My Fight Volume II - Yet another HPP USAAR

It's August 23rd, 1939, and the Second World War has just started in Europe over Poland's only noteworthy port, which happens to cut Eastern Prussia from the rest of Germany. Sucks to be them I guess. They will probably go down in a few weeks. There'll be a lot of stuff going on during that few weeks though, like the entire Commonwealth of Nations joining the Allies to fight the evil Germans, the Soviet Union backstabbing Poland but the Allies chickening out, etc. I'll spare you the details and the screenshots, it's really not that interesting.

What I will talk about is the US gearing up for war. Because we all know I will join sooner or later. Last week I would have said that it's not a good idea to gear up just yet. The decision reduces Neutrality by 5, and that would be brought back up to 100 in less than a year. But (and this is the part even I wasn't aware until I checked the files for a completely different reason last weekend): it also triggers a country flag that removes the Monroe Doctrine Strategic Effect! Unfortunatelly the tooltip is not clear enough on this, which will be fised in the FtM version. Anyway, the point is that it is in the best interest of the US player to use that decision right away, and that's what I just did. And I also left the Naval Treaties since everyone else left already anyway.

And here comes the interesting part: since China has lost over half of their territory, I can initiate the Lend-Lease Act right away! Sure, it was originally aimed mainly towards the Allies, but China and the USSR were also among the beneficiaries and in this timeline China will be the main (or at least the first) focus of the operation. The -10 Neutrality comes in handy for me: it brings my Neutrality to 85, meaning that I will lose the generic Neutrality Strategic Effect almost immediately as well, speeding up my gearing process quite a lot! Thank you, Japan! A rather subtle way of bringing the US into the war even earlier than historically! Highly appreciated


China even has some ports to bring in the lent stuff. Neat. This also means by the way that I can make the "They went too far!" decision from now on, so after this Chapter, you can start to cast your votes whether I should do that or not. If it was up to me, I wouldn't to it just yet because of the insane Dissent I would get for it, but I will deal with it if I have to.

Meanwhile Isotope Research is finished, opening up the way towards Civil Nuclear Research. And it's only two years ahead of time! It will take over 400 days though, so let's start it right away!

I mentioned the USSR backstabbing Poland. Well, that's more like a backslapping I guess:


Well, to be fair with poor Stalin (yeah, I know, the irony...), in-game that decision is pretty much mandatory unless you are willing to let the entire Soviet Union end up in yet another Civil War: they have a rather ugly modifier from the start of the game that continuously lowers their National Unity and in '37 they get another that lowers party popularity as well. It is probably possible to still avoid a coup but it will get harder and harder and there's no other way to remove the modifiers than either remove the opposition or remove Stalin himself. Which is pretty much impossible without a coup, so... You get the point. Anyway, during the Great Purge, the Russians get a metric shitload of negative modifiers to unit organisation, morale, etc. It's a challenge to win any wars with them until they get over it.

And this is the point where things took another interesting turn:


As a reminder, Xinjiang is still at war with Xibei San Ma but also with Japan and their lapdogs, Manchukuo, Mengjiang and China-Nanjing. Now, there's a rather stupid bug (or oversight) in HoI3: you can end up in a war where your allies are not involved but there's no way of calling them in. For the player, that is. It is not possible because the "Call to Arms" Diplomatic action is only available on the Diplomatic screen for the Axis. The AI on the other hand does not use the screen, it has direct access to the actions. There are a few cases where this wasn't thought through enough and thus the AI has access to actions the player wouldn't be. This is such an instance: the AI is able to "Call to Arms" even if not in the Axis. I'm not yet sure what will happen here but theoretically it is entirely possible that Xinjiang will call the Soviet Union to arms. The AI is usually willing to answer such calls, unless it would be against a major or someone in a faction and it is already at war with another major or faction. But the USSR won't be at war at all in a few days.

Poland surrendered (went into exile in London) on 14th of September. Using the opportunity, the Soviets negotiated for basing rights in the Baltic States. Lithuania had the balls to resist (despite the fact that the Soviets gave back all the Lithuanian cores from their Polish gains!), so that's another minor war for Stalin to fight with his completely disorganised officer corps. They were defeated quickly, but that's not all. The border-skirmish between the USSR and Japan ended with returning to Status Quo and signing a Non-Aggression Pact. But that's the past now:


On a lighter note, on 16th of October, I researched the RADAR. That's a fantastic invention that will allow me to keep an eye on basically the entire Pacific Ocean from my fortress at Guam. It's not much of a fortress just yet but I intend to turn it into one in the next year or so.

Fighting between the USSR and Japan flared up again at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, another border incident. The outcome was a little funny:


Now that's interesting! I actually thought that this skirmish would be a short one as well and that it would bring the war between Japan and Xinjiang to an end as well, but that was not to be. Did Stalin chew on more than he could swallow? We'll see!


And this is not enough for the Emperor: they declared war on unsuspecting Tibet! The funny thing is, this automatically pushed Tibet into the Comintern! They are Paternal Autocrat, so this is not really good for them either.

In January, 1940, I recieved a new Vice-President, Henry A. Wallace. He is a Silent Workhorse, replacing a Pig-Headed Isolationist, so even though the timing is not really perfect from a historical sense (he should have replaced John N. Garner only in '41, after the election), I'm not complaining That five percent gave me more IC than most American countries have all together! Anyway, since it's already 1940 and I've started gearing up for war already, I can now start training actual troops. But I won't. I'm still building some more IC. That will come in handy!

Now with the USSR at war with Japan, I can send Lend-Lease shipments to them as well. But I won't. Because screw them, they are communist scum and they will be moved down by Japan anyway. Or at least Japan will keep them occupied until Germany gets ready. At any rate, investing into them is not really worth my supplies.

So by now I recon there will be war with Japan sometime in the not so far future. Hence I have started the construction of Fort Guam:


Meanwhile, Europe was quiet. A little too quiet in the opinion of the United Kingdom, so they sent a freind of theirs to Norway called Wilfred.


German response didn't take long: Denmark was invaded on the next day with stunning efficiency. They surrendered within a day (or so). In a few more days Germany officially declared war on Norway (which they didn't IRL but that's how the game works...). The actual landing took a bit more, in fact, it didn't take place for quite a long time. In the meantime, Germany asked Sweden to use their railroads to transport some troops around but the request was declined! Sweden has some balls!

So, it's May, 1940, and my Industrial program is over. I have over 400 base IC with almost 350 effective already and about 80 from that is sitting idle on supplies. Time to start building up some forces.

I'll start with 3 Light Fighters. They are not really that urgent, but they take some time to form. Then I'll build three paralels of five serials of Tank Divisions with the following setup: 2xARM + 1xMOT + 1xH-ARM + 1xSP-Art. This division with the current techs has 5 Width (that won't change), 11 Hard Attack, 14 Soft Attack, 17 Defensiveness and 23(!) Toughness. Air Defence is pretty low though (3). With 40% Softness, this is a Combined Arms Division and it can take quite some punishment. Impressive, if you ask me. It has a cost though: a single Division like that eats 7.58 Supplies anf 7.6 Fuel! Which is the reason why I won't have too many of them running around. But I won't need to anyway! They are rather expensive, too, but I'm still on a Peacetime Economy, so my reserves are very cheap. Now here's the trick: in the HPP it costs a lot more to upgrade and reinforce your units than in vanilla. I'm not really sure how much it will cost me, but I'm sure it won't be as easy as it is in vanilla to exploit the reserve mechanic.

That two investations take care of my free IC completely for the time being. I'll need to either increase my economic mobiliziation or somehow get the Great Depression to fade away more quickly to get more IC. It's getting a bit annoying to be honest. I've been playing for four years now, keeping up the New Deal as much as I can but it's still as bas as it was in '36...

But at least in Europe things started to stir up a bit in late May with a German declaration of war against the Netherlands. At around the same time the Soviet port of Vladivostok fell to Japanese hands. And they thought this would be the perfect opportunity to start trying to lure me into the Axis. But as I stated earlier, I have no intention of joining that faction, so I started countering with aligning myself to the Allies. I'm still not sure if I will join them or not, but I want to keep the option open. Drifting away too much could make that impossible.

The German invasion of the Netherlands was quick and decisive. In a mere week they were able to force the Dutch into capitulation. The consequences were far-reaching. King George decided to get himself a new Prime Minister because the old didn't work out too well. Belgium began fearing for their lives and asked to join the Allies. Their request was accepted.


Also, the French managed to outmaneuver themselves, as usual. The AI tends to freak out when a new front is opened and to reorganise everything it has when this happens. The first example for this are amphibious invasions where the defender will bring everything but the kitchen sink to defend on the new beachead and the other is when Germany starts to break through in the Low Countries and France brings the entire defence of the Maginot Line to defend on that front instead. The result is that the Germans are held in the Ardennes but they break through the Maginot like it was a house of straw. Quite unfortunate but it is supposedly much better in FtM.

With the ten levels of Radar finished on Guam, I've started building four paralels of three serials of Light Bombers. They will be my flying tanks, hopefully providing the required air support for my quick and decisive advance. At least that's the theory.

In the second half of June it almost looked like the Allies managed to hold up the Germans in both Belgium and France, but by the end of the month both fronts were breached.


Belgium capitulated on the 8th of July, but that doesn't mean that the country was completely lost, the United Kingdom took control of their remaining territory. And I think I know now why that happens: I messed up the event I'll think of something better later. Anyway, the Dutch and Belgian colonies are under British control now and their European territories will be under German occupation soon. The war doesn't look good for the Allies. By early August, the Germans were on the outskirts of Paris. That's especially important because if they take the city, France will lose a lot of National Unity, which is vital to make them surrender.

By the way, I'm not sure when, but Italy has joined the war already and took over most of Tunisia. On the other hand they never actually landed in Albania. Odd. A few days into August my Neutrality gets below 70 (the Lend-Lease events helped a lot here, reducing it by 1 point every time!), allowing me to switch to Basic Mobilisation. This will increase the cost of my tank Divisions slightly, but it will decrease Consumer Goods Demand and the penalty on Resource production by 10%! Very helpful! At the same time I hire the Paternal Autocrat Henry Ford as my Armaments Minister. He is an Administrative Genius and he will help our economy immensely, giving over 40 additional IC! Actually, half of that goes to cover the increase in the cost of tanks, but still. I also appoint a new Foreign Minister, Charles Coughlin, a Paternal Autocrat Ideological Crusader. He will make me drift towards the Allies a bit more (which is somewhat contradictive, but that's how I roll!) and also increases the threat we generate, which is completely irrelevant. The others are alright.

Meanwhile in Europe, Germany is advancing relentlessly, although they forgot about Luxemburg. Maybe they were afraid that the tiny Duchy would turn out to be a world-conquering juggernaut... Well, actaully the reason is that the German AI no longer declares war on Luxemburg because it caused a lot of issues earlier (it is related to the issue I mentioned above, the AI bypassing the interface limitations). Now Luxemburg guarantees Belgium to get them involved but since Belgium joined the Allies instead of being DoWed, that didn't do anything. Anyway, this will no longer be an issue in FtM since the AI bug is fixed there.

Paris falls on August 31st. By that time the Germans are almost at Lyon and captured Cherbourg.


In other news, after the Bulgarian claims on Dobrogea, Romania suffered a right-wing coup and joined the Tri-Partite Pact (ie. the Axis). Bulgaria also joined the Axis on the next day. Tibet surrendes to Japan on the 6th of September.

Probably due to the distribution of Victory Points in France, it took another month to force the Vichy Armistice on France, on the 9th of October, 1940. It was a very interesting race! In the end, there were four French VP cities on the front, all of which could have pushed them into surrendering: Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille and Alger.



So, this concludes the Fifth Chapter! As of now, my Neutrality is as low as 68, so very soon it won't actually make any difference to use the "They went too far!" decision... Still, using it now would cause 40 dissent and six revolts, while reducing Neutrality by only 20 points. Also with the Fall of France I will be able to use the Destroyers for Bases decision soon, reducing Neutrality by another 5 points. So, should I use the "They went too far!" decision? Cast your votes!