Hello and welcome to Für den Kaiser !, a German A-historical AAR about the restoration of the Hohenzollern Monarchy. This AAR will be played using Mod-33 on normal difficulty/aggressiveness. It will be writen as a more or less history book style, but I might also make an attempt at incorporating other AAR styles, specifically adding narrative bits, likely told through letters, diaries and what-not.
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Introduction
1914-1933
When the world was plunged into war in August 1914, no one in Germany could have suspected that the war would eventually lead the country to disaster and would threaten both Germany's political and social situation in Europe. Indeed, after a series of quick successes in Belgium and Northern France, the overstretched German forces were ultimately stopped in their tracks at the First Battle of the Marne. By the end of 1914, the war had degenerated in a war of attrition, where the outcome of battles were dictated by the realities of trench warfare. The ensuing stalemate would strain both the German population and the nation's economy to a breaking point. Heavy casualties in the cataclysmic battles of 1915 and 1916 would devastate a generation of young men, massacred at the front in futile attempts to achieve decisive victory. On the Home Front, the British Naval Blockade deprived Germany of many vital resources for the waging of war, straining Germany's economy to it's utmost limit. By 1917, the tide was turning irrevocably against Germany. Although it had won a decisive in Russia, victory on the Western Front eluded the Imperial Army. Also, the entry of the United States into the conflict meant that Germany's already noticeably big lack of manpower meant that the war had to be won quickly and decisively. In 1918, Germany placed all it's hopes and dreams of victory in General Erich Ludendorff's Spring Offensive. Instead of offering victory, however, the Spring Offensives failed in their ultimate goal of dislocating the Allied Lines and to therefore winning the war. It instead exhausted the German Army, already weary after four years of brutal, uninterrupted fighting and completely drained what little manpower the Germans had left. By the end of the year, Germany was spent. Civil unrest and dissatisfaction with the war resulted the what was later to be known as the German Revolution and the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II on November 9th 1918. Knowing that the war was lost, the Germans signed an armistice on the 11th of November 1918. Following the armistice, a battered Germany was forced to sign the deeply humiliating treaty of Versailles, which mutilated the country and started the troubled years of the Weimar Republic...
In 1920, an obscure Austrian corporal named Adolf Hitler joined a small fringe party know as the National Socialist German Worker's party. The young politician quickly rose through the ranks and built a powerful political force. In 1923, confident that the German people were behind him, Hitler launched what is now known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler and his SA attempted to take control of the city of Munich and then march on Berlin. The Putsch was a catastrophic failure and Hitler was arrested along with many of his party comrades, including the well known General Erich Ludendorff. He was imprisoned later that year and received a 5 year sentence but was released in December 1924. Hitler was now free to resume his political activities. The later half of the decade saw the rise of both the Nazi ultra-nationalists and the Communists in Germany. This led to many conflicts between the paramilitary groups of both sides. After the stock market crash in 1929, the Germany, along with the rest of the western world, was plunged into chaos. Both the Communists and the Nazi would receive a tremendous boost in national support and popularity. By 1933, the situation was dire and President Hindenburg weary. A restoration of Germany's glory days under the Kaiser seemed far away...
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Table of Contents:
-Introduction (1914-1933) -Above-
-From The Abyss... (1933-1936)
-Restoring the Reich (1936-1941)
-War in the West (1941-1943)
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