Too many people are dying in a war that everyone knows is already won, use the nukes and finish the job. Too many lives, American, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and otherwise, have already been lost.
Good update tho'!
Good update tho'!
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That was a good update as always. Seeing the Americans invade the Korean Peninsula brings back memories for me.
There would not be much point in using them at this point. The Japanese will fight till I take their last victory point because the game forces them to and my game is tempermental about me writing events so writing an event for them to surrender and getting it to work would be frustratingly difficult at best and down right impossible at worst. That is in addition to my feelings of them being somewhat cheap. To be honest, I only really considered using them once in the entire game. I was going to nuke the crap out of the border between France and Spain to allow me to break out once I got the required three nukes, but I managed to break out without them so I didn't use them. I also thought I would need them to invade Japan, but the ai's stupidity meant I didn't. In all honesty, I think it would be a waste of a perfectly good nuke to use one right now.
Indeed I bet it does. The Korean War happened just a tad different and a tad late in this AAR didn't it?
Alright readers, after three years of rather inconsistent writing, the war is finally going to end in this update. Their will be one more update after this were I wrap things up. If I need more then that, I will certainly take it, but I am only planning one wrap up update at the moment. However, I do have a slight problem with my game that is preventing me from finishing the game off. That problem is the fact that I cannot release Nationalist China. I am uncertain on why that is as I cannot find a ideology or government requirement for doing so, but Nationalist China just doesn't appear in my list of releasable nations. Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated. So without further ado, we have a war to end.
The War was finally nearing its end. While the Americans had been telling themselves that for a long time, it seemed that now the Japanese had finally gotten the news as well. Ever since the fall of the Japanese Home Islands, the Americans had gone from victory to victory. It was as if all of the fight had gone out of the Japanese soldiers. They knew the war was over and with their homeland taken, there really seemed to be nothing left to fight for. While the Japanese code of honor would never allow them to outright surrender, the prospect of dying on foreign soil for a lost cause was not a prospect any of them relished. Indeed, with the Emperor, who they universally revered as a Living God telling them to lay down their arms, saying they had done enough already, that no one could doubt their loyalty and devotion to Japan and that their was no shame and great nobility in accepting when you are beaten, their were many in the Japanese army who began to question whether fighting to the death was really the noble and honorable thing to do. Indeed, many agreed with the Emperor's sentiment that the very fact that they were willing to fight to the death for Japan, even after its fall, was enough to prove their honor and nobility. Besides, if the Emperor himself had accepted Japan's defeat with honor and dignity, what choice did they, who had been taught to honor, revere, and follow the Emperor in all things, have accept to follow his lead in this as well. The conflicted nature of these soldiers had begun to show in the months following the Emperor's request for the Japanese to lay down their arms in the fact that they were no longer displaying the fanatical determination that the Americans had come to expect from them. Eventually, cracks began to appear in the Japanese military. The first were those who were determined to follow the cabinets orders to fight to the death. They justified disobeying the Emperor's orders by accepting the story put out by the Cabinet that this Emperor was an imposter even though it became more and more apparent that it was a lie. To those who did not accept this lie or who gradually came to relieve it as such, they claimed that the Emperor had dishonored himself by surrendering and was thus no longer worthy of their loyalty. Indeed, they called for the selection of a new Emperor to replace the man they saw as a traitor to their people. The other side were those who favored following the Emperor's orders and laying down their arms honorably. They pointed out that it was not the place of mere soldiers to question the august personage of the Emperor and that if he, who was regarded as a God and therefore infallible, was calling for surrender, had in fact himself surrendered, then surely there could be no dishonor in the act of doing so. Initially, the pro-Cabinet faction had the upper hand. However, as the fortunes of war continued to go against Japan, the Imperialists began arguing that the rash of defeats clearly showed that the heavens were still with the Emperor and that they had obviously forsaken the Cabinet for their disloyalty. The fact that the war was going badly for the Japanese before the coup was conveniently ignored, as was pointed out by numerous high ranking pro-Cabinet officials. Eventually, however, the arguments of the Imperials began winning over the Japanese soldiers. This led to something that had never happened before in the war. Mass dissertions and surrenders of Japanese soldiers. At first, the Americans mistrusted these surrenders, fearing some kind of trap. However, as it became more and more certain that they were legitimate, the Americans began to realize that the Japanese were losing faith in their cause. This news was a cause for much rejoicing in the American ranks. If the Japanese army was divided, then surely it was only a matter of time before the whole thing collapsed in on itself. It was with this renewed spirit that MacArthur ordered a renewed offensive in the Chongyin area.
