Is that a French province I see in Cambodia?
FIX THIS NOW. Thanks.
Unfortunately, I can't yet. The game thinks that France is the legal owner of Cambodia because they were its last owners. After the war, however, I intend to force them to release it.
Its the begging of the end! Will it be our finest our?
I believe it shall.
I don't think that you have an audience with a President, I think it's just called a meeting. Good update though. China's going to be a basket case; the Japanese have probably been acting like slavemasters for twenty years and the whole social structure is probably gonna come down. A
I agree with China being a basket case. As you saw in the last update, only American intervention stopped the Chinese from killing every Japanese citizen they could get their hands on. You think their still bitterness over OTL WWII, this will make that relationship look like their best friends. I am pretty sure that the Chinese will never forget what the Japanese did to them and probably never forgive them either. America is probably going to have to keep the two nations off each others throats for a LONG time.
While there is a lot of good stuff in this update, this might be the best part:
Nasser fighting in China...that's just great!
I agree, It is strange isnt it. What your seing their is essentially the troops who have been fighting through Russia finally getting close enough to be brought to bear in China. I haven't talked about the fighting in the West because the important battle is in the East, but pretty much all of Sinkiang has fallen by that last update. I stopped producing units a long time ago so now I just ship in allied units if I need more men, Nasser has been fighting in the Middle East and Russia for a long time now and was one of the first generals sent to fight under General Clark.
Yup, this is probably the greatest international effort ever made.
I think it definitely is. Troops from almost every nation I ever liberated are either currently fighting or have fought against the Axis. This has truly become an international effort to defeat Fascism. The crazy thing is, I had plans for events that would have made it even bigger, bringing in every neutral and possibly turning South America into a theater of war as well with a two or three way war going on down there. However, I never got them to work. If I can ever figure out why the events did not work and get them to work, I may actually consider doing a redux of this AAR. The events I already planned alone would probably be enough to make WWII into an even more epic struggle, and thats assuming I do not come up with more by then.
Alright its time for another update. Also, do not forget to vote for this AAR in the AARland Choice Awards.
now without further ado, lets get to kicking some Japanese butt.
The moment that the McArthur and the American top brass have been waiting for was finally here. Japan was the last significant power left in the war. If she could be knocked out of the war, this war, which had dragged on for 12 long years for the Americans and for 21 years for the rest of the World would finally end. However, nothing the Americans had ever encountered before in the war could ever have hoped to prepare them for what they would face when they invaded Japan. With virtually every other nation, the Americans had been greeted as liberators by countries that had been brutally subjugated by the Axis. Even with the fall of Germany, the Americans had been greeted as liberators by a people who had grown sick and tired of the war, especially after it had begun to turn against them. Japan, however, would be different. There would be no jubilant crowds of people cheering the American liberators, like the American generals were used to. Indeed, these were a people who believed their leader was a God and that God had been telling them, or so they believed, that these Americans were monsters who committed horrible atrocities just for the fun of it. This was a nation of people who had been told by their leaders for years that their soldiers were the heirs of the samurai and that they were the greatest warriors and soldiers in the world, something that the early victories of the Japanese had led many to believe. The only break the Americans would catch is that the Japanese did not believe that the Americans would invade at this early stage. Indeed, the Japanese leaders were convinced that the Americans would not invade until after China had fallen, so ferocious had been the attack in China. The Japanese had also deployed a large portion of their military in China believing that the decisive battle of the war would take place there. However, they also knew that if China fell, the Americans would be coming to invade the Home Islands. While even the most Ardent Japanese leaders did not really believe that they could win the war if that happened, they did believe they had a chance of not losing. The hope was that they would be able to inflict enough casualties to convince the American invaders that the invasion would be too costly, thus forcing them to negotiate a peace treaty. In furtherance of this, they had begun the training of bands of civilian militias to resist the Americans. These units, however, had yet to complete their training, as the Japanese believed they had plenty of time to train them. They were about to find out how wrong they were.
In order to ensure that the Japanese did not suspect anything, the Americans ordered continued attacks in China, the spearhead of which was led by Patton, who was ordered to advance into Ankang.
