Germany, 1936: Cabals from the Meuse to the Memel

[K W]

Part XXXIII: April 1939

We have currently 134 divisions (140 if I count the Hungarians in) at our disposal. On one hand, if I compare it with my test and handoff games, this number is quite high. But on the other hand I have to subtract around thirty divisions that will be exclusively tasked with the defense in the east, which leaves us with 104 divisions for France. 104 divisions for France is a slightly lower number than I usually use to defeat France, so it will be necessary to depend heavily on surprise, the air force, some daring tricks, a little bit luck and above all a quick capture of Paris with my armored divisions, otherwise it's going to end in a catrastrophe. We will have, before the war starts, twelve light armor divisions (two are still being produced), so this should be indeed not an impossible task. The three HQs are also just sufficient to allow Case Yellow without any further inconveniences.



No comment on this.



The number of interceptors will increase to eight before the war starts, so local ground support missions should be without any restrictions possible. Due to the early defeat of France I won't need much interceptors for the protection of my industrial base anyway. My overall number of planes could be higher, of course, but the French air force will be only a threat when combined with the British, so everything should be all right.



Let's take a look on France's strength. The French have, according to my spies, 114 infantry divisions -- which is worrisome, as they technically outnumber me. However, I suspect that not every division is stationed in Metropolitan France, and some divisions in Metropolitan France are diverted to the Italian border. Nevertheless, to break the French front line it will be necessary to set some traps. In contrast, the number of armor and HQ divisions is more soothing; elegant French offensives are not possible with such an army. The French navy is of course a monster compared to mine, and their air force corresponding to my aforenamed expectations sub-potent. The Polish have only 54 infantry divisions and no armor, HQs, air force or navy to speak of, so I expect that the front in the east will hold, should Poland attack during the campaign in France. I would only be worried about Poland if they would outnumber us 2:1 -- which is not the case. Should I succeed in getting Romania to my alliance in time perhaps even an offense against the Polish would be possible with my small border guard parallel to Case Yellow.



Now, it's time to take the necessary steps to prepare our troops. The first step is to take military control over Hungary so that we can command all military units of the Axis. Perhaps you've also noticed that I started to shift around corps -- I will introduce you to the final order of battle as soon as all divisions are in place, so don't worry now that you could miss something. I'm still trying to find the best setup and have to make several tactical and strategical decisions before I can present you the definitive setup.

I've also updated the game to 1.01.1 -- neither problems nor any relevant changes for this AAR.

[K W]

"Expand your political power for free!"

Why I never get such e-mails.

Waiting eagerly the next update.

Same here.

Sorry that I can offer you only this statistics update; the next update will have more action ...

[makif130289]

I think you produced too many L-ARM divisions. Upgrading them to ARM will be very expensive. You should have built few motorized divisions. There are also very few fighter divisions. If you will use 4 fighter in Poland, then the remaining 4 will not be enough to protect your cities against Franco-British air raids.

[Cybvep]

He will need all those armoured divs in France. Yes, his airforce should be bigger and he has no chance of conquering the GB in 1940 if he wants to attack the Soviets in 1941, but it should be enough for the Fall Gelb.

[K W]

I think you produced too many L-ARM divisions. Upgrading them to ARM will be very expensive. You should have built few motorized divisions. There are also very few fighter divisions. If you will use 4 fighter in Poland, then the remaining 4 will not be enough to protect your cities against Franco-British air raids.

Oh my god. Yet another of my readers has been banned -- it seems that someone in the forum administration doesn't like me.

Nevertheless, my answer: First, I don't intend to use my air force in the east against Poland while invading France, during Fall Gelb all air force units will be stationed in the west. The Polish air force is so tiny that it really isn't necessary to intercept them. Second, I'm not extremely concerned about the long light armor to armor update. Light armor is a decent unit type for the initial confrontations.

He will need all those armoured divs in France. Yes, his airforce should be bigger and he has no chance of conquering the GB in 1940 if he wants to attack the Soviets in 1941, but it should be enough for the Fall Gelb.

Exactly.

[Gusbrown]

Before updates, before mother board crashed, i followed your strategy, ended up in 46 dropping nukes on England with little or no chance for Sea Lion, good strategy all and all, but i found it better to do sea lion in 40. the france first strategy works very well, in fact you should be able to push the poles back with just infantry corps on the boarder with an hq thrown in for good measure

[Miihkali]

Sorry that I can offer you only this statistics update; the next update will have more action ...

