Ayyyyyy, there he is! Hopefully we will eventuallysee Yaroslav placed on the throne of Poland- he can't be worse than Golikov.
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I know the feeling man...Some bad news and good news today. When I was just finishing up this update earlier my son decided it would be a fun idea to break my laptop screen :|. The good news is the computer itself was fine - so I’ve been able to post the update while plugged into my TV (not the most usual method) and I’ve got all my AAR files safe. The bad news is we will likely have a little pause after this update until I find a more viable means of writing further.
Finally caught up after a furious fortnight of a millennia of history! Liberal Jewish Poland was a very exciting prospect for me, so I was especially sad to see the radical turn and have been enthusiastically rooting against the current (Russian!) regime for the last three decades. But Makarov and co have pulled things back from the brink often enough that I am skeptical of the potential for collapse even with the full might of China and the West arrayed against them.
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It has been a long trek since the days of High Medieval Poland, but here I am! Let me congratulate you for this AAR. It is one of the few that manages to maintain itself interesting over the time.
It took me a little while to get a replacement laptop. Hoping to get back into this in the next couple of weeks, time permitting.
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1948-1949 – We Are Betrayed
The fall of Italy in December 1948 had given the Eurasian League a decided advantage on the Western front going into the new year. Through the first three months of 1949 the Russians embarked on a series of highly successful offensive operations – pushing the remaining Allied troops from Liguria in Italy, capturing Bavaria and the key city of Munich, advancing into the heavily defended Alpine passes and rapidly advancing across the German North Sea shoreline to reach into the Netherlands and cut off Amsterdam.
Just as the momentum of the war appeared to be firmly on Russia’s side, news reached Kiev of the most foul treachery from their former ally. Russians and Serbs had stood side by side in the face of the International during the Second World War a decade earlier, and had even entered the present conflict as allies. Political instability, and popular Russophobia, had driven the Serbs out of the conflict in December, but few had expected Serbia to throw its lot in the with western Allies. However, Serbia’s internal political ructions had continued to escalate in the preceding months, turning the country in an increasingly anti-Russian direction. This reached its ultimate conclusion on April 1st 1949 when the Serbs declared war on the Eurasian League and began to pour across the lightly defended souther frontier of Russia’s empire. Enraged, Golikov swore to utterly destroy the Serbian nation and condemn its empire to the dustbin of history.
Serbia’s treachery compounded upon a worsening situation for the Eurasian League on a number of other frontiers. In the early stages of the war, Russia’s Middle Eastern imperium had fallen apart as the Allies quickly brought about the collapse of Israel and isolated seven entire divisions at Trablus, trapped between the Lebanese mountains and the sea. The Allies followed this up with a devastating assault on Iraq in January 1949 spearheaded by American armour that saw Baghdad fall and the state surrender after just three weeks fighting. Shortly after this Persia joined the grand anti-Russian coalition – declaring war on the Eurasian League and invited Allied forces onto its territory in return for promises of annexations in Farsi-speaking lands. This left the Russians further exposed in a number of regions – South of the Caspian, Tabriz and Tehran appeared near indefensible, while there appeared little in the way of an Allies push towards the Caucuses. To the east, the Allies found an easy route of attack into the recently acquired Russian territories along the Indus that provided it with its connection to the Indian Ocean. Worse was to come in mid-February when the Russian army at Trablus, the best part of the troops assigned to defend the region at the outset of the war, surrendered. Russia’s southern flank was completely open.
From the most southerly front to the extreme north, the news was profoundly negative for Kiev. A number of successful Skottish and American landings in the autumn of 1948 had put the Eurasian League firmly on the retreat in Scandinavia from the outset of the war. While the Russians had, to a large extent, succeeded in halting the Allied advance along a solid defensive line in Lapland, their stabilisation of the frontline proved only temporary. In April 1949 the Skots and Americans launched two further naval lands near the cities of Murmansk and Archangel that completely outflanked the Russians – trapping six divisions in western Lapland, ultimately leading to their surrender – allowing for them to drive almost unchallenged towards the rich lands of Muscovy.
