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Alea Iacta Est: Italy in 1936

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Feb 23, 2008
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ALEA IACTA EST
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An Italian History starting in 1936​


Introduction
I. 1936
Part 1: We don't need national colonies.
Part 2: Who said Italy doesn't have technology?

II. 1937
Part 1: A year of war!

Other parts still to be played.


INTRODUCTION​
Victor Emmanuel III, king of Italy had already reigned for 35 years, soon to be 36. His health was worsening and the recent outbrake of the Fascistic movement decreased his support under the politicians. The incoming messages of German practices worried the King and slightly drove him crazy. A conversation between the King and Head of Government Benito Mussolini:

"My King, how are You today?" asked Mussolini.
"I don't know," answered the King with a voice as if Mussolini had just stolen a cookie from his royal jar. "I'm worried about the future of my beautiful nation. Europe, even the whole world is gearing up for a war and I have the feeling that we're falling behind."

"That is anything but true sir, we are advancing technologically and are close to finishing two flotilla's of highly advanced war ships. This will strengthen are fleet which is already very strong for Mediterranean standards."

The King sighed; "You know Benito, sometimes I wish I would be like Caesar and have an empire like the Romans did. I'm seated in Rome, just like the Romans and yet I still don't feel Roman."

Mussolini looked at the King as if he just went crazy, little did he know that the King was going crazy.

"That's it Benito! We're going to reinstate the Roman empire. I can visualize it already, a nation reaching from the Atlantic coast of France and Spain to the Bosporus and beyond." Mussolini was stunned; "But sir how do you want to defeat nations like France or Germany? The Romans also occupied parts of Southern Germany. We can never invade them, they are our allies."

"Now now Benito, don't you think Adolf would love to see a fascist / nationalist nation ruling over Southern Europe. He could have Northern and Eastern Europe and we could have the Southern part, maybe without any German provinces. It doesn't have to be exactly like it was in Roman times."

The King made a quick scetch. He was a very good drawer:

empire.gif

"This surely must be possible Benito, certainly if we do it in stages. Now those two German provinces are optional so you shouldn't fall over them."

Mussolini was actually quite attracted to this plan. He thought to himself 'Maybe if I can get the support of Hitler this plan isn't so impossible after all... The Northern parts of France will be tricky but we might make it if we take the East and Spain first.' He looked up and said to the King; "Very well my King, your will is my command, we will discuss this with the staff."

"Good Mussi, very good. I'll be called Caesar Vittorio! Doesn't that sound great Mussi?" Mussolini almost dropped dead; 'Why does he call me Mussi?' "Very well sir, I'll retreat now."

As Mussolini was walking towards the door he thought 'Caesar Vittorio my ass, there will only be one Caesar! Me!' then he tripped over a cookie jar and fell into the doors opening them. Victor Emmanuel III couldn't help falling of his chair and laughing while he was practically almost rolling over the floor. The doors that had just been opened lead to the main hall of the Royal Palace which was full of press at the moment. Mussolini was overwhelmed by photographers. Though he ordered all photos to be destroyed. None survived. It's a shame.


Part 1 and 2 of 1936 coming up; already played.​
 
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wise said:
He was a very good drawer
Click to expand...
He sure was! Dang!

All silliness aside, good luck.
 
What effect have you used on the map?
 
CHAPTER I. 1936​
Part 1: We don't need national colonies.​

"Where is my staff?!" screamed Mussolini as he walked into the headquarters of the Italian government. The only one present at the time was Cesare Amé, Head of Intelligence.

"Sir, do you still need the intelligence report on partisan movements in our colonies?" asked Amé. "It turns out that although no one is actually prepared to start violence, a large majority of almost 76% does not want to be under Italian government. And this is not only Somalia but even Libya!"

"Cesare, did I say I wanted to hear your reports?! E?" yelled Mussolini.
"No sir but I assumed..." Amé stumbled over his words.
"Then you assumed well Cesare, I am interested, just wait for my answer next time you ask me something." said Mussolini with a very peculiar smile.

"The situation in Africa is the least I'm worried about right now Cesare. The war in Ethiopia is going well, we're gaining grounds and will soon reach the capital. As soon as we occupy the streets of Abbis Ab... whatever the city is called, the government will surely give in with annexation of their territory."

Mussolini paused. Then took a deep breath and sighed. Cesare Amé thought he new what was coming and jumped on the floor. Though Mussolini didn't sneeze, he continued the conversation with Amé and luckily for him, Mussolini had just turned his back towards Amé, leaving his jump unnoticed. Though Cesare was proud; he had never jumped with so much flair and with such a speedy reflex. 'Back to the point.' he thought to himself.

"Sir what should we do?" said Amé with a self-confidence that he had never shown before and that even impressed Il Duce.

Mussolini answered: "As soon as we have annexed Ethiopia we will give up all colonies and will create three new puppet states: Somalia, Ethiopia and Libya."
"But Sir..." stumbled Amé.
"No 'but' Cesare, you are not in the position to..."
But Amé had already walked out the room. Some 30 minutes later Amé reported to Mussolini's office. "Sir, I'm resigning. I'm not happy with the thought of releasing our colonies and I will not stand for it. Good Bye!"
Although this act of confidence filled Amé's heart with pride, he also hoped that Mussolini would try to stop him. But he didn't. Mussolini said nothing, he just picked up the phone and called the security;
"Carlo, there is a homeless man in my office. Please remove him and make sure this never happens again."

The next day Cesare Amé's house was razed to the ground and all of his bank accounts were frozen. Also Mussolini assigned the new Head of Intelligence; Umberto Ricci, this man promised to increase the industrial capacity of the nation by a staggering 5%. Also he agreed fully on Mussolini's plan to create the three puppet states in Africa and form an alliance with them.

And thus the creation of Libya as a puppet of Italy took place. Ethiopia wasn't fully conquered yet and therefore the state of Somalia had to wait too.

colonies.gif

Some days later the capital of Ethiopia fell and the nation was annexed. The creation of Ethiopia and Somalia as puppets of Italy followed shortly. Italian Militia Divisions stayed in Africa guarding the provinces of the puppets since they didn't have any military forces themselves yet, except for a small fleet.

Part 2 of Chapter I coming up.
 
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Well, you have a... strange sense of humor. :D
 
Unexpected that.
 
interesting idea, giving up all your colonies, will it be worth it in the long run?
 
rcduggan said:
interesting idea, giving up all your colonies, will it be worth it in the long run?
Click to expand...

i wasn't sure about it either, certainly about Libya. but the thing is: i think my troops in Ethopia and Somalia are now supplied by those nations. if i go to war with france or the uk then my troops won't be unsupplied and thus fighting better. besides i don't believe the roman empire ever controlled ethopia or somalia.
 
CHAPTER I. 1936
Part 2: Who said Italy doesn't have technology?​

It's been a month or two since all the colonies were liberated and Italy was Italy again; just the boot. Well, also some isles east of Greece but they're so small we don't even take them serious. Now as Mussolini was studying the map drawn by the King (or Caesar) he kept thinking of the huge amount of techniques that would be necesarry to conquer all those provinces. Techniques Italy didn't have. The Germans, they were advanced... but Mussolini didn't think Hitler would share his technology with Italy, certainly not now as Italy had no plans whatsoever on aiding the Germans in their cause. To visualize the process of advancing through technology I'll use some diary fragments of the assistant to Umberto Ricci; Head of Intelligence who was fitted with the task of researching various technologies. (you might wonder if this is a legal task for a Head of Intelligence; well since their is no spying in the normal HoI2 version the Head of Intelligence is pretty useless except for improving your IC effectiveness, so I figured he could be given this task too...)

Fragments of Giulia Pescanzari's diary:

- March 12, 1936
Dear Diary,
Today the sun was shining so bright when I went to work. It was pretty hard getting through the traffic in Rome. When I arrived at work I found some flowers on my desk, they were very pretty. There was a card on them too, it said; 'You'll probably look stunning today, as always. Love, Umberto.' That silly mister Ricci. He knew... (We're going to skip this part because it's pretty dull. She goes on and on for hours about mister Ricci, I think she has a crush on him, and what about the flowers? I see an office romance happening!) ...Anyway, today mister Ricci and mister Mussolini discussed some new possibilities of researches. Not only military researches, also industrial researches. It was pretty confusing though, they were talking about the 'Sjwerpuncte Doctrine' all the time. I have no idea what that is. After the meeting mister Mussolini asked me to nominate the national tech teams and companies for the following researches: Improved Oil Refining, Basic Infantry Division, Basic Machine Tools and Early Marine Division. This is what I came up with:

tech.gif


Apparently the 'Sjwerpuncte Doctrine' wasn't so important after all because they didn't order it to be researched.

After that she goes back to her routine of writing about mister Ricci again. Half of her diary is filled with nonsense about his great humour. Because it turns out miss Pescanzari hasn't got much to say, we'll just make a short overview of the techs that were researched in the rest of 1936.

- Basic Machine Tools - May 20 1936 - by FIAT
- Early Marine Division - October 10 1936 - by Lancia
- Improved Machine Tools - November 25 1936 - by FIAT

The techs that were started being researched in 1936:
- Basic Infantry Division - by Breda
- Improved Oil Refining - by Caproni
- Advanced Machine Tools - by FIAT
- Schwerpunkt Doctrine - by Rodolfo Graziani

Mussolini chose not to interfere with the civil war in Spain. It was too early and the Italian army was too underdeveloped for an optional assualt on Spain. Besides Italy was running out of resources themselves, a shipment of supplies to Nationalist Spain was just impossible and would've hurt the Italian economy.

The low amount of resources was probably the result of the war with Ethiopia and the sudden liberation of the colonies. But the economy was starting to adapt to the situation and the Foreign Minister made some very well timed trade agreements. This probably saved the nation from a complete economical crash. An overview of Italian production, trades and resources in 1936:

prod.gif

Production, trades and resources in 1936 before the Foreign Minister saved the day!​
 
wise said:
i wasn't sure about it either, certainly about Libya. but the thing is: i think my troops in Ethopia and Somalia are now supplied by those nations. if i go to war with france or the uk then my troops won't be unsupplied and thus fighting better. besides i don't believe the roman empire ever controlled ethopia or somalia.
Click to expand...

I can't imagine Ethiopia or Somalia would have many supplies though.
 
rcduggan said:
I can't imagine Ethiopia or Somalia would have many supplies though.
Click to expand...

that's true but i think it's enough to support my militia divisions, and if it's not... i wouldn't care too much. it's a loss of territory but i'm focusing on the european states: more IC. i've never seen the advantage of colonies in HoI2 apart from it being a hell of a job annexing a country with colonies. in games like EU and Victoria at least you had the advantage of rare resources but even that's not a huge advantage in HoI2, certainly not in Africa.
 
Well irl many colonies were for either (a) prestige, or (b) to stop the other bugger getting them. :)

Surprised you decided to stick out of Spain.
 
You don't seem to worried about the dissent hit from releasing Libya...

In my experience Libya won't produce more than a couple of its own infantry divisions. The same for Somalia except change infantry to militia. Ethiopia however, will make you many MTN divisions, usually brigaded too. Usually four or five before war with Britain breaks out. :cool:
 
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