Your text is almost like word of God, so don't worry. I enjoyed reading this update a lot. This is one of the best AARs I've ever read. I really admire your style, you have exactly right combination of words and text, plus you have skill to describe the situation very well.

[K W]

Part XXXIV: April – July 1939

On the 9th of April, 1936, the Reich declares war on the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. After seventeen hours, Luxembourg is annexed by us. This is another precautionary measure I decided to take in order to strengthen my stategical situation against France -- I will elaborate on the military usefulness of Luxembourg in one of the next updates in more detail when the war has started. Instead, notice how quickly I captured Luxembourg: I used an engineer-brigaded HQ division to attack the defenseless province. This is important because otherwise Belgium and the Netherlands would intervene and declare war on me due to an event that fires if Germany is at war with one of the Benelux states. The event, however, can't fire if Luxembourg is attacked and annexed within the day the war is declared, so by using a fast division I prevented an otherwise undesirable chain reaction. The annexation of Luxembourg, a German core province, granted us five points of IC, one point of MP and 69 points of metal production in exchange for a belligerence increase; after annexing Luxembourg our belligerence increased to twelve points.

During the remaining months of peace our air force as well as our army receive some crucial updates to newer models, although we expectedly fail to upgrade all of our divisions. We also try to get Romania into the Axis to have another front for Poland should Warsaw decide to join the Allies, but at some point the chances to invite Romania to the Axis dropped to zero without any explanation -- before this happened I could have tried to invite Romania with a chance of around ten percent, but I decided to wait instead and to increase the chances with the execution of several diplomatic influence missions. This obviously failed as the Romanians are now no longer willing at all to join the Axis; I probably have to wait for the Romanian Nazi coup.



The number of hostile intelligence missions increased again (all were successfully repelled), so I'm giving our intelligence network again a cash infusion, probably for the last time during peace. Because we are increasing beyond level ten, the improvement in numbers is only miniscule, but will give us nevertheless a considerable boost when compared to the intelligence networks of our competitors.

Before we start the war, a final update of our research:

Rheinmetall ---> Early Field Artillery | Werner Heisenberg ---> Faculty of Nuclear Research

It is necessary to research nukes as fast as the historical dates allow, because the United States will certainly do the same. The only thing I worry about is, however, the delivery system. We aren't researching strategical bombers, and haven't researched any rocket technologies yet -- I think that it will be therefore necessary to use Wernher von Braun for one of the technology slots as soon as possible ...

Heinz Guderian ---> Combined Arms Offensive | Mauser Werke ---> Fighter Veteran Initiative

As expected, the Combined Arms Offensive -- a crucial Blitzkrieg doctrine -- was researched just in time. There are still numerous 1939 air doctrine techs available for research, which is worrisome, so I decided to maximise my efforts in researching these. As I don't have a suitable techteam, I use the Mauser Werke to research Fighter Veteran Initiative to improve the organisation and morale of our interceptors. Notice that the two other interceptor doctrines offer the same bonus, but that this technology also offers improved snow and rain attack, so it's the first of the three interceptor doctrine technologies that should be researched.

Hugo Sperrle ---> Night Strikes Doctrine | I.G. Farben ---> Night Strafing Doctrine

And here another doctrine for our tactical bombers. Hopefully a technological edge will compensate for the small size of our Luftwaffe.

Krupp ---> Basic Medium Tank | Kriegsmarinewerft ---> Early Underway Replenishment

This technology will increase our naval range by one thousand points -- which could become useful should it be necessary to invade Norway and for other adventures that would require transportation of troops by sea. Apart from this, we're now able to produce medium tanks; the production queue as well as our light armor divisions in the field will slowly start to update to medium armor.

On the diplomatic stage, the Soviet Union and Japan concluded after the Nomonhan Incident a Non-Aggression Pact which makes a Japanese entry into the Axis even more improbable.



After the final two tank divisions are produced, deployed and reorganized, I dismiss on the 11th of July all corps commanders and appoint new ones according to their usefulness: The Western Front receives -- with the exception of the corps in Freiburg -- commanders with four to five skill points which often even have a useful offensive doctrine. The Eastern Front receives four skill point generals together with some defensive doctrine leaders. Unfortunately, the final interceptor is going to be finished in September at the earliest, but we can't postpone the whole operation just because of one missing interceptor; we must get along with seven interceptors.

