• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
More apologies: internet connection lost again all day. Children complaining of cruelty - no cable and no facebook - letters to UN re parental neglect etc.

Luckily cable power problems fixed (I hope). Seriously we are lucky - only people we know without flood damage. Had our average rainfall for January, February and March in just 2 hours.

Without further ado:

Rank and File
A Clerk’s War​


29th October to 31st October 1939

The weather here in Berlin has remained fine, if getting a little cool. Fortunately for our soldiers, the clear weather seems to have persisted over much of France, with only the occasional rain or storm front passing through. OKH is be keen to take advantage of this unseasonal bonus, and has launched three attacks on the French, who are struggling to form a coherent defence line.

General Nehring led the charge, sending his 1st Pz Division against Bethouart’s 6th Motor Brigade. General Bethouart has another division in reserve, but that unit is exhausted from recent battles and constant marching and, even if brought to the front, it will not provide much of a problem for the elite soldiers of our leading medium tank division. The Yonne and Sereine rivers could cause problems, but the latter is quite easily crossed and General Nehring predicts a quick victory.

chablisfinal.jpg


Battle of Chablis

In Avallon, General Dietrich is even more confident. His opposition is the 71ème Infantry Division led by General Arlabosse, a unit which is fully rested and dug in. But the terrain is flat and uninterrupted, allowing our panzers and motorised infantry a clear run. The Luftwaffe should handle any strong points or centres of resistance. 2nd Panzer Division hopes that speed and power will allow it to overrun the French infantry, despite the presence of the standard issue anti-tank guns.

avallonfinal.jpg


Battle of Avallon

The third attack of the morning included my brother’s “Wunsdorf” regiment. General von Manstein has been provided with 4th Gebirgsjäger Division to assist his own 3rd Leichte Pz Division “Angriff”. His objective is the key province of Nancy, held by the British General Hollington with more than 17,000 troops. The French 52ème Division is in good order, but Hollington’s own 1st Mountain Brigade is still shaky and may not be able to withstand the shock of a full armour attack. Whatever the outcome of the first contact, von Manstein has orders to force forward regardless of casualties. The capture of Nancy is critical to cutting off the French in the northern Maginot, and speed is of the essence.

nancyfinal.jpg


Battle of Nancy

As we worked through the day, there seemed to be something missing. After an hour or so I realised what it was. There were no constant reports of RAF fighters intercepting our bombers. Throughout the day there was not one air battle: our bombers were able to operate without interference. Unfortunately the Luftwaffe was not able to take full advantage of this as many units were grounded for repairs after the merciless attacks of the past few days.

Other than routine bombing statistics, the only other news on Saturday was from our submarine commanders. Both von Nordeck and Wolf had success, with both destroying ships heading for the USA. II Unterseebootsflotte had the first kill, sinking a Norwegian freighter bound for Boston from Bergen. A submarine from 4th Unterseebootsflotte caught a lone French merchantman on the Lorient- Boston route. While the non-arrival of these ships will do no harm to the USA, the lack of foreign income will impact both Norway and France, and civilian morale will drop further. As our intelligence tells us that in France petrol is virtually impossible to obtain, we hope that the lack of funds means they will not be able to purchase crude oil from overseas.

Once again I took Sunday off, and even though this week was not quite as enjoyable as last week’s trip to Sanssouci, it was still a pleasant break. It was good to complete a few tasks around the house and get in some casual reading while listening to a concert on the radio. A couple of friends from the old days dropped in and I took the opportunity to open one of my hoarded bottles of Scotch. It may be some time before I get a chance to replace it, but it had aged enough. I slept very well.

Monday the 31st was fairly hectic, as I had completely forgotten the end of month rush. I only had time for a very quick review of the events of Sunday. Both Nehring and von Manstein claimed victories, and surprisingly it was the perhaps over-confident General Dietrich who was still locked in combat in Avallon. Chablis was a walkover for 1st Pz Division. Several bridgeheads over the river were won on 29th October and when dawn rose on 30th October, Nehring’s men found nothing but empty trenches and abandoned equipment in front of them. General Bethouart obviously decided his one combat-capable division was not enough to hold the province and, under cover of night, pulled out both his units. We had only 23 casualties while the French lost 91. More importantly another river line has been breached.

Following this success, General Feige started to fire on British held positions on the far side of the Moselle, preparatory to attempting a river crossing. This will be a difficult exercise as General Bucknall’s 68th Infantry Brigade (mot) is well prepared and Charmes, though predominantly plains, offers good defensive terrain in the vicinity of the Moselle. 8.Infanterie Division has been promised air support: military advisers here are sure they will need it.

charmesfinal.jpg


Battle of Charmes

General Model has the hardest task of all. His Pzkpfw IIIs are to force their way across the Loire into Cosne-Cours and, once across, defeat the tanks of Prioux’s 15th Infantry Brigade. 5th Panzer has the edge in numbers and has plenty of experience, but we have found that some of the French tanks are more than a match for ours. The area is heavily forested, and locating the enemy vehicles and anti-tank weaponry will be difficult in the undergrowth. Model too has been promised air support but the Luftwaffe anticipates that it may be some time before long-range bombers can be allocated.

cosnecoursfinal.jpg


Battle of Cosne-Cours

Late on Sunday von Manstein smashed through the defences in Nancy. The British mountain troops, as expected, could not stand a concerted assault and, when they started to break, the French also started to pull back. Sensing an opportunity, von Manstein committed his reserves and turned a controlled withdrawal into a full-blown retreat. The rear of the Maginot is only kilometres away. The battles, though short, was intense, and we lost 120 men, but the French lost 342 as well as one of the last links to the northern Maginot forts.

Luckily for me (the Scotch may have been well-matured, but perhaps I slightly over-indulged) Monday was very quiet. General Dietrich got his victory in Avallon, many hours after Nehring’s win in Chablis. I noticed General Nehring made a point of congratulating his fellow panzer commander and offering to help out if he gets stuck again. There is a fine sense of competition in our “Blitzkrieg” commanders: I suppose it is because the need for speed is drummed into them so much. 71ème Infantry must have put up a much tougher fight than expected: Dietrich reported 145 casualties while claiming to have inflicted 542. Obviously determination and high morale is more important to a defender than good terrain.

As on Saturday, the standard messages and reports were only brightened by von Nordeck and Wolf. The former sank a Boston bound British freighter in the Western Channel while the latter intercepted a French merchantman hugging the coast of Porto. In a disturbing note, Wolf added that he had spotted a Royal Navy detachment on patrol in the in the Bay of Biscay. He evaded it this time, but one day his luck will run out.

The quiet day allowed me to prepare a little for the end of month Cabinet meeting. With the war on, these are now a scaled down affair as the Ministers and their staff are very busy, but the Führer insists on a formal meeting so that is what we will have.

I will not be called upon to attend this month’s meeting, and Gisela has not been asked to take confidential minutes. Luckily there will be no need to present: late on Monday I was delivered a copy of the briefing papers that had been prepared for the Reichkanzler’s office. Every Ministry had submitted a précis of their Minister’s presentation, and they made interesting reading.

The Foreign Minister, von Neurath, is still basking in the glow of Bulgaria’s entry into the Axis. Several pages go into painful detail of the diplomatic manoeuvring behind the signing of the Alliance documents. There is a mention of the difficulty we are having in making trade agreements. Even our allies seem reluctant to do business with us, which is a problem as we need more steel and rare materials to maintain our stock levels. Money is not a problem: we have the contents of several national banks and the gold reserves of Poland, Belgium, Denmark and Holland backing us. Von Neurath suggests that many governments (and businessmen) have been alarmed by our disagreements (the diplomatic word for “wars”) with our neighbours. Knowing how the Führer reacts at these meetings I would have included some sort of solution to the problem, but there is no answer in the briefing paper. There was one foot note I found interesting: the British Government has been investing considerable diplomatic capital in Switzerland recently, and the Swiss are responding positively. Surely the Swiss, neutral for hundreds of years, could not be envisaging re-entering European politics?

panzer39final.jpg


The Swiss have 24 of these Czech built Panzerwagen Pzw.39 armoured vehicles. Needless to say our Panzer commanders are not impressed.

The Ministry for Armaments’ paper was strictly factual. Lists of production reports, analyses of power and raw material efficiency, projections years into the future – it was a mathematicians delight. What it boiled down to was that every factory in the Reich and the occupied cities is producing at capacity (well, the best we can get out of captured plant without imposing the harshest possible occupation policies). Repairing and improving road and rail in Poland is proving costly, but Minister Schacht believes it to be essential for our planned drive to the East. The cost of upgrading existing equipment is still manageable, but the warning is that massive expenditure can be expected in the next year or so when we modernise our infantry force. Replacement of damaged equipment is a constant drain on production, and contributes to delays in issuing contracts for new acquisitions. As Minister von Neurath pointed out, we are consuming more steel and rare materials than we produce or otherwise obtain. This is not a concern at the moment, as it would take years to drain our resources at the current rate. But if we are to build or “acquire” more factories, then we will need to address the problem.

The Chief of Staff, Major Bayerlein concentrated on supply. He acknowledged that Minister Schacht continued to deliver all the supply demanded by the Wehrmacht, and noted that apart from occasional local shortages all front line units received full rations, all the fuel they needed and regular ammunition and equipment deliveries. He is happy with the progress on road construction in the East, but warns that we must continue this level of investment for some time to ensure that we can supply large numbers of men, horse and vehicles in bad weather. He is a bit concerned about rumours that Minister Schacht intends to draw down supply stocks in the next few months to assign manufacturing capacity to the upgrading of our infantry divisions. (He has good information: my sources tell me this is definitely the plan).

polishroadrepair.jpg


To back up his claims that we need more investment to pave roads in occupied Poland, Minister Schacht included a photograph of one of his Polish construction workers carrying out maintenance after recent heavy rain.

General von Blomberg, Chief of the Army, had little to say in his paper. He started with the obligatory praise for the fighting men of the Reich etc, then went on to state that he was happy with progress in the West. He did request that priority be given to the production of more tanks and motorised divisions, but was prepared to allow that the Luftwaffe needed more fighters. The major concern of the Heer was the manpower losses suffered in the past 6 months, the majority of which have been caused by enemy bombing. Unexpected casualties due to the French invasion early in the war were an additional drain on our reserves. The General stressed that if a long war is contemplated, then manpower would be a growing problem, and we need to work on solutions now. While we have 1,159,000 men available currently, this will be drawn down heavily in the next few months. Accessing more manpower from the occupied territories is a possibility, but he understands Minister Schacht has determined that to increase the number of volunteers we would need to relax our policy of seizing production and facilities, badly affecting our overall production. He suggested more research on improved agricultural techniques to free up our land workers. The final paragraphs referred to the expected modernisation of the Heer: he acknowledged that this would be a hugely expensive process, but added that he wanted to completely re-equip the Heer again, probably in 1941-1942.

As usual, Reichsmarschall Goering’s report was short (he prefers to do his negotiating in private). He accepted that the Heer was suffering high casualties from enemy bombing, but explained that the Luftwaffe was giving priority to the defence of the Reich. Protecting our cities, factories, mines farms, roads and railways took all available fighters. To extend this cover to all our military units would need a massive increase in aircraft production. In any event, more aircraft would be required to launch the assault on the Communists. Many air units would need to be left in the west, and Luftwaffe estimates were that we would need another thousand bombers at a minimum. Two thousand would be better. No-one ever accused the Minister for Air of being slow to stake his claim and he followed up this with a demand for half a dozen dedicated research teams to develop a whole new generation of fighters and bombers, and production facilities to upgrade the entire Luftwaffe.

produktionvonmesserschm.jpg


Though our factories are already at full production, Air Minister Goering put forward a good case that our existing fighter production lines should be expanded.

With Admiral Raeder at sea with the Nordseeflotte, a representative was to deliver his report. The loss of the “Admiral Scheer” led the report. I was surprised to find that an internal investigation into the Battle of the Bälts revealed that it was not the big guns of the battleship “Royal Sovereign” that sank our Panzerschiff: it was a torpedo from the light cruiser “Danae” that dealt the critical blow. A salutary lesson to all commanders of our capital ships to keep a distance from the enemy screens. We are lucky that within few weeks the battleship “Tirpitz” would join the main fleet. The Admiral sees the role of the Kriegsmarine in the next year or so as two fold. The first is to assist in the invasion of Scandinavia, and to keep the transport and supply fleets safe until the Baltic is secure. The second is to continue the U-boat war which is aimed at crippling both the UK economy and civilian morale. Our surface fleet is sufficient for the first, but we need more submarines for the second. Longer term, we will have the issue of the Soviet Baltic fleet, but this is not seen as a problem. Rader assumes the French will surrender within weeks, but he is uncertain what will become of La Royale. Should it flee to join the Royal Navy then, even if we capture Gibraltar and can link with the Regia Marina, then we will still be vastly outnumbered. Apart from the “Tirpitz” we have a battlecruiser, a fleet carrier, several light cruisers, a destroyer squadron, three submarine flotillas and a transport fleet in the shipyards. The Admiral’s conclusion: We need more.

maratfinal.jpg


The Soviet battleship “Marat”: flagship of the Northern Fleet. Großadmiral Raeder is dismissive of the threat she poses, pointing out that despite a refit and a change of name, she is still the 1917 built “Petropavlovsk”.