He had been ordered to take the province to "support American advances deeper into the interior." What this meant was that he was supposed to ensure that the Americans advancing towards the Yangtze could cross without too much resistance. He, however, had different plans. Taking advantage of the vagueness of his orders, Patton planned to drive North into Xian after taking Ankang. From there he would continue on, outflanking the Japanese positions on the Yellow River and hopefully crossing the river before anyone knew what was going on. After crossing the river, and thus getting behind the defenses on the Yellow River, he would continue to push Northeast towards the city of Tianjin. If the plan worked, the defensive line on the Yellow river would become a massive pocket, trapping all Japanese troops holding the river inside of it were they could be annihalated. It was risky. Patton's personal units would be carrying out the attack without any backup, which meant that if the Japanese managed to get behind him, the encirclers could become the encircled. Patton, however, was gambling on success in the interior freeing up units to come in behind him to hold the areas he took long enough for the pocket to close. Time would tell whether this gamble would pay off.
With the attack in China keeping the Japanese attention fixed there, MacArthur's men boarded transports and headed for Japan. speed was of the essence. If he took to long to arrive, the Japanese might realize their mistake and rush men to the province. There was also the danger of his transports being detected, causing the entirety of the Home Islands to be put on alert and making the landings that much harder.
While MacArthur was on his way, however, the Americans in China received a surprise of their own. Thinking the Japanese navy too badly mauled to carry out amphibious operations, the Americans had neglected to defend the beaches they took from them. The Japanese then seized on this to launch and amphibious invasion of their own in Nantong, which they were able to take without any opposition for the Americans.
Stillwell, on hearing the news, was mortified. Realizing his mistake, he immediately ordered several units from the front to detach themselves and head back to try and drive the Japanese out before this minor annoyance became a real problem.
The day after the debacle in Nantong, MacArthur arrived off the coast of Japan. To MacArthur's great relief, he and his men arrived to find the beaches of Kagoshima devoid of Japanese troops. MacArthur breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently, he had moved fast enough that the Japanese had not been able to send defenders to the province. now all that remained was to take the province and establish a beach head.
MacArthur and his men were able to get ashore without any opposition, but it was not long until opposition found them. As it happens, a member of the Kagoshima Citizens Militia spotted the Americans coming ashore and quickly reported the news to his superior. This superior was now placed in a difficult position. He had two options. He could order the militia into action, but he had no idea how many Americans there were and he and his men might be outnumbered (they were, but the commander at the time did not know that). If he succeeded, he would surely be honored as the man whose quick thinking repelled an American invasion. On the other hand, he could inform the Japanese military and wait for their arrival. While this would surely allow him to make up for a deficit in numbers, the nearest Japanese forces were miles away in Fukoaka, and it could be a while before they arrived. Right now the Americans had just started landing and had yet to reach the town itself, but there was no telling how long it would take them to reach the city and they were closer then the Japanese Army. That meant that there was a very real chance of the Japanese arriving too late to save the city from what he felt would surely be a brutal sack from the "American Devils". After all, these were men who, according to the Japanese army and government (one and the same these days) burned villages to the ground for no reason other then the fun of it. Who knew what they might do to the city. Fearing that the Americans would arrive any moment and wanting the glory of repelling them for himself, he ordered the militia to take up defensive positions within the city. His plan was to halt the American attack then counterattack and drive them back into the sea. If he had only known how outmatched he was, he probably would have called for reinforcements and tried to hold out till they arrived. Against his force of about 30,000 half trained citizens stood a crack force of 120,000 Marines under the command of one of America's best generals. While they were able to put up a brave fight, the superior numbers, discipline, training, and experience of the Americans allowed them to quickly break through the lines and capture the city. After the city fell, the Japanese people, far from throwing the celebration many of the Americans expected, looked on them with nothing but scorn and contempt. This worried MacArthur mostly because he was afraid of an incident between his men and the local civilians escalating into a full fledged riot. "You could cut the tension in the city with a knife and I could feel the whole city could go up with the slightest spark". MacArthur would later say of the situation in the city. To prevent this, he gave strict orders for the American soldiers not to ever wonder the city alone and to be armed at all times but only to shot if fired upon. "If the city went up, I was determined that my troops would not be the ones to light the match", he would write in his journal about this policy. Luckily for MacArthur, the Japanese in the city never openly attacked the Americans, not even the most fanatical of them. MacArthur, however, believed the real reason for this was that they were hoping that the Japanese forces in Fukoaka would drive his men out without the need for them to drive them out. This, however, was a hope that was soon to be dashed. Soon after news of the fall of Southern Kyushu, the Japanese in Northern Kyushu received orders to abandon the island, the Japanese high command having decided that their positions there were untenable. The plan was to surrender Kyushu to the Americans and then take up positions in Hiroshima and the rest of Chugoku to hold the Americans and prevent them from invading Honshu, the largest of the main islands. With the Japanese forces went hundreds of thousands of refugees, fleeing what they believed to be the imminent and brutal sack of their city.
When MacArthur heard of this, he could not have been more pleased. This meant that his forces could now seize all of Kyushu with almost no opposition. Furthermore, he saw an opportunity to ease the tension in the city. He immediately called a meeting and compelled all of the Japanese citizens of Kyushu to attend. When the meeting began, he immediately told them that their government had abandoned them by ordering a withdrawal from Kyushu. He then stated that he and his men had no intention to interfere in their daily lives anymore then necessary and as long as the Japanese did not attempt to attack or otherwise harm his troops, they would be left alone. At first, the Japanese did not believe that their leaders would just abandon them like that, but eventually, they began to hear from more and more news of the evacuation. The citizens of Kagoshima, upon realizing that they had been left to their fates, were furious at their government for abandoning them. However, this did not bring them over to the Americans side. It did, however, remove any desire to fight for a government that would not fight for them. This led to a slow easing of tensions as the Americans kept their word to not interfere anymore then was necessary. The fact that this was the complete opposite of what they were told to expect was not lost on any one, and the Japanese of Kagoshima began asking themselves the same question there friends on the mainland, who had been evacuated to Kagoshima recently, had asked. "If the government lied about the Americans, what else have they lied about". The question and the resulting answers were very unsettling and, in many cases, was enough to completely shatter their faith in their former government.
While the invasion of Japan was getting underway, the war in Southeast Asia began to heat up once more. After managing to get to Phenom Pen before the Japanese, the Americans and their allies launched an attack in all directions, aimed at driving the Japanese back into Vietnam and, eventually, into the sea.
unfortunately, only the attack on Saigon would prove a success.
Meanwhile, back in Japan, things had been relatively quiet for the last six days following the capture of Kagoshima, as the Americans had brought in reinforcements. Now, MacArthur felt confident enough to march out and take Fukushima.
While they met no resistance on the way to the city, they would arrive to find that almost every able bodied man who still remained in the city was prepared to resist them. However, by this point, the Americans did not have simply 120,000 men, they now had 300,000 men and the horribly outmatched and hastily assembled citizens militia was even less of a match for them then the men who attempted to defend Kagoshima had been. Despite fighting with the ferocity of men who believed they stood to lose everything if the city fell, it was not enough and within 4 hours, the city had been secured. MacArthur made them the same promise that he had made to the men at Kagoshima and, luckily, he was able to yet again avoid trouble.
While the campaign in Japan was going remarkably well, the same could not be said of the China campaign, where the Americans had suffered another setback by being driven out of Jinan.
To make matters worse, the Japanese who had landed at Nantong had managed to take back Shanghai and Suzhou before a landing of reinforcements drove them out of the later city.
However, their was a bright spot among these setbacks. Patton had managed to take Ankang and had begun his drive north by ordering an advance on Xian. Stillwell, curious as to why he was advancing in that direction asked Patton for a reasoning. Patton then told Stillwell his plan. Desperate for anything that would let him break the Japanese defense of the Yellow River, Patton was given the go ahead.
While this was going on, MacArthur had finally completed preparations for his planned attack on Hiroshima. Given how easily he had taken Kyushu, he remained confident that the Japanese would not be able to stop him. His men were able to cross into Honshu with little resistance, leading him to believe that this would be as easy as the invasion of Kyushu had been. Then, suddenly, after his men had crossed, they were hit with punishing artillery and machine gun fire. The Japanese had rallied 19 divisions to oppose MacArthur's 30 and now they were making their presence felt. After several days of taking heavy casualties and making no progress, MacArthur begrudgingly called off the attack. It seemed that the invasion of Japan would not be as easy as he had thought.