The spring of 1949 also saw the conclusion of fighting on one of the war’s least remembered fronts – in North America. There had been a Polish presence in North America since the late 17th century when intrepid explorers had established Grigoria in the Pacific North West, yet, aside from the occasional gold rush, the region had rarely attracted much attention. As such, Kiev had left a modest garrison of three divisions to defend the vast territory, who had little hope for victory when faced with the continental might of their enemies in North America. For the most part, the Americans had left the Danish Canadians to handle this theatre of war, battling small insurgent Russian detachments over an endless and inhospitable landscape in a slow advance towards the Ocean. In May 1949 this campaign would largely meet its end after the Canadians captured the most populous part of Russian North America around the Nootka Sound and accepted the formal surrender of Russia’s commanders in the region, although small military and paramilitary elements would carry on a guerrilla campaign in the wilds through to the end of the war.
By the spring of 1949 the Russian strategic situation, was sufficiently critical to gravely concern the regime’s elites. Golikov’s hopes of a decisive victory in the West would have to be abandoned. Following the Serbian invasion, the armoured and motorised troops that had spearheaded the victories in the region in the preceding months had to be hastily scrambled eastward to halt the Serbian advance into the League’s unprotected underbelly. Elsewhere, 100,000s of men would have to be redeployed from the main front to plug the emerging gaps in Russia’s defensive in the north and south. With any hope of a quick Russian battlefield victory through conventional means over, and fears that a long war could lead to starvation and economic catastrophe at home, Golikov contemplated drastic action to reverse his empire’s fortunes.
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A bit late, but we are back!
Things starting to get a little hairy for Russia - in this update alone I've lost 16 divisions to encirclements and we're losing out on several fronts. Serbia in particular was a big concern. I actually left the long border with Serbia completely unguarded, so they have free reign until I can get my fast moving units to the front the halt them.
Things starting to get a little hairy for Russia - in this update alone I've lost 16 divisions to encirclements and we're losing out on several fronts. Serbia in particular was a big concern. I actually left the long border with Serbia completely unguarded, so they have free reign until I can get my fast moving units to the front the halt them.
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May God bless Poland for being utterly smashed by the forces of the free world.
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I'm delighted to see Russia is losing, but that last sentence has me terrified that the war is about to turn nuclear.
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Russia's chickens have come home to roost, but I have a feeling that the worst is only yet to come -- and judging by that foreshadowing, it's going to come by its leadership's own hand.
I started getting more and more excited as I read on. I have a suspicion I'm not the only one excited to see Makarov losing.
Great to have this back!
Great to have this back!
I smell Golikov deciding it's time to pull no punches anymore and using the nuclear option to bring the Allies to the negotiating table or worse, bring them down with him if he loses. Both are absolutely terrifying to think about.
As many have noted, that last line is truly terrifying. The war has not yet reached the Russian heartlands, so Golikov would 'only' be visiting nuclear horrors upon occupied lands.
The question is how well Golikov thinks his enemies have figured out the state of the atomic arsenal. At this point, it cannot be extensive enough to genuinely win a war ons o many fronts (setting aside how bastardised a victory it would be to turn half of Europe and the Asian steppe into nuclear wasteland). If they know his nuclear resources are limited, then Escalate to Deescalate has no chance to work; it only delays the inevitable and ensures further that the victorious powers will wipe off the face of the earth a nation that was inhuman enough to use such a strategy.
Not that such a thing matters to Golikov, who will be dead anyway. Therefore, he is absolutely going to try it.
Happy to have you back!
The question is how well Golikov thinks his enemies have figured out the state of the atomic arsenal. At this point, it cannot be extensive enough to genuinely win a war ons o many fronts (setting aside how bastardised a victory it would be to turn half of Europe and the Asian steppe into nuclear wasteland). If they know his nuclear resources are limited, then Escalate to Deescalate has no chance to work; it only delays the inevitable and ensures further that the victorious powers will wipe off the face of the earth a nation that was inhuman enough to use such a strategy.
Not that such a thing matters to Golikov, who will be dead anyway. Therefore, he is absolutely going to try it.
Happy to have you back!
Hardly anyone playing EU4 or similar Paradox games hardly likes to lose, yet you're allowing yours to lose. Is there a specific reason for that?