As is customary, Minsters Frick and Goebbels made a joint submission. They were pleased to report that, as of the end of October, no research time was being lost to enemy spies. Only three agents are known to be active in the Reich, and two of those (French and South African) are purely looking for military intelligence. Our “neutral” neighbour, Russia, has a group of saboteurs active in our factories. At the moment we train a new spy every 10 days: this is just enough to cover losses. Diplomatically, we develop enough diplomats to keep pressure on the USA and a little in excess for emergencies. Neither minister wishes to increase this level. We have enough scientific graduates to keep 27 simultaneously research projects. It would be wonderful to increase this, but the growing size of the Wehrmacht and the increasing number of officers dying in combat means that every spare graduate is being sent to officer school. Even with 67 men graduating from military colleges every day, we have only 15% more officers than the bare minimum. General von Blomberg often talks longingly of the days when he had a 50% buffer, and how these added officers increased the ability of our units to respond after action. Our spies overseas are still mainly in “sleeper” mode: we cannot afford to lose too many. Those in France are trying hard to break the will of the people, and as far as we can tell just over half the population still trust the government. A little more effort and surely the French will be forced to negotiate? Our agents in Britain and Russia are busy spreading alarming stories about the threat they pose to their neighbours.

schulefinal.jpg


Keen as mustard, new officer candidates arrive for their gruelling induction course. They won’t be smiling for long, but it will do them good!

I don’t know what the Cabinet will make of all this, but to me it looks as though the Reich is in good hands. Some things could obviously be improved, and I wonder if von Neurath is the right man for the job. But it could be much worse, and perhaps it will be. Many people cannot remember a winter while the country is at war. I can, and I hope that when the winter blizzards finally hit that we do not experience the suffering of 1918 and 1919.

Bombing Summary for 29th to 31st October

Neufchateau: Sperrle with 1st Taktischeluftflotte (1 x Bf 109G, 2 x He 111): 111, 284, 219, 93, 163, 200
Les Riceys: Löhr with 2nd Stukakorps (2 x Ju 87G): 33, 163, 116, 53, 118, 107, 75, 138, 141
Chablis: Kitzinger with 3rd Taktischeluftflotte (2x He 111): 98, 242, 192, 145, 241
Nancy: Kesselring with 1st Stukakorps (2 x Ju 87G): 158, 134
Neufchateau: Kesselring with 1st Stukakorps (2 x Ju 87G): 101, 141, 169
Chaumont: Sperrle with 1st Taktischeluftflotte (2 x He 111): 122, 208, 214
Avallon: Kitzinger with 3rd Taktischeluftflotte ((2 x He 111): 129, 168

francefinalend.jpg


France at the end of October 1939: The French Army is about to be crushed as the Österreich Army and elements of the Army of the Ardennes wheel on the Luxembourg axis. At pleasant surprise is the news that a Hungarian infantry division is moving up to join combat in Les Riceys: at last the Hungarians will do something other than stand guard!

libyafinal.jpg


Libya at the end of October 1939: the British continue to move west, followed by their Iraqi allies.

chinafinal.jpg


China at the end of October 1939: there is a lot of manoeuvring by the Japanese, but no combat units are moving to put down the insurrection.
 
Glad to hear everything is okay, well except for the minor ISP inconvenience. I hope your internet connection is getting better though, so we can hear another tale about our beloved clerk.

Your AAR is still one of the best, if not the best AAR out here.

Back from holidays (again ?!! Yeah, again, there's still some snow on the slopes of the Alps, what did you expect ??) and still as good as when I left.

Keep it up ! And many thanks from your devoted readership...

it's actually readAARship :D

Heh, good one. ;)

Thank you all - and perhaps for Baltasar I should have aarpologised for the delay.
 
Another good update. What the surrender percentage up to now? It looks as if you should be very close, especially with the Italians taking territory too.
 
Indeed, the Italians are still doing a great job. They're not that far away for the new French capital (Lyon? ).
 
I always enjoy coming back from class and reading an update from you while on my lunch break. Excellent work as usual!
 
Yet another good update! I am looking forward to the Cabinet meeting. Hard choices need to be made, what will get priority, the Heer, the Luftwaffe or the Kriegsmarine. You cant do it all, I guess.

Anyway, waiting patiently for another update. :)
 
Another good update. What the surrender percentage up to now? It looks as if you should be very close, especially with the Italians taking territory too.

If by the surrender %age you mean the French National Unity, it is sitting just over 50%. I have my 10 spies working on it so hopefully won't be long.

Indeed, the Italians are still doing a great job. They're not that far away for the new French capital (Lyon? ).

The Italians are storming in: we should meet soon.

