Fatherland - Deutschland über alles

[unmerged(41995)]

I remain resolutly against the Italy gambit. Why should we interfere amongst our two fighting enemies? I say let them duke it out and weaken each other, we will need to concentrate all of our available forces and TC for the russian campaign.

I concur.

There can be no better result than one keepos the other busy. As long as one doesn't get the upper hand in their war.

Our victory over Italy is assured. Our victory over USSR is less assured. Lets concentrate our forces where they are surely needed.

 

[Lord E]

It sounds smart at the current time to wait with the Soviets until spring, although they will suffer from attacking you during winter you will also suffer from attacking them, so it is better to be nice for now and then wait until spring. As for the Italian plan I have to agree with some of the others, it would be smart to leave them alone for now and allow them to fighting it out. Then we might in the future turn on them if it should be interesting when they have weakened themselves from fighting. But using the time for some minor operations sounds nice…

 

[Mahrabal]

This leaves me with some time to fill in so I will be looking for some "minor" operations to pursue in the mean time.

I am against striking against Italy for the moment, let them occupy the UKs remaining forces.

There do not seem to be any particularly tasty targets to attack in the meantime. Going further into the balkans may provoke the big red bear, going for norway or sweden would involve winter fighting, and going into africa seems very unimportant at the moment. The only thing we may gain from africa is more experience for our CAS.

But then again sitting round doing sweet f.a. does not seem to be the Kanitailan way of doing things

 

[unmerged(40779)]

Greece->Turkey->Iraq? Oilfields, new distraction for STAVKA (which is forced to move it's troops to that front. It'll also weaken the British.

 

[dublish]

Invading Italy would be pointless at the moment. Not only would it lower TC for the invasion of Russia, but we would need a number of provinces in Libya and Egypt in order to annex them. With Allied forces still a major force in this area, I fear we would only get sucked into the Black Hole of Africa.

Likewise, invading Greece, Turkey, Iraq, and/or Persia is not a wise move. While attacking Greece and Iraq would hamper Allied operations, invading Turkey is a sure way to provoke the Soviets. Turkey will be pushed into the Comintern, Soviet troops will move into Anatolia, and it will be just that much harder to attack through those hills and mountains, to say nothing of the further dispersion of our forces.

At this point, I'm afraid that there are no actions to be taken that will be profitable in the short term, which is exactly what we need if we want to invade Russia on schedule.

 

[unmerged(40779)]

Knowing Kanitatlan's usual speed, I doubt the Soviets would even react before Turkey wouldd be annexed already... but if they did, it would be a great shame, and it may be so that the risk is too great in comparison with the benefits. It's just that I can't imagine anything BETTER to do while preparing for Barbarossa. And I think he stated quite clearly that he really is going to do something.

 

[unmerged(24320)]

Knowing Kanitatlan's usual speed, I doubt the Soviets would even react before Turkey wouldd be annexed already... but if they did, it would be a great shame, and it may be so that the risk is too great in comparison with the benefits. It's just that I can't imagine anything BETTER to do while preparing for Barbarossa. And I think he stated quite clearly that he really is going to do something.

certainly we should take out Greece! ! even if we leave Turkey until either during or after we snuff out the Bear! !

also, i agree that we should let Italy and the UK duke it out ! !

 

[Kanitatlan]

Rather than individual replies, since you've all been taling about the same issues I will simply post a general reply.

I have to invade Greece to set Italy and the UK fighting so clearly Greece has to go. In case you are interested I believe annexing Greece should take about 4 days. After this Italy will beat the crap out of the Allies in the eastern Med as a result of the damage I have already done to them. I will leave Italy to it until much much later.

The Baltics, Bulgaria and Turkey must be left alone to avoid the risk of upseting the Soviets. Apparently they have no guarantee of Romania but I am not certain that attacking is safe. Currently I am obtaining a great deal of oil from them and an occupation would necessarily reduce this. I propose to leave them for now as well. I could join the Italians in the eastern Med, land in palestine and fight through to Iraq but the oil there is relatively modest. The real oil bonanza if the entire middle east is taken (including Baku) but this must wait until later.

This leaves me with secondary operations further west. I am definitely going to take Portugal as loss of their European holdings tends to totally cripple them. This gives me "claims" on some key Atlantic island properties but I will probably leave them to rot for the time being. It also gives an excellent air/naval base at Lisbon with significant saving in base building.

I am tempted to take out Switzerland for no better reason than because I can and it needs doing one day. It adds a little industry (and manpower) and tidies up Europe. I will definitely be taking out the whole of Ireland, for similar reasons.

I am tempted to take Norway and Sweden, again because I cana nd it needs doing one day. Norway is trivial to take since I will have naval freedom in European waters once the whole of the UK has gone. Sweden is a bit more trouble but with naval and air superiority they will be extremely vulnerable. I will declare that I Norway should not be taken without Sweden since I do not like to be with land based supply lines.

It is worth noting that my partisan settings give a -2% per month effect for annexed countries and hence partisan levels will have dropped a great deal by next May. This suggests I should be annexing as quickly as possible.

 

[Kanitatlan]

Just to prove the Kanitatlan way I have carried out a study of invading the USA whilst waiting to attack the Soviet Union. Unfortunately this doesn't look practical since it raises all the following issues.

Firstly I cannot be fully confident of defeating the US fleet. The intelligence report doesn't show that many carriers (only 12) but the battleship count is a little scary. This need not on its own be a block on considering the operation but does raise some concerns.

I would need to obtain hopping off points across the Atlantic. Under the circumstances these would be Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland. These would be fairly easy to take. Following this with an invasion of Canada would soon put the Canadians on their back foot and this would cause a USA DOW (Monroe doctrine).

To defeat the US on land is well within the capabilites of my armed forces. It would need the transfer of may be 60 divisions as a minimum. Unfortunately my merchant marine is not currently up to supplying this size of force (plus aircraft) on the other side of the Atlantic.

Travel time across the US would be such that significant forces would still be operating by next Spring even on the most optimistic time scales (which is the time scales I would be meeting). I would also require substantial anti-partisan forces. This is actually a closer run thing than you might think with a likely conquest time of may be 6 months minimum. Unfortunately winter weather would interfer and I can see the campaign winding up 12 months from now which is not soon enough.

Annexing the USA would require a major campaign in the Pacific. For the operation to be practically concluded I would need to annex. This again would be well outside the permitted time scales and difficult to guarantee until the US fleet is defeated. This would leave it as a follow on to conquest of the mainland.

This leaves the operation as clearly inappropriate at this time although not quite as impractical as you might first think. There is a difference between audacity and recklessness.

 

[Kanitatlan]

And now we get back to the fighting in all its minute detail. The current situation has “mopping up” operations in the UK and Gibraltar. The Polish front remains minimally active and will remain as is until the M-R pact neutralises it. Elsewhere I am going on a conquest spree everywhere but on the Soviet borders.

18:00 July 20th 1939

The main Kriegsmarine fleet is currently lying of the end of the English Channel mopping up any stray allied fleets going past. The area is quite active and there are allied ships in harbour at Plymouth. My CAS are busy bombing Plymouth and naval areas east and west of the UK leaving the channel patrolled only by fighters. These have very little effect on any ships encountered. Currently we are having a period of bad weather that inhibits successful carrier operations so the enemy escapes quite safely from this brief encounter.

The main UK carrier fleet is just visible underneath the battle and hence this remains an area of intense interest. There are large numbers of allied ships still operating in UK waters.

 

[Kanitatlan]

18:00 July 20th 1939 b

The bombing of Plymouth is a mix of ground attack and port strike missions. All the air units seem to adopt the mission of the first one on the scene so today it is port attack.

11:00 July 21st 1939

A single German mountain division has retaken Bristol. The British are attacking Bristol so I have immediately retreated. The move to Bristol was never intended to be an effective defence, it simply returns Bristol to my control until further units arrive. I have the UK invasion panzer group heading this way but it is unknown whether they will arrive before the British advance (also not very important).

There are a number of successful naval air strikes during this period (such as the one visible in this image). I have not and am not going to document them all but the steady losses inflicted will be visible in the periodically posted shipping loss reports.

 

[Kanitatlan]

18:00 July 21st 1939

The fleet has gone chasing and successfully caught someone but the weather has declined to the point where carriers are totally ineffective (and land based air power). Unless the weather improves the allies can run whatever operations they like with no risk of interference.

 

[Kanitatlan]

22:00 July 21st 1939

In Spain divisions are being sent to garrison all the airfields, as there is a major air power redeployment operation in progress. On arriving at Tarragona I have found a free French division coming ashore but my forces easily block this. Rather annoyingly the Free French have been equipped with 1943 infantry divisions giving them 33% more firepower than my current models. This is, I believe, an intentional feature of the ‘French’ events system to make sure they are reasonably modern when engaged later in the war. My early war situation has somewhat undermined this idea but I will just have to deal with what they have got.

 

[Kanitatlan]

05:00 July 22nd 1939

The first country for annexation is Greece. The attack is fairly simple and barely opposed on the border. I need to capture Salonika and Athens to annex and I am not expecting any real problems.

DOWing Greece immediately results in them joining the Allies and hence creating a state of war between Italy and all the allied powers. This is part of the reason for attacking Greece. With the allies so badly damaged by my activities so far I am expecting some reasonable success from the Italians despite their abject failure to achieve anything against the Greeks.

12:00 July 22nd 1939

As soon as the air power arrives we get a better view of Greek defences. This all looks perfectly reasonable except that 5 divisions in Salonika is rather more than expected. Salonika is a fortress so there may have to be some real fighting.

 

[Kanitatlan]

15:00 July 22nd 1939

I am running air patrols over the Bay of Biscay to intercept transfers between the UK and Gibraltar. This is more of an opportunity idea than any real attempt to block these transfers. On this occasion though we seem to have struck gold and are able to badly shoot up the British naval bombers. There org is low so they are unlikely to be any threat to my naval units in the near future and the lack of decent allied controlled airfields will probably mean they never attack me.

17:00 July 22nd 1939

There is a surprising amount of naval activity with odd fleets here and there operating all around the UK but especially down the west coast.

03:00 July 23rd 1939

My panzer group have arrived immediately cancelling the British attack on Bristol and now moving south to blunt the attack on Portsmouth.

09:00 July 23rd 1939

This is the same fleet as was bombed yesterday giving one of those rare opportunities to genuinely appraise the success of a bombing mission. It looks like the previous attack dealt with the escort (1 DD, 1 CL).

 

[Kanitatlan]

19:00 July 23rd 1939

The first advance into Greek territory gives us the start of the attack on Salonika. Unfortunately the arrival time is just at nightfall giving a very low efficiency night attack. The enemy is 1936 divisions and therefore not very effective against my armoured divisions. There total effective firepower before modifiers is about 20 whereas mine is 153. Given this I can even beat them in a purely night attack. Come dawn the tactical bombers will arrive on interdiction and that will be the end of them.

 

[Kanitatlan]

07:00 July 24th 1939

Back in the UK I have decided that Plymouth is too disruptive and difficult to bomb into submission. If I keep them confined they dig in and will become invulnerable. If I let them out then lots of time will be used up as I need to tempt them out. The decision is to crush them utterly so that the panzer corps can move on to other operations.

 

[Kanitatlan]

10:00 July 24th 1939

In Greece both Athens and Salonika have been attacked and the defenders defeated. All that remains is to complete movement to the target provinces.

21:00 July 25th 1939

Athens has fallen

02:00 July 26th 1939

Salonika has fallen and Greece has been annexed. The entire operation took just under 4 days. Greece used to be a problem when there was a VP on Crete but now it has become utterly trivial.

Greece may be out of the war but Italy remains at war with the Allies. I am not going to keep a close eye on Italian operations mostly because I can’t. To see what is going on I would need to be allied to them and that is just not going to happen.

 

[Kanitatlan]

09:00 July 26th 1939

Depletion of the Gibraltar defences is progressing nicely. My tactical bombers are inflicting major losses on the mixed force that keeps advancing into Seville. Major infantry forces are being bought forward for the final assault but that is currently still some way off.

13:00 July 26th 1939

Another successful interception of the British naval bombers. One squadron has already gone missing and the others are looking more than a little depleted.

 

[Kanitatlan]

18:00 July 27th 1939

With the taking of Plymouth my carrier fleet has proceeded northwards to support potential attacks on Scapa Flow. The mountain corps has achieved a successful isolation of the British forces despite their head start and closer position to Inverness. Once the main infantry corps arrive I will be able to assault and take Scapa Flow. I should have around 50% more base firepower, better modifiers and shore bombardment support. This combination should be more than adequate.