Siegerkranz - Germany's Place in the Sun

While it's an awesome image, no, by 1948, Germany needs a rest.

I admit I'm surprised that someone's read the Starbuck books, to be honest. The Arthur books are great, the Saxon books are probably his best series writing (Agincourt takes the one-off prize), and the Sharpe books set the standard for modern historical fiction, but the Starbuck books... aren't his best, really.

No, seriously - by 1948, Germany and the Germans will need a rest, and projection across the Atlantic is problematic at best, though I suppose I could use Yogi's old conceit of returning Cuba to Spain as a base.

To be honest, the Germans could only have taken Kornwerderzand by a recon-in-force that consisted of more than three men who had been told it had been abandoned. A company-plus could probably have taken it on the rush, but that was a position that could be reinforced more or less at leisure.

Wilhelmina is pretty much the only reason the (greatly reduced) Netherlands is independent at war's end. She strikes me as realist enough to play for survival when outright annexation seems likely, and tough enough to actually pull it off. If nothing else, the Prussian royals owe her, as if it were not for her, they would likely have faced a rather hostile French war-crimes jury.

As for Russia - well, it's the tail of 1941 right now, and Russia doesn't kick off until 1943. There are a few more loose ends to wrap up in the west, like that pesky set of islands. Unfortunately, I'm in the middle of a job search and the French campaign writing frenzy took a lot of juice, so I might need a little recharge time before the (not so) triumphant return of Philippe Petain. Thanks, incidentally, for pointing out the various Bourbon candidates way back in the day. I have a pretty good idea what happens in France postwar now to explain the frequent partisan outbreaks after France becomes France again.

64. The End In France

Chateau Lassan
Outside Rouen, Occupied France
25 September 1941

The Kübelwagen pulled up outside Chateau Lassan, and the Vicomte pursed his lips, glancing past half-closed curtains. It seemed likely that the Germans were here to grab whatever they felt like looting... but if that were the case, why did they send just one officer?

The officer in question approached the house, glancing at a paper and hesitating before knocking at the door. The booming knock brought Annelise down the stairs, and she too glanced out the window. Her reaction was totally unlike the Vicomte's. She threw the door open with a delighted shriek and a flood of German beginning with "Willi!"

It transpired that the officer in the battered camouflage jump smock was her brother, that he had been granted seventy-two hours to travel back to his new duties, and that he had finally remembered the name "Lassan." He shifted uncomfortably in the presence of Henri and the Vicomte, but he melted at the sight of his nephew, though he seemed determined to maul the name "Richard," giving it its German pronunciation. His French was excellent ("Willi always had a thing for languages," Annelise explained in a gushing aside), but tinged with a bitterness that the Vicomte recognized from the Great War. Plenty of Frenchmen had had that same sound after the War, he recalled sadly.

Finally, Wilhelm produced a letter. "Father wrote to me when he heard I was being sent here," he explained awkwardly. "Read it, please, Annchen." He pushed it toward her and she read, dreading what Ernst Volkmann might have to say. Some passages stood out clearly, others blurred. What I cannot understand is how she could do it without telling us... Make sure she is all right, Wilhelm. She may have strayed, but she is family. Her eyes teared as she quietly folded the letter away. "Thank you, Willi," she said quietly, entirely subdued. "Please tell him we are all right."

Wilhelm hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "I'll do better than that. You have paper I can write on?" The Vicomte nodded, standing stiffly, and moved to a desk to retrieve a couple of pieces, fine white paper that looked better suited to Paris than Normandy. Wilhelm drew a pen from his blouse and began to write. "This is a... call it a safe-conduct pass. It will make sure no one quarters here." He looked up. "Though it does mean if you decide to do something... French... it may get you all hung as partisans." Old Colonel de Lassan nodded gravely, leaving the thanks to Annelise, who smiled, wiping away a tear. "Thank you, Willi. I... I don't know how to thank you. I didn't really think about any of that."

Wilhelm stood slowly, straightening his uniform. "You can thank me by not making me regret it, Anni." He glanced at the Vicomte, eyes narrowing slightly. "Thank you for caring for my sister, M'sieur. We owe you." The Vicomte gave another fractional nod, and Wilhelm's reserve finally broke. He offered his hand, hesitant at first, but his decision rapidly firming. For the first time, he saw the decisive, surefooted Colonel de Lassan that Ernst and Lise had met the year prior; the Vicomte stood, taking his hand and squeezing, his hand surprisingly tough from years handling horses. "Are you sure you cannot stay... Hauptmann?" he asked after a quick glance at Wilhelm's shoulderboards.

"No, thank you. I'm here on sufferance, I have to report to... my next unit," he added, the sudden amendment making it sound somewhat lame. "Mmm. A pity that you could not meet my son... your brother-in-law. It would have been worth both your times." The Vicomte smiled, showing square, straight teeth yellowed with age, and Wilhelm found himself, despite all his new-gained prejudices, liking this old man. "I am sure it would have been, sir. Now, if you will excuse me... I really cannot stay." He picked up his cap and returned to the Kübelwagen, his driver looking bored and leafing through the October Signal.

Annelise stood at the window and watched him drive away, cradling Richard against her chest, resolutely not crying. The Vicomte left her for a moment, then gently patted her shoulder. "The horses need feeding, Annchen."

---

The writing was on the wall for France by the end of September; it was so painfully obvious to all concerned that the Germans began repositioning troops for garrisoning even before an armistice, and the forward forces began to grumble that the war was over already, why not go home? Wilhelm Volkmann and Fritz Bayerlein were only a small fraction of the complacency that set into the Kaiser's army.

They had good reason to become complacent: on the last day of September, Papen sent coded telegrams to Madrid and Rome, and on the first of October, Britain and France awoke at war with Italy and Spain. In Spain, a vast array of men, mostly veterans of the Civil War, assaulted Gibraltar under Franco's personal guidance. The British garrison could perhaps have held against a corps; against the hundred thousand men in Franco's concentric offensive, there was simply no hope. The Union flag came down at sunset on the third of October, and word immediately flashed to Admiral Cunningham at Valetta that the Mediterranean Station was alone.


It reached him the same day that very different news had reached him. Upon intercepting the Italian declaration of war, he had transmitted a signal to Rear Admiral Lumley St. George Lyster, commanding the Mediterranean Carrier Squadron, consisting of Argus and Hermes. The signal was a single word: JUDGEMENT. Immediately, Lyster had concentrated his two ships off Ottoman Greece and launched his fifty Swordfish torpedo-bombers at the Italian fleet at anchor in Taranto. Like Scapa Flow, it was a plan long in the making; Lyster had in fact begun considering it in 1935, before Peter Volkmann began the plan for MONT BLANC. Considering the assets available to Germany and to Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham, JUDGEMENT was far more impressive.


The Swordfish got separated during their initial approach, resulting in three waves instead of the planned two. The first two waves arrived more or less simultaneously, with the smaller contingent plunging into the inner harbor and catching the two Italian battleships Caio Duilio and Andrea Dorea at anchor. Like Hood and Royal Oak, they never had a chance to depart their moorings. In the outer harbor, the Swordfish pilots, under the direction of a Royal Marine captain named Patch, worked over the gathered Italian shipping intended to carry troops and supplies to Libya. The third wave continued the work of this outer-harbor group. In exchange for two aircraft, in half an hour, the Royal Navy sank a quarter of Italy's battleships and fifty thousand tons of shipping traffic. Characteristically, Cunningham's response to Lyster's report was a simple signal: MANEUVER WELL EXECUTED.

The news of the Battle of Taranto reached London at the same time as word that Gibraltar was in Spanish hands and the Straits were closed to British traffic. It was the one bright spot in a very dark year, and Prime Minister Churchill, longtime patron of the Admiralty, made sure Cunningham's star shone as bright as it could. Cunningham was recalled home to be celebrated and promoted; the admiral, an admirable fighting sailor, refused, quoting of all men the American John Paul Jones: I have not yet begun to fight. Churchill seized upon the quote, and Royal Navy recruiting posters bearing Cunningham's likeness sprung up across Britain, recalling Kitchener's posters of the Great War, this time demanding Have YOU begun to fight?


The French knew their answer to this question; on 1 November 1940, Marshal of France Henri Philippe Petain accepted the summons of the rump Chamber of Deputies to surrender to Germany. He had, he announced, arrived "to end France's suffering." Petain's armistice was just that - not an end to the war, but a ceasefire in France. The brutal terms of the ceasefire were horrifying even in Petain, at least in private: the northern half of France to be occupied by Germany until the final peace treaty, the admission of French guilt for not allowing German investigation of the death of Ernst vom Rath, and the agreement in principle to a "national indemnity."

If France's fate looked bleak, the French colonies' fate was far worse. By early November, Turkish troops had entered Beirut and Damascus, and the Lebanese and Syrian governments surrendered. The return of these territories to the Sultanate, and the destruction of the "degenerate secular governments" instituted by the French, was trumpeted loudly in Istanbul. In a panic, the British overthrew the German-friendly Persian Shah to install their own candidate on the throne, and Persia joined the war against Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Turkey on the grounds of reconquering Kurdistan. It allowed the direct infusion of troops from British India, or at least that was Churchill's plan, but this plan backfired, through no fault of the redoubtable British Prime Minister. It backfired because of the Japanese.

The Japanese, upon the collapse of France, and with the blessings of the Papen Chancellory, demanded and received French Indochina at gunpoint. By now, the Japanese were the de-facto government of China, and Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalists forced into hiding so deep in the hills that his communiques were more often released to the world by word of mouth. They now had a land link from Seoul to Saigon. Along this link, they rushed many of the Chinese Force veterans under a man who became known as the "Tiger of Malaya," Lieutenant-General Yamashita Tomoyuki. Yamashita launched a surprise attack through friendly Siam into the Malay Peninsula, and by the end of autumn 1941, Singapore too had fallen. The British Pacific Fleet was forced to fall back on Calcutta, sustaining such radical losses that they essentially vanished. All that remained of the Royal Navy's fighting capacity was Fraser's Home Fleet, hounded by the Luftwaffe and the U-waffe as soon as they left port, and Cunningham's cut-off Mediterranean Fleet, nervously eyeing the Suez Canal as Italian troops turned from their conquest of Tunisia to strike Egypt.

In the Sudetenland, meanwhile, a factory complex began to rise around the former radium springs at Bad Schlema, restricted from view and built in total secrecy.

Van5 said:

I wonder if this is how Otl allies felt after the fall of france...

Fear

Dissapointment

shock

It's humbeling for sure

Is germany feeling Victory disease

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Certainly that's how Churchill fet following Dunkerque. His memoirs make it clear that at that point, he was pretty much at low ebb. As for Germany getting victory disease: Yes. Any nation that begins to pull active-duty combat troops back under a big ol' "Mission Accomplished" banner is getting victory disease.

This from a guy who once was one of those troops.

Kurt_Steiner said:

I don't like Germany's allies. Not at all.

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Actual allies as defined by the game engine, west to east:

Spain
Italy
Hungary
Turkey

Nations with whose interests Germany's coincide momentarily:

Japan

This is somewhat ironic, given that Yamashita would have preferred to strike the Soviets rather than fighting the Western powers. Still, the Kaiser is adamant that the legitimate government of China is currently in Manchuria.

trekaddict said:

Oh wow... This makes me want to start a new UK game...In spite of the very good China game I have running at the moment....

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Basically what the Royal Navy did in this game was stay bottled up in Portsmouth and Scapa Flow until those sites were overrun, catching Stukas round the clock, and then beat the ever-loving hell out of the Italians and the Japanese. Given that the Med was closed to them for much of that time, I'm forced to conclude that Cunningham falls back on India. Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Browne Cunningham, Viscount Cunningham of Andaman...

