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Lordling

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Dec 26, 2006
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The end of the war, it seems. In the spirit of those who have reversed defeat, and turned it into victory, with the United States against an Axis world, I've decided to take it one step further. Can I reverse an ailing Australia, with only one ally remaining, and bring about victory in the war to come? Without the mammoth resources of the United States, this will be hard, to say the very least. (Which is why recovering said resouces will be my primary concern)

Of course, there's going to be a number of custom events improving IC and manpower to some small degree when other countries fall, and, furthermore, the AI won't be getting nukes, as I feel it'd just ruin me.

And lastly, and certainly not least, I'll be playing this AAR as Germany up to the defeat of all other Allied countries.

- - - - - - -

"Sir, more bad news. The Japs sunk the Canberra near Darwin. Our relief force was decimated"

Menzies's eyes flickered down with defeat. Politically, it was important. Very much so. Curtin had been pushing for his resignation, ever since the fall of Britain. Since the fall of Tobruk. And then, since the fall of Port Moresby. But even Curtin had stopped, as the peril grew nearer. Menzies knew he had made a mistake.

A large one. The war had been marked by mistakes, idiotic mistakes from all Allies, and very few from the Axis. Indeed, there had been much that, in hindsight, was madness, and, considering their situation.. he considered surrender. What was there left but surrender?

Since the fall of Darwin, several relief forces had been sent, but superior Japanese naval force - over fifteen carriers, at last report, all more modern than the single carrier the RAN had, the HMAS Matilda, and with admirals who had no compunction in annihilating his fleets where they were.

The war had gone poorly, he reflected. Very poorly. But nevertheless, surrender was as poor an option as losing, now. And the Japanese did not respect surrender.

The door swung open with a mighty bang, revealing two men, and a third walking in behind them. One was quiet, and the other swore as the door swung back at him, and kicked it out of the way, his foot tearing at the flyscreen. The third, was overshadowed by the first as well.

"General Patton. General Montgomery. Admiral Royle. Good of you to come."

Patton chuckled. "Good of you to have us, Prime Minister. The slit-eyed bastards couldn't stop me coming to this meeting, not for anything."

"Well, that's at least good to hear."

Menzies spoke. "This, gentlemen, seems to be a dark hour. The only fleet carrier we have, the Matilda, is unfit for service, and taking repairs in Adelaide. With the fall of Darwin, things are looking exceptionally grim. The Japanese have ten fighters and ten bombers in the air for every active fighter we have, and our latest intelligence report tells us that there's now over twenty-five divisions in Darwin, preparing to conquer mainland Australia. Patton, I haven't heard from the Americas in some time. How is it going?"

Patton's eyes squeezed shut with pain, and he spoke. "Those.. the United States of America has fallen. They got Roosevelt. That's what I'm here to tell you. The USN, or what's left of it, will be cutting its losses, and heading down to Sydney. There's nothing more it can do on the mainland. Although the Atlantic Fleet was captured almost wholesale. Hitler must've had someone on the inside."

Menzies winced. "Canada?"

"The Japs landed their main invasion force there. With Germany in the east, and those little bastards in the west, the Canadians never stood a .. a fucking chance. The Americas are gone."

Montgomery spoke up. "Delhi fell last week, and along with it, Britain's last holdout."

The door swung open again, and another man rushed into the room. Freyberg, the representative of New Zealand. The other nation still in the war. New Zealand had been invaded twice now by Japanese forces, but the RAN had managed to facilitate the destruction of the Japanese forces both times, although suffering heavy losses.

"General Freyberg.".

They'd all been granted the ranks of General when they arrived, four days ago. Generals in the Australian Army, of course. Freyberg still retained his rank within the New Zealand Army, but the ranks of Montgomery and Patton at this time were meaningless. There were no Americans or British soldiers for them to command.

Royle, the Admiral of the Royal Australian Navy, was the only man among them who did not command on the land. Menzies valued his advice among them most of all - six Japanese and German carriers sunk by a mere three cruisers and a carrier, and a single wing of torpedo bombers had forestalled the invasion of Darwin for some time, now.

Menzies took a breath, and spoke. "Royle. Patton. Freyburg. Montgomery. We're losing this war."

Montgomery nodded. "Well, of course we are. We can see that."

"We can't beat the Germans, and the Japs, I appreciate that. We can't succeed where the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union combined failed. But we can damn well drive them off our continent! Now, there's something most of us didn't know. Ever since early January, 1936, the United States has had an exceptionally well-placed intelligence service within Germany."