The attack began on January 21, 1960. While the initial plan had been to wait until the Liaoyuan region had been taken, MacArthur sensed in these dissertions and surrenders an opportunity, and it was an opportunity that he meant to exploit. If he could break the last determined defensive positions the Japanese still held, he might be able to give further fuel to the flames of doubt that were already burning in the hearts and minds of many Japanese soldiers. If he could do so, it was not unreasonable to think that the Japanese Army might collapse in upon itself, allowing the Americans to mop up the scattered remains with minimal loss of life.
The problem, however, was that the Japanese were thinking along the very same lines as MacArthur. They feared that the loss of Chongying might cause the whole of the Japanese army to mutiny. If that happened, the Cabinet would have no choice but to sue for peace. Since none of them had any illusions about what their fates would be if that happened and they all universally were quite attached to their heads and liked them to stay attached to them as well, they were understandably determined that Chongying could not be allowed to fall. They gave orders that any man attempting to surrender or retreat in any way was to be shot on site and that under no cricumstances was anyone to leave the city until the American attack had been repelled. After the first few soldiers attempted surrender and received a bullet from their own commanders on the spot for their trouble, the Japanese soldiers decided they had more to fear from their own officers then from the enemy. Thus, however reluctantly, the Japanese soldiers determined to make one final stand. The Japanese fought like demons for every inch of ground in the city, placing ambushes around every corner, bobby trapping any position they abandoned, and even a few of the men they abandoned. Numerous reports came in of Japanese soldiers, having run out of ammo, faking their own deaths and waiting for the Americans to advance past them, only to rise like Lazarus himself and attempt to stab the American soldiers from behind with their bayonet, or, failing that, whatever sharp object was nearest at hand. This led to American soldiers shooting any "dead" Japanese soldier they saw once in the head "just to make sure". However, in the end, no amount of determination could change the fact that there were too many Americans and not enough Japanese. After 12 days of brutal room by room, house by house, and street by street fighting, the Japanese forces were completely out of ammo. It was then that the Japanese commander gathered all of his forces in the center of town for one final stand. He waited for the Americans to arrive, encircling the remaining Japanese soldiers. He then ordered every man there to make one last Banzai charge straight towards the American forces, taking his place at their head. Despite the valiant effort, it was doomed from the start. What few Japanese managed to get past the American machine gun emplacements, hastily put into place in anticipation for just such a move, were cut down by the Americans in brutal, sometimes hand to hand, close range combat.
The fall of Chongyin was the final nail in the coffin of the Japanese army. With their last prepared position having fallen, the entire Japanese army simply collapsed in on itself and The Cabinet, which had only recently called so loudly for due or die resistance, fled rather ignobily on the last ships available to it to hide out on a small island somewhere in the Pacific. After finally being revealed as the cowards they were rather then the fearsome tigers they portrayed themselves as, the Japanese soldiers and populace abandoned them en masse Japanese soldiers, upon facing American troops increasingly began to surrender rather then even attempt to fight. Seeing the collapse and wanting to speed it along and encourage it, MacArthur and Stillwell ordered several more units ferried behind the Japanese lines to intercept any retreating soldiers. landings were made at Iman and Khabaravok and quickly and ruthlessly exploited. Before long, only the Kamchatka region remained in Japanese hands, and that only because the Americans had deemed it to unimportant to devout men to it. The Japanese forces there, numbering no more then 10,000 men, had not been informed of the collapse of the Japanese army and stayed, waiting for the American attack that would never come. Eventually, after the surrender, they would be sought out by one of the Emperor's relatives, bearing a letter from the emperor himself informing them of the surrender. It was only then that these soldiers, the last hold outs of Imperial Japan, would finally surrender.
It was in this atmosphere of general collapse of the Japanese Army, that MacArthur and Truman made the announcement of the liberation of the Korean Peninsula to uproarious fanfare. Finally, after suffering under Japanese rule for 51 long years, Korea, the first nation to ever fall to the Japanese, would finally be free to chose its own destiny.
With the Japanese Army no longer a threat, the Americans got down to the business of hunting down the Japanese Cabinet, intent on capturing them and forcing them to sign Japan's formal surrender. This task was taken on by MacArthur himself, who requested, and was granted, the honor of delivering the killing blow himself. The first place that he hit was the island of Tinian. This was a small unassuming island in the Pacific, located not very far from the former American base at Guam. The island had been retaken during MacArthur's initial campaign through the Pacific but, due to an oversight in the American High Command, the island had fallen to the Japanese a second time. Now MacArthur was determined to retake it. MacArthur made his initial landing on Tinian on April 16, 1961 and found not a trace of the Japanese army or the cabinet.
having failed to find them there, he then retook Guam, almost as an afterthought, not really expecting to find his quarry there, despite how delicious an irony it would have been.
