19.00 May 20th
An obsolete carrier has taken the bait of a useless u-boat parked in Rotterdam. One carrier is unlikely to do it much harm and it is only parked here as a target. The range is so short that type I u-boats are pretty much useless.
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19.00 May 20th
An obsolete carrier has taken the bait of a useless u-boat parked in Rotterdam. One carrier is unlikely to do it much harm and it is only parked here as a target. The range is so short that type I u-boats are pretty much useless.
00:00 May 21st
The most important naval event of the campaign has occurred. Six brand new type IV carriers roll of the slipways and begin working up to operational status. This gives me 10 carriers in combat condition and 2 repairing. There are sufficient supporting ships to operate a single fleet which will be even more effective at mistreating the British navy.
00:00 May 21st b
The battle of Compiegne is not going quite according to plan. HobotnicaJoe is an excellent General but even his skills cannot compensate for a night attack across a river. The encirclement event will help and I live in hope that one of my generals will get a new “skill” in combat events. The defence has concentrated the majority of French armour and they are the equals of my forces. This makes attacking them quite dangerous without a more substantial superiority. They are heavily depleted and lacking in brigades but many of my armoured divisions are too.
Further north the French have made an amphibious landing behind my lines. This is why I will never trust a single width strip of coastal provinces for the supply lines. It is critical to make sure inland routes are available.
Marines
French troops coming ashore behind my lines.
05.00 May 21st
A single division under Rocketman has been sent to eliminate the French landing. This shows the sort of combat adjustments available to both sides. The ESE, experience, difficulty, minister and dissent modifiers should be applicable to all combats. These add up to about –10% for Germany but about –17% for the French. On top of this there is a massive discrepancy in leadership with my forces typically getting the +40% shown here against the French say +5%-+15%.
07:00 May 21st 1939
The battle of Compiegne continues with further support from the defence force in Paris. The entire attack is still across a river and despite the apparent closeness of victory and the return of daylight the battle has to be abandoned later in the day. The battle has served its purpose of making sure that fighting takes place here rather than elsewhere.
15:00 may 21st 1939
200 German tactical bombers swoop on the British fleet that ahs been harassing Rotterdam. Unfortunately TAC III (He111) are not too effective especially against giant fleets. This target needs something like 10 CAGs rather than just a few tactical bombers.
19:00 May 21st 1939
The British make another carrier attack on Rotterdam on the as yet apparently completely undamaged u-boat flotilla.
Rotterdam
A captured RAF reconnaissance photograph accurately shows the lack of damage and general ineffectiveness of the British attack.
23:00 May 21st 1939
The troops passing north of Paris have all crossed the Seine and begun the process of fanning out across northern France. There is minimal opposition here from a mere two divisions. Notice that ALL of the allied infantry divisions from the north France / Belgium theatre have completely disappeared without trace.
11:00 to 15:00 May 22nd 1939
Our u-boats have finally attracted surface ship attention, which is extremely threatening to them. They retreat as soon as they can taking some damage but escaping to fight another day. The incessant air attacks on them have been completely ineffective.
00:00 May 23rd 1939
The spreading greyness in northern France becomes more pervasive. Auxerre has fallen and Zwei Koetz panzer group continues on to threaten the entire French army with encirclement in eastern France. If there was no Vichy event then this would be a very serious threat to the French forces and would be the key operation in destroying their armed forces.
05:00 May 23rd 1939
I have launched an attack on Rheims as it has so many adjacent provinces it remains a threat to German forces in many locations. The threat is actually relatively mild but the attack can be in huge numbers. My attack is also a serious threat to French forces to the west and should distract the concentrations in Compiegne and Troyes so as to eliminate/reduce risk to the outer encirclement.
13:00 May 23rd 1939
It turns out that the cavalry division defending northern France is actually Belgian and very seriously reduced in strength already. I most have reached or nearly reached the Vichy conditions so triggering is just a matter of time.
15:00 May 23rd 1939
The British have gone but now the French are having a go at the poor lone u-boat. I am amazed that they appear incapable of causing any damage at all. I suspect the population of Rotterdam will not be too happy with this since the bombs have to go somewhere.
21:00 May 23rd 1939
Zwei Koetz advance into Dijon is close to success producing the ultimate military crisis for the French.
15:00 May 24th 1939
Back east other events continue. The Luftwaffe is continuing its bombing of the Danish fleet now operating under the British flag. They are trapped in this sea zone but even so it appears to be taking for ever to eliminate them.
01:00 May 25th 1939
Further progress and the French position now looks irretrievable no matter what. The Government will soon realise their situation and give up further resistance.
02:00 May 25th 1939
This is rather nasty. The French are counter-attacking Zwei Koetz’s already rather depleted panzer group. The correct strategy at this point would be to withdraw – possibly delaying to dawn – but this is not possible. The german force must wait until late evening before it can be given further orders. Personally I think this is a fault in the game, troops should be able to retreat at any time. As it is I am going to be punished for the high organisation of my troops as they will insist on continuing to fight until actually defeated. Dijon simply isn’t important enough to fight over.
06:00 May 25th 1939
It looks like bombing of the Danish fleet is finally approaching success.
06:00 May 25th 1939 b
Zwei Koetz’s force is saved in the nick of time otherwise he would have lost his undefeated record. I immediately accept their surrender and it is now time to move on to the next phase of operations.
Armistice
The armistice is signed in the same railway car used for the German surrender in the last war, too good an idea to change.
France 1940 Review
The France campaign was not the same foregone conclusion as the Polish campaign. A good deployment by the combined Anglo-French armed forces could have made things very difficult for me. The combination of intelligence reports suggested that they (plus Belgium) had about 230 infantry and 30 armoured divisions to oppose me. My entire army is less strong than this giving them the opportunity for an effective defence. Unfortunately they did several things wrong.
1. The British have committed apparently very limited forces. Intelligence reports very little change in their total strength as a result of this campaign. This is a very poor performance on their part and on its own would almost certainly condemn the French to ultimate defeat.
2. Deployment of French forces concentrated around the Maginot line was asking for trouble. The only possible reason to do this would be to make an attack possible. As it is they where obviously never going to attack there and hence should have installed a viable defence force and deployed everything else on the Belgian border.
3. The Allied counter to the invasion of Belgium was extremely piecemeal. My forces encountered the advancing allied forces a few at a time resulting in defeat in detail. The response should have been more coordinated with all the Allied forces arriving simultaneously. This is a persistent AI flaw and originates in the core AI programming and hence cannot be addressed by AI configuration adjustments.
4. After the weight of the German attack fell the allies should have responded by a massive redeployment of forces. This never happened and I would suggest that the AI reaction was extremely poor in the first 5 days over which period it was almost impossible to discern any response whatsoever. After this they began to respond but still in a very limited way.
Ultimately I did not engage the main strength of the enemy army and defeated them by attacking where they were not present. This is a legitimate strategy for achieving a positional advantage but goes against my doctrine for victory in the normal way. In a real fight it is always appropriate to target the enemy armed forces rather than their territory. The effect of high-speed motorised warfare is to make this inessential for some campaigns where it is possible to destroy the support for the enemy armed forces rather than the armed forces themselves. This is sometimes a risky strategy but not very in the confined combat zones of Western Europe. It will not apply elsewhere; in particular it is NOT the path to defeating the Soviet Union.
One last point, I did not form any conventional pockets in this campaign. Not once was there a group of surrounded divisions like we had in the Polish “slice and dice” campaign. This is because I used an overrun approach with my forces advancing across the entire selected front. The consequences are easiest to see by looking at a few images scattered through the campaign showing resisting forces along the front during the advance to Paris and then think about where they went. All of these forces were defeated and put into retreat and then after a bit disappeared. I don’t know exactly how many divisions where effected but there are at least two dozen missing. This is the result of an armoured overrun attack. Not only has the attack broken through and swarmed into the enemy rear areas but it has actually completely eliminated all those defending forces it had to defeat and, most importantly, no unit has had to deviate from the advance to eliminate those forces. You will be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing.