Turntables - A Russian Fascist AAR (Rt56)

The Menace · Mar 5, 2022

Hello,
this is my first AAR. I've been thinking about doing this specific campaign for a while and given how much I enjoy LARPing as a general from the comfort of my armchair I figured I'd make a story out of it.

Firstly I'd like to say that the subject matter of this AAR is in no way meant to be a commentary on current events. I had the idea of doing this campaign as I was finishing up my last, and it was only as I was starting this that things kicked off in East Europe irl. I will express no opinions on current events other than my desire to see peace return as soon as possible; with that I will say no more that isn't related to the AAR.

Below is a description of the custom country paths I've selected, which you shouldn't read if you prefer surprises.

As mentioned above, the central premise of this campaign is fascist Russia vs. Communist Germany, but to make things a bit more challenging and interesting for myself I've also set Hungary and Romania to go down their communist paths and hopefully ally with Germany. I've also set Yugoslavia, Turkey, Japan, Mexico, and the United States to "random" to create uncertainty on my peripheries. Additionally, I've also buffed Germany by one level.

-1936- "I Serve The Soviet Union"

It has been a bit more than one year since Leonid Nikolaev, the assassin of Stalin's close friend Sergei Kirov, was caught and executed. Since then, Stalin's fear of betrayal from within the Party has only grown with each new trial. Fascists, fifth-columnists, and saboteurs lurk in every shadow of his Soviet Union, and it is the job of the NKVD to root them out. That is, assuming one can trust the NKVD. Stalin has grown weary of the current People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, Genrikh Yagoda. On the 8th of February 1936, Stalin makes a few phone calls, signs some papers, and Yagoda is arrested the next day for treason.
Immediately, Stalin calls Nikolai Yezhov to his office and awards him with Yagoda's former position. Yezhov was crucial in the fabrication of evidence against Kaminev and Zinoviev, opponents of Stalin who were conveniently disposed of in the trials following Kirov's assassination.

As Yezhov walks home on the night of his greatest promotion, he thinks back to how warmly the Georgian praised him, and how he knew his boss's attitude could change at the drop of a hat. He wondered if Yagoda received that same pep talk years ago when he took up the job, and how certain he could be that the same fate wouldn't befall him. He tried to push the thought away, but seeing Yagoda reduced to a husk on that stand, confessing to things he knew to be fiction, left a strong impression on him. After a few days of wringing his hands he thought "No, I can't live with this moustached sword of Damocles floating above my head." and he began to put together a plan.

Stalin had many enemies inside and outside the Union. If Yezhov was going to take out The Boss, he was going to have to marshal all of them that he could get his hands on.

Trotsky was an obvious choice. The proponent of world revolution had signifigant appeal with the old Bolshevik cadres who were disappointed that "socialism in one country" meant they might never get another chance at taking Warsaw. When agents of the NKVD attempted to contact him in Mexico he was understandably suspicious, but after being told of the growing dissatisfaction with Stalin's regime he became aware of the great opportunity he was being presented with.

Yezhov couldn't afford to only recruit from veteran inner party members. Dissatisfaction with Stalin's government was higher among those Party members who hitched-on after the revolution was won. Unlike the old Bolsheviks, their loyalty to the current regime was based not only on fear but also opportunism, which made many of them ideal targets of recruitment by the growing fifth-column. Of these hangers-on none volunteered more readily than Andrey Vlasov. It did not take much convincing to get him on-board with killing Stalin, and he told his recruiters that he would bring along many more "patriotically-minded" comrades from the armed forces.

Meanwhile in Western Europe, Hitler's government made its first major move towards undoing the constraints of the 'Versailles Diktat'. Seeing that Britain and France had neither the public nor political will to engage in another war and, since the invasion of Abyssinia, were diplomatically divided on Italy's membership in the Stresa Front, the German Fuhrer ordered that the Rhineland be re-militarized. On March 12, units of the expanding Wehrmacht crossed the Rhine, provoking strong criticism from Western nations and condemnation from the Soviet Union.

In Berlin, sighs of relief are had in the Reich Chancellery building. Adolf Hitler puts on a tone of "I told you so" when talking to the general staff about the success of the maneuver, pointing to the reactions of France and Britain as evidence of "the inherent spinelessness of parliamentarian hucksters". Despite the success, "doveish" elements remain in the high command; Reichsminister of War Werner von Blomberg continued to object to a policy of expansionism stemming from doubts of the war industry's current capacity to sustain a conflict with another European power. Heinrich Himmler, meanwhile, became more active in the foreign policy debate on the side of the expansionist proponents of autarky. Despite the recent provocative move, Hitler had not yet fully weighed-in on the argument; perhaps wanting to being seen as siding with the SS over the Wehrmacht, Hitler continued entertaining the idea of either an entente or a full alliance with Britain. Like Yazhov ~1,000 miles away, Blomberg found himself contemplating whether his country's political leadership could be trusted.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-W0402-504,_Generaloberst_Werner_von_Blomberg.jpg_(cropped).jpg

Back in the USSR, The NKVD commissar's search for potential allies widens to anti-communist exiles living abroad, including some formerly aligned with the White armies, now residing in Manchuria. Yezhov wasn't happy about making deals with these reactionaries, but he assured himself that, being far more familiar with political purges than they were, their presence would not last very long after they outlived their usefulness.

In Manzhuli, on the Manchurian side of the border Southeast of Chita, a bright neon swastika shines from the local headquarters of the Russian Fascist Party, taunting the Reds from the safety of Japan's new client state. Konstantin Rodzaevsky had been keeping his ears open to rumors of instability from Soviet Russia; one day, he fantasized, his black-shirt legions would storm across the border and reclaim Russia from the bloody red tyranny. But he couldn't afford to be impatient lest he smash everything he'd built against what he knew was an infinitely stronger opponent. For now, he had to wait patiently and consolidate strength, not just in terms of recruitment from the White Russian community of Harbin, but also in terms of relations with the Japanese Kwantung Army, who he hoped would assist him militarily in the coming reconquest of Russia.
One day in April of 1936, five years and twenty-three days after the founding of his party, Rodzaevsky noticed the wheels of the rumor mill were turning faster. White Army leaders outside his party with whom he had contact were whispering of a plot to kill Stalin. Konstantin decided to cut his visit to his party comrades at the border short and headed back to Harbin where he could put his ears closer to the chatter.

-

Moscow, May 8, 1936: After two months of sleepless nights, today was the day. Nikolai Yezhov anxiously paced in the hallway outside Stalin's office until he received word that everything was in place. Three NKVD rifle divisions, one armored, and one motorized division had been secretly assembled on the outskirts of Moscow by Red Army leaders loyal to the fifth column. When Yezhov recieved word that they were in position, he responded with the signal to put Moscow under martial law. To avoid the plot's discovery, nothing pertinent was mentioned over phone lines. The message was instead sent to the division commanders via a messenger who traveled via the new Moscow Metro to a location on the outskirts of the city. There the messenger met Vlasov, who immediately sent word to the other commanders to take control of the city. They had previously timed the length of the journey so that Yezhov could count on the armed forces jumping into action at the same time he entered Stalin's office. After giving the signal, he waited 30 agonizing minutes, then told the NKVD officers he came with to kick open the door.

Before the shouting toned down and his shock had worn off, Stalin was restrained by the two agents and his underling was reading out a list of accusations. He didn't speak, he had imagined every possible variation of this scenario already, and he knew from experience that there was little point of protesting this sort of thing. Nikolai continued to read the list of crimes. He looked up from the papers he was holding to look at his boss and was met with a glare of hatred more intense than he had ever seen from his boss before. He was taken aback, and for a split second paused his reading of the charges against the General Secretary. He looked back down to continued reading but forced himself to maintain eye contact as much as possible throughout the arrest. After he concluded, Stalin was led out of the room and Yezhov was left alone. He walked behind the desk and sat in a chair that was still warm from its previous occupant. He did not know whether he would survive the coup he just executed but, for now anyways, he thought to himself "I won".

-

"GENERAL SECRETARY CAUGHT SELLING STATE SECRETS TO ITALIAN FASCISTS", "FORMER GENERAL DISCOVERED EMBEZZLING BILLIONS OF RUBLES", "EX-COMMISAR FOR NATIONALITIES FOUND IN POSSESSION OF PORNOGRAPHY" were some of the headlines read by the residents of Moscow in the aftermath of the coup. To the average Soviet citizen, the idea that comrade Stalin had been a great leader seemed more and more like something they must have misremembered. The iconic name the Soviet leader had used for himself since 1912, "Stalin", was avoided by the press (and quietly removed from the names of cities) for it's connotations to the cult of personality they were now dismantling. In its were often former titles, sometimes it was just "Mr. Jughashvili". That was the name he was addressed by in court, to which he refused to respond. Yezhov avoided the trial. He couldn't bear to re-hear the long list of crimes (some true, some not) that he had written. It made him imagine how long the list would be if he was ever confronted with his sins.

But Yezhov did not have time to wring his hands over what he did. The Soviet Union was in a terrible state. Logistical slowdowns, epidemic, and an unstable new administration were pressing matters that had to be addressed immediately. The first task was getting the economy back on track. The newest political purge had wrecked havoc on the State Planning Commission's ability to manage the world's 4th largest economy by command. To build support for the new leadership among the workers, Yezhov ordered that the current Five Year Plan be refocused on raising the Union's standard of living by expanding civilian industry. This would also build a larger economic base that could be refocused to arms production if need be, although not as quickly as if arms production was given preference.

The new boss didn't have much more time to plan things alone. Trotsky had arrived in Leningrad on the 14th and after making few speeches to cheering crowds, departed on a train to Moscow. He was received warmly by Yezhov at a hastily-organized public ceremony that featured a column of T-26 and BT light tanks rolling down Red Square. Standing upon Lenin's mausoleum, Yezhov leaned in to fraternally kiss Trotsky on the lips, who quickly turned his head so Nikolai's lips landed on his cheek, and then did not return the favor. The two play it off and continue waving for the cameras, but both of them feel awkward from the exchange.

A few days later, representatives from the Chinese Communists ask Moscow for assistance to kick Japan out of Manchuria to create a communist base from which to spread the revolution to China. The Yezhov Trotsky government refuses on the grounds that it cannot afford a conflict with Japan at this time. The Chinese Communists respond by replacing Mao Zedong with someone more aligned with Trotsky's views in the hope of improving their standing in Moscow.

Trotsky had wanted to promise the Chinese the help they requested, but was advised against doing so by a Yezhov who was still uncertain about the precarity of his new government. The same threats that Georgian saw in every shadow were now increasingly creeping into the mind of the man who took his job.

The next diplomats to arrive in Moscow are from somewhere less expected. Yugoslavia had recently changed its policy toward the USSR. After some private talks between diplomats via third parties in Bulgaria. On the 23rd, a embassies were established in both nations' capitols.

The next day, something unexpected happened. NKVD officers sent to arrest a man suspected of distributing anti-Yezhov pamphlets were assaulted by members of his family as they tried to enter his apartment. Soon nearly the whole complex was outside fighting off the reinforcements which had been called. A great many knew someone who had been taken and never seen again, few had seen the archipelago from the inside, and their determination to prevent a loved one from seeing the same convinced crowds to follow them. Eventually, guns were drawn by the NKVD and by dawn of the next day 17 were dead. In the days that followed, word spread through Leningrad that the corpses smiled for having died by the steps of their homes rather than in the Tundra. The event was absent from the pages of Pravda, but in the following weeks the story was reported on in the foreign press and became an international embarrassment for the Soviet Union.

Yezhov could be heard cursing in his office. Trotsky had noticed the NKVD Commisar's drinking habit began to steadily intensify that Summer.
Compounding the stress on Yezhov was the task of overseeing the Soviet Union's industrial growth. At every turn incompetence, or perhaps malice, was throwing a wrench in the gears of the Soviet economy. Wreckers, sabateurs surely sent either by the fascists or holdout reactionaries hoping to restore the Czars, were surely behind the recession that followed the coup.

Yezhov sought to hit two birds with one stone; the NKVD was ordered to step up arrests of saboteurs. These new prisoners would be put to work building railroads, mines, and factories across European Russia, Siberia and the Far East.

Then a new development reared its head. Reports reached Moscow on the 14th of July of a putsch had been attempted in Spain by rightist elements of the Spanish military against the new leftist government. A decade of polarization had now broken out into all-out civil war.

Trotsky pleaded with Yezhov to send a sizeable volunteer force or at least material aid. The NKVD head refused, citing the ongoing troubles on the home front, and told Trotsky that the inevitable world revolution could wait, but troubles in the interior could not. Rather than meekly accepting the NKVD commissar's decree, Trotsky argued for intervention in public speeches. Soon, a Trotskyist faction of the CPSU again divided Soviet politics.
The office of General Secretary of the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not as all-powerful as it used to be. During the coup against Stalin, the NKVD had expanded its size and powers to the point where it could practically govern the USSR by itself. Trotsky, who was elected General Secretary after Stalin's removal, was growing frustrated at the ability of the Commissar to circumvent and block his authority.
Yezhov's sleepless nights returned. To remedy this he again increased the amount of alcohol he consumed each evening.

August: the world meets in Berlin for friendly competition and to admire great feats of athletic achievement. After the procession of national teams to thunderous shouts of "Heil!" from a packed stadium, the German chancellor announced the games officially open and 30,000 pigeons are released into the sky as a gesture of peace.

After the games are concluded, Hitler sends a memo to Herman Goering, calling for a four-year plan to prepare Germany for another world war. "the extent of the military development of our resources cannot be too large," The Fuhrer writes, "nor its pace too swift."
The following month sees another shift of Hitler's stance in favor of the autark faction. At a meeting in Berlin where Colonel Friedrich Hossbach took minutes, the fuhrer explained that the Germany could not sustain its present standard of living without the ability to independently produce enough food to sustain a growing population. A German Reich dependent on food imports from abroad would be vulnerable in a war against a Britain whose navy rules the world's shipping lanes.
Additionally, he continued, Germany's current lead in the arms race with Britain and France was not going to last forever, and the balance of power was predicted to shift back to their favor by the mid-1940s in current trends continued. The amount of secret rearmament spending via MEFO bills had put Germany in a strong millitary position in Europe that would be squandered if not put to use soon. Repayment of the promissory notes could only be extended so many times before the industrial cartels churning out German arms lost faith, at which point the German economy would be in crisis.
"The only remedy, and one which might appear to us as visionary," the Fuhrer continued, "lay in the acquisition of greater living space – a quest which has at all times been the origin of the formation of states and of the migration of peoples."

Naturally, England would be expected to oppose such expansion in Europe in fulfillment of her longstanding policy of maintaining a balance of power on the continent, but considering the weakening of the British grasp on India and her weakening position in the Mediterranean and Asia due to the increased aggressiveness of Italy and Japan respectively, Hitler believed that British hegemony was more of a paper tiger than what they presented. Rather than challenge Britain overseas and attempt to regain Germany's lost colonial possessions, the better strategy was to acquire space and resources in Central and Eastern Europe. The presence of some 30 million ethnic Germans in these regions of Europe would only facilitate and give greater significance to this conquest. Surely, he thought, the English leadership is equally aware of their fragile position, and will shrink away from conflict in Europe to preserve their own empire.

As the Fuhrer talked of the risks involved in winning for Germany a position of global power, Werner von Blomberg feels a knot in his stomach. He thinks back to the last war; of how quickly everyday things like butter or leather became luxuries, and of how many men under him never came home. He almost raises an objection, but, despite Hitler's promise of political independence for the Wehrmacht, he thinks again before contradicting the Fuhrer.

In Moscow, Yezhov was plotting to rid the Soviet Union of the Trotskyites, this time for good. Like the Left Opposition, the White exiles that had been brought in to oust Stalin (and some opportunistic party members) had formed an insular circle of their own. Yezhov saw an opportunity to play two ambitious opponents off one another. On the 24th of September, he contacted the mercenary-general Konstantin Nechaev with a contract. On the 23rd, a counter-offer was delivered, written on a crumpled paper and dropped (by arrangement) in Yezhov's office waste bin: "give me the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union and I'll give you Bronstein's head". Yezhov tore up the paper.

On the 27th of September, Konstantin Nechaev is awarded the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union for his performance during the coup. The fact that he fought the Red Army from the Volga to Mongolia during the Civil War is not mentioned in the papers.

Meanwhile, Yezhov's efforts against the "wreckers" were still not bearing fruit. Arrests were higher than ever, but the slowdowns continued.

The "Iron Hedgehog" was nonetheless determined to continue the work of turning what the world called a backwater into the industrial heart of the Communist International.

With that, 1936 comes to a close.
I hope you've enjoyed this first installment. If you'd like to see this continued leave a comment and I will write up the events of 1937.
I planned on making one post per year (in-game year that is) but if you think this is too long and should be broken up into smaller pieces let me know.
Also let me know if there's anything in the formatting or content that should be changed for the sake of readability or rule-compliance and I will make necessary edits.

NarcomancerPL · Mar 5, 2022

What about Poland and Baltics? Random or default?

The Menace · Mar 5, 2022

NarcomancerPL said:
What about Poland and Baltics? Random or default?

Default.

The Menace · Mar 12, 2022

I received three likes and one reply to my last post so I will take this as a popular mandate to continue posting.

-1937- A Series of Unfortunate Events

the 12th of February 1937 saw the attachment to Andrey Vlasov the title of Chief of the General Staff at the recommendation of Nechaev. Alexander Yegorov, the title's former holder, was found guilty of conspiring to undermine the army and executed. Yezhov was not happy being the one making concessions, but he assured himself that his position at the top was now more secure than Stalin's ever was, arrests were higher than ever after-all.

While Yezhov had reoriented economic policy away from increasing arms production, maximizing output remained a long-term policy goal. Recent discoveries (and executions) of fascist agents working within the State Planning Agency and the USSR's second five-year plan was declared complete early, with the third starting in 1937, one year earlier than it was scheduled to. Many lower-level bureaucrats who complained about the change are arrested.

The intensification of conflict between Uighurs and Sheng Shicai's regime in Sinkiang was reported to Yezhov in March.
Although having little understanding of Marxism, Sheng saw socialist world revolution as an inevitability he wanted to be on the right side on, and had been a close ally of the Soviet Union since his ascent to power in 1933. In hopes of riding the USSR's coattails into becoming the leader of a socialist China, he ceded mineral rights to the Soviet Union in parts of Sinkiang.

Trotsky argued that the Soviet Union was obligated to defend the revolution not just for themselves but their neighbors. Yezhov argued it'd be too costly, and besides, the Uighurs had also made offers of cooperation, to which Trotsky exclaimed, "An Islamist ally of the Soviet Union?" Trotsky exclaimed, "What's next? Are we bringing the patriarchs back to Moscow"?

In the Soviet Union, what exactly the party line was at any given time became confusing. The General Secretary of the CPSU said one thing, the Commissar of the NKVD said another, and one had to remember who one's boss was loyal to before repeating one of two conflicting narratives in public earshot.

In April another former White exile was raised to the rank of Marshal. Both Vlasov and Nechaev argued that his promotion was crucial to the operation they were planning against Trotsky. The presence of two ex-Whites raised eyebrows across the Union, especially after nearly everyone else who had once been a member of a non-Bolshevik party had been sent off to the tundra.

In May, the United States renewed the Neutrality Act which was previously revoked after Italy's invasion of Abyssinia. Relations had warmed between the USSR and USA after the red scare had died down and the US recognized the Soviet government in 1933. During the NEP, American companies were allowed to operate within the USSR and import much-needed wheat. American engineers were even assisting with the construction of a great hydroelectric dam on the Dnepr (Many of the Soviet Union's own engineers were confined in Siberia for conspiring to sabotage the project).

While Pravda denounced the American capitalists' acquiescence to European fascism, many in Gosplan were glad to see relations with the US continue at the status quo.

While the US drifted back toward neutrality, the capitalists in Poland embraced aggression. In July, Polish foreign minister Józef Beck announced that, due to the aggressive policy of General Secretary Trotsky, the Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed in 1932 was now null and void.

"Those pig-headed fools;" Yezhov thought to himself, "they're going to ally with the fascists in Germany and Japan and try to attack us from all sides"! To Trotsky's pleasure, Soviet propaganda intensified anti-Polish messaging, informing the people that the workers and peasants of Poland would one day be freed of their chains. This time, there would be no miracle at Warsaw to save them from the consequences of their greed.

A few weeks later, fears of a joint Polish-Japanese invasion were lessened by the escalation of conflict in China. Beijing fell to assault from the IJA within days of fighting. The bloodthirsty Kohoda faction seemed to excised and Japan was looking South; Moscow breathes a sigh of relief.

In late July of 1937, the plot to remove Trotsky with the help of the ex-Whites seemed to be approaching it's final stroke. Vlasov oversaw the recruitment of special squads that would work with NKVD officers to neutralize resistance from the left opposition once the plan was put into action. Divisions of the Red Army were also redirected near major cities in anticipation of nationwide resistance.

In Moscow, Yezhov and Vlasov discussed the last movements of agents before it all kicked off. Unknown to the former, the not all of Vlasov's "special squads" were disclosed to him. There were far more than Yezhov was led to believe, and contrary to what he was told, they were primarily being recruited from the emigre population in Manchuria rather than from within the Soviet Union. White squads secretly encamped and stockpiled weapons in the Union's major cities.

At noon on the 9th of August, Andrey Vlasov walked into Nikolai Yezhov's office in the Lubyanka building. "Leon Trotsky has been arrested...", he announced to the commissar. "What! I thought I was to give the word! You insubordinate-" Vlasov cut him off, "and next on the list is you". Yezhov's face suddenly changed stared past Vlasov with a glazed expression. "How didn't I see it?" he thought. He remembered how withdrawn the White faction had become in recent months, and how focused he had been on rooting out disloyalty among factory managers, professors, local party chairmen... "If only the NKVD had taken its eyes off the ground and seen the forest through the trees...", but he was already being carried out of the room. While being transported through the hallways he pondered how Stalin, or any of the other millions who had been sucked up by the organs of state, must have been in similar states of shock, how their minds too must have raced to think of how they slipped up.

While Yezhov was being locked away, the NKVD officers placed in charge of Vlasov's squads were killed, mostly by shots to the back of the head from one of the men they thought they were leading. The cells then charged out into the cities and attempted to establish martial law. Confused three-way fighting broke out all over the country between them, the NKVD, and those loyal to Trotsky's party who did not yet know their leader was already captured.

Later the same day, Vlasov was hastily voted in as General Secretary of the CPSU. He decreed that he was leading a new campaign against "enemies of the people". No ideological significance was given to this campaign; for the time being he still needed the loyalty of the Party to bring the now less-than-bloodless coup to a swift end.
By now the party had been purged of most of its old Bolshevik backbone that had been willing to wage a civil war for their ideals. The replacements had come from the ranks of Stalin's (and then Yezhov's) yes-men, who after two coups were now aware of the precarity of their situation. By this point many were looking for an off-ramp from their political careers that didn't lead to Siberia. To them, Vlasov was just the most recent of several ambitious men to seize control of the party and in all likeliness there were several more waiting in line behind him. For now, their objective was to survive, and that would be accomplished by clapping for comrade Vlasov's speech and keeping their heads down afterward.

In Manzhuli, Rodzaevsky had learned via spies that some kind of major upheaval was happening in the Soviet Union. He had noted that many White exiles had been sneaking across the border in preparation of this event, and deduced that the coup underway was being directed by figures with some nationalist sympathies. He decided that now was the time the liberation of Russia would commence. Either his math was right and he'd be striking a dying Soviet Union or he'd be smashing his organization up against a heavily-defended border. He gave the order for the blackshirts to attack, and for the Asano brigade to defect from the army of Manchukuo and join them.

When the Red Army divisions of the Far East learned of Vlasov's takeover, some decided to travel West to join the fight for their preferred side, others started fighting amongst themselves. Amongst the chaos, black-clad men of the Russian Fascist Party snuck across the border in small groups and converged to assault disorganized remnants of the Red Army. Caught by surprise, and without a clear understanding of who was in-charge, ~10,000 soldiers surrendered to the numerically inferior forces that had crossed over from Manchuria. Word of the victory quickly spread throughout the Far East, and other Red Army units turned on their commissars and laid down their arms thinking a Japanese invasion was underway.

As Rodvaevsky began his trek to European Russia, his ranks swelled with groups anti-communist Russians (and a few Mongols and Buryats) who flocked to his banner.

The fighting in most cities continued for days. In some urban pockets and remote areas NKVD holdouts resisted the new government for weeks after the coup. When it was clear that the coups succeeded, Vlasov decided to finally declare his intentions. In a speech before the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the General Secretary declared to a shocked audience that the crimes he was fighting against were not just limited to Trotsky or Yezhov, but communism itself. He described the system as a "failed experiment" and announced a motion to dissolve the All-Union Communist Party and the Soviet Union itself. Fearing for their lives, a majority of the Presidium voted in favor and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its organs were no more.

Yezhov and Trotsky were executed after damning confessions were extracted from both

In the newly renamed city of St. Petersburg, Vlasov unilaterally declared the restoration of what he claimed was the last legitimate government of Russia, which had been submerged under Bolshevik rule, the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic. The hastily thrown-together body then passed a motion authored by Nechaev and Rogozhin to change the names of the Russian Republic and the Provisional Council to the Russian Empire and Provisional Council of the Russian Empire respectively. The abruptly restored Empire did not yet have a head of state, and there was talk of inviting Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich back to take up the crown, but there were more pressing concerns for the moment.

The whole country was in a state of chaos. Whole swaths of Russia were still under military rule, and the legal status of the SSRs, no longer part of the USSR, was in dispute. Nationalists were demonstrating for the independence of Belarus, Ukraine, Transcaucasia, and the Turkic republics. Since Stalin was removed from power before he could implement his plan to re-draw the borders of the SSRs, the proposed Kazakh and Kirghiz Soviet Republics were never created and these regions remained autonomous regions of Russia.

A new constitution was implemented to resolve these problems. The Russian Empire was established as the supreme authority of all the territory of the Soviet Union, but was divided into "Great Russia" (comprising all the territory of the Russian SFSR) and the six "grand viceroyalties" (reorganized SSRs) of White Russia, Little Russia, Transcaucasia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

1280px-Soviet_Union_-_Russian_SFSR_(1929).svg.png

Internal Divisions of the Russian Empire, 1937

Andrey Vlasov assumed the title of "acting head of state" (a temporary measure until the Tsar returned) and, to bolster the idea of a continuation of pre-Bolshevik Russia, the old Kadety Pavel Milukov was elected president of the Council in-absentia.
The basic administrative units of the Russian SFSR, the Raions, were abolished and replaced with governates with varying ratios of military/civilian administration. For now, the chaotic situation called for a significant military presence to root out the underground vestiges of the Communist Party.

Rodzaevsky arrived in St. Petersburg a little over a week later via the Trans-Siberian rail. Word of the RFP's victory in the Far East had traveled faster than him and, with the help of RFP propagandists, had been exaggerated.

In St. Petersburg, curious crowds gathered in front of a podium hanging from which was a flag with a black swastika emblazoned on a yellow diamond on a white field. Rodzaevsky stood atop the podium and addressed the crowd: "The international conspiracy to enslave the Christian peoples of the world has been struck a deadly blow here in Russia! The adherents of this Satanic creed, who wrought decades of terror upon our motherland, are now crawling back into the shadows! To them I make the following guarantee, 'try as you might, you will never escape justice before the Russian people'! I make this pledge to you, brothers and sisters, because I lack any faith that the current government has the political will to do so themselves. It is a government composed largely of the same breed of gray old men who in 1917 capitulated to Bolshevism. Can we trust them to protect holy Russia in the event that the red pestilence rears its head again? No! If Russia is to survive, it must be under the leadership of men of action, fanaticism, and cold, unshakable resolve!..."

Throughout the following months, the RFP's ranks grew with new recruits from across Russia. Marches and speeches were held before larger and larger crowds in Moscow, Tsaritsyn, Smolensk, and also throughout the countryside. The rapid growth of this party was noticed by Vlasov, who was looking for any way to expand the shaky new government's base of support. On September 1st, Vlasov sat down with Rodzaevsky to offer him the title of Deputy to the Acting Head of State in exchange for the latter to change the tone of his propaganda regarding the current Russian government. Konstantin graciously accepted.

With the barrier of Italian intervention removed by a treaty of friendship with Germany in October 1936, Hitler could finally set in motion his dream of unifying his home country of Austria with Germany. Throughout the Winter of 1936 and the Spring and Summer of 1937, Germany encouraged the Austrian German National Socialist Worker's Party to step up its activities and agitate against the government of Kurt Schuschnigg. In August of 1937 Hitler met with Chancellor Schuschnigg at his Obersalzburg retreat and demanded that Austria lift the ban on the DNSAP and appoint Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Minister of the Interior. Schuschnigg caved to these demands.

Berghof Interior

On September 8th 1937, Schuschnigg made one last attempt to preserve Austrian independence by announcing a referrendum on the issue. The voting age was raised to 25 to exclude the disproportionately younger National Socialists and bans were lifted on the participation of social democratic parties to ensure the pro-independence vote would win. Hitler responded to this move with an ultimatum for Schuschnigg's resignation. At the ultimatum's expiration of midnight on the 9th, Schuschnigg resigned and was replaced by Seyss-Inquart, who ordered the Austrian armed forces to stand down in the face of the Wehrmacht divisions which were now crossing the Austro-German border. Hitler flew into Vienna later that day. Upon seeing the cheering crowds, he abandoned his initial plan to set up a temporary Austrian puppet state under Seyss-Inquart and announced the unification of Austria with the German Reich.

Commemorative Postcard

The German Fuhrer retired that night to the famous Hotel Imperial where, decades prior, he had worked as a day laborer. Reichsminister of War Werner von Blomberg was invited to Hitler's suite. There he found the Fuhrer sitting beside a table chatting merrily with other high-ranking Party members. Blomberg sat beside Hitler and, after congratulating him, spoke in a reserved manner about his fears of Western retaliation. Hitler dismissed his minister with a laugh and expressed how this great coup had reaffirmed his faith in the cowardliness of Western leadership and the strength of the German people, of which the Reich now had 6.7 million more of than yesterday.

As Blomberg responded, he noticed Hitler seemed more focused on a blank paper he had in front of him, on which he was drawing the new C-shape of the Reich's borders. Hitler placed his thumb and index finger on Austria and Silesia respectively then pinched them together until they touched where Bohemia would be. "I hope you're not thinking of..." Blomberg started, "Yes I am." Hitler interjected, "The state of Czechoslovakia is an abomination that was brought into existence for the sole purpose of encircling Germany and, and acting as an outpost for French influence in Central Europe. In the coming weeks I will make it clear to the world that the new Germany will not tolerate the oppression of the four-million volksdeutche living in Czechoslovakia, and we will bring about the destruction of this abomination one way or another."

Blomberg was horrified. The Fuhrer was talking about war with Czechoslovakia, a country allied to France, over a territory lined with fortifications. It was madness, Hitler was going to start another world war and, as the Fuhrer had said himself, another defeat would not mean another Versailles, but the eradication of Germany itself.

The next day Blomberg returned home. When his fiancee, Erna Gruhn, asked about his trip to Vienna he confided to her that he had been assigned a terrible task. Blomberg met secretly with Generalmajor Hans Oster of the Abwehr and prefaced his proposal with a remark as to how much more "sensible" foreign policy had been under the Kaiser.

The strength of Rodzaevsky's RFP continued to grow in Russia throughout September and early October. Blackshirts were vastly over-represented in the ranks of the reformed Okhrana, adding a much-needed ruthlessness to the state's efforts to track-down, arrest, and interrogate former communists and suspected sympathizers.

On September 21st, the 1,075th anniversary of Russian statehood and the 556th anniversary of the overthrow of the Mongol Yoke, Konstantin Rodzaevsy was so inspired by Hitler's coup in Austria that he decided to deliver an ultimate of his own. Vlasov was to resign from his position of Acting Head of State, allowing Rodzaevsky to assume the title, or the latter would withdraw his party from coalition with the Whites' on the Council and pursue the office by other means.

"The bastard is threatening a coup!" Vlasov exclaimed to himself upon reading of the demands in the paper. Russia had endured two of them already in the last two years alone, and each one more violent than the last. Another "coup" might be more analogous to a another civil war. Russia could not afford this, not now with the international situation looking more volatile than it had been since the early 20s.

The capitalist powers of the West (as even the anti-communist Vlasov still reflexively thought of them) seemed to be in full retreat in the face of increasingly ambitious fascist states. The Japanese in China, Mussolini in Abyssinia, and now Germany in Central Europe. Sooner or later a line wall would be hit and there'd be another great war just like the last. The main question of Vlasov's foreign policy was which side of that brawl Russia would ally with. Diplomatic feelers from all major powers had already contacted him. Rodzaevsky seemed to know the answer, maybe he was right: making friends with the main threats to Russia's East and West, Japan and Germany, would give Russia a free hand to expand toward Persia and the Middle East, bringing the Motherland (or rather the Heartland) in conflict with an overextended Britain's grip on the Inner Marginal Crescent. Even if Hitler and the Japanese were to gobble up Britain's spheres of influence in Europe and Asia, Russia would control the Pivot Area, and if that Scotsman Mackinder was right, the World.

Geographical Pivot of History, 1904

Global Political Ideologies, 1937

Vlasov resigned from the position of Acting Head of State later that day, retaining command over the armed forces.
Before crowds waving black-yellow-white swastika flags Konstantin Rodzaevsky made a speech accepting the office. "The worst crime committed by the Bolsheviks was that they robbed some 10 million Russians of their ultimate sacrifice, a sacrifice that shall rise anew before the eyes of our youth as an eternal warning as a demand that they be revenged! My program is one of national resurrection in all areas of life, and one of intolerance against anyone who sins against the nation! Today is the birth of a new Russia, not built on whimsical notions of intelligentsia or the rabble they stir up, but on our foundational values of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality! Today marks the first step toward a Russia that not only excises from itself what has become rotten, but one that rises to and surpasses all previous heights of our nation's history! I know that, were the graves to open today and the ghosts of those who once fought and died for Russia float aloft, our place today would be behind them! All the great men of our history, of this I am certain, are behind us today and watch over our work and our labors!" Rodzaevsky promptly left the podium and, escorted, walked past a crowd cheering so loudly his ears were ringing by the time he stepped into his car and was driven off.

The first thing the new Acting Head of State wanted to do upon arriving at the under-renovation imperial palace was establish closer diplomatic ties to Germany. He dreamed of meeting the German Fuhrer whom he idolized (and lifted a few lines of his acceptance speech from) in person. Just then, RFP Supreme Council member Lev Okhotin approached a daydreaming Rodzaevsky, "Breaking news! Hitler is dead! Attempted coup in Germany!".

On November 24, a group of armed men led by aristocratic officer Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal had entered Hitler's office in the chancellery and shot him. Werner von Blomberg and Hans Oster then declared a new government would be formed to restore the Hohenzollern monarchy. After a brief gunfight whereby the SS retook the Reich Chancellery, Blomberg and Oster were tried for treason and beheaded. A contentious emergency session of the NSDAP then convened which saw Heinrich Himmler, having put down the coup, elected as the new leader of the Party and the German Reich. Himmler's first act was to declare a state of mourning for Germans everywhere, and revenge on the "international criminals" who were behind the assassination.

Rodzaevsky sealed himself away for thee days after hearing the news. When he emerged, he coldly announced to the RFP's Supreme Council that the international conspiracy against the world's nations was far from defeated, and that measures must be taken to ready the Russian Empire for war.

The Menace · Mar 14, 2022

More than just being unfamiliar with the writing of AARs, I must admit that I haven't done my fair share of lurking around this section of the forums before prematurely graduating to making my own thread. I did not know that AARs are traditionally categorized as either narrative or gameplay. My intentions for this AAR at the time I started were for it to be gameplay-focused with just enough story to tie the screenshots together. Also, I always stop playing at the end of each in-game year, at which point I start typing up that year's post. This way, you guys can watch my poor tactical/strategic decisions play out in real-time (or something close to it).

The previous two posts have been very politics-focused because I felt the need to add some plausibility to the overthrow of Soviet communism in 1937 (something that only appears more implausible the more one thinks out such a scenario), but as the years progress closer to war I plan for this AAR to become more focused on gameplay decisions, with politics shifting into the background.

As for the main characters, I must admit that the only individuals for whom I have read complete biographies have already been killed off, and I am no expert on the specific beliefs and personalities of the leaders of the Russian Fascist Party who now take center stage. Because I'm too busy right now to read his book, "The Last Will of a Russian Fascist", the character of the Russian Vozhd is mostly just guesswork from what I gleamed from his Wikipedia page. Because this is intended as a mere gameplay AAR I, while trying to be as historically accurate/plausible as I can, will not be striving for an academic-level standard of historical accuracy. Besides, I don't expect that there are many fans of Konstantin Rodzaevsky here who would be upset at me for misrepresenting him.

-1938-The Gathering Storm

In January of the new year, Russian delegation headed by General of the Infantry Andrey Vlasov head out on a diplomatic tour through Central Europe. Although having formally left politics, everybody inside and outside of Russia knew that the army still kept a finger on the scales.

The delegation traveled by plane to Budapest where agreements of mutual non-aggression were struck with the governments of Admiral Horthy and representatives of Tsar Boris III. Representatives of Italy and Franco's junta were also present in Budapest and Vlasov gave vague assurances of cooperation to them as well.

Vlasov's party then flew to Berlin and was given audience with the new German Fuhrer. In the Reich capitol, signs of the chaos that followed Hiter's death were visible everywhere; littering the streets were crumpled posters torn from walls that read "BERLIN IST ROT" with an avant-garde-style depiction of a worker smashing a swastika with a red hammer.

Since Himmler had assumed power, the NSDAP had become plagued by internal divisions between radical supporters of the new fuhrer and conservatives who criticized Himmler's aggressive foreign policy and "un-Christian" religious views. This divide was deepened when Himmler attempted to restart the "Kirchenkampf" against German churches, especially Roman Catholicism but including nationally-organized protestant churches as well. This campaign led to conservative NSDAP members threaten a vote of no-confidence unless Himmler put an end to the campaign and abrogated the Reichstag Fire Decree, which he reluctantly did.

The loosening of the totalitarian power the NSDAP wielded over German civil life that followed allowed former KPD members who had previously kept low profiles to once again become active. Communist meetings were held again for the first time in years; first in basements, then living-rooms, then beer-halls, and now again on the streets. This didn't mean Himmler's RSHA let them off easy. Communist demonstrations were always met with violence from the Sicherheitspolizei and what was left of the SA, but to the reformed KPD this felt just like the good old days.

During his meeting with Vlasov Himmler seemed oblivious to the crumbling authority of the NSDAP, instead talking about his plans to eventually absorb the entire Wehrmacht under the authority of the SS. He congratulated Vlasov on the overthrow of communism in Russia, describing the achievement as "a victory for the foundational Germanic nucleus of Russia's heterogeneous racial character". Vlasov didn't know how exactly to respond, so he pivoted to the topic of establishing spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. Himmler stated that it was "imperative for Germany to reclaim those lands which once belonged to our kin, the Ostrogoths" but refused to elaborate and then shifted to talking about "great discoveries being made in Tibet as to the origins of the Nordic race and it's prehistoric extent". A baffled Vlasov only nodded to indicate he was still listening. The meeting continued this way for another hour without any significant progress being made toward Rodzaevsky's goal of an alliance with Germany.

Not long after Vlasov had returned to St. Petersburg, one of the few achievements he could boast of came undone, as communist revolutionaries assassinated Miklos Horthy and overthrew the Hungarian government. The non-agression pact with the Russian Empire was then annulled.

Rodzeavsky took the news surprisingly well. "Fine," he said, "the basin of Pannonia has always only ever been a Magyar enclave within Slavic Eastern Europe. A century from now, 'Hungary' will be merely a geographical expression... if that." Rodzaevsky had been more vocal about his territorial ambitions since he had initialed his policy of expanding the Imperial Army late last year. The Acting Head of State had long talked of restoring Imperial Russia's frontiers to those of 1914 and beyond, encompassing Finland, the Baltic, Poland, Carpathia, Romania, Bulgaria, Iran, Afghanistan, and eventually avenging Russia's 1905 defeat by taking Manchuria and south Sakhakin back from Japan.

One day...

But that dream was still far off; in the present Russia's foreign policy would be orientated on securing a buffer zone in Eastern Europe. In a meeting with the Supreme Council of the RFP, Rodzaevsky announced: "We have in Russia already the space, people, and abundant natural resources necessary for turning Russia into a self-sufficient world power to rival Britain. What we need is more space between our core industrial areas and potential attackers". "Potential attackers" here obviously referred to Japan and Britain, but considering the failure to achieve an alliance with Germany, they were not written off the list either. Rodzaevsky was not ignorant of Hitler's aims of "living space" in Eastern Europe; in Harbin he had even written to the Fuhrer on several occasions asking him to reconsider, but received no response. Now with Himmler in power, and with the internal situation in Germany unstable, a potential conflict with Germany had to be prepared for.

In late April, Romanian diplomats offered the Russian Empire military access through the country in exchange for a guarantee of territorial integrity. "A guarantee?" Rodzevsky asked aloud, "directed at who? Bulgaria? Hungary? No, those bastards want us to guarantee them against ourselves! They think they can solve the Bessarabian Question in their own favor in exchange for basing rights. They must think we're stupid enough to involve ourselves in another Balkan war for, get this, the objective of giving up territory. Laughable."

The following rejection from Russia was a big embarrassment for the Romanian government which the Romanian Communist Party capitalized on.

In the Spring of 1938 the Russian Empire began a new phase of industrial buildup. The governates of Smolensk, Kursk, and Donetsk were identified as possessing enough infrastructure to support the construction of an additional 22 tank, aircraft, and small arms factories before the end of the year. In Siberia, thousands of engineers interned under the communist regime were freed and sent west to oversee the construction and operation of these facilities.

Generally, the Fascist government intended to free anyone who was incarcerated for criticizing the communist government who wasn't also a member of any leftist parties. This task was a difficult one, not only due to the great number of zeks to review but also because of the tendency of the previous government to charge those they arrested with various crimes unrelated to their real infraction, if there even was one. Because the RFP did not want to return millions of common criminals back to the streets, only those with sufficient proof of their innocence could be freed, resulting in many thousands of innocents, including those sympathetic to the new government, who would have to languish in the taiga as they waited out the remainder of their 10-year sentences.

One plank of the RFP's economic policy that dovetailed with their social policy goals was the undoing of Soviet policies of sex-equality and the removal of women from the workplace. Naturally this would reduce the Army's total manpower by requiring more men to take essential industrial jobs exempting them from service, but halving the potential workforce would also reduce unemployment and improve efficiency.

It wasn't long after the first street-brawls between the reformed KPD and the police that the 'low-level-civil war' atmosphere of the Weimar era returned to Germany. Gunfights between red and brown again broke out on the streets of Berlin, but even now with the backing of the state the NSDAP was not putting up the same fight it did during the first three years of the decade. Himmler's move to subordinate the general staff to the SS had created in the Nazi government a low-level civil war of its own. Out of this chaotic three-way battle the reds came out on top and wrestled control of the state. In June of 1938 the Soviet Socialist Republic of Germany was proclaimed in a ceremony on the Opernplatz where, on the spot where Magnus Hirshfeld's library was burned 5 years prior, swastika flags and many rightist books were thrown upon a large pyre.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-00888,_Berlin,_Wahlwerbung_für_KPD.jpg

The flags flying in Berlin for most of the month were mostly either plain red or contained a KPD hammer & sickle on a red field. Within the following months a new national flag was adopted that featured a KPD party emblem on the old black-red-gold tricolor. Enst Thalmann, who had returned to his position as leader of the party, believed a restrained appeal German patriotism would provide some legitimacy to the new dictatorship of the proletariat.

The KPD maintained the same Stalinist party line it had adopted in the early 20s. A policy of "socialism in one country" was announced to the world, but in Berlin that issue was still in debate. "We've inherited a ticking time-bomb! one party member proclaimed, "The MEFO bill system the fascists created is going to create either another recession if we don't pay them back, or another hyperinflation if we print enough money to pay!"
"How long can we stave off this crisis?" asked Thalmann.
"Another two years at most. Even with the arms industry nationalized, it'll be short on funding and production will crater if we don't pay back the play-money they've been given."
"But for now the managers still see the bills as having value no?"
"well, erm... yes but"
"Then the policy stays, for now, while we still lack the means to fund these industries."
"Then how will we pay them? Liquidating recently nationalized assets?"
"And send Germany back to pastoralism? No, we need a high industrial base to defend our hard-won socialist state from capitalist intervention. Let's face facts, we are currently in possession of the strongest air-force in the world and a very large army. To our east are autocratic and artificial capitalist states set up by the imperialist West with relatively weak armies. Our thinking here must be scientific. We must do whatever must be done to defend socialism here and see it go on to emancipate the world."

Thalmann continued, "The fuss Hitler made over his fellow fascists in the Sudetenland is still in the newspapers of Britain and France. The British clearly have no stomach for war and would be willing to negotiate for this region to be surrendered to us if we keep up the pressure. Without their main line of fortifications, the Czechs will go easily. From there we will be in a position to dominate Europe, from which the revolution will spread throughout the world. For this to happen, we cannot be at war on all fronts. We must fully destroy capitalism and imperialism in either the West or the East before turning to the other. The reactionaries in charge of Russia, although inheriting the economic miracle created by Stalin, are ruling over a people who yearn for the restoration of the worker's paradise that was stolen from them. The Russian people will turn back to communism just as an angry child always returns home after a fight with their parents. In the meantime, we will present the hungry pig Rodzaevsky with an offer of a slice of Eastern Europe in exchange for an alliance against the West. He clearly has designs on Persia, which would make him amicable to an alliance against Britain."

The Berlin Supreme Soviet was shocked. "An alliance with the fascists?!" rang out in the room. But Thalmann made good points, and in emulation of the Russian Soviet system he wielded immense power over his party. The next month, a diplomat was sent to St. Petersburg.

"An alliance with the bolsheviks?!" Rodzaevsky exclaimed, "They must be out of their minds!"

"Let's not be unreasonable." chimed RFP Supreme Council member Lev Pavlovich Okhotin. "Allying with the Reds would guarantee for us our much-needed buffer space to the west and give us a free-hand to fight the British out of Persia and India."
"And then what?" responded Rodzaevsky, "We get Asia while international Bolshevism gets Europe? Where does that leave our power relative to theirs 20 or 30 years from now? No, the reds would turn on us as soon as they hang the last capitalist from the Empire State Building, and by then no amount of industrial buildup we could achieve could match theirs. No my friend, this will not work. Such an alliance would also rightfully scare the British shitless, and they would go about sparking a war long before we are ready for one."
"Rodvaevsky is always right." Okhotin said, half sarcastically and half in reference to the Italian Fascist axiom.

Russian diplomats informed German representatives that the terms they were proposing were unacceptable. The German government then issued a statement calling upon the workers of Russia to throw down their tools and overthrow their fascist oppressors, while strongly implying that the German Red Army would intervene to their aid.

"They can't be serious, right?"

"That's all but a declaration of war!" Rodzevsky proclaimed to everyone in earshot upon hearing the news. "These people are the most childish bunch of despots that have ever ruled over a civilized country! They're responding to our refusal like an insecure boy reacts to being rejected by a girl! All the more pathetic that their threat is obviously a toothless one; for them to reach us they'd have to go through Poland, who isn't going to open their borders to them any time soon. Trust me, the Germans will come crawling back with another offer in the future." Rodzaevsky was not so sure about that last part, but he clung to the hope that war was not really on the table for the near future.

More evidence of international communist conspiracy came in the form of a revolution that swept Yugoslavia (organized in part by Soviet exiles from the Belgrade embassy), bringing another country into the orbit of Berlin.

"They can't keep getting away with this!" could be heard by bureaucrats two rooms separated from the office of the Acting Head of State. "We can't continue to stand by while nation after nation in Europe falls to communism like dominoes! It's about time we started sending aid to the brave souls fighting bolshevism in their own country. Today we will go farther than just recognizing Franco's government and send a military attaché to Spain." The speech was planned to be made before the Supreme Council of the RFP (which was quickly becoming regarded the de-facto upper-house of the Russian government rather than the de-jure body, the Provisional Council of the Empire) announcing the move.

"Furthermore," he continued, "I have come to decide that the shifting international situation calls for a greater grip on internal affairs if Russia is to come out of the next decade alive. I thereby plan to dissolve the Provisional Council of the Russian Empire and absorb its powers under the new title of 'Vozhd'. The body has been nothing more than a formality for some time now; we fascists will not continue the illusion that we plan for Russia to become a bourgeois 'liberal democracy' like they have in France or America. Russia will instead be an unapologetic model of the third path that leads neither to world communism nor financial enslavement by London or New York. Russia will continue to be called an empire in the sense that it encompasses many peoples, but there will be no pretending that I am merely 'acting' as head of state until we re-institute a monarchy. No my friends, I am the state."

September began with another shock to the international community. After having met with Ernst Thalmann in Munich, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to allow the DSSR to occupy the ethnically German Sudeten territory of Czechoslovakia. Ironically, many Sudeten Germans, fearing reprisals from Soviet Germany against those with ties to the Sudetendeutsches Freikorps, reacted by fleeing into the interior of Bohemia. To say that these political refugees were given a cold welcome from the Czechs would be an understatement.

On the 7th, France and Britain, hoping to keep up a stance of deterrence despite the concession, announced a formal alliance.

On the 20th Rodzaevsky publicly announced the departure of a military attaché to Spain, sparking a diplomatic protest from the Republican government. "let's hope we're backing the right horse" Okhotin thought to himself.

With the ground beneath the international stage shifting more rapidly than ever, the Russian Empire began to look abroad for potential allies. "Italy has made clear that they are open to the formation of a Rome-St. Petersburg Axis" Okhotin reported to Rodzaevsky, "and the Japanese have stated that they would not be opposed to our entry into their 'Greater East Asian Sphere'. I believe the latter alliance is our best bet."

"And who would these alliances be directed against?" Rodzevsky replied, "Italy has designs on the colonies of Britain and France in Africa, and will surely strike West should Britain and Germany ever go to war. The Japanese also have their eyes on British colonies in Asia, and they may even provoke American intervention in pursuit of them. We can no longer afford to entertain the idea of war with Britain while the reds in Germany pose a clear threat in the short-term. Besides, our international standing as the easternmost outpost of Western Civilization would be destroyed if we allied ourselves to an Asiatic power bent on shattering European hegemony."

"Western Civilization? Okhotin prodded, "We Russians have stronger ties of kinship with the Tatars of Kazan and the Mongols of Kalmykia than the English or French. For our new Russian Empire to be truly unapologetic, we must embrace a national identity that is more true to our soul, that of a union of Eurasian peoples."

"Some of what you say is true, but we must not forget the great advantages that have been brought to Russia by Peter the Great's efforts to bring us into the community of European nations. With the exception of Hitler, may he rest in peace, most Western leaders see the eastern boundary of Europe being the Urals, not the river Bug. We should see it as an asset that the civilized world sees us as a fundamentally European state, albiet one they have always regarded with suspicion. If we are to save the world from the international serpent wrapping itself around the globe, we must think globally; the West is the only of the world's great civilizations that has the power to achieve world hegemony, and for us to use this hegemony to defeat our eternal enemy we must show the West that fascism is a viable alternative to democracy. This cannot be done by throwing in our lot with Asia, or by joining the Duche's misguided quest for glory."

"Now that we have our bigger-picture ideas sorted out, lets refocus on the here and now. Changes must be made to the Imperial Army if we are to win a war with another great power. The greatest weapon we have, sturdier than any heavy tank, is the Russian man, and fortunately we have in our possession a great number of these. That does not mean we should go throwing them in waves into enemy machine-guns. We must preserve this great asset of ours with the addition of medical companies to all infantry divisions so that we can keep plenty of men in the factories and watch our enemies bleed out first. As long as we're not going to war with all of China this strategy should be viable. I will bring women back into the factories only as a last resort. For now they are better suited producing our future manpower at home."

"We will also be integrating the Blackshirts into specialized combat roles aimed at puncturing the weak links of the enemy frontline so that motorized infantry can pour through the gaps and strike the enemy in their soft behinds. By 1940 I'd like to see 1 in 10 of our divisions being specialized in this way and eventually for medium and heavy armor to be integrated in these units."

"...Lastly, I want the Okhrana to do something about the strikes and anti-fascist demonstrations that are continuing to occur throughout Russia. This is a serious obstacle to our buildup and an embarrassment for us internationally. Make it clear to them that this behavior will not be tolerated."

There doesn't seem to be anything in my focus tree to get rid of this

On Novermber 2nd 1938, Konstantin Rodzaevsky announced before a large audience at Red Square the abolition of the Provisional Council of the Russian Empire and the combination of its powers and those of Acting Head of State under the new title of Vozhd. "I have an unshakable faith that those who still curse us today, in Russia and abroad, will one day march beside us toward the fufullment of our holy mission, having realized that we wanted nothing but the best after all!" The Vozhd thundered from atop the still under-construction Tomb of Russian Martyrs, where the now-demolished mausoleum of Lenin once stood.

The words "holy mission" stayed in Konstantin Rodzaevsky's brain long after they left his mouth. "Perhaps I really was placed here for some great purpose..." he thought to himself, "How else can one explain the ease with which I ascended to power, and the speed at which the Soviet system collapsed beforehand... Perhaps some divine intelligence up in the heavens is guiding me somehow, as if pressing keys on a typewriter, towards some objective which I myself cannot yet see."

The Menace · Mar 18, 2022

I had it all typed out. I pressed "save" and returned the next day only to find the whole draft was gone. Shoulda' taken note of that "site maintenance" warning I guess.
I apologize for this longer-than-usual delay between posts; having to re-write the same thing you've already written creates the worst kind of writer's block there is.
Next time I should copy everything to a Word doc so this doesn't happen again.

-1939-The European Powder Keg

The Winter of 1938-'39 saw a tightening of the Vozhd's grip over the military. Andrey Vlasov, General of the Infantry who had kept the army an active force in politics even after the RFP's rise to power was asked to resign and replaced with Vasily Blucher, whose ties to the previous communist government could be used to blackmail him and the army into obedience to the party.

(real reason was bc of Vlasov's -10% malus to xp gain)

The size of that army was now 1.4 million men in the field and another 153 thousand soldiers in training. The Imperial Russain Air Service totaled 37.5 thousand and the navy 39.2.

Of those one and a half million men in Russia's armed forces, the majority were organized into infantry, armored, and motorized divisions. A few cavalry divisions also existed but were specialized for future partisan suppression operations.

High command planned to equip all infantry divisions with support engineer, anti-tank, and anti-air companies by mid-1941 and double the number of main infantry companies by 1943. Other planned upgrades included the addition of armored anti-tank and mobile artillery companies to all armored divisions by 1942.

On the 19th of January, the German SSR and the Yugoslav SFR announced the formation of a "Berlin-Belgrade Axis" in the interest of ensuring Central European and Balkan security.

Russia responded to this provocation by stepping up involvement in Spain beyond military advisers and sent 7 divisions and 300 aircraft to the Nationalist side as a volunteer legion.

The first action these divisions saw was a two-pronged offensive aimed at cutting off Republican forces to the west of Oviedo from supplies. By the 10th day, the offensive was deemed a success and 6 Republican divisions were encircled and destroyed with the help of Nationalist troops.

In April another offensive was launched aimed at the encirclement and capture of the Basque city of Bilbao, the encirclement of which was completed on the 10th. The push toward the French border involved a Russian aerial bombardment of the Republican town of Guernica, an event which quickly circulated through the international press and was immortalized by the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso.

The tenacity of Republican fighters impressed the Russian legion. After Bilbao's defenders were forced out of the city, they climbed onto boats and proceeded with suicidal attempts to retake the city by repeated naval landings from the Bay of Biscay. The attacks continued until every last Republican soldier lay dead or dying on the once-beautiful Arrigunaga Beach.

With Bilbao securely in Nationalist hands, the Russian legion attacked East along the Ebro River until reaching the Mediterranean coast, at which point they advanced north and captured an undefended Barcelona in late June, trapping another four Republican divisions against the French border. By now the tide of the war had shifted decidedly in favor of Franco's Nationalist faction.

The next month's offensive was directed south along the coast toward the city of Valencia. The loss of this city dealt a deadly blow to the morale of the Republican faction, which then fractured into a civil war within the civil war as anarchists and Leninists turned on one another. Franco took advantage of the enemy's crumbling unity by launching a large offensive along the entire front-line, causing the routing and shattering of remaining republican units and an end to the Spanish Civil War.

As the final stages of the war in Spain were unfolding, tensions continued to increase throughout the rest of Europe. The loss of the Sudeten territories to Germany had led to political turmoil and strained ethnic relations in the (now-hyphenated) rump 2nd Czecho-Slovak Republic. Czech nationalism surged and fingers were pointed at the Slovak, Hungarian, Ukranian, Jewish, and especially German minorities for the national humiliation of the previous year.

The desperate position of Czecho-Slovakia prompted a research agreement and non-aggression pact with Russia in hopes of a future guarantee, but with Rodzeavsky still hoping to cool relations with Berlin, a Russian guarantee was never on the table.

The German Soviet Socialist Republic had made clear, to the concern of international observers, that it would intervene in Czecho-Slovakia to protect ethnic minorities should the state "devolve into fascism".

"Small, but our own"

On the 14th of April, hopes for peace were given a splash of cold water when Mussolini invaded the small country of Albania. The eccentric King Zog ordered his army to stand down and an Italian protectorate was proclaimed the same day, reducing the number of independent nations in Europe by one.

The Vozhd reacted to these developments with decrees aimed at accelerating the time-frame for Russia to be ready for offensive warfare. Factories previously used for manufacturing trucks were redirected toward the manufacture of light tanks, armored tank destroyers, and armored self-propelled artillery. five new facilities were planned for the manufacture of new T-28B medium tanks. Research was directed at developing improved cold-weather gear and tactics for a planned war against Finland, as well as new military police gear/tactics for the future occupation of that country.

The first elite Blackshirt shock divisions began training that Spring and were to be deployed later in the year.

