Gearing up for War
November 8, Kiel Shipyards
“Gentlemen! I am proud to be here with you on this day! The day that the [I[Kreigsmarine[/I] is truly reborn!” It is a cold blustery November day in Kiel and there in the protected harbor lay 10 light cruiser escorts under construction watching the newest warships in the German fleet, 4 pocket battleships armed with 18” guns and the 4 fleet carriers working up with their aircraft. The crowd roars at this, Germany taking yet another step to ensure that she can defend herself against British aggression.
“ Yes gentlemen, yes” Hitler smiles as his amplified voice washes over the crowd, “I know that the most modern German battleships the
Bismark,
Tirpitz, and our first Aircraft Carrier
Graf Zepplein have been built and have been sitting in Wilhelmshaven Harbor for some time now and when the time comes they will be the fleet-in-being that protects Germany from the British Navy while you men have the honor of engaging the British Home Fleet and the convoys that feed Britian raw materials.” Hitler’s speech despite his rambling and failure to really make a point as of yet somehow resonates with the sailors and marines gathered at the harbor today.
Hitler pauses for a moment and waits for the roar of the crowd to die down, “Today we commission the capital ships and aircraft carriers that will comprise the 1st Carrier Squadron, by summer of next year gentlemen their light cruiser escorts, modern as anything the world will ever see, will commission and the squadron will undergo maneuvers in the Channel under the command of a man you know well, Admrial Raeder will you please come up here and speak to your squadron now?”
Hitler bows and raises his hands to the crowd of naval personnel waving for them to continue their cheering and slowly begins to calm the crowd before bowing for a heartbeat and motioning for Admiral Raeder to take the podium before stepping back and away from it. Raeder reaches the podium, “Thank you Feuer! Lads! These warships are rightfully the possession of Germany and they don’t know we have them yet,” Raeder’s voice carries over the crowd, “Gentlemen, we will be demonstrating to the British and French in late summer of next year to keep them from doing anything unwise.
“Gentlemen, I will not lie to you, we will be vastly outnumbered by the Royal Navy whenever we finally do put to sea. I do not worry though, not with lads like you at my side.
The crowd goes wild as Raeder and the other top brass exit
January 1, 1939 Berlin, Germany
“Gentlemen, I know that the last few years have been fairly busy, but what have we to show for it?” says Adolf Hitler who now at this point is considerably more sober and is actually looking halfway mentally stable at the moment.
“Sir,” Rader starts, “As you know we commissioned the capital ships of the 1st Carrier Squadron late last year and their escorts should commission before anything more happens in Czechoslovakia. I’m not completely sure I agree with the construction of aircraft carriers, but I am glad that they will be escorted by very modern pocket battleships and escorts.” Raeder stops and takes a sip of water, “However, I do have issues with this whole plan still, regardless of the relative parity in capital warships that we apparently have in comparison to the British and French if you believe the reports from Admiral Carnaris’s spies. Nothing against you Admiral, I think it would be prudent to assume that your spies likely missed some warships.”
Carnaris nods and motions for Raeder to continue.
“At least we won’t have to deal with the American fleet at the same time, I suppose they will be busy with Japan for at least 2 years and most of their warships are relatively old like the British and French fleets, though that will likely change sooner than we would like. Speaking doctrinally, we are several years behind where the Americans are, much less the French or British. Now Dr. von Braun’s has discussed some of his
wunderwaffens with me, personally I am very happy with the prototype tests of his anti-ship and anti-air rockets, particularly that we can mount them on our warships and have a much more effective punch against any hostile fleet, even if they are short ranged, that we can then mount them on our capital warships and screens and this is beyond whatever affect that the early rockets will have in defending our provinces, much less their distribution to our ground units. Perhaps aircraft will be nothing more than an expensive endeavor in naval combat when ships possess anti-aircraft rockets? Only time will tell. Regardless, I would like to avoid putting any fleets at sea until they have been upgraded with these “portable SAMs” and “Anti-Ship Missiles” to ensure that our small number of warships will account themselves fully. We have fully upgraded our cruiser escorts and we believe that they are at the limits of what can be built, not what we can currently build. Seeing as the British haven’t built anything better yet, or at least Admiral Carnaris’s spies haven’t found anything better in their docks or blueprints.”
German Naval Technologies
British Naval Technologies
General Beck seeing that Raeder has finished his presentation begins, “Gentlemen, we seem to have rearmed ourselves very well up to this point. We have approximately 3.4 million men under arms at this point and 252 divisions of infantry… more than any one other power at this point. Unfortunately as Minister Schwarz would tell us if he were here, apparently he is at the hospital with a serious case of influenza and thought it best to not infect us all with it. This year aside from continued infantry production, the production of interceptors, and the production of the first batch of light cruisers we must halt all production to re-arm our infantry. We have met or exceeded all of our 39 projections in nearly all categories, except the navy and we expected our naval goals to fall short, and so we may safely ramp down production putting those factories into retooling to re-equip our infantry and militia divisions. As you know Germany is experiencing a critical shortage of metals which plays utter havoc with our production and so we have agreed to run the factories at less than full speed when upgrading our units to build up war stockpiles. Unfortunately, with our research outpacing our production capabilities, we could easily still be modernizing the army at the end of this year, assuming that production isn’t diverted to other areas as well.
Latest Technologies and Research Levels
Still, Poland will fall without significant effort should they not surrender Danzig. The new assault rifles and quick firing artillery should provide an edge beyond just our numbers. Not exactly sporting now, but it is a matter of life and death for Germany.
Late August Berlin, Germany
“Adolf, there is absolutely no chance that the Poles will peacefully hand over Danzig, none at all. After the events with Czechoslovakia, when the Allies thought all they would need to do to ensure we would not re-unify with them was talk big and scold us, when they didn’t mobilize their troops and put them in behind the Maginot Line at the absolute very least, much less ship them into Czechoslovakia via friendly Poland they showed they weren’t very serious. For crying out loud here the trade with us actually
increased right after it happened.. even if it was 0 trades up to 1.
That is why you should give the orders to mobilize now and get orders out to the commanders to break out weapons and munitions for the
Heer units that aren’t already on the border and to ensure that the portable SAMs and anti-shipping missiles will reach their units in time.” A very weary Carnaris finishes. “Once this kicks off we will be at war with the entire planet in one fashion or another, well aside from our Hungarian allies and the puppets we have off of Sardinia. By the way whose idea was it to claim Sardnia from the Italians? And why are you spending valuable time and resources still trying to ally with the Italians? They start pointless wars that they can’t even get to now.”
“But I am the leader of the Third Reich!” exclaims an angry Adolf Hitler, “I control the military,”
The military representatives there, Beck, Raeder, Luttwitz, Koller, and Carnaris exchange quick glances at that comment and give a mutual shrug.
“Perhaps you once did, or thought you simply thought you did,” Carnaris interrupts, “I think I speak for the others here when I say that your actions in attempting to control the military over the last several years has been utterly illegal, much less some of the laws that you’ve tried to pass that have mysteriously been forgotten about. I’m not about to overthrow you, not now with this period of turmoil and war that Germany is about to go into, but once the initial campaign is completed we’ll deal with you permanently.” Carnaris smiles, “ I wouldn’t be thinking that you’ll be getting any help from your pal Goring, not with everyone sick and tired of his political games trying to dig up dirt on everyone, actually I suppose he’ll never have to worry about anything again in all truthfulness. You really should have fired him after the first incident. Don’t get me wrong here, you are still a hero in Germany, you had the guts to rearm us when the French alone could have walked in and taken Germany without any military opposition, but by no means are you nearly as popular now as you once were thanks to Goring.” Carnaris sighs, “I was hoping you might have seen some reason, but apparently not. Guards! Lock him up.” Carnaris looks around, “Alright I think we can take ten while he’s dealt with, then back to the meeting.”
Ten minutes later, the spilled coffee having been cleaned up and some chairs switched around while
that coffee dried, the cabinet, now only eight men instead of nine sat down to continue their important business.
“Gentlemen, I move that we keep this very quiet until things are decided one way or another in Poland and France. It would do no good to get the people up in arms over this right now and distract the
Wehrmacht from its primary duties. Now Gentlemen, what is our plan for dealing with Poland and the inevitable French reaction?” Carnaris begins.
General Beck begins,“Well, it appears that our modernization outlook is still correct, that is to say that we will be modernizing our units well into 1940,” begins General Beck, “However, our troops at the moment are armed with weapons at least two if not three generations more modern that what the Poles have and one or two generations more modern than what the French have. Currently we have twelve divisions covering every province on the Siegfried line to draw the bulk of the French Army there. Dangerous, no?
Ambassador Ribbentrop has informed me that we have signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, the invasion plans for which are… ah in my briefcase there we go, with the real kicker being that we will split Poland with them, and ensure the neutrality of the Baltic States… unless of course we will find some benefit in occupying them as well, but one should honor neutrality agreements when they work for you, yes?
In the Konigsburg district we have several field armies ready to break out and take Danzig from the Poles, while elements from the “mainland” portion of Germany will attempt to distract the defenders and keep them from looking over their shoulders. Elements near Poznan have been equipped with additional trucks to improve their chances of a breakout to Warsaw. Krakow will be harder to crack open though as we cannot rely on the Hungarians to push through and capture the city. That being said troops from Oppeln will advance under the cover of heavy artillery fire through Katowice and push into Krakow. When these sectors have been occupied the Red Army will swoop in and take the demoralized Poles in the rear. They will have no choice but to surrender.
“And what do the Soviets have in comparison to the Poles?” ask Carnaris.
“Similar equipment and raw numbers. It will work even if we have to capture all of Poland ourselves and hand it over to them. Once that is accomplished we will leave behind a minimal rearguard and move to the Belgian border.”
“Isn’t our side of the Belgian border unprotected General?” asks Carnaris a bit more concerned than he was just a minute ago.
“It is, but we are confident that the Belgians will see this as a sign, along with our departed leader’s guarantees of independence that we won’t do anything to them and they won’t do anything to us. Which of course is completely wrong, but they won’t know that until after our troops are already across the border and looking at the Channel. If we can conquer Poland before October, I would like permission to go ahead and invade France via Belgium. Otherwise we will spend the winter re-equipping our troops and allowing Admiral Raeder a chance to sting the English a bit at sea.
I am uncertain however, as to what our goals are at this very moment beyond the annexation and return of Danzig and the defeat of France. Certainly, it would be useful to capture the Rock, but to do so we would have to move through Spain, a Spain we assisted to win its civil war. Alexandria would be nice as well, but to go through Turkey in the winter? That does not make sense at all. Invade the Soviet Union? …Not this year, perhaps as the mud begins to dry. The General Staff will be working on that one, but we will need some way to better move supplies to our troops with the awful roads in the Soviet Union.. I’m not sure how we can do that; maybe we can dump supplies out of airplanes to our troops, regardless its going on the priority list. Admrial Raeder, would you like to talk about the preconditions for the invasion of the British Isles? Getting the
Heer there is your problem?”
“Certainly General,” Raeder begins, “First, we must wear the home fleet down enough that they cannot effectively interdict the landings, secondly we do need more transports to ferry our troops across the Channel, I propose Sealion for 1941, and Barbarossa for Spring 1940. I fear that the superior tactics of the British fleet will make any fleet engagement so costly that we will have to abandon these plans to invade the British Isles. Just how useful will our SAMs and Anti-Ship Missiles be? We cannot know, not without engaging the British head-on,” Raeder sits back showing the frustration and stress of having a fleet, but not being able to take it to sea against the RN without it likely being destroyed.
“Gentlemen,” Carnaris begins, “Today we determine the destiny of Germany. Good luck and Good Hunting.”