Enewald said:

Volkmanns... everywhere... with carriers!

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A Volkmann with a carrier, which is an antebellum pre-dreadnought that's been modernized three times and converted to a flight deck. It's technically an "aviation cruiser."

The other Volkmanns are, in age order:

Ernst - In charge of Engineering District Westerplatte, which consists of the factory near Bad Schlema and a research organization in Berlin.

Johann - Battalion executive officer, 2. Abteilung, 3. Garde-Panzerregiment "Totenkopf," 3. Garde-Panzerdivision "Totenkopf".

Wilhelm - Staff officer, duties undefined, Combined Operations Staff, shortly to be sent to school in Livorno.

Actually, for all their opportunism, the Italians prove freakishly, ridiculously capable. The next update concerns African affairs, so I'll give a brief outline:

Italy took Malta, Tunisia, and Egypt without any help except breaching the Suez Canal. The sudden appearance of Germans in the Near East did change the game there, but not appreciably, just meant the Ottomans' open flank in the desert vanished. And yes, most Germans view Italy with intense suspicion, thanks to the Great War, but the British were understandably not amenable to making an alliance with the rampaging bull of Europe. I should probably do a domestic-situation update, as dissent was well over 25% during much of this time (wasn't fully dictatorial, so every nation in the Allies in 1941 was a 3.3% dissent hit).

No, as I told Dutchie, the war in the east doesn't begin until 1943; it's the tail end of 1941 right now.

That's the focus of the next update, since there's not a lot that happens in Germany in the winter of 1941-1942.

65. The African Front

Taranto was a setback for the Italians, but surprisingly, they rebounded, both on land and at sea. At sea, the troops which had been awaiting embarkation in Taranto loaded aboard what transports were left and launched an amphibious assault on Malta. Cunningham was shocked at the Italian turnaround, and with his carriers still at sea, had no warning before the Italians appeared. As at Gibraltar, the British had been prepared for what they considered a "reasonable" assault. What they actually faced was a full ten-division wave of reinforcements, including the elite Alpini and the Folgore parachute division. Malta's Spitfires claimed a heavy price from the transport aircraft, but enough parachutists made it to ground to tie down defenders whose presence at the beaches was badly missed. Cunningham was in Alexandria at the time that the Italians landed, preparing that city as a fallback in case of Malta's capture. When a signal from HMS Revenge was decoded, the situation looked bleak: ITALIANS ON BEACH. EMPTY OF AMMUNITION. Cunningham, agonizing at the sudden turnaround after the triumph of Taranto, reluctantly gave the order for the Malta squadron to withdraw. Only upon their arrival at Alexandria was the error detected. The signal for "empty" had been transmitted instead of the correct signal - "Full." Because of a single Morse error, the island of Malta was abandoned to the Italians.

The Italian forces already present in Libya struck first into Tunisia, capturing Tunis only a few days after the declaration of war in the face of stunned French resistance. The French units, consisting mostly of Foreign Legion Bat d'Af troops awaiting transshipment to Toulon, were utterly unprepared for the appearance of the bulk of Mussolini's modern forces, especially with their heavy weapons already embarked. The Duce's hold on Tunisia was, for the foreseeable future, absolutely guaranteed. He promised Marshal Badoglio the first Roman triumph held in millennia - once the war was over, of course. To achieve that, Badoglio carried out one of the most remarkable countermarches in history.

The British forces in Egypt had penetrated almost as far as Benghazi by the time Badoglio's counter appeared along the coast road, and as a result, Mussolini had, for the first time in decades, visibly lost his nerve. He was unsure that Badoglio's maneuvering would stop the British before they reached Tripoli, especially without reinforcement. Therefore, he appealed to Papen, in the middle of a stormy debate in the German high command about Operation Tannenbaum. The German generals saw an opportunity to delay the pointless invasion of Switzerland, and Marshal Bock himself authorized the formation of the German Africa Corps, or Deutsche Afrika Korps. His choice to command the expedition was a Generalleutnant who had distinguished himself as Blomberg's East Prussian Chief of Staff.