On the 13th of July, 1939 all our units are at their designated positions and ready to strike in the West and to defend in the East. The screenshot shows the eventual setup of my army:

Western Front

We have stationed 105 army divisions in the West. 32 divisions are going to withstand any French offensives from Alsace-Lorraine, the other 69 divisions will be used for the invasion of the Low Countries. I have not only ordered all eight armour and three HQ divisions to the West, I've also shifted divisions around so that only the most modern divisions will be used for the offensive in the West. The gap in Luxembourg is intended and part of my strategy. The HQs have been placed -- for maximal effectivity -- in Wilhelmshaven, Muenster and Aachen, and the two latter provinces have, respectively, six armour divisions stationed that will fulfill the function of spearheads. The whole Luftwaffe as well as the Hungarian air force were rebased to Essen to support our initial advance into the Low Countries.

Eastern Front

31 divisions are stationed in the east (not counting the Hungarians in) and their quality is, compared to the divisions of the Western Front, under-average, but still sufficient enough to fight the Polish. I decided to deviate from my ordinary corps setup for the eastern front: Instead of six divisions almost all corps in the east are composed of five divisions. Considering that East Prussia is home of seven IC points the thinning of our forces is in my opinion acceptable: It allowed me to send one defense corps to East Prussia, as I was able to create an additional army corps by separataing one division from the five initial six division corps, creating six five division corps. I've also decided to use the lone division that was initially intended to defend the Yugoslavian border in Czechia under the command of Rommel (five skill points) so that the Polish, should they try to stage any offensives, can't take the provinces without at least a short battle, which would give me some time to react. I've also ruthlessly decided to send the whole Kriegsmarine to the Store Belt, thus blocking enemy access to the Baltic Sea -- the French and especially the British have due to the improved AI of Darkest Hour the annoying attitude of starting amphibious invasions in the German hinterland. To make things harder for them, it is crucial to prevent with my navy any landings in the East by blocking the access to the Baltic Sea. This will save us a lot of trouble in the long term, and I suspect that even the British won't break this blockade unless they decide to send the Home Fleet to Denmark, which doesn't seem probable. Concerning the Hungarian six divisions, I've just evenly placed them at the Polish-Hungarian border and appointed some decent leaders, prayers will be here more important than power or strategy if the Hungarians don't use their IC to produce some more divisions.

My strategy will be discussed in the next update in detail.



After several border incidents at the Dutch-German border, including such shameless acts as Dutch soldiers storming German radio stations and broadcasting insults against our beloved Führer, the government of Germany declared war against the Netherlands in order to protect the integrity of the German border on July 16th, 1939. The Führer officially declared in an emergency meeting of the Reichstag that German army units are shooting back at the Dutch since midnight. Of course, the Reich is an empire of peace and does not aim for any kind of military conquest, so our generous Führer offered the Dutch several proposals for peace with very mild terms, but unfortunately the Dutch rejected all proposals, stating that the secession of the Dutch mainland in Europe to the Reich is not debatable at all.

The rationale behind this is obvious: My plans that I will present in the next update require the defeat of the Netherlands first. Declaring war on the neutral Netherlands raises my belligerence to twenty points -- which is, according to France's interventionism slider, enough to declare war on me and start World War II -- and this is, after all, the ultimate goal. On the other hand, if France declares war on me (which is most likely), this would decrease my belligerence considerably. If I would just declare war on the Allies and then on the Low Countries to start World War II this would lead to a hefty belligerence increase. However, I can't ignore my belligerence like in the historical Poland First approach, as there is the realistic chance that the Polish will stay out of the war. Poland's interventionism slider requires a belligerence of 36 before they can declare war on me. Keeping my belligerence low will allow the Poles to attack me only by joining the Allies, which is a little bit more complicated than just declaring war on me. Apart from this, there is also another advantage of this strategy: France will probably need one or two days to react and to declare war on me, as well as Belgium, so I gain a nice headstart in the beginning that is especially useful if you consider my actions portrayed in the next screenshot. And if France shouldn't decide to protect the Netherlands, it would be even better, as I could invade the Netherlands without any resistance to speak of and place all my units elegantly along the Dutch-Belgian border before the offensive against France. It's a classical win-win situation for me.



After declaring war, I enacted the Partial Mobilization decision. It is important to enact this decision instantaneously after the declaration of war, because the enactment of this decision during peacetime would lead to a twelve percent increase of our dissent (and dissent decreases the overall battle performance of our troops). By enacting this decision in wartime we circumvent the inconvenience of a hefty dissent increase. And as we're, for now, only at war with the Netherlands, it isn't even a tragedy that the reserve unit activation event that automatically reinforces all our divisions by 65 points doesn't provide a full reinforcement. After the Partial Mobilization, the IC need for reinforcements dropped to just 56.37 IC, which is low enough to reinforce all our divisions within one month, the approximate time it will take -- according to my expectations -- before the main offensive against the French mainland will be launched.

This concludes our war preparations and starts World War II. God with us!

[K W]

Before updates, before mother board crashed, i followed your strategy, ended up in 46 dropping nukes on England with little or no chance for Sea Lion, good strategy all and all, but i found it better to do sea lion in 40. the france first strategy works very well, in fact you should be able to push the poles back with just infantry corps on the boarder with an hq thrown in for good measure

I don't have a problem with nuking the United Kingdom into oblivion if I'm unable to capture the British Isles by conventional means. Although I don't think that it will be actually necessary -- after the Soviets are defeated, I can start building tons of submarines and naval bombers that will smash the Royal Navy. And I also hope that you're right with your assumptions concerning Poland, I really don't want to see any Poles in Berlin ...

Your text is almost like word of God, so don't worry.

How terrible. I just hope that your words do not signal the beginning of some kind of creepy religion ...

I enjoyed reading this update a lot. This is one of the best AARs I've ever read. I really admire your style, you have exactly right combination of words and text, plus you have skill to describe the situation very well.

Thank you very much. Your kind words honour me.

[Cybvep]

That trick with Luxembourg was sooooooo gamey. I'm surprised that this bug hasn't been fixed yet.

You should do fine with the Dutch. The problems may arise when you attack Belgium and will be forced to fight in the forests with the French. We will see whether your airforce is up to the task, too.

[Herbert West]

Strange, in my experience, whenever your try to pull a Luxemburg, or attack any of the low countries, they always get a "Join the allies, the evol germans attack our enighbourhood" event

[Miihkali]

Great update--as always. Waiting for the WWII

[Shynka]

Talking about Gamey Tactics, in my Game it was actually possible to demand Territories from Belgium and teh Netherlandzorz I mean the latter took a couple of tries, but Belgium just caved into my demands. Of course I have only demanded the land that was needed for Fall Letspwnfrance but still, I thought it was rather funny when Belgium agreed.

[K W]

That trick with Luxembourg was sooooooo gamey. I'm surprised that this bug hasn't been fixed yet.

I don't think that it is a very gamey strategy -- in HoI or AoD this strategy would be also possible; it would have been even easier to annex Luxembourg due to the lack of events for the Netherlands and Belgium that trigger a unified front of the Benelux countries. Instead, a gamey tactic would be to annex Luxembourg in the very beginning to harness their IC, manpower and resources -- but this wasn't my prime intention. I could have attacked Luxembourg after declaring war on the Netherlands, yes, but I just thought that it would be not only a little bit more realistical to make it a part of my war preparations but also fairer for the Allies. Just attacking the Netherlands and sparing Luxembourg would have been probably one of the cheapest tricks possible, as my belligerence would not be high enough for France to declare war on me, allowing me to steamroll through the Low Countries without any resistance.

You should do fine with the Dutch. The problems may arise when you attack Belgium and will be forced to fight in the forests with the French. We will see whether your airforce is up to the task, too.

My plan is to prevent any French expeditions into Belgium ...

Strange, in my experience, whenever your try to pull a Luxemburg, or attack any of the low countries, they always get a "Join the allies, the evol germans attack our enighbourhood" event

If you annex them within the day of the declaration of war the conditions of the event, that are as far as I know checked every day, aren't satisfied and thus the event that triggers a Dutch and Belgian response does not occur.

Great update--as always. Waiting for the WWII

Talking about Gamey Tactics, in my Game it was actually possible to demand Territories from Belgium and teh Netherlandzorz I mean the latter took a couple of tries, but Belgium just caved into my demands. Of course I have only demanded the land that was needed for Fall Letspwnfrance but still, I thought it was rather funny when Belgium agreed.

The Demand Territory mechanism really needs revision -- it would have been possible for me to diplo-annex Denmark if I would have tried repeatedly, for example. The chances for secession are way too high for non-core provinces. While I'm not unhappy about the chances to demand cores, it is just ridiculous that smaller countries are willing to secede their own core provinces to a bigger country that only has claims without cores on their territory. Such a situation would only be realistical if a massive and intimidating show of force is conducted, and even then the chances should be slim.

[Leviathan07]

I don't think that it is a very gamey strategy -- in HoI or AoD this strategy would be also possible; it would have been even easier to annex Luxembourg due to the lack of events for the Netherlands and Belgium that trigger a unified front of the Benelux countries. Instead, a gamey tactic would be to annex Luxembourg in the very beginning to harness their IC, manpower and resources -- but this wasn't my prime intention. I could have attacked Luxembourg after declaring war on the Netherlands, yes, but I just thought that it would be not only a little bit more realistical to make it a part of my war preparations but also fairer for the Allies. Just attacking the Netherlands and sparing Luxembourg would have been probably one of the cheapest tricks possible, as my belligerence would not be high enough for France to declare war on me, allowing me to steamroll through the Low Countries without any resistance.



My plan is to prevent any French expeditions into Belgium ...



If you annex them within the day of the declaration of war the conditions of the event, that are as far as I know checked every day, aren't satisfied and thus the event that triggers a Dutch and Belgian response does not occur.







The Demand Territory mechanism really needs revision -- it would have been possible for me to diplo-annex Denmark if I would have tried repeatedly, for example. The chances for secession are way too high for non-core provinces. While I'm not unhappy about the chances to demand cores, it is just ridiculous that smaller countries are willing to secede their own core provinces to a bigger country that only has claims without cores on their territory. Such a situation would only be realistical if a massive and intimidating show of force is conducted, and even then the chances should be slim.

Actually, Germany demanding Eupen-Malmedy back is not so unrealistic. However a country threatened with hostile claims should take guarantees into account (and alliances of the guaranteeing power) when it considers whether to accept or not.

Should Belgium or the Netherlands be abandonded by France and the UK, it would be 100% realistic that they cave into German demands on their territory. However with France and UK backing them up, they should never accept ...

[Cybvep]

Just attacking the Netherlands and sparing Luxembourg would have been probably one of the cheapest tricks possible, as my belligerence would not be high enough for France to declare war on me, allowing me to steamroll through the Low Countries without any resistance.

What? Are there no GOIs there?

[K W]

Actually, Germany demanding Eupen-Malmedy back is not so unrealistic.

And therefore there should be a radical distinction between claiming cores and claiming claims.

What? Are there no GOIs there?

There are, but even they would have failed to maximise France's interventionism slider.

[Gusbrown]

my deployment was different than yours, i use 3 div corps, this allowed me some flexibility to deal with polish incursions and i more heavily defended East Prussia, the poles are very weak, even with your lesser divisions deployed you shouldn't have much trouble, as far as england goes, it's a long time between nukes, also, if you check your rocket tech tree, you will see you can't drop nukes from a rocket till you get icbm's. which means you will need strats, i built 4 after researching the tree late, very fast to do that, then i dropped them at night, no british fighter response, not that that would have helped much as by 1946 i had total air superiority, i lost the game when mother board crashed, but if i remember right i was running at about 600 ic or so at the time, very good aar, i am really enjoying it

[K W]

I just wish to notify you about the arrival of my new PC -- it will take some days until everything is again in place, but I will install DH here tomorrow and try to write the strategy update before the actual action starts.

my deployment was different than yours, i use 3 div corps, this allowed me some flexibility to deal with polish incursions and i more heavily defended East Prussia, the poles are very weak, even with your lesser divisions deployed you shouldn't have much trouble, as far as england goes, it's a long time between nukes, also, if you check your rocket tech tree, you will see you can't drop nukes from a rocket till you get icbm's. which means you will need strats, i built 4 after researching the tree late, very fast to do that, then i dropped them at night, no british fighter response, not that that would have helped much as by 1946 i had total air superiority, i lost the game when mother board crashed, but if i remember right i was running at about 600 ic or so at the time, very good aar, i am really enjoying it

Hmm. I think you convinced me to scrap the rocket idea. Strategic bombers are even with under-average technology able to use nuclear weapons.

[Shynka]

Looks at AAR forum -> Sees Germany: Cabals...-> Sees that the last post belongs to K W -> Scrolls down, very desperate for WWII -> Wait a minuRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGEEEE