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Hello and welcome. So I will try for another AAR (one ongoing at the moment) and yet again I will focus on Norway. Why Norway? Yes it is my homecountry, but it is also a nation that most likely will be invaded and will prove a challenge. Now this is also my first time playing HOI4, never even played the totorial, so a heads up; I will most likely lose. My objectives are simple:
Hope you will like it and will stay with me as I will fall to either Germany, UK, USSR or boredom!
Table of contents:
- Hold out as long as possible.
- Re-arm.
- Help our Finnish brothers against the USSR.
Hope you will like it and will stay with me as I will fall to either Germany, UK, USSR or boredom!
Table of contents:
- Lessons of the Great War.
- End of a Decade.
- The Beginning of the End.
- Winter is Coming.
- Retreat!
- All sacrifice some. Some sacrifice all.
- Put the People to Work.
- The Dragoon.
- State of the Realm.
- Sitzenkrieg.
- Awaiting Orders.
- A Channel too Far.
- Das Boot.
- After Action Review.
- The Freezing Winter.
- Brighter times ahead.
- The Summer of 43.
- Operation: Red Dove.
- Battle of Levensauer Bridge.
- Economics 101
- CQB.
- Operation: Hornest Nest.
- First we take Hannover, then we take Berlin.
- Edelweiss.
- Alpine Vacation.
- Vienna Opera.
- Untergang.
- Neptune.
- The War to end all Wars.
- Treaty of Truk.
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Chapter 1: Lessons of the Great War.
I am Mister Teodor Maxmillian Tangen. No that is not me on the picture, that is our King Haakon. Now you see when mr. Hitler got elected to power our king said that we will have war in the end of the decade. Now it is 1939 and war have not yet erupted. But I am of the same opinion as our king and our government are not. I were therefore specifically hired by our king to talk some sense into our government. War will soon be upon us and we need to prepare for it.
In case you do not know it is the 14th of August 1939. Our government refuse to believe that we will be an obvious target for the war, but we will. Mr. Hitler himself have openly said that he will not face the same fate as in the Great War. That is he will get free sea access and use our land as a leverage to the United Kingdom. Even during the Great War the German Kaiser Wilhelm resided with his yatch, as you can see, in Norway. The British intended to sink his ship, but they escaped. Even then our fleet were active in the Great War even if we were neutral. We were the fourth largest maritime force, and is still among the greatest, and 49% of our tradefleet got lost. 2000 sailors lost their lives, no other power in the Great War lost more civilian sailors than us. And if we are to believe from the lessons of the Great War both Germany and UK intend to bring us to their side by force if necessary.
As you can see one of my first course of action were to guarantee the indepence of Finland. That is because that dreadful Stalin most likely want to spread communism and see Finland as an integral part of Russia as it were until the Great War. Now this did cost me some poltical power and perhaps I should only send voulenteers to Finland. But we Nordic and neutral nations need to stand together against Fascism and Communism! My actions even moved Canada so much that they are sending us kind words every day.
Now another reason for why we might end up in war is because of Sweden. No they do not intend to invade us. They have respected that we became independent in 1905, we were strong then and they respected that. We even engaged in a minor arms race! But in Kiruna Sweden got a lot of natural resources. Currently those can only be shipped to, and through, our port of Narvik. This make Narvik vital for both Germany and UK. This is a reason for why Narvik and Sweden may become vital in the upcoming war. While we're talking about trade, as you can see we are currently important oil from UK and steel from Sweden. This is because of our re-armament, which I will come back to later. I chose to deal with Sweden as they are right next to me, and UK over Germany simply because the British are much more edible and reliable.
It have been much talk of politics, so let me introduce you to it. This is our government. AP, Labor Party, have a massive majority. That is not weird considering the second greatest party the Conservatives have disapperead. Now the Socialist AP suddenly turned Conservative, I can only assume they and the Conservatives merged to one great party. Now I do not have that much political pwoer anymore, I lost much in order to recruit new generals, admirals and hire advisorsand so on. But as you can see our economy is based upon a civilian one. That is no surprise of course, but I intend to turn it into an economy geared for war and have greater conscription.
For companies I chosen Raufoss to research new small arms and Norsk Hydro to better synthethise oil which we will need. I will come back to that. I also hired Konrad Stundlo as our foremost theorist. He will research various military tactics and strategies.
For the general staff I chose Kristian Laake as the chief of the Army. The reason is he focus on the defense, the other guy on the offensive. When the commies or nazis come we need to defend not attack. For the navy I chose Henry Diesen since he focus on traditional ships, the other guy focused on carriers. We have none! Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen is the chief of our mighty airforce, and he will focus on bad weather. That is great as we have lots of bad weather in Norway. I am sure Stalin and der Luftwaffel tremble at the thought of Norwegian fighters in blizzards. Now I also employed Wilhelm von Tangen-Hansteen as part of the Military High Command. He focus on infantry, the backbone of our armed forces. When I get more political power I will convince the pacifist to hire more military men and to gear our economy and conscription toward war.
So this is the grand Norwegian army in 1939. I organised the army into two groups: Northern Army and Souther Army. The Northern Army is composed of two infantry divisions, one brigade and one dragoon regiment. Their primary goal is to protect the border against USSR and aid eventually aid Finland. Their goal is also to protect Narvik. They are led by General Fleischer who is experienced and even a trickster and winter expert - perfect for the conditions of northern Norway and Finland! In the south I had to spend political power in order to hire a new general. He is fresh from the War Academy, but he will do for now. The Southern Army is composed of three infantry divisions and two dragoon regiments. Their task is to protect the major cities and industrial areas in the south. Other actions I did were to add a batallion of artillery in the infantry divisions. In hindsight I should perhaps only made support elements and not entire batallions. This of course cost political power. I also gave the order for both armies to excercise and prepare for war. It is good to see that all my men doing pushups and squats! This will make them strong!
Now for the Sea Defense, or Navy as you may call it, is grand but old. Currently we have the Norge Class as our Heavy Cruisers. At the current speed however they take five years to produce, but they are the pride of our fleet and we currently have four of these monsters. We also have Destroyers named Draug Class, named after Norse Zombies. Then it is the B Class which is our submarines. We saw the horrors of the German submarines during the great war as they sunk 49% of our convoys. I intend to focus on them in the future to repel invaders coming on the high seas.
Other than that our Navy is divided into three districts. 1. District is the grandest with plenty of submarines and heavy cruisers. They are based in the port in southern Norway and led by Admiral Corneliussen. 2. District is based in Bergen and is led by Admiral Sunde and is composed of three destroyers. District 3 is in northern Norway and is composed of two heavy cruisers and two submarines and led by Admiral Hauge. District one is supposed to protect Oslo, 2 is to protect Bergen and western Norway and 3 is to protect Narvik. I had to use political power to employ Admiral Sunde and Hauge too. Admiral Corneliussen is experienced and said to spot others faster than normal.
Now behold our great airforce. As you can see it is bad weather, so it was wise of me to hire that guy to be chief of the air force. Now we currently only have two wings north of Oslo. Those are fighters and tactical bombers, and all are outdated. This is troublesome as in Norway alone we got two major flight zones and three more along the coast. We need to improve our air force, we can not rely on blizzards alone.
Then it is reserch. I ordered the scientists to develop new weapons. Our rifle Krag Jørgensen is fine and dandy, but we need to modernize our army. So Raufoss is developing new submachine guns and anti-tank weapons. Interesting times! Also it is a shame that Norway the land of the mountains don't have soldiers specialized in mountain warfare. We need to be prepared when the German and Austrian Gebirgsjäger assault us. Lastly our military scientists are developing new ways of defense when we are invaded, and to think of new doctrines. We have too much old weapons, planes and ships, so at the very least our thinking need to be new!
As you can see our industry is not the best. We too felt the effects of the great depression, and after that the Communists took over in the form of the Labor Party. Then they split due to the dreaded USSR, and now AP is even more moderate as they have gone conservative. Still they did manage to build a potent enough industry, but mostly focused on civilian goods. I aim to transform it into a greater military power. And as you know Norway have no oil. We are not oil nation at all. So I am focusing on building oil refineries to gain oil we need for our production. Also our infrastructure is OK enough, but could be better in middle and northern Norway. Also we have no radar stations to listen to the chatting of the Swedes, and no AA batteries. We need to imrpove on this aswell if we are not to lose an invasion from land, sea and air by the Commies or Nazis.
