Sudden Carnage
Chapter XI – Operation Storm part II
Countries played by humans: UK, France, Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, Japan
Recap: The German push in the North East sector drove to a halt in August as the Red Army found perfect defensive lines in swamps, forests and behind rivers. With the Allies pressing on beyond the Maginot line Germany struggled to keep the momentum and some initiative. From this, Operation Storm was born. The idea behind this operation was quickly shifting from the north to the center and attack there together with the Italians – hopefully overwhelming the Red Army in this sektor before they could pull reinforcements from the north (as they had the great marshlands blocking a quick transfer from north to center – a problem German forces was without)
September 25th, 1939
Operation Storm is one month old. The Axis have pushed further into the Russian center and the German spearhead have been slowly turning southwards. Together with the Italian’s they finally manage to trap a Russian division. It was just a single division but still a small success.
Eager to make a decisive break in the Russian lines, the German’s let the 1st paratrooper division jump behind the enemy line, in Tarnopol. It was all do to a mistake made in the rush of things. A scouting fighter, led by von Greim, had reported a single HQ. When 1st paras landed, they quickly came under attack from two Russian infantry divisions.
Von Greim started to support the paratroopers with fierce bombing runs and Erwing Rommel’s 1st panzer divisions and several infantry divisions attacked from the north trying to reach the unfortunate paratroopers.
September 26th, 1939
Rommel won yet another victory and threw the Russians aside, opening up a route to the paratroopers, giving them an opportunity to retreat.
It sadly turned out that the paratroopers were surrounded and could not flee. They soon surrendered.
::Lucas Bauer was still in Suwalki. Things were orderly here. The 2nd Fallschirmjägar Division hadn’t been part of the war in Poland and as they were an elite unit they did not mistreat the populace. So the relation was fairly good with the Poles. And Lucas enjoyed the city and their camp just outside it. He had time to enjoy the open lands and the different set of flora and fauna. They had wolves here. He hadn’t seen them but you could hear them some nights. It was impressive. And he had some girls too. He sort of dated Anastazja but there were some other girls too. As Lucas didn’t smoke, he had a valuable currency for getting extra food rations, which was the right currency for make friends with the Poles – or at least some of them.::
::When the 1st Fallschirmjägar Division, which also had been based in Suwalki for a while, was flown away on their third combat mission, the guys in 2nd felt all angry and mistreated. They thought it was their turn. Lucas didn’t mind though. After a while, news came in that the mission had become some kind of a disaster. Lucas didn’t hear the details except that they had landed in the midst of plenty of Russian troops. It sounded awful. Later, after the entire division had perished, fighting bravely to the last man, shouting “for the fatherland” – or so the story went – one of von Greims officer was hanged. Apparently, he had made the wrongful observation leading up to the bloodbath. His family trea was not very good, they said. He had managed to hide the fact that he came from a mixed heritage of a lesser race. But now he got to pay for it. Death was too merciful… or so they said. Lucas wasn’t sure about all that. He actually didn’t think too much about it. Back from where he came from, everybody was full bred Germans. He didn’t know what a man with mixed heritage looked like. He best mate in the platoon, Martin, who always dwelled on things, grumpily suggested that Lucas couldn’t tell a so called real German from a mixed one. Lucas was quite sure he could, but then again, he had never seen a mixed one…::
Author’s note: I have not played too much with paras. I thought that they, just like any other ground troops, could retreat to a neighboring friendly province (as it became German before the paras surrendered). But not after a combat jump it seems. I guess it actually makes good sense and is perfectly logic (as a jump in hostile territory make them scattered over the province and not close to a specific border) – but had I known I hadn’t made this order. That was a pure waste.
September 15th, 1939
The Allies had take yet another province in the far south, but a stalling battle in Donaueschingen proved very costly for them.
Donaueschingen had, except several lighter forts and fixed cannons, lush forests and a broad river giving the defenders perfect cover. Dead French soldiers piled up high on the beaches. It was pure carnage.
September 30th - October 2nd, 1939
The French just did not want to leave the province of Donaueschingen alone. In wave after wave they attacked and the river sometimes ran red from all the corpses and blood. Even if the victories were welcomed by the Germans, they had casualties too, and when the French leader changed butchered divisions for new, it was still the same Germans who had to fight again. In the last battle, 25 French soldiers fell for every German. That was carnage.
The death toll in Donaueschingen was up in 3000 German and 9000 French dead.
October 2nd, 1939
If the French died en masse down south – they did a lot better up north with the help of UK forces. More and more Allied troops reached the front and the German defense buckled. This caused the German leadership quite a lot of distress. The Rhine River was their last proper defensive line. After that, the heart of Germany lay open.
October 8th, 1939
The unexpected and unwanted war with the Allies had left the weak Italian Africa Corps in an awful situation. Even though the Brits were not too strong either, they were definitely stronger. Tobruk was threatened.
October 8th, 1939
But if the Italians in Tobruk started to fear their future it was worse for the Russians in the Far East. The Japs had succeeded with the nasty stunt of deploying troops in the back of the Russians who retreated from Vladivostok. An entire army, albeit small, was captured in a huge pocket (its only oceans in the north). The trap was not final, but it would need a lot of hard work from the Russians to get out of it. This is good news. Axes need some decisive victories.
October 9th, 1939
The push into the Russian center continued to slowly turn southwards (due somewhat to the marshlands in the center). A lot of the Red Army had suffered during the summer and autumn, but somehow they always had one more fresh division to throw in. And every time the German soldier had crushed an enemy line, there always a second line with dug in Russians hiding in the God forsaken woods up front. Still, the Axis is slowly gaining ground.
Rohatyn was yet another forest full of Russians. Von Küchler’s division had been through some tough battles before, but he knew they would not fail him. Russian troops came retreating in from other provinces and the defenders in Rohatyn knew they had to keep a retreat-route open for several days.
…
Operation Storm was still quite successful in the sense that the Red Army was being pushed back. The operation was less successful in the sense that only one Soviet division had been captured and that the Red Army still held their lines intact. This was a troublesome fact since the Allies still kept pressing on in the west. Well, Operation Storm had more to give. Let’s see what’s behind the next few dawns…
