Someone might notice my preference for playing those countries with tragic destiny and few chances of victory like Romania, Italy, and France. Since the yet to be finished Romanian campaign, and my Italian experiment much experience was gained, and this time I changed the tune to France.
One year ago (or more) I tried a French campaign, thereby getting a severe beating that really discouraged me from new attempts with yet another hopeless country. This year, after interrupting my work at the Romanian campaign and learning fleet strategy with Italy (another failed campaign, but very instructive nonetheless), I did delve into the secrets of land combat departing from the unfounded supposition I was an expert in the field. Months of research into division composition, effective building and research strategy, and offensive and especially defensive battle tactics turned me confident to challenge again the tough fate of France.
One small notice: the campaign is not over but it got very interesting with unexpected twists that I would gladly share with you.
An unforgiving beginning
France starts with marginally more Leadership than Italy, poor resource production, limited MP, few apt generals, and catastrophically low IC Production. In a short sentence, this country is destined to lose. Historically, France was almost bankrupt throughout the 1920s and 1930s because of the devastation of its industrial cores during the First World War, a psychologically scarred nation after the millions of lives lost during the same conflagration, and a politically unstable state in part due to the lost self-confidence after a pyrrhic victory.
Given the ruinous state of France, these are the self-imposed conditions for a French victory:
1) France has to successfully resist the German offensive during the first two or three years of conflict.
2) Should Germany be defeated with the participation of the Soviet Union, which according to other players will DOW Germany at latest in 1942, France has to establish a demarcation line at the Rhine, and prepare for a war with the Soviets to liberate Central and Eastern Europe from Bolshevik occupation, in other words, to rebuild the Cordon Sanitaire, and eventually drive Russia beyond today Ukraine. According to the German and Romanian historical sources, when the Axis officers captured the first HQ documents of the Red Army in the first days of war, all the Soviet battle plans were exclusively offensive, and so was the disposition of troops, suggesting Stalin was preparing his own surprise attack on Germany and its allies a few weeks or months later. One can only speculate when the Communist power planned to start its own offensive for the domination of Central and Western Europe (in my opinion it is possible that Stalin actually wanted to wait longer so that Germany and the Allies spend their energies against each other first), but in a scenario of a French (Allied) victory west of the Rhine and a Soviet victory east of the river, we would have had the same Cold War scenario, where the Soviets took a very confrontational stance, perhaps feeling frustrated by the American power stealing their chance of a full invasion of Europe and internationalization of Communist order. The only factor that stopped a Third World War in real life was the American use of the Atomic Bomb in Japan and the implicit threat to the security of the Soviet empire in case of direct confrontation.
3) France and its Allies enter war with the Soviet Union, regardless of who DOWs whom, and France has to establish an European Democratic Liberal order as soon as UdSSR is defeated, or even during the War. France will thus liberate all the countries, reestablish the borders prior to the Second World War, since Paris guaranteed them in the Versailles Peace Treaties. This should be the basis for a liberal world order, less impregnated by nationalistic politics which are steering the world nowadays back to a world rife with conflicts and great power competition.
4) Should the option be possible, the Allies will try to establish liberal democracy in Russia as well, hopefully in an alternative historical process that didn't go astray for the Russian people and for the Russian democracy as in real life during the 1990s.
The following parts will be rather short centered on my policy decisions, the response of the AI, and the turn of events, without the rich historical background present in the Romanian AAR. The experience gained in the past and present campaigns will impact the Romanian campaign as well, in ways that I will explain there.
PS: And yes, there won't be any tricks meant to exploit the system in an antihistorical manner. The play will be within the limits of sportivity. For example, I will refrain from Atomic bombings, strategic bombing of the enemy capital city, overuse of the paratroopers, and other egregious tactics. The game is the vanilla TFH variant, normal difficulty level, any modding for France being absent.
One year ago (or more) I tried a French campaign, thereby getting a severe beating that really discouraged me from new attempts with yet another hopeless country. This year, after interrupting my work at the Romanian campaign and learning fleet strategy with Italy (another failed campaign, but very instructive nonetheless), I did delve into the secrets of land combat departing from the unfounded supposition I was an expert in the field. Months of research into division composition, effective building and research strategy, and offensive and especially defensive battle tactics turned me confident to challenge again the tough fate of France.
One small notice: the campaign is not over but it got very interesting with unexpected twists that I would gladly share with you.
An unforgiving beginning
France starts with marginally more Leadership than Italy, poor resource production, limited MP, few apt generals, and catastrophically low IC Production. In a short sentence, this country is destined to lose. Historically, France was almost bankrupt throughout the 1920s and 1930s because of the devastation of its industrial cores during the First World War, a psychologically scarred nation after the millions of lives lost during the same conflagration, and a politically unstable state in part due to the lost self-confidence after a pyrrhic victory.
Given the ruinous state of France, these are the self-imposed conditions for a French victory:
1) France has to successfully resist the German offensive during the first two or three years of conflict.
2) Should Germany be defeated with the participation of the Soviet Union, which according to other players will DOW Germany at latest in 1942, France has to establish a demarcation line at the Rhine, and prepare for a war with the Soviets to liberate Central and Eastern Europe from Bolshevik occupation, in other words, to rebuild the Cordon Sanitaire, and eventually drive Russia beyond today Ukraine. According to the German and Romanian historical sources, when the Axis officers captured the first HQ documents of the Red Army in the first days of war, all the Soviet battle plans were exclusively offensive, and so was the disposition of troops, suggesting Stalin was preparing his own surprise attack on Germany and its allies a few weeks or months later. One can only speculate when the Communist power planned to start its own offensive for the domination of Central and Western Europe (in my opinion it is possible that Stalin actually wanted to wait longer so that Germany and the Allies spend their energies against each other first), but in a scenario of a French (Allied) victory west of the Rhine and a Soviet victory east of the river, we would have had the same Cold War scenario, where the Soviets took a very confrontational stance, perhaps feeling frustrated by the American power stealing their chance of a full invasion of Europe and internationalization of Communist order. The only factor that stopped a Third World War in real life was the American use of the Atomic Bomb in Japan and the implicit threat to the security of the Soviet empire in case of direct confrontation.
3) France and its Allies enter war with the Soviet Union, regardless of who DOWs whom, and France has to establish an European Democratic Liberal order as soon as UdSSR is defeated, or even during the War. France will thus liberate all the countries, reestablish the borders prior to the Second World War, since Paris guaranteed them in the Versailles Peace Treaties. This should be the basis for a liberal world order, less impregnated by nationalistic politics which are steering the world nowadays back to a world rife with conflicts and great power competition.
4) Should the option be possible, the Allies will try to establish liberal democracy in Russia as well, hopefully in an alternative historical process that didn't go astray for the Russian people and for the Russian democracy as in real life during the 1990s.
The following parts will be rather short centered on my policy decisions, the response of the AI, and the turn of events, without the rich historical background present in the Romanian AAR. The experience gained in the past and present campaigns will impact the Romanian campaign as well, in ways that I will explain there.
PS: And yes, there won't be any tricks meant to exploit the system in an antihistorical manner. The play will be within the limits of sportivity. For example, I will refrain from Atomic bombings, strategic bombing of the enemy capital city, overuse of the paratroopers, and other egregious tactics. The game is the vanilla TFH variant, normal difficulty level, any modding for France being absent.
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