribbentrop, quickly annexing Baltic countries and pushing forth with invasion of Finland, while the war in Finland did not seem to progress very fast, the soviet pressure was inevitably pushing deeper...

Having delivered Armee B to Scotland, Hochseeflotte fast retreated, escaping almost without damage from it's first mission, and later arrived in Danzig. Alas, Balticseeflotte was sunk trying to interrupt shipping of fresh troops to Scapa Flow. However, I and II Armeekorps had began moving towards Danzig upon confirmation that fall of Poland was inevitable, and were shortly reassigned to reinforce Armee B, where fighting was not going as well as was hoped.

And thus, October 13th, Hochseeflotte arrived at Maidenstone, and disbarked near 80000 men on the coast of England, 2 of the intented 10 divisions failed to make landing as english fleet arrived to interrupt the operation and fleet was forced to fall back to Wilhelmshaven with them still onboard. Without the naval landing part, invasion of port of Dover took bit longer than expected, but was eventually succesful, meanwhile the advance elements of landing force had already managed to capture London forcing the British goverment to flee north. Waste fleet of transport ships arrived to Thames to ship all that they could remove from London back to mainland.



To replace these korps fresh panzer korps was added to Armee G, which had arrived to the Maginot line. Having noted that the fortifications existed and remembering the failure of schliffen plan in previous war, OKW had opted that this time, it would be straight forward push though, surround the fortifications and proceed to the undefended french heartland and force surrender. For this purpose IV. Panzerkorps had been created, with 3 panzer brigades equipped with newest model panzers and supporting engineer regiment, they had been training just for this breach in the Sudeten where Checz fortifications were effectively used to simulate maginot line.

Thus, after invasion of Dover was in progress to futher divert british forces, Germany asked Franco to declare war on France and invade over The Pyrenees on 29th of October (meanwhile British troops supported by americans managed to recapture London). Few days later, hoping that French attention had been succesfully drawn south, German divisions began assault on Maginot line, with focal point being Wissembourg and the rest of attacks just being diversions to hold troops in place.



While even with bomber support the breakthrough took a while, it was eventually achieved, and rest of the panzerkorps of Armee G poured through to surround Maginot line, French after realizing they'd lost their main defensive line did put up quite heavy resistance, but the threath of Italians and actual Spanish assault in south drew forces that would have been necessary to actually hold the line, and the British were still busy clearing up invasion of their own island.

The cost of this breakthrough was steep, while the actual push at Maginot line did not actually cost life of all that many soldiers, Wehrmacht lost around 150 000 men on the shores British Isles, just to divert the British, and capture some quality furniture for Führer's office from Harrods.
In fact, Germany had to rely upon some Hungarian troops to hold it's border with netherlands so it could free it's own corps to keep the maginot line surrounded, there were after all, only 20 panzer divisions and 25 infantry divisions available for west front at this time, against those ~100 french divisions (- those occupied by spanish).

However, the plan did work, by early January German forces had managed to surround Maginot line, while French forces managed to temporarily relieve the northern pocket, it was eventually closed again without allowing much of the troops to escape. After this German forces were forced to stand still for a while, to refrom and resupply, however, after they had done so, the real blitzkrieg was begun, and french forces holding were quickly overrun or surronded by faster Wehrmacht divisions.



...Meanwhile, in east...

February 20th, Finland surrendered so Soviet Union, who reclaimed this old part of Russia, that had been given indepence earlier on assumption it would later voluntarily join the worker's revolution. Despite the earlier pact with Germany, Soviets decided to push forth and declared war on Sweden the very same day, progressing to annex them on 6th of May and after then pushing to annex Norway on 18th, while Germany sent a halfhearted diplomatic protest, we were unable to make any real threaths with situation in west still being volatile.

Also as a sideplay, Romania decided to attack Bulgaria on 6th of January, swiftly annexing them by the end of month.

...Return to west...

While the chance of USA joining in support of Poland had been considered low, it was even more shocking for 1. SS Panzer division under von Arnim to find them defending Marseilles, it had been assumed that quality of their troops would be so low that they would not make any real efford to defend France, even if some americans had been assumed to participate in the battle of Dover. The estimates of their quality, alas, were right on the money, as their 18 divisions were strugling to hold back the German elite spearhead.



(side note, US was AI controlled for first session until 1st of August, so the quality is not to be blamed upon controller)

And to end, Gif showing events in europe between 13th of sept and 18th of may.

[DireSituation]

Ah, so this was the map I saw at AltHist.com

[General War]

The animated map looks great.

[Forgiven]

Can't take credit for that map, stole it from our Soviet player

[itsdodge]

Excellent game reportage! Looking forward to more updates

[Forgiven]

Chapter Five

June 1940 - November 1940

Let us first observe few minor details we skimmed over in the past.