Finally it is what I have ordered the workers to produce. That is submarines and convoys. Submarines is the key to controlling our fjords, and you can never have enough convoys (I think). We are also producing artillery for our new artillery battalions and our divisions out in the field training need new weapons and support gear. Initially I produced Submarines and Destroyers and airplanes, but they costed to much oil and steel. However now I have more oil and steel from trading with Sweden and Britain.
So this is how the Norway is in August 39. The world is getting more tense, and I am sure Germany, USSR or UK will invade us. And we need to be prepared for that. But to sum it up: We are low on manpower, little political will and outdated army, navy and airforce and industry. I intend to reform our entire system before the war break lose. I am optimistic, but if I can't reform and transform society and our military until then only God and great courage can save us!
I am Mister Teodor Maxmillian Tangen. No that is not me on the picture, that is our King Haakon. Now you see when mr. Hitler got elected to power our king said that we will have war in the end of the decade. Now it is 1939 and war have not yet erupted. But I am of the same opinion as our king and our government are not. I were therefore specifically hired by our king to talk some sense into our government. War will soon be upon us and we need to prepare for it.
In case you do not know it is the 14th of August 1939. Our government refuse to believe that we will be an obvious target for the war, but we will. Mr. Hitler himself have openly said that he will not face the same fate as in the Great War. That is he will get free sea access and use our land as a leverage to the United Kingdom. Even during the Great War the German Kaiser Wilhelm resided with his yatch, as you can see, in Norway. The British intended to sink his ship, but they escaped. Even then our fleet were active in the Great War even if we were neutral. We were the fourth largest maritime force, and is still among the greatest, and 49% of our tradefleet got lost. 2000 sailors lost their lives, no other power in the Great War lost more civilian sailors than us. And if we are to believe from the lessons of the Great War both Germany and UK intend to bring us to their side by force if necessary.
As you can see one of my first course of action were to guarantee the indepence of Finland. That is because that dreadful Stalin most likely want to spread communism and see Finland as an integral part of Russia as it were until the Great War. Now this did cost me some poltical power and perhaps I should only send voulenteers to Finland. But we Nordic and neutral nations need to stand together against Fascism and Communism! My actions even moved Canada so much that they are sending us kind words every day.
Now another reason for why we might end up in war is because of Sweden. No they do not intend to invade us. They have respected that we became independent in 1905, we were strong then and they respected that. We even engaged in a minor arms race! But in Kiruna Sweden got a lot of natural resources. Currently those can only be shipped to, and through, our port of Narvik. This make Narvik vital for both Germany and UK. This is a reason for why Narvik and Sweden may become vital in the upcoming war. While we're talking about trade, as you can see we are currently important oil from UK and steel from Sweden. This is because of our re-armament, which I will come back to later. I chose to deal with Sweden as they are right next to me, and UK over Germany simply because the British are much more edible and reliable.
It have been much talk of politics, so let me introduce you to it. This is our government. AP, Labor Party, have a massive majority. That is not weird considering the second greatest party the Conservatives have disapperead. Now the Socialist AP suddenly turned Conservative, I can only assume they and the Conservatives merged to one great party. Now I do not have that much political pwoer anymore, I lost much in order to recruit new generals, admirals and hire advisorsand so on. But as you can see our economy is based upon a civilian one. That is no surprise of course, but I intend to turn it into an economy geared for war and have greater conscription.
For companies I chosen Raufoss to research new small arms and Norsk Hydro to better synthethise oil which we will need. I will come back to that. I also hired Konrad Stundlo as our foremost theorist. He will research various military tactics and strategies.
For the general staff I chose Kristian Laake as the chief of the Army. The reason is he focus on the defense, the other guy on the offensive. When the commies or nazis come we need to defend not attack. For the navy I chose Henry Diesen since he focus on traditional ships, the other guy focused on carriers. We have none! Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen is the chief of our mighty airforce, and he will focus on bad weather. That is great as we have lots of bad weather in Norway. I am sure Stalin and der Luftwaffel tremble at the thought of Norwegian fighters in blizzards. Now I also employed Wilhelm von Tangen-Hansteen as part of the Military High Command. He focus on infantry, the backbone of our armed forces. When I get more political power I will convince the pacifist to hire more military men and to gear our economy and conscription toward war.
So this is the grand Norwegian army in 1939. I organised the army into two groups: Northern Army and Souther Army. The Northern Army is composed of two infantry divisions, one brigade and one dragoon regiment. Their primary goal is to protect the border against USSR and aid eventually aid Finland. Their goal is also to protect Narvik. They are led by General Fleischer who is experienced and even a trickster and winter expert - perfect for the conditions of northern Norway and Finland! In the south I had to spend political power in order to hire a new general. He is fresh from the War Academy, but he will do for now. The Southern Army is composed of three infantry divisions and two dragoon regiments. Their task is to protect the major cities and industrial areas in the south. Other actions I did were to add a batallion of artillery in the infantry divisions. In hindsight I should perhaps only made support elements and not entire batallions. This of course cost political power. I also gave the order for both armies to excercise and prepare for war. It is good to see that all my men doing pushups and squats! This will make them strong!
Now for the Sea Defense, or Navy as you may call it, is grand but old. Currently we have the Norge Class as our Heavy Cruisers. At the current speed however they take five years to produce, but they are the pride of our fleet and we currently have four of these monsters. We also have Destroyers named Draug Class, named after Norse Zombies. Then it is the B Class which is our submarines. We saw the horrors of the German submarines during the great war as they sunk 49% of our convoys. I intend to focus on them in the future to repel invaders coming on the high seas.
Other than that our Navy is divided into three districts. 1. District is the grandest with plenty of submarines and heavy cruisers. They are based in the port in southern Norway and led by Admiral Corneliussen. 2. District is based in Bergen and is led by Admiral Sunde and is composed of three destroyers. District 3 is in northern Norway and is composed of two heavy cruisers and two submarines and led by Admiral Hauge. District one is supposed to protect Oslo, 2 is to protect Bergen and western Norway and 3 is to protect Narvik. I had to use political power to employ Admiral Sunde and Hauge too. Admiral Corneliussen is experienced and said to spot others faster than normal.
Now behold our great airforce. As you can see it is bad weather, so it was wise of me to hire that guy to be chief of the air force. Now we currently only have two wings north of Oslo. Those are fighters and tactical bombers, and all are outdated. This is troublesome as in Norway alone we got two major flight zones and three more along the coast. We need to improve our air force, we can not rely on blizzards alone.
Then it is reserch. I ordered the scientists to develop new weapons. Our rifle Krag Jørgensen is fine and dandy, but we need to modernize our army. So Raufoss is developing new submachine guns and anti-tank weapons. Interesting times! Also it is a shame that Norway the land of the mountains don't have soldiers specialized in mountain warfare. We need to be prepared when the German and Austrian Gebirgsjäger assault us. Lastly our military scientists are developing new ways of defense when we are invaded, and to think of new doctrines. We have too much old weapons, planes and ships, so at the very least our thinking need to be new!
As you can see our industry is not the best. We too felt the effects of the great depression, and after that the Communists took over in the form of the Labor Party. Then they split due to the dreaded USSR, and now AP is even more moderate as they have gone conservative. Still they did manage to build a potent enough industry, but mostly focused on civilian goods. I aim to transform it into a greater military power. And as you know Norway have no oil. We are not oil nation at all. So I am focusing on building oil refineries to gain oil we need for our production. Also our infrastructure is OK enough, but could be better in middle and northern Norway. Also we have no radar stations to listen to the chatting of the Swedes, and no AA batteries. We need to imrpove on this aswell if we are not to lose an invasion from land, sea and air by the Commies or Nazis.
Finally it is what I have ordered the workers to produce. That is submarines and convoys. Submarines is the key to controlling our fjords, and you can never have enough convoys (I think). We are also producing artillery for our new artillery battalions and our divisions out in the field training need new weapons and support gear. Initially I produced Submarines and Destroyers and airplanes, but they costed to much oil and steel. However now I have more oil and steel from trading with Sweden and Britain.
So this is how the Norway is in August 39. The world is getting more tense, and I am sure Germany, USSR or UK will invade us. And we need to be prepared for that. But to sum it up: We are low on manpower, little political will and outdated army, navy and airforce and industry. I intend to reform our entire system before the war break lose. I am optimistic, but if I can't reform and transform society and our military until then only God and great courage can save us!
Tack söta bror. Hope you will like it!
Takk! I'm gonna need all the luck in the world. As currently I got no skill and honestly got no idea what I do.
In theory
We will see how much my pushup taking soldiers do it. But they will fight to the very last (I think )Thanks, much appriciated
Wonderful! It's great to see a low-profile nation get attention. Plus, I think the "realistic" goals you've set out for yourself are not only attainable, but can provide a lot of fun for the AAR. Good luck, will be watching.
Cheers!
Cheers!
Ah, fine then. I was waiting for someone I know to post an HOI4 AAR but it seems you younglings are pullin' me in
Great AAR, so far!
Great AAR, so far!
Good luck, personally I went down the Facist path, installed Vidkun at the helm, then visited Söta bror with superior firepower in tow.
- May 6, 2015
- 2.278
- 3.161
Glad you like it and will be watching it
And yeah, the goals are pretty modest. But as you said it's kinda the whole point, and I want to do an impossible/challenging AAR. Hopefully the winter war and eventual invasion of Norway will be a success!Ah, fine then. I was waiting for someone I know to post an HOI4 AAR but it seems you younglings are pullin' me in
Great AAR, so far!
Thanks! Hope I won't disappoint
Ah I actually thought about doing something similar. Sound fun and interesting, but in the end I chose to stick to neutral (or democratic) and see how long I will survive
Welcome aboard
Bedankt. Hopefully it will be more glorious than glorious Gelre!
And I hope to get a new update this day. But gotta see cos of work during day and boat-certificate stuff at the evening. So if it don't come today, don't lose all patience
- May 6, 2015
- 2.278
- 3.161
Scrub, I am rocking one update a day. But maybe it's harder to update like 4 Norway AARs every day.Bedankt. Hopefully it will be more glorious than glorious Gelre!
And I hope to get a new update this day. But gotta see cos of work during day and boat-certificate stuff at the evening. So if it don't come today, don't lose all patience
Also, it's Glorieus Gelre!
End of a decade
Now my King we have changed a few priorities. First of all we do have enough convoys, currently they are not under the threat of the Uboat warfare as during the Great War and we got more than enough to ship in our oil and steel. We have instead assigned three dockyards to produce submarines and one to produce one Destroyer per year. We also finally got more political power to go away from civilian economy to begin partial mobilization. It took a lot of effort in the parliament, but we should be better prepared for the eventual war - alltough I hope we will never see it. For construction the government cancelled their production of refineries, they justified it by that we already get enough oil from our British friends. Instead we focus on producing more factories to produce weapons and Anti-Air batteries. We have all seen the devastation of the German Stukas.
Other than that as of 23rd of September the warmongers have united the Danzig corridor and advanced into Poland. As we know of it is currently two battles, one in a closed pocket and one near the Slovakian border.
Now for October I have this to report. Our scientists and Raufoss Company would finally find new and improved weapons. We immediately started to produce them instead of our obsolute weapons. We will need 3200 units of them however and produce only 6 of them per week. Our next research focus is methods to implement motorized warfare as we see the Germans use in Poland. Also we have implemented new ways of thinking when it comes to military doctrines. Now we will focus on gaining a better war industry. This will help us produce our new weapons on a fastr scale.
Also it was this political scandal.. The public did not like our new government's focus on rearming. Our Prime Minister, however, would follow the advice from me and tell them our sovereignty comes first. He may lose the next election, but that is better than losing the next war. This led us become more divided, but as we say divided we stand, united we fall. Also enjoy this picture of two of our Uboats. Amazing right?
