Tomorrow the World - A German AAR

1941-07-02
General von Lüttwitz's 18th Panzer-Division was able to break through the enemy lines in the northern part of the Russian front last week. Supported by elements of the V. and VI. Infantry Corps he has reached the bridgehead, that was established around Riga, today, encircling a total of eleven Soviet infantry divisions.


1941-07-07
After driving almost nonstop day and night, the 11th light Panzer-Division of General Heinrici has reached the Black Sea only a few miles west of Odessa. The city is completely undefended, just as the rest of the southern Ukraine. We have achieved the most important part of our plan well ahead of schedule. The Romanian and Bulgarian troops that are rushing north to help the Soviets are now trapped.


1941-07-08
With the objectives in the south achieved, I've ordered General von Manstein to swing his 1st Panzer Corps around and to march north towards Kiev. His tanks are part of the 6th army whose task it is to secure the right flank of our cut through the Ukraine. But because there are no enemy reinforcements in sight in this sector, I think that we can risk exposing our flank a few more days, if it gives us a shot at taking Kiev before the retreating Soviet troops can dig in there.


1941-07-10
The Italians are making good progress on the Balkans. After a series of embarrassing defeats last year, they have managed to link their enclave on the Adriatic Coast in Zadar with their main force today and are now advancing further south along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Less pleasant news came from Ireland today: The British forces have almost completely occupied the entire island and the Irish army has retreated to their capital where they are staging their last stand. The Irish ambassador has asked for an audience today but I'm quite busy with our own operations.

1941-07-11
On the front in the Balkans we have begun to storm the Hungarian capital today. Five well rested infantry divisions, supported by the 2nd tactical bomber air-fleet, are now assaulting the Hungarian defenders, demoralized by weeks of constant retreating. I'm confident that Budapest will fall soon and the rest of Hungary will follow quickly.


1941-07-12
General von Bock's 6th Panzer Division, which is under the command of von Manstein's 1st Panzer Corps, has reached the southern outskirts of Kiev today. He continues to march into the undefended city while Waffen-SS units are moving up to secure their advance.


1941-07-13
As expected, General von Bock has taken Kiev today, more than a month before the schedule. With this important railway hub under our control the Soviets won't be able to re-balance their front line anytime soon. While they do have quite a few troops fighting north of Kiev all the way up to Leningrad, the entire south remains undefended.


1941-07-14
Budapest, the capital of Hungary fell today after only three days of fighting. For a few days now we are spotting more and more foreign troops from Romania, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union on the front in Hungary, but it will be too late for them to save their struggling ally.

1941-07-16
After a lot of hard fighting and constant counterattacks, we have managed to break through the most northern part of the Finish front line and were able to encircle a single enemy infantry division. This is the first success of Heeresgruppe Nord, after they captured the port of Petsamo a few weeks back. It is becoming clear that we will have to send more reinforcements to this army group if we want to achieve our goals from Operation Barbarossa in this sector. Especially frustrating is that we are unable to capture the important aluminum mines that lie only a few kilometers behind the enemy lines.


1941-07-21
After the loss of their capital the Hungarians were unable to establish a working provisional government and their military command structure has collapsed. Just as I have predicted the bulk of their forces has capitulated to our troops today.


1941-07-24
For a few months now Winston Churchill has been trying to establish the "V-sign" as the official sign for the "resistance against Germany". The royal air force is dropping an increasing amount of leaflets over the occupied territories, in order to convince the population to turn against us. Today my propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels has started a brilliant counter campaign, using the V-sign to spread our own message.


1941-07-26
It has been well over a month since we started Operation Barbarossa and things are looking great. We have reached almost all of our objectives on the eastern front, the red army is in shambles and I'm confident that we will defeat Romania and Yugoslavia by the end of August. Even with another five weeks to go on our schedule I think it is safe to say that Operation Barbarossa has been a complete success. I've given the order to my general staff to start working on new plans for September.

1941-07-28
The Heer is doing great. The investments we've made in the months before Operation Barbarossa have paid off. Our soldiers have shown that their weapons, their tanks, guns and planes are superior to those of our enemies, which is why I have decided today that we can afford to focus on the Kriegsmarine again. Not long ago we have invited our arms manufacturers to bid on new weapons projects for even better tanks and artillery, but these projects will be put on hold for now. While our academics will focus on improving our naval tactics, our most skilled ship builders will start working on new plans for better vessels, implementing all the new ideas we got from the naval battles we fought since the war started. We won't switch our production form tanks and guns to naval vessels, though. Our troops still need more equipment, but if things continue like this we will have enough capacities next year to double the size of our fleet with top of the line ships.


1941-07-29
It came as no surprise to me, when the British announced today that the last last Irish militia had just capitulated. They have been defending the capital Dubulin for a few weeks, inflicting heavy losses on the Brits but in the end there was no other way this could have ended. Churchill gloated in a BBC broadcast that this was only the first victory over "the Hun and their allies" this year. Apparently they are now receiving supplies and weapons which the United States have "lend" or "leased" them. I wish I had heard on Admiral Dönitz when he proposed to build a strong submarine fleet which we could use now to simply sink those leased weapons before they reach Britain. But as it is we only have one flotilla operational, hardly enough to make a dent into the British sipping lanes.
Because we have sent all available reserves to fight in Russia, Spain or the Balkans, I've elevated the preparedness level for our garrisons on the French coast, just in case Churchill's speech was not mere propaganda.


1941-08-06
Stalin spoke to his people via Radio Moscow today. It was mandatory for soviet citizens to listen to his broadcast in which he declared the current conflict as a "Great Patriotic War", as well as announcing the complete mobilization of the entire country for total war.
Unimpressed by their propaganda we are penetrating deeper and deeper into their territory. Our troops in the northern part of the front have already reached their goals and have stopped at the designated positions as they are described in the operational plan.


1941-08-10
General von Edelsheim and the 1st light Panzer-Division reached our easternmost target in Dnipropetrovsk today. In the recent days our advance has slowed down. We are still almost unopposed in this sector, but we are having increasing trouble with our overextended supply lines. Our troops are also stretched quite thin on our flanks, which means that we will have to spend at least a few weeks to consolidate the front and to reorganize our troops before we can start a new operation. Some of my generals, like von Manstein and Guderian, have protested against my orders to hold where we drew the line a few month back, even though they could easily advance even further, but I'm backed by most of the members in my general staff.


PS: Thanks for the nice comments.

1941-08-12
I was woken up by my adjutant at 4 o'clock this morning with the news that the British have landed in Sicily. I was wide awake immediately and rushed to the OKW as fast as I could. When I arrived at 5:30 the situation had already changed and the word was that the British now held two beachheads at Syrakus in the south and Messina in the north. The rest of the day was very chaotic, I was unable to get a direct telephone line to Mussolini and we constantly received new telegrams confirming or refuting all kinds of new rumors about the situation. At the end of the day the British had successfully landed an impressive amount of troops on a broad front along the entire eastern coast of Sicily, trapping the small remaining garrison on the island.
At our previous meeting last winter I told Mussolini to protect his southern coast, because of the obvious danger that the British would try to cross the sea from Africa to Italy there. But Mussolini, desperate for a victory, had thrown his entire army against the Yugoslavians, exposing his home front.


1941-08-13
Today I finally was able to reach Mussolini in his headquarters in Rome. He reassured me that they had the British landings contained on Sicily and that there was no way they would be able to set foot on the Italian mainland. Even though I didn't speak to him directly (I had to use my interpreter), I could hear the desperation in his voice. He asked if we could cover over his nation's part of the front in Yugoslavia, so that he could transfer some troops back from the Balkans to Italy. I expect the Yugoslavians to surrender in a week or two, so I agreed.
This invasion was the last thing we needed right now. Mussolini hasn't asked us to send troops, yet, but if he did, I'm afraid we would be in trouble. The campaign on the Balkans is going great but if we were to divert troops from the Yugoslavian and Romanian front to Italy now, I'm afraid that we will loose our momentum. If we keep on pushing I expect Yugoslavia and Romania to surrender in a few weeks, which would free up some of our divisions there, but these units are already earmarked to be transfered to the eastern front, which has grown significantly in its length over the previous months. The only troops we could spare at the moment would be the reserves in France, because it is unlikely that the British are capable of staging two major invasions at the same time.
But for the time being I hope the Italians can do their part and fend off the British on their own.

1941-08-15
Despite Mussolinis promises the British have managed to cross the straight of Messina today and are now standing on the southern tip of Italy. The Italian high command is panicking and Il Duce has ordered all his troops to return to Italy to defend their homeland. We will take over their part of the front and try to defend their holdings in Croatia.


1941-08-18
With the landing in southern Italy we, and our allies, are a now fighting on five fronts: The Finish front has only moved a few kilometers since the war began. In Spain we are now in control of one quarter the country and are standing on the gates of their capital Madrid. On the Balkans we have reached Belgrade and the 2nd light Panzer Division under General Hoepner is standing in striking distance of the Ploiesti oil fields. Our army on the eastern front has reached its goals of Operation Barbarossa and is now waiting for new orders. In Italy the British are expected to capture Palermo by the end of the week but I'm hopeful that the entire Italian army will be enough to stop them from advancing much further.


1941-08-19
I flew to Minsk today to visit our victorious troops and to meet with my front line generals to discuss the plans for the coming months. While we wait for our supply lines to catch up we will perform some necessary reorganizations of our army groups:Army group south will be split in two, the troops on the Balkans will be placed under the command of "Heeresgruppe Balkan" and the troops in the Ukraine will remain under control of "Heeresgruppe Süd". At the moment most of our tanks are assigned to army group south after their daring push to the black sea. Half of them will be assigned to army group north for the coming operations. Their places in the front will be filled with infantry divisions that will be withdrawn from the Balkans as soon as they are available.
"Heeresgruppe Iberia" will be renamed "Heeresgruppe West" and their headquarters will be moved from Toulouse to Marseille. From there they will be in charge of not only our troops in Spain, but also of our reserves in France which we are now on route to northern Italy, where they will secure their most important assets while the Italians can concentrate completely on the situation in the south.
The general staff is working on various new plans for the eastern front, which we can implement once the reorganization is complete. But in the mean time we will launch a new operation on the Finish front to break the stalemate there, codenamed "Unternehmen Polarlicht".

1941-08-21
For the upcoming operation in Finland we have shipped two army corps from the eastern front over the Baltic Sea to our naval base in Luleå: General Axthelm's "V. Korps" and General Jaenecke's "1. Marine-Sturm-Korps" which led the successful amphibious landings near Riga during Operation Barbarossa. We have also significantly increased our air power in this theater: The 2nd Stuka air-fleet will be operating from our airfield in Kirkenes while the recently transfered 2nd tactical bomber fleet is stationed in Luleå. With the arrival of the reinforcements the 7th Army has been split in two armies. The new troops, as well as the IV. infantry corps are now under the command of von Witzleben's 10th Army while the remainder of the force in the north stays under the command of General Schöner's 7th Army. Both armies are under the command of "Heeresgruppe Nord".
For almost two month now we have made only minimal progress in this sector. The main reasons are that our troops are attacking from territory with very bad infrastructure in the north and over a river against well prepared defenses in the west. We were able to push back the Soviets a few kilometers in the north, thanks to out superior weapons and tactics, but this advance has taken its toll and our troops are only recovering very slowly. Constant supply shortages are also a burden to our combat effectiveness. The Soviets on the other hand can utilize two major railroads that run directly from Leningrad to Murmansk on the Soviet side and form Helsinki to the aluminum mines at Kemi on the former Finish side if the country.
During "Polarlicht" our goal will be to cut through these vital supply veins in order to weaken the Soviet defenders and to allow our troops on the western part of the front to break through. Three marine infantry divisions will land near the small harbor town of Oulu while the other tow marine divisions will support a river crossing near Kemi. Once we have captured the important aluminum mines there, these two forces will unite and advance behind the enemy lines towards the Murmansk-railway, either encircling the Soviet defenders or, more likely, forcing them to retreat.
Since operation Barbarossa began, the Soviets have almost cut their troops stationed in Finland in half, giving us, for the first time on this front, the numerical superiority. Unlike the Russians we don't have any tank support, but I think our Panzers would be more of a hindrance in the difficult terrain than an asset. Our air force should be able to tip the balance in our favor. The Operation is scheduled to start on the 28th of august.

1941-08-28
At precisely 6:30 standard German time we launched operation Northern Lights. Supported by our superior air force our troops attacked on the entire front and our marine infantry began attacking the enemy garrison at Oulu, which was caught completely off guard.


In other news: After a short stop to wait for the infantry to catch up, General von Kluge's 5th Panzer Division has captured the Romanian oil fields of Ploiesti today. The installations have been damaged by the fighting but they are expected to resume full production in a few weeks. This is no serious blow for the Soviets, their oil comes from the rich oil fields in Baku, but with the Romanian oil under our control we will be able to fuel our tanks, planes and ships for the foreseeable future.


1941-08-30
Our specially trained marine infantry was able to cross the river west of Kemi on the Finish front and has broken through the Soviet positions. Our amphibious landing near Oulu has been a complete success as well and we have established a broad beachhead, cutting through the Soviet supply lines in that area.
We've also made some impressive progress on the other fronts today: In a historical first our troops have managed to captured three capital cities only a few hours apart. The Spanish are still resisting but we expect the Yugoslavians and Romanians to surrender any day now after the loss of their capitals.