The Tipping Point
Sorry for delay of updates, weekends are really busy and writing about these crazy wars I started is getting very difficult.
Berlin Burning:
We continue to fight it out with desperate Germans around their capital, while our infantry assaults the city.
Battles around Brandenburg between May 15-17th
The assault on Berlin on May 18th. It had already been going on for a few days, and most of the Germans guarding the city had been worn down by breakout attempts and previous attacks by our forces.
On May 19th the Germans surrender the city, the fighting had been so intense that the infrastructure of the city would be damaged for weeks after, looking like a hilarious dot of yellow in a sea of bright green. This special victory gave us a chance to decrease our dissent by 10% or something, all I know is we could switch all (36) our IC on consumer goods to other things. Sorry little Soviet children born in June the glow of victory will be your only birthday present this year! We are also sending you to work in the coal mines.
After Berlin surrendered all the tank divisions that had been strongpointing the city were let loose, slamming into the exhausted German lines that had been probing our positions for weeks. It was like a tsunami of armor, washing away all the German units, destroying almost every division that was around the city. Over the first few weeks of June our armies in Germany set their cruise control to cool (and pillage)
All the way in Danzig we finally push the Germans back into the city. But the city has even better fortifications than Lauenburg...
Down in the Balkans things are not going as well. The stacks of our puppets are still getting tossed around by the Italians and Germans. Thankfully the line only crumples allowing us to focus on other fronts. I am now convinced that the USSR needs to puppet at least 1-2 Balkan states if they want to have an easy time fighting the Axis.
Shortly after the fall of Berlin the Germans began to attack the Allies in the Netherlands. Better late than never...
Down at the bottom you can just see Bitburg, the new German capital. It is in an extremely defensible position with rivers, cities and fortifications surrounding it. Hitler had chosen it for the good hotels and brothels, the defensibly of the city was just a fluke.
Italy also goes full retard and starts a war they cannot hope to finish. Unless they get puppeted by us and then dragged into another war against the allies. War with France will have unfortunate, rage inducing consequences.
The advance on June 12th, after the fall of Berlin there was little resistance in central Germany.
The dot in northern Yugoslavia is the salient that the single Russian corps in the Balkans is maintaining. In the south, Albania and the very large Italian garrison is about to fall.
Our glorious puppets have single handed won their own battle. The great thing about puppets is that you get to keep what they conquer, also they will send their troops to die for whatever you point at. And all the oil you could ever want!
Also happening in early June: The Manchurian front has broken open, we have just captured Manchukuo's 2nd capital and are rushing for the third.
And then we puppet them. Shortly afterwards I learn about a particularly annoying aspect of puppeting your enemy's puppets. Whoever they were attached to get a truce. Meaning Manchukuo is at peace with Japan, not only denying me the use of their considerable army, but giving the Japanese army a free pass to escape to their borders in Korea and China. If anyone knows how to get puppets to declare war on countries they have truces with could you let me know. In the meantime Stalin ordered the arrest and execution of all the leadership of our new puppet until someone attacks Japan.
I am use to seeing absurd and slightly depressing things in this AAR but this one takes the cake...
Sigh, looks like the war is just getting started.
On June 12th we capture Wien, or as we North Americans call it Vienna.
Vienna is a way better name tbh.
A few days later our breakneck drive across Germany comes to an end as our forces slam into a line of German units. Before I took this picture two of our vanguard tank divisions had already reached Dusseldorf, but then ran into a whole bunch of stukas, panzer divisions and motorized infantry, they did not make it out alive.
We have taken two crucial airbases and are poised to assault the sprawling Ruhr and its blob of cities, once those fall Bitburg can be attacked. But that is easier said than done, in all the alternate Cold War gone hot stories I have seen or read the Ruhr is usually what stops the Soviets cold.
In the south our forces are getting spread very thin, and run into determined resistance. Our tank divisions are worn down, we don't have enough infantry to hold gaps. As the weeks go by we decided to focus on holding ground in the south and charging toward Bitburg with everything we have.
On yet another front, the north Balkans, we are deep into Slovakia, and have started to prob the mass of units guarding Bratislava (can be seen as the 0 attack in picture below). We begin to encircle the city to destroy all those divisions in it.
Between the giant clash of Russian and German arms around the Rhine and the sloppy mess of the Balkans, packs of Italian and a few German divisions roam through south central Germany unimpeded, harassing our weak underbelly. They start to threaten Prague so we dispatch divisions form other fronts to try and tie them down.
Might as well take this moment to talk about the air war. First of all I suck at managing air forces, although I am way too picky to let the AI do it. The air war was going well in the early stages. The only thing stopping my bombers was AA and logistics. While our huge stacks of INT kept the Germans from hurting us. But as we neared the Rhine my fighters had finally been worn down to nothing, while many of my CAS had lost considerable levels of strength and org, the luftwaffe was back.
It would take some time to gain control of the skies, but until then our tanks were bombed and our bases harassed.
On June 22nd, we begin the decisive offensive of our war with Germany, if we succeed they will surrender, if we fail our southern line will likely crumble and we will be forced to pull back.
The German surrender progress. Soviet High Command likes to call this the
Countdown to Annihilation.
1000 Year Reich? The only thing that will last 1000 years in Germany will be the monuments to glorious Soviet victories, Communism and the mass graves of Germans who stood in the way. Also giant gold statues of Stalin, we're going to be building lots of those.