The Air war had been quite minor up to this point, and would continue to be so for a while yet, main operations were bombing of Maginot line and Hungarian airforces attempts to bomb Gibraltar to pieces. British bombers had made few attempts to bomb german cities, but most of these were intercepted fast enough to avoid any real damage.

You may also remember Hochseeflotte escaping after the landing in Maidstone, and yes, the force had indeed taken serious damage in the battle, losing some of it's escorts and taking quite heavy damage to the heavier ships as well, thus it withdrew all the way to port of Danzig for repairs.

Alas, the British navy was having none of that, and chased after them, and ordered air strikes from carriers succesfully sinking all but Tirpitz and Bismark that managed to make run out of the port in barely working condition, and Bismark did indeed get sunk in the night, Tirpitz escaped to Königsberg, it is to this day assumed British thought she had been sunk too, as they withdrew after this, but in the end, they had managed to reduce Kriegsmarine to 1 bb that would take next 6 months to repair and 2 submarines that had been operating in southern atlantic, these were now recalled to northern spain to replace the submarines that had already been sunk trying to blockade United Kingdom.

This meant that there was no possiblity of rescuing any of the divisions landed across the channel, and that the goal that had been to ensure that British would maintain heavy forces to cover their home was somewhat diminished, as it was clear Germany no longer had means to transport troops over the channel.

In the Mediterranean while Italy had so far remained out of the war, a covert operation had been initiated where Italian submarine fleet had their isignia repainted to those of kriegsmarine and some uniforms had also been shipped to complete the appearances, these submarines then waged war against british commerce even while Italy remained formally neutral.

During the next period, Germany invited Brazil and Romania to join the axis, after this Italy and Hungaria insisted their friendls Greece and Portugal also belonged to axis and they were also invited in. Thus there were now only 4 unaligned countries left in Europe.

On 15th of June, Soviets forwarded claims for Besarabia, while Romania was quite unwilling to give these up, and Germany tried to diplomatically note to Soviets that they had already taken up quite more than agreed in north, generals adviced that Germany was not quite yet ready for a war in east, and in the end Romania yielded the territories.

On 17th of June, after insistence from political leadership that plans be accelerated, Switzerland was invaded and annexed with the week.

July saw Belgium and Netherlands allowing German troops take over their coastal defences and formal agreement signed joining these two to germany with local autonomy (collaboration goverments).

As negotiations with Denmark failed, Germany invaded in August and while the armored divisions failed to take Copenhagen and and infantry corps had to be called in from Netherlands, the war still lasted less than a month.

Meanwhile Nationalist Spain was strugling to keep what they had taken in africa before fall of France as british forces had begun operation to recover these lands.

Thus, to support their Spanish friends, Italy joined the war and invaded Egypt in late August, initially forcing back the british and coming close to capturing Alexandria, unfortunately this was a turning point and the Italian forces were then driven back, slowly. And, as we can see, the Americans provided some support for the British here in Egypt as well:



Naval losses in the war by the end of October;

Allies Class Axis
   5     BB    3
   1     CV    0
   0     BC    3
   6     CA   13
   21    CL   18
   15    DD   21
   1     SS   10
   8     TP   12

It is worth note though, that while Italians managed to sink those british BB's, their own fleet was in need of heavy repairs after the battle and had lost most of their screen.

Map covering this 'time of minor incidents' :

[Forgiven]

Chapter six

1st of September 1940

After the first year of war, economic situation had changed quite a bit, not least because France was no more and UK and USA had now fully geared up for war.