Finally, after much fruitless searching, MacArthur finally tracked the cowardly members of the cabinet hiding out in the Bonin Islands. After being dumbfounded at the stupidity, bravado, or possibly both, of choosing a hideout so close to Japan, MacArthur ordered an immediate attack.
The island was taken without any resistance and the Cabinet members caught while attempting to flee to yet another hideout. After forcing them to sign a treaty making Japan's surrender official, MacArthur had them dragged before the Emperor, who he put in charge of deciding their fates. After unceremoniously begging them for their lives. After telling them to stop disgracing themselves with such a pathetic show, he ordered them all taken off to be put on trial for treason. A few weeks later, the verdicts came down. Guilty, across the board, and the former Cabinet members were all sentenced to death by hanging. And thus, at long last, World War II, which had ravaged the world in the fires of war for 20 long years and America for 16, was finally over. All that remained now was to sort out what to do with those territories that still remained under occupation and to decide the fate of Japan.
Just read the whole story, what a brilliant story. From all the AAr's i have read, this one was by far the best
I read the entire thing, except the last few updates, in one sitting too, good to know I'm not alone
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3 years, wow. I think this is the longest lasting aar on the forums. Bravo, History_Buff, Bravo.
I am amazed at the amount of work and though that you have put into this AAR. It was the first AAR I ever read and seeing it end makes me more than a little sad. You have a great talent for writing.
This has been such an epic AAR; to top it all off, you turn the hunting of the Japanese Government into a military version of "Where's Waldo?" :rofl:
MacArthur: Not here. Not there. Damn it! I need my glasses to find those little guys! Oh! There they are!
Speaking of MacArthur, interesting timing that you released Korea ten years to the day Truman fired him during the Korean War.
MacArthur: Not here. Not there. Damn it! I need my glasses to find those little guys! Oh! There they are!
Speaking of MacArthur, interesting timing that you released Korea ten years to the day Truman fired him during the Korean War.
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Nathan, searching for war criminals is fun! We should try it together sometime. Where shall we begin?
Nathan, searching for war criminals is fun! We should try it together sometime. Where shall we begin?
I don't know. This AAR seems to have gotten them all.
Well that's a shame. Maybe we should go play with the buttons on Truman's life support supermachine?
Truman died in 1972, so he'd actually still be alive at 77 as of the last update. 77 also happens to be the same age Reagan left office, interestingly enough.
Yeah, but he's also been in office 8 long years later than OTL, and still has one term left to go. That tires a man out.
I think Truman is going to resign after the war is over and hand the reins over to JFK.
Josef Mengele looked at his watch, growing increasingly restless. He had been in Argentina only five months and already he could tell that he was being spied on, moreover, the government continued to keep him under surveillance and it seemed more and more likely that they might hand him over to keep the Allies from coming down on them. He fiddled with his cigarette some more and looked disgustedly at the garbage-filled alley that the man who would take him across the border to Paraguay had told him to wait in. He had heard that old man Strossner was very amenable to National Socialists and it seemed like the safest place for a man of his, unique reputation. He heard footsteps and at the mouth of the alley he saw a figure silhouetted against the streetlight at the other end of the alley. The figure kept advancing, methodically down the alley, then the man stopped. Mengele was puzzled, then the figure moved and his face was illuminated by a small flash and Mengele heard a sound like a car backfiring. He stumbled back at what felt like a punch to the stomach. The warm liquid that began to soak his shirt and pants made it clear that he had been shot, but before he could process the information, the man fired again and again and then everything was black.
Howard Hunt repocketed the pistol and exited the alleyway, the faint scent of cordite lingering in his nostrils. A sea breeze was blowing through Buenos Aires and the entire city was filled with the cleansing smell of brine and spray. The sun had just peeked over the horizon and the first few golden rays of dawn illuminated the city giving everything a cleaner cast. The world was changing, and the horrors of the old world were finally being expunged.
Howard Hunt repocketed the pistol and exited the alleyway, the faint scent of cordite lingering in his nostrils. A sea breeze was blowing through Buenos Aires and the entire city was filled with the cleansing smell of brine and spray. The sun had just peeked over the horizon and the first few golden rays of dawn illuminated the city giving everything a cleaner cast. The world was changing, and the horrors of the old world were finally being expunged.
I will eventually, it is just taking awhile because I am currently experiencing a problem where Nationalist China cannot be released for some reason. I have tried to get help for it in tech support but it is taking a while because I haven't uploaded the save. I can post a link to that thread if any of my readers would like to try and help out as any feedback on how to fix this problem would be greatly appreciated.