He smiled. "In fact, they've been so deeply planted into the German hierarchy that only recently they were rooted out. However, they have a file that reports on German actions, and German military, almost completely. A few brave souls, upon the capture of FBI offices, managed to sneak this file out, all-but-intact. If nothing else, we have the oppurtunity to study our enemy."

He turned to the man he had been speaking to before. "Mr. Greene, would you care to put on the first slide?"

"Ah, here we are.."

Greene fiddled with the slide for a moment, and flicked on the projector. "It all began in early January, 1936.."
 
This will be hard. To put it lightly.

Good luck!
 
Lordling: The end of the war, it seems...


NAAAAYY ! ! ANZACs are the BEST ! ! :cool:
 
Things aren't looking so good...
 
4th Dimension said:
Should I tell you that you are going to loose. Painfuly. :D

Seconded!

May I ask for a few maps and screens?
 
W00t. Looking like a fine start.
 
Keep in mind I'm playing on Very Easy for the Germany years - mainly to keep the force disposition of other nations down somewhat (and also to ensure that Germany has enough forces that even the AI can't waste them horrifically when I switch to Australia), but I won't be playing as only Germany during these years, so rest assured that every Axis country will be well-equipped.

I originally simply edited the save so that I could start from there - but then I realised it'd be more fun to illuminate the history from '36,

- - - - - - - - -
"It all begins on January the 17th, 1936."

"It began when that paper-pushing bastard took power. He intended all this."

Greene, momentarily confused, looked over at Patton - as did Menzies.

"Please, General Patton. Let Greene continue with his presentation. It's not as if we have anything else we can do, for the moment."

Patton grumbled, but sank back into his seat.

Greene's voice quavered for a moment as he spoke, seemingly believing someone would interrupt him again. "As I said, January the 17th, 1936. Hitler remilitarizes the Rhineland. Three German divisions march in, triumphant. The French, angered by this, move in to throw them out. Over two thousand German casualties are suffered, and General Conde loses his commission over the incident. The French government is further weakened, and Hitler proclaims that he is only trying to regain the rights of the German people - and that the French are aggressors."

He took a breath. "The British, on the other hand, see the French move as utterly unnecessary, and threaten to cut off their alliance with the French should they move against Germany militarily again. This, compounded along with a lot of other misunderstandings between the Allies, only hastened Hitler's meteoric rise diplomatically among nations, and prevented the Allies from acting effectively against Hitler when he threatened Eastern Europe in the years to come."

"The German army at this time is in no shape to defeat the Czechoslovakian army at this time, let alone the French one. However, with this British ultimatum delivered, the collapse of the European Entente, as it was named, takes place within a week. The greater alliance that had been formed only some months earlier to contain Hitler, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia, and Denmark, one of the greatest feats of French diplomacy, collapses, as France can no longer guarantee that she can come to the aid of the other nation-states."

Greene took a breath. "Soon after, Denmark, realising that, without direct British aid, it cannot hold against Germany, withdraws from the European Entente. The remaining two members, Poland and Czechoslovakia, have shared poor relations for years, and an offer to guarantee Polish indepedence against Soviet aggression by Hitler is willingly accepted, in return for the breaking up of the last of this alliance."

"In the meantime, Hitler continues the buildup of his armies, whereas France and Britain do so at a much slower rate, comfortably preparing for a conflict they believe will never come - building what they do only to deter a war. The British Navy is still the most powerful in the world, although it seems to be nigh-superceded by the USN, and Britain is unassailable."

Greene paused for a moment, and then realised that the projecter was not on. He frowned. "I thought.. I thought I set this thing up earlier, dammit."

He flicked the switch again, and nothing happened. He swore under his breath. Going around the back, he moved the power cord around for a few moments, and then the projector switched on, light streaming towards the empty white wall it was pointed to.

"This report isn't entirely accurate - we have near-perfect data on Allied countries, and Germany, of course, but the Soviet Union infantry count is only an estimate, as we know somewhere between one million and one and a half million men were under arms in the Red Army at that time. Later reports confirm a total of 136 divisions."

Greene smiles. "June 9, 1936. The next big event. A German army officer defects to the French, spilling the beans on the total size of the German army. Five hundred thousand men - against France's four hundred and eighty thousand. Despite the security that the Maginot Line provides, this is a blow to the French people."

6cxdj7c.png


The slide comes up perfectly, and the army count for the world comes up. "Keep in mind, though, that most of these are estimations. But the fact remains that the French people demand that Germany disarms, and a meeting is held in Berlin, with Albert Lebrun, and Stanley Baldwin in attendance - the leaders of France and Britain at the time. War looms over Europe, and it is only deflected by more skillful statemanship on Hitler's par-"

"My God! You sound like you admire the bastard!", Patton roared.

"General! Please. Mister Greene is only piecing together his report from American intelligence reports. At this time, many in the US saw Hitler as a statesman and diplomat trying to avoid war."

Menzies winced. If he wasn't such a brilliant general.. But the thought was only there for a moment. He needed Patton more than he needed Montgomery, and without Montgomery, hero of the one victorious theatre of war the Allies had engaged in, morale would drop as if it had been hit below the belt.

"The-the war was averted by Hitler, willing to give concessions to the Allies in return for peace. The most notable among these was the Observer Act, allowing one British observer aboard each German surface ship, which more-or-less prevented Germany from effectively developing naval doctrines, or deploying new ships, without also giving such things to the British. Germany also offered to decomission her submarine fleet in its entirety, the fleet which had been so feared by Britain during the Great War. The scant demands Britain had come to the table with had been met a hundred times over, and she soon saw France as a dangerous warmonger, and Hitler as a somewhat misguided man, perhaps, but a man who believed in peace. It was easy enough to ignore his words at party rallies when he gave such concessions at the peace table."

"In return for this peace, though, the Kriegsmarine was virtually crippled, which did not bother Hitler overmuch - the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht benefitted immensely from this treaty, which, in return for the aforementioned concessions, allowed the German army to equal one-and-a-third times the French one, the Luftwaffe to have unlimited numbers in fighters, and bombers equal to two-thirds of the British airforce, but forbade the construction of naval bombers - and, of course, the construction of the Siegfried Line to two-thirds the strength of the Maginot. The French did not sign the Treaty of Berlin, but, without British support, and with no chance of reconstructing the European Entente, they could hardly declare war on the Germans."

Patton smiled. "And we see how much good negotiating with Hitler did to the Brits, don't we now?"

Montgomery's eyes narrowed, and he stared at Patton. The other man's brash smile faded away, and he mumbled an apology.

"Now is not the time for pointing fingers, gentlemen. We need all of those fingers for the war effort."

Greene bobbed his head thankfully at Menzies for intervening, and began to speak again. "The United States, deciding that war in Europe had been averted, ceased to buildup in any major way or form - and the Japanese, seeing a Britain align herself with Germany, and against France - a somewhat simplistic interpretation of the events, to be sure, began to look towards the rich French lands in Indochina. Japan was poor in oil, and she was not yet ready for a confrontation with China, but the French hardly possessed the means to defend their colonies there at this time, when German arms surpassed French ones on the mainland."

"Australia, by comparison, was complacent. With relations between Japan and Britain warming, so did the relations between Australia and Japan, and so, it was believed, if war came, it would be between France and Germany once more - and, this time, Britain might not even interfere. The only man who recognized the danger, it seemed, was Stalin. But the danger to him was palpable - if Britain supported Germany, then Britain and all of her Dominions might not aid France in the event of a war. And the United States seemed to adopt the former British doctrine of 'splendid isolation' - there would be no help from that quarter. So the Red Army began a period of furious rearmament and reconstruction, with little or no attention paid by the Allies, or the Axis for that matter, as they were both preoccupied with one another."

Royle spoke, then. "We don't need a history lesson, Prime Minister. We need another ten carriers, and a hundred more divisions."

Menzies's smile faltered, and he replied. "Believe me, Sir Royle, if I had ten carriers - or even another one, she'd be afloat right now. But this 'history lesson' might just give us some clues as to how the Japs and Krauts work. And we need those clues. If we can't push the Japanese out of Darwin, they'll land in Brisbane. And if they land in Brisbane, they'll land in Sydney. And if they land in Sydney, we'll lose the war."
 
Lordling: Keep in mind I'm playing on Very Easy for the Germany years - mainly to keep the force disposition of other nations down somewhat (and also to ensure that Germany has enough forces that even the AI can't waste them horrifically when I switch to Australia)...

makes sense ! ! :)

excellent update ! !
:cool:
 
Looks awesome man. You're a really good writer! :)
 
"Next slide, then."


Menzies nodded at Greene. "Explain the situation here. I don't think Patton, for one, understands how the British let it slide this far."

"Oh, I understand all right. I understand that you Brits backstabbed the Frogs right when-"

"Damnit, sir! Be silent!"

Montgomery's temper had risen to the occasion - usually a mild-mannered man, travelling from fallen India through British and Japanese blockades alike had tested his resolve severely, and the destruction of Britain had given him a greater temper than he normally would have.

