Stalemate and Disaster
Argentina is really the next most important looking country in South America that we can reach, so we declare war. The country has a lot of flat land so we are bringing tanks all the way from Spain to join in on the fun.
Some cool tech that we have researched in the past couple months.
Now that we are at war with one of the premier naval powers of the world I decided it was prudent to actually get a real navy. As I have said before I prefer the CL-CV fleet composition having recently abused its power during a Japan game. The range, hitting power, flexibility and robustness of the CL-CV fleet make it the much better choice. We have the IC and leadership to make it possible, although if the US, Japan or UK are playing properly we will have very far to go.
In case we can never gain enough naval power to win wars conventionally, nukes will win them unconventionally. I don't know about you guys but I take enormous satisfaction every time I nuke America, just feels so wrong its right. To help speed up our nuclear program I am also prioritizing nuclear physics theory. That is one sexy theory tech, the ultimate snowball effect machine.
We also researched strategic bombers, wonder what those will be used for... anyways back to the action.
The South American Front:
We begin the
liberation of Argentina on December 6th with small scale landings to secure Buenos Aries.
The city falls 2 days later.
They abandoned the city faster than expected, this caused an unfortunate naval clash. My fleet was still guarding the passage as we unloaded more troops when the Argentine navy was forced to leave the city's port. The two fleets smacked each other up, our battleship the Paris Commune was heavily damaged and limped back to Rio, but we also sank one of their battleships.
This is a huge bummer, we were planning on using that later.
Things get worse when the Brazilian navy decided to get into a slug fest with the Argentines too, although I am happy the Brazilians are attacking stuff, their efforts would be more welcome elsewhere. Like fighting the US navy that is still sinking convoys.
Ouch.
We dump the rest of our army into the country, including to tank divisions, they start to rush across the plains toward VPs in the north, enemy units form up along our long exposed left flank, we don't have enough to hold them back should they all attack at once. We decided to just start attacking them one at a time with infantry to buy time for the tanks to win the war.
The armor spearhead can be kinda seen here. Argentina never stood a chance. So I took very few screenshots :/
Moscow, January 2rd, 1941.
Deep inside the Kremlin the Politburo had been discussing late into the night the next target for their South American campaign. Things were rushed and Molotov had been absent. Proper protocols were not followed when the order where sent to the Foreign Ministry. The events that happened after are highly embarrassing.
The Foreign Ministry Office January 3rd: Mikhail Sergetov received the orders in the morning. It was a single damp sheet of paper covered in burns, grease stains and erratic pencil scratches. It smelled like vomit. He immediately called over his boss Molotov to clarify things. "Comrade, I am told these are our orders for the next war declaration, but they are unreadable. Can you call Stalin and confirm the next target?" Molotov shuddered, "The last time I called Stalin when he was hungover he had my house burned down." "Well we have to declare war on someone, and soon" There was panic in Sergetov's voice, "and what if we declare war on the wrong country, and our armies have been positioned incorrectly!" Molotov gasped, "I have it, we'll just declare war on the whole continent, Stalin won't care, the man started a war with US for gods sake, and our armies will be able to attack anybody they want! Everybody wins." Sergetov was happily nodding, "I'll prepare the messages, we are going to have a lot of Embassy's to blow up."
The Soviet Union is now at war with: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and Venezuela, also America. This is not an intelligent choice, those of you who are playing to win, do not do this ever! This means no more taking down countries one by one with awesome sneak attacks before they can even mobilize. I figured I would give you guys a good show and keep things interesting. I will later regret this sentiment.
Argentina surrenders on January 8th. We attack the capital of Paraguay, its right on the border, but in a jungle so it still takes time. We also attack Chile and their two very exposed VPs. A river in Uruguay slows down the one division tasked to subdue the small country, we wait for reinforcements.
Our assault on Santiago.
The Paraguayan capital falls, they are puppeted.
On January 26, Montevideo falls and we puppet Uruguay. Chile goes down quickly as well.
The bulk of our army moves north to attack Bolivia.
Our First Boondoggle
They say war is series of catastrophes resulting in victory. Our wars have been lacking major disasters (unless you count the spread of communism you capitalist swine!) But our poorly conceived and executed invasion of Venezuela was a relatively major catastrophe. We lost more troops in that invasion than in all our previous ones.
I had a simple dream of controlling almost all the oil available in the game, and Venezuela was the last major oil exporter other than the US that I have not yet attacked. The problem is it, and everything around it was painfully far away from my bases. Only a corner of the country could be attacked from Rio. Furthermore, the only port in that godforsaken country is not in the capital, but all the way across on the other side. I did not know this until my troops were already on the ground and trapped. Finally Venezuela actually has a large army, a lot larger than the paltry 40,000 auxiliary troops I tossed on their shores. Let us watch the tragedy unfold.
The invasion begins on January 9th, gulp.
Our troops are constantly attacked as they rush for the capital and its desperately needed supplies. One by one they are engaged, forced to retreat and overrun, we eventually capture the capital, but by then there are only two divisions left.
As Bolivia is puppeted the noose around our troops is drawn tighter.
Months of depressing fighting later, in mid March 1941, we make a final stand in Caracas, and lose.
Stalin vows to wipe Venezuela off the map, remove it from history and salt the land so no one can ever live there again.
Stalemate in Peru:
Over the early months of 1941 we have learned that South America is a very difficult place to wage a respectable war. Its all mountains jungle and rivers. We learned this the hard way as we worked up the west coast and ran into heavily defended mountains. How heavily defended you ask?
That heavily defended god dammit
The stalemate line, the only way to get through to Peru is over those mountains that are chock full of pissed off Peruvians.
It's going to be a long war.
Fortunately the loss in Venezuela and the frustration in Peru galvanized the Russian high command. They were not getting what they wanted. They were at war with a superpower and an entire continent, but our mighty army and air force were stuck in Europe. Waiting for the German threat to materialize. They had waited five years. Germany had not even conquered France. The Soviet High Command was angry at Germany for wasting their time, angry at Japan for threatening their borders and angry at Italy for being Italy. You wouldn't like them when they are angry...