I always enjoy coming back from class and reading an update from you while on my lunch break. Excellent work as usual!

Thanks Black Lotus. I admire your conscientious attitude: when I was studying I was much less dedicated. In my defence, it was the 70s. (all of the seventies!)

Yet another good update! I am looking forward to the Cabinet meeting. Hard choices need to be made, what will get priority, the Heer, the Luftwaffe or the Kriegsmarine. You cant do it all, I guess.

Anyway, waiting patiently for another update. :)

The Fuhrer wants it all!

There was a mistake in the above quoted sentence which I took the liberty to correct.

Isn't there a psychiatric term for ascribing your wishes to another?:D

I think this can only be solved by arm-wrestling,

Don't tell the Fuhrer: your airplane factory seems to be building Spitfires... :)

I am pretty sure they are Bf 109G6s. OK, I admit that they are a 1943 model, but there are not a lot of factory photos available. Here is a shot of a Bf 109G6 in a Polish museum: looks the same to me. It is a bit difficult because many tell-tale parts are not yet installed, but the leading wing panel slats seem conclusive.

Before anyone points it out, the "road-worker" is not not Polish, and nor is the road. In fact is a 1911 photo from the USA. But I liked it.

220pxme109gcracowaviati.jpg


as it those tell-tale blisters that hide the cannon? :D

The blisters were only used to modify the earlier Me 109s that were originally fitted with machine-guns. To hold the larger magazines for the Hispano cannon they had to make the blisters. Later models were OK.

But I am impressed that 1) You read the whole thing and 2) You remembered it- from memopry it was only a line in a phot description.
 
Last edited:
I am pretty sure they are Bf 109G6s

I believe so as well. Spitfire has got different wings. By the way, Petropavlovsk was launched in 1911. Soviet navy acquired her in 1917 and renamed to Marat in 1921.

Truly impressive updates! Thank you very much!
 
Maybe they're a special birthday present for Galland? ;)

Didn't Galland say something about wishing for Spitfires?

I believe so as well. Spitfire has got different wings. By the way, Petropavlovsk was launched in 1911. Soviet navy acquired her in 1917 and renamed to Marat in 1921.

Truly impressive updates! Thank you very much!

Thanks for the confirmation (and compliment).

You are right about the Marat. I knew she had been "acquired" by the Soviet Navy in 1917, it just slipped my mind to find out whether this meant she was actually built earlier or if it was just sloppy writing.


EDIT Sometimes I think I must be getting senile: of course she was "acquired" by the Soviet Navy in 1917: the Soviet Navy didn't exist before then! She was obviously built earlier and used by the Imperial Russian Navy. I can't even blame alcohol induced memory loss. I may have to go into the garden and eat worms.
 
Last edited:
I though all Bf109s had square wingtips, I stand corrected ! I am now relieved that your brave workers are still faithfully working for the motherland.

No square wingtips, but they do have the squared "hard to see out of" canopy that were the bane of many a Luftwaffe pilots existence. You can see the squared canopies very clearly in the photograph as well.

Nice AAR by the way, long time lurker, first time poster.

Your AAR inspired me so much I knocked the dust off this game after a 2-3 month hiatus and started playing it again.

Thank you very much! :D
 
Not long untill Vichy event.. the road to Brittany and beyond seems as desolete as a wasteland.. perhaps you could use that for exploitation?
 
Uriah, if you check the diplomacy tab for the country you are attacking, it shows a green bar that turns red as you acquire victory point cities. Hovering your mouse pointer over it will give you the percentage of conquest, so you will have an idea of how many more need to be captured.
 
The AI seems to be able to conquer Scandinavia by itself at a decent pace, but it has a lot of trouble in Finland if it doesn't have a ton of troops: The AI needed 5 full Corps with air support. If you don't plan to attack Russia until late 40, you could just send 2 armies to Scandinavia, and let the rest take over Spain.

Now, the Soviets will probably have little other than infantry, and are a piece of cake when a human is controlling the German troops, but the AI will take plenty of time before they force a surrender. This is because the AI just can't seem to use Armor effectively. To blitz, a human would use a small number of troops to break a line, leaving 4+ divisions patiently waiting behind them to exploit any weakness. The AI Makes every division enter combat, so while it manages to defeat the first line of defense faster, it makes the Armor have to wait for a few days due to the delay between attacks, so the line moves a whole lot more like WWI than WWII. The AI only gets a semblance of speed when it can break the entire defensive line all at once, and then its troops just chase the routed enemy.

With an OOB not very different from yours, 1.4.RC10 with human control, France was capitulating in July, and the Soviets were surrendering in two months.