"You tell me to be silent, Mo-"

"SILENCE! Both of you! Please, please, Generals. There are over five million soldiers out there who would love to kill you both, and that's a conservative estimate. Don't do their job for them."

"It's all right for you, Menzies!", Patton snapped. "You still have a country."

"Indeed. And I damn well won't have one much longer unless you men manage to pull together and help me save it!"

Patton and Montgomery fell silent, and Patton muttered another apology to Montgomery. The two were as different as generals as one could want - one an unusually gifted quartermaster, the other a bold and brash fighter, both suited to their own kind of warfare - and together, Menzies hoped, they'd be able to do a lot more than they would on their own.

6eypz6w.png


"Spain, July 18th. Tensions between.. well, best to call them communists and fascists for simplicity, arise, and the Spanish Civil War begins. Italy sends aid almost immediately, despite still being embroiled in the Ethiopian War - Haile Selassie proved to be somewhat of a tenacious fighter, if not a great leader. The resources sent to the Spanish Civil War, in fact, were appropriated from the latest of the shipments to be sent to the Ethiopian Front. This gave the Ethiopians a chance to fight on for longer, and even drove the Italians back in a few places."

Greene smiled. The Ethiopians had been the shame of Mussolini well into 1937, and even still the Italian Army was not entrusted with any missions. Hitler had taken it to garrison occupied Europe, whereas the Wehrmacht was currently marching through New York and Washington D.C.

"However, Germany, for one, decided not to interfere. Rather than test the will of France, the proposed plan to aid Franco - and test German weapons, as well, was abandoned, while both France and Russia sent aid."

"The real shock, however, came on July the 21st."

This was something they all knew. The prelude to the war to come. The war between democracy and oppression, fought in Europe's own backyard.

"France declares their open support for the Republicans, and moves forces down from the Maginot Line to the Spanish border."

Greene took a breath, and flicked on another slide.

"French troops, supporting Republican ones - versus an almost unaided Nationalist Spain saw the capture of many crucial Nationalist outposts in the north early-on, and, subsequently, allowed the Republicans to focus on the south."

5xqsu0z.png


"This map is from September 16th - it's the only reliable slide the US had of the occasion, but the destruction of Nationalist Spain is not far off. However, France had stripped the Maginot Line of troops, three divisions maintaining the German-French border. If Hitler ever had a time to strike, it was now. Indeed, the Wehrmacht divisions at the border were put on high alert, and twelve divisions, one of them commanded by the notable Major-General Guderian, were shuttled to the Siegfried Line. Three tank divisions were also readied, and it seemed Hitler would strike down through an almost undefended Maginot Line, and take Paris before the French had a chance to respond. In fact, the French inactivity, once exposed, frightened the Czechoslovakians and Polish so much that they issued statements saying that they would counter any German aggression against France with force."

"It was..", Greene yawned, stretching his arms out, and squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, before speaking again. "German policy at this time, despite their treaties with Britain, was one of major naval rearmament. The Treaty of Berlin allowed Germany to develop five more capital ships, with a tonnage of no more than 20,000 tons apiece. And they were not allowed anything deemed greater than a "Class Two" carrier, a classification of ship which were already obsolete at the time. However, eight were constructed at this time - six carriers, all obsolete before they built, but still useful - and a cruiser, and also a battleship. Three of these were disguised as merchant hulls, and with the crisis of Spain ongoing, Britain tamely accepted them as much, while tripling their deployment to Gilbratar. Indeed, France's actions allowed Germany to undergo a buildup which would've been utterly impossible were all eyes fixed on Germany, as they had been before the remilitarization of the Rhineland."

Freyberg, New Zealand's representative in all this, had not yet spoken. And now he did. "Menzies, I have a question. Not about the lesson, but about the war. The Japanese can easily muster twice our forces within a fortnight, and secure Darwin to the point where it will be easy to force out any attack. We can't cut them off from supplies, as what's left of the Allied navies entire can't beat the Japanese forces stationed in Port Moresby. What are your plans?"

"Plans?". Menzies laughed bitterly. "I've had a few. However, you three gentlemen are the best generals remaining who are left, or at least not in an Axis PoW camp. This is why I'm showing you this. I'm a politician, Freyburg. I didn't even serve in the war, as much as I'd have liked to. You men, on the other hand, have had some brilliant successes, forestalling utter destruction of Allied forces time and time again, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat... right now defeat is looming rather hungrily over what little hopes of victory I have left. I can offer you the entire resources of the Allied army, what little of it there is left, and you men.. if you men can work out a plan, we might just keep ourselves out of those damned PoW camps ourselves."