The report or November is due. We finally found ways to implement Motorized infantry. Hopefully this will lead to a more flexible and more aggressive army. We are now researching how to to better disperse our industry in case of bombings. This will increase our production and reduce it's damage from bombings. We also found new ways to protect our trenches and positions. To further supplement this Raufoss is building new light machine guns and heavy machine guns. This will greatly improve our military forces. Here is also a picture of some of our boys in Narvik testing out an early protype of a LMG based upon the British Bren Gun.
My King December have now passed. Before we took our well deserved Christmas break we decided to replace the horses with motorized trucks in our Dragoon Regiments. This is because trucks move a lot faster and can carry more troops than a horse. We debated wether or not we should keep the cavalrisits, but currently we do not have enough manpower. Once we get enough manpower we will add battalions of calvarists to our Dragoon Regiments, or perhaps even armor as the dreaded fascists have. Other than that our artillery need is filled and we now "only" need 2971 units of our new infantry weapons. We also got a new factory to produce arms, trucks and so on Vestlandet. We will put that to good use my Sire. Now we are focusing on strengthening our own position at home so that we may bring upon political change to better mobilize.
Of other events during December Cairo fell to Mussolini morning of 7th December. This may be a blow to UK and in turn us. The reason is that if the Italians control the Suez canal we might not get our precious oil from the British Empire anymore. Also if the Axis control the Suez canal and Mediterranian it would be an absolute disaster for the Allies. Now the day after the caputre of Cairo the Frenchies invaded Italy. We will see how far they go. In response, however, the Germans invaded poor little Luxembourg at teh 31st of December, and Belgium followed soon. Germany have stopped their advance in Poland, but it seem like they aim for Luxembourg and Belgium now. If they attack them, what will stop them from attacking us?
Now for our future goals it is simple my King. We wil modernize our Navy by producing Destroyers and Submarines. We have already produced one submarine and attached it to the 3rd District in northern Norway. This is in order to harass hostile convoys and High Sea Fleet. But our main focus is on land, that is since every war is won by controlling the terrain. Right now we focus on the defense but we have a goal on transforming our Dragoon regiments to Motorised Regiments composed of motorized infantry and armor. Hopefully we will get enough time to change our laws and build new factories.
That is all my King, happy new year and may it be peaceful!
Thank you I will need it
Scrub, I am rocking one update a day. But maybe it's harder to update like 4 Norway AARs every day.
Well work to 16:00 and then boat license stuff from 17:00-23:00
But I did make the update so no complaints! And duh it's only two.
One thing I am noticing, from my own play thru observations, seeing yours, and also from several reviews--the Axis (especially Germany) seem woefully underpowered to produce the war on grand scale per actual history. But I suspect this will be amended soon enough (who really wants to play a world war that only lasts from 1939-1942?) {I say this even as the Italians near the Suez} ... Or it could just be the few limited games I've played and Kotaku's review where he had a similar experience of France holding off Germany. But hey, a-historical developments are worthwhile too!
But, I suppose for you this is great news. The Norwegian Front should prove to provide great combat, either stalemate or an insurgent Norwegian victory! I guess we'll find out soon enough...the Winter War might end up being more interesting.
But, I suppose for you this is great news. The Norwegian Front should prove to provide great combat, either stalemate or an insurgent Norwegian victory! I guess we'll find out soon enough...the Winter War might end up being more interesting.
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One thing I am noticing, from my own play thru observations, seeing yours, and also from several reviews--the Axis (especially Germany) seem woefully underpowered to produce the war on grand scale per actual history. But I suspect this will be amended soon enough (who really wants to play a world war that only lasts from 1939-1942?) {I say this even as the Italians near the Suez} ... Or it could just be the few limited games I've played and Kotaku's review where he had a similar experience of France holding off Germany. But hey, a-historical developments are worthwhile too!
But, I suppose for you this is great news. The Norwegian Front should prove to provide great combat, either stalemate or an insurgent Norwegian victory! I guess we'll find out soon enough...the Winter War might end up being more interesting.
That is only good for us! We will make a preemptive strike and conquer Berlin!
But yes it seem like your theory is true :/ Germany Shouldn’t come into a deadlock in Poland and focus on invading France through low countries during winter (!) and while they are fighting Poland. It make no sense. Perhaps the war with Germany won't be as hopeless as I hoped
But USSR can be the new invadors I hope or a bloody Winter War