Nation                IC        Energy        Metal        Rares     Oil       Supplies   Fuel  Money   Manpower  Leadership Officers
Germany             228/410     99999+368     99999+31    93191-74   28326     55847     66708  6670    1060+27,1  38,80       192%
  changes           +51/+141   +11000+200    +64000+13   +63000-154 +15000    +46000    +40000 +6300    -415+15,0  +6,20       +44%
Italy                78/136     25000+88      12971-9     10959-4     6309     51403     12646   644     829+9,9   15,36       115%
  changes            -1/0       +6400+67      +2900+14    +3000-12   +1300    +16000      -300  +370     +90+0,5    +,52       +10%
Japan               145/246     60218-248     23906-154    7202-58       0     27270      4486    44    1633+33,2  26,82       116%
  changes            +6/+14    +30000-70     +11500-14    +6000-60       0     +8000     +3700  -122    +380+1,6   +1,58       +47%
Hungary              44/71       6669+44       5456+4      3058+1     2419      5869      4866   742     185+3,8    4,70       111%
  changes            +8/+14     +2000-3       +2200+11     +800-3    +1000    -18000     +1700   +17     -18+0,5    +,55        +8%
Romania              41/63      17793+62       8080+6      6859+11   10770     14384     15805  1205       0+4,2    4,90        98%
  changes            +6/+45     +6500+45      +2900+3     +3500+8    +4800     +9500    +11800  +775    -146+3,1    +,03        +6%
Soviet Union        274/431     28964-111     84607+72    15995+7    28488     12374     57123  1862     232+33,5  21,98        97%
  changes           +96/+196   -39000-269    +34000-19    +6000+7   +18000    -12000    +26000   +40    -870+16    +4,8        +38%
United Kingdom      170/280      6576-103      6449-209   56980-116  14575      8004     29173   160      19+25,9  27,3        107%
  changes            +9/+59    -33000-17     -33000-59   -20000-10   -3500     -3000     -5000 -1550     -66+17,8   0           +6%
USA                 305/503     99999+540     99999+530   55312+90   99999     29452     99011 24123       0+28,4  33,75       188%
  changes           +21/+319        0+140         0+230  +34000+76   +2300     +6000    +57000 +**      -148+26,6   0          +93%

German raid of london had granted them abundance of raw materials, some of those had indeed gone to waste as there was no way to store them all.
Soviets had also spent their time investing heavily into industry, allowing them to even have more production than germany with all it's annexed territories. And yet, USA still overcame both of them. Another fine point, soviets have managed to spend most of their manpower, quite a bit of that is in divisions still training up.

And then on to military strenght review;




Indeed, at this point in time, Axis seem to have quite the superiority in force.
54 armored brigades had already finished production in soviet union, and germany had indeed in such a rush to cover all the territories and borders it had not been able to so simplemindedly build up just it's armor force, thus falling behind in this. Looking just at the east at this point, we could say that the axis do not even have numerical superiority, quality wise almost certainly, the german armor is bound to be of higher quality than the soviet one afterall, not to mention it's officer corps (approaching 200% vs 107% of soviets). Germany leaving 75 brigades to france + hungary and romania give axis east front strenght of ~350 brigades against 575 of soviets, as indeed, it seems they have abandoned manchurian border, the war however did not start on 1st of september, so this is, theoretical exercise...
The force balance of Italy + Spain vs USA + UK for african theather does not look much better, indeed, this is major reason for Germany's push to get Japan in the war as well, they however, seem rather reclutant and claim they are not prepared to take on the allied navies.

[itsdodge]

...seem rather reclutant and claim they are not prepared to take on the allied navies.

While you haven't given the stats - I rather think I would be reluctant if I was playing Japan. (Is Japan Ai or human btw?)

[Forgiven]

August 30th 1940 naval situation, but you are quite right.
Then again, they allies do have industrial superiority as well, so it's not likely to get any better on the seas.
But in fairness, the comment was bit flavor, as yes, Japan was played by human, mostly, he did miss 2 or 1 and a half sessions at very inconvenient moments (without us finding a sub) leaving the AI to make a mess out of his OOB and troop positions, which was major part of the reason I did not 'force' him to join the war this early...
It's only worth keeping Japan out if USA is not already in the war, alas, they made their early entry to polish situation and thus, Japan was only going to get into worse situation navally, as well as on land.

Edit; hmm, that table shows a battlecruiser of mine beeing alive as well, I don't remember that...

Edit2; I seem to have forgotten to count the Human players, indeed:
Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary and Romania were around for almost all sessions for axis, with occasional visit for someone as Nationalist Spain.
UK, USA, France and, I think, Canada as well, were frequently around, France moving around to Australia or sub/co-op something after the fall.
And yes, we had one and a half soviet players as well.

[Red_Communist]

Great AAR.

It's quite impressive.

[Forgiven]

Chapter Seven

November 1940

Europe had been cleared, excluding that little blob of Gibraltar, that still resisted all assaults by nationalist even with hungarian bomber support.
Nonetheless, it was time to go looking for lebensraum in east, we had afterall promised Hungarians Ski Resort in Urals for their agreement not to push their claims inside romania..

Our spies confided to us, that while Soviets clearly had built up their industry (tech practicals around 99) they had also built up quite a few armors (again, practical was over 90...), thus, it was unlikely to get much better, indeed, it was to be hoped that they were still unprepared, expecting to go to war when summer came, thus plan for imminent invasion was pushed forth, not in small part, because the allied while 'sleeping' would propbably eventually get around to trying to free France again.

German engineers, had by demands from high command, concentrated on making the panzer units as fast as possible, instead of pushing for heavier and heavier units, they had gone for strong and reliable engines. Newest versions came available in late october, and upgrades would have to come as attack progressed, replacing the old ones as they blew up.