Günther von Kluge had all the prerequisites for promotion: General Staff training, a good Prussian military family, and participation in the Polish war as Blomberg's chief of staff. Only posting to Blomberg's staff had delayed his further advancement, since East Prussia was effectively exile. He had commanded a corps in France under Bock, and was ambitious for a fully independent command. Thus, he was elated to be sent to Africa, backwater though he regarded it as being, because it was essentially fully independent from Berlin.

The first DAK units arrived in Tripoli through the second week of October, 1941, consisting of Kluge's signal battalion, 21. Panzerdivision, and the 5. Leichte-Division, a motorized formation. They had one major disadvantage in the desert environment, their very high fuel requirements, but Mussolini promised to keep them in fuel and lubricants. They joined Badoglio's forces just after the Italian marshal had breached the Egyptian border near Tobruk, to Kluge's immense frustration.

Kluge was barely able to pace Badoglio's lead elements now that they had convinced themselves the British were beatable, and the British distraction in Ethiopia - which had swallowed several British armored units whole, and was totally inexplicable to the German General Staff - meant that Badoglio's road to Alexandria was wide-open. The Italian took Alexandria on 10 November 1941, and two days later, Mussolini himself entered the city on a white horse. Kluge, frustrated endlessly by the Italians' outracing his front, politely declined to attend the ceremony and struck south instead. For the first time, he met the British before Badoglio: it was Kluge whose troops were photographed before the Sphinx on 20 November, and it was Kluge whose tanks drew up at the Suez Canal two days later. They were frustrated by Admiral Cunningham, of all things: Cunningham was frantically evacuating his fleet from the Mediterranean, their last ports under the combined fire of the Turks in the Levant, and the Italians in Egypt.


The Italian fleet harried Cunningham's forces as he fell back, but even the presence of the Vittorio Veneto-class battleships in the Mediterranean could not change the fact that Cunningham's forces were better-trained, better-equipped, and better-disciplined. Cunningham lost most of his destroyers and light cruisers to the Italian battleships in a series of deliberate, suicidal spoiling attacks meant to allow him to conserve his capital ships and escape through the canal. Captains like Charles Lambe of HMS Dunedin sacrificed their vessels in order to allow Cunningham's fleet-in-being to escape mostly intact first to Mascate, then to Calcutta to operate against the Japanese as even Churchill saw the Near East collapsing. Finally, on the night of 23 November, Cunningham himself, aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth, with his flag inverted at half-mast, left the last locks of the Suez Canal and brought his ship to broadside against the Germans on the Egyptian bank. In despair at losing the Mediterranean, he gave one of the most controversial orders of his command and ordered the Queen Elizabeth's guns turned on the canal control structures. The ship's crew, as emotionally depleted as their admiral, obeyed, and the Suez Canal was closed for the duration of the war.

It made no difference; by four in the afternoon, Berlin time, Generalleutnant von Kluge transmitted his famous telegram to Berlin: Leaving Africa.


Cunningham, for his part, arrived in India expecting a court of enquiry, and instead found himself bewilderingly promoted to the command of the rump of the Royal Navy's Pacific and Indian fleets and awarded a second bar to his Distinguished Service Order, for Taranto, and the Victoria Cross, for his timely action in denying the Suez Canal to the Kaiserbund. The normally phlegmatic Cunningham, known for his reserve, broke down upon receiving the news. It had been a trying two months for him. For three days, nothing was heard from the new commander-in-chief of the Indian Fleet; at the end of those three days, Cunningham emerged from his cabin as if nothing had happened and addressed his command. Like Fraser at Scapa Flow, his attitude conveyed itself to his new command: "Sink, burn, and destroy: Let nothing pass!"

It was an admirable, fiery sentiment, and if the British Empire had fared half as well on land in the winter of 1941 as they had at sea, then the war's outcome would have been quite different.