Even futher, thinking on the speed, new units had been training, freshened with veteran noncoms, on new style of equipment made especially for blitzkrieg, this new corp had 20 divisions, made of light armor element and mechanized combat brigades, reaching very high and steady speeds. (10,10 kph, soviet armored units making something around 6-7kph, according to some sources).

Thus, on the eve of Barbarossa in late november, german OOB looked like this, it would also be the last moment when it had been so thoroughly organized, as after this, units would have to go direct to where they were needed as they finished training and gearing.



As you can see, the old V. and XV. Panzerkorps had their losses of french campaign and few other reorganizations (to the new mech corps) replaced from Hungarian and Romanian volunteers and moved to be part of their command structure.

Italy and Spain were occupied in Africa, Japan insisted on level of neutrality, scandinavia had fallen to Soviets, Turkey resisted diplomatic efforts of Germany, so the attack would be mainly carried out by Germany, Hungary and Romania, Italy promised that they might occasionally be able to aid in the air war, should soviet air force prove to be more of a problem than assumed. Thus, the following plan was presented, as general war plan for defeating the soviets, each phase was planned to last from 1 to 2 months.



Of course, it was inevitable some deviations from the plan would have to be handled as they came, no plan survives contact afterall.

[Lord Ederon]

Great story Forgiven!

[Forgiven]

Chapter Eight

January 8th 1941

One month has passed since first german soldier crossed the border to Soviet Union. The sprearhead has broken through Pripet marshes as planned and seeing how empty the area is, is quickly advancing on Moscow. The supplyroute has stretched and troops seeking to secure it have been delayed by soviet troops attacking the flanks. So far, it's still open though. The 'decoy' attacks in baltics have been extented as it became apparent the soviet forces there were low. Romania and Hungary are still sitting out, waiting to see how it'll go...



In east, while Japan has chosen to stay neutral, it agreed to allow it's puppets to declare on Soviets, after confirming there was barely even a borderguard left in the fareastern theather.



February 4th 1941

Rommel has reached gates of moscow, finding that they are made of several meters thick concrete circling the whole city (lvl 8 fort), while barely defended by a guard infantry division and lot of headquarters, it looks like it won't be taken with single division...
Meanwhile soviets are using light troops to harrass the stretched german supply lines, the base route has been expanded but in fact, line to moscow has been temporarily cut.
To south Von Schell is approaching Stalingrad, having essentially cut off soviet supply to their southen armies (with some other divisions but essentially...), encouraging Hungary and Romania to join the war.



Italy has by now essentially lost Libya, and situation in Spanish africa is dire for the Italian expedition and spanish troops.

[Forgiven]

Chapter Nine

March 8th 1941

The plan, is progressing, while initial push to end the war fast failed due to Moscows impressive fortifications, Stalingrad has indeed been captured by von Schell, ofcourse, he's sadly out of supplies as the citizens do not feel very productive. Thus in the last month, the sprearhead for most part pulled back to form a defensive line along the rivers while original plan was getting carried out, in form of creating a pocket around baltics. This included followup landing to Estonia, as operation for capture of Narvik, which had been started very early in the war, was also finished and some troops were available from the north.




In northern Africa, Spain had lost it's ports, and the Allied were now in practical control of the continent.



In Far East, Japanese divisionsion were joining their puppets, and progressing deeper into Soviet territory.

[Forgiven]

Chapter Ten

March 20th '41

While Soviet forces tried hard to break out of their encirclement in the baltics, the Kesselschlacht could finally proceed, German forces having secured succesful perimeter around the soviet pocket.



Meanwhile, Hochseeflotte, what was left of it, expecting deployment of new BB's shortly, sailed for Bordeaux, to transport from there to Brazil held Guyana.
Alas, shortly after arrival, british carriers proceeded to bomb the fleet to pieces..

April 10th '41

The Pocket was closing, if it had not been clear before, qualitative superiority of German troops over Soviet ones was still overwhelming.




Indeed, somewhere between 44 to 60 Soviet divisions (including HQ's) were eventually destroyed in the pocket. The final battle lasted all the way to May 5th.



Meanwhile...

April 20th 1941

American forces had landed and taken over Portugal, considering how weak the Portuguese military was, it wasn't a major suprise, but alas, British were also landing in Spain, and there the OKW expected better results, alas, it would turn out, they were wrong;



And while Germany was busy finishing off the Baltic pocket, Romania was pushing north to create pocket around Kiev...



...German troops would race to meet them, once the pocket in Baltics would be finished, only time would tell if they would manage to connect, for the time beeing there were not enough troops to push forward, especially with british and american planes flying bombing missions from soviet airports, Italians worked to intercept lot of these missions, alas, they could not be everywhere.