At the same time, Rodzaevsky unveiled an ambitious new economic initiative before the Supreme Council of the RFP. Russia would "undo the backwards economic policies of the Soviet era" by privatizing many of the state's resource-extraction firms. "I can assure you, party comrades, that this move will not turn Russia into a degenerate capitalistic state like Britain or America. We will maintain a great deal of influence over these privitized industries just as Hitler, may he rest in peace, did in Germany. These new industries will be encouraged to merge into large cartels and these cartels will be subject to government oversight bodies called 'corporations'. We will retain the power to strange these companies with regulation should they deviate from the good of the national organism"
"This is a mistake, my Vozhd," Okhotn objected, "We'd practically be selling our enemies the steel they'd use to kill us! and our current trade surplus would vanish overnight!"
"It's true, we would have to increase imports to compensate for the resulting hike in exports, and some of our raw materials would find their way into the factories of our potential enemies, but the gains we would make in economic efficiency would outweigh these costs." The Vozhd assured his subordinate.

The vozhd's 1939 economic reforms may also have also been motivated by warming relations with Berlin following the conclusion of hostilities in Spain. Secret negotiations in Belgrade had secured for Russia a trade deal with Yugoslavia, and preliminary secret negotiations via this less-than-neutral third party were beginning over spheres of interest in Eastern Europe.

After the victory in Spain, the RFP moved to strengthen the national spirit and identity of the new post-Soviet Russia. "It is clear that the internationalism of the bolshevik regime must be purged from the Russian consciousness. In the coming years it will be absolutely imperative that our people's only thoughts to be for the good of the nation. We must face the reality, however, that our country does not possess the same cultural homogeneity that made possible the degree of ethnic consciousness in National Socialist Germany. Russia is a land of many peoples and we cannot expect all of them to simply shrug off their various customs and faiths. What we will expect of them is that they, like us Great Russians, put the greater good of the Empire over whatever petty nationalistic ideas they have for their particular group. This does not mean Russia is a land of equals; it would be foolish of us to pretend that the Tatar or the Evenk, or even the White or Little Russians, have contributed as much to the character of our state as we Great Russians have. The Orthodox Christian faith will be our sole state religion, but that does not mean that our Russian national identity is closed to the Catholic, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist..."
"Even...?" a voice in the room hesitantly began to ask.
"No of course not!" the Vozhd quickly snapped back.
"As I was saying, our new Russian Empire will be a union of peoples with the Great Russian people at its helm. If all those peoples who have inhabited the lands of this polity for centuries march as one, our nation will become more powerful than at any point in our previous history, of this I am certain, even if we have to drag them kicking and screaming". The room gave the Vozhd their applause.

Despite this talk of national unity, there were still those blind enough to the RFP's benevolence to demonstrate in the streets over the state's suppression of attempts to organize labor. In a show of generosity the Vozhd announced the creation of national state-run labor unions, to which the subversives only blackened his eye by demanding that the unions be under the autonomous authority of representatives elected by the workers. The Vozhd had no choice then but to resort to more reliable means.

In September, the Communist Party of Slovakia declared (with German encouragement) an uprising against the fascist government in Prague. Germany responded with an immediate ultimatum for Czecho-Slovakia to stand-down its armed forces and submit to German occupation. To prevent futile bloodshed Prague complied and a 'transitional' government was established in the Czech lands which then became the Czech Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic under German supervision.

The People's Republic of Hungary seized on the chaos with an immediate invasion of Slovakia and the briefly-independent Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine. After annexing the latter, the Hungarians halted their invasion of Slovakia after Germany declared the small country was under its protection. A future war in Europe was now regarded as a certainty, the only question was what spark would trigger it.

Britain responded to the developments by distributing gas masks to the populations of major cities in anticipation of a future German chemical attack. Norway made a declaration of neutrality, and Poland announced it would pursue closer military cooperation with France.

More trouble was brewing in the Far East. Chiang Kai Shek had refused to flee from Nanking as the city was being encircled by the IJA and now communications were cut between the capitol and the rest of China. Without central leadership, the warlord armies of the Chinese Southwest were crumbling.

An impending victory over China had apparently rekindled ambitions in Japan of conquering the Russian Far East. A clash at the border with Japanese Korea near Lake Khasan had occurred and Russian spies in Manchuria had detected Japanese troop movements additional Japanese troop movements toward the disputed region. Sensing that a future clash was impending, several divisions were moved from the Amur border with Manchuria to the disputed area. "If the Japanese think they're up against the same Russia of 1905 they are in for a great surprise" Rodzaevsky was heard saying.

As Russian planners expected the Japanese were completely unprepared for the number of defenders Russia had sent to the border. One single Japanese division attempted to seize the disputed area and was driven back amid high casualties within hours. The battle of Lake Khasan was a clear Russian victory, and Japan was forced to reconsider her ambitions over Siberia. "They'll come crawling to us with a non-aggression offer within the next few months..." remarked the Vozhd as he authorized the redeployment of divisions from Vladivistok to the border with the communist holdouts of Mongolia and Tuva, "But I must admit that I thought the Germans would have come to us with an offer of their own by now. The talks in Belgrade are going nowhere, even though we've made it clear to them that the Baltics falling within our sphere is a precondition for any agreement..."

Карта-схема._Разгром_японских_войск_у_озера_Хасан._29_июля_–_11_августа_1938_г.jpg

Suitable vengeance for Tsushima... for now

"News from Berlin!" Okhotin announced bursting into the Vozhd's office, "An ultimatum has been sent to France!"
"What are the terms?" asked an annoyed Rodzaevsky.
"They're demanding Édouard Daladier resign and cede power to the PCF. Poland and France are both mobilizing against Germany."

755px-Édouard_Daladier_sur_l'aérodrome_du_Bourget_à_son_retour_de_Munich.jpg

"Then its war. Took them long enough."

Crimson Lionheart · Mar 19, 2022

This is incredibly well written and engaging. Subbed!

The Menace · Mar 20, 2022

Crimson Lionheart said:
This is incredibly well written and engaging. Subbed!

Thank you.

-1940-Bloodlands

The war began on January 3rd, 1940. Daladier issued a defiant response to Thalmann's ultimatum in which Germany's occupation of Bohemia and increasing influence over Central Europe and the Balkans were condemned. Germany declared war on France in a speech made at 10pm that night, after which Poland declared war on Germany the next morning. No sooner than the Polish declaration reached the airwaves than Polish positions deployed offensively in the Voivodeship of Poznan found themselves under attack by fast-moving armored vehicles and air bombardment. The Polish air-force attempted bravely to keep the skies clear of enemies but were out-numbered and out-gunned by the Workers' and Peasants' Luftwaffe. French units attempted to attack the Saar at the same time as what they thought would be a Polish offensive toward Berlin would start, but ran straight into the formidable Westwall defenses; ordered as one of Hitler's last building projects and finished under Thalmann.

At 1pm the next day, the Vozhd of Russia ordered a large-scale redeployment of military assets in European Russia westward.

On the 10th, Nanking fell to Japan. Stories of the IJA's treatment of the city's denizens began circulating through the foreign press in the following weeks.
With Chiang's status unknown, a new central government formed in Chungking that called on every Chinese person to resist Japanese invasion to their last breath.

On the 16th the city of Danzig, the last holdout of the NSDAP in the German world, arrested Polish officials in the city and promptly surrendered to the communist German units entering the city from East Prussia. The decision was a tough one for the Free City's Senate President Arthur Greiser. On one hand, communists were invading his last bastion of National Socialism, on the other hand, the invaders were Germans, and Germany was at war with the Poles. If he tried to resist the communists, he would be fighting against his own race alongside the Slavs. The thought repulsed him slightly more than the alternative, and so he issued a statement ploclaiming Danzig an open city "to avoid senseless bloodshed between German brothers." Danzig was then proclaimed re-attached to the province of East Prussia during a ceremony where red flags were hung from the Lutheran Supreme Parish Church of St. Mary's, which was to be repurposed to a Red Army supply warehouse.
Greiser was arrested and shot the next day.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-E05455,_Arthur_Greiser_(2).jpg

As the war continued into late January tensions between Berlin and St. Petersburg began to rise again, the Yugoslav economic deal that had been made the previous year was cancelled by a unanimous decision by Belgrade. The RFP was sure that this decision originated in Berlin.

Fearing that German tanks would not stop their drive east after reaching the Russian border, the Vozhd demanded that more concessions be made at the secret talks in Belgrade.

I think the war-goal that Germany gained on me because I rejected the Moscow-Berlin Axis offer is both pointless from a gameplay perspective and would spoil some of the fun of this playthrough. Letting Germany use its war-goal against me at this time would spoil things not because I foresee my defeat, but because the early two-front war Germany would inevitably find itself in would make my victory too easy. I wanted to face a larger German army 'mano y mano' so to speak, so at this point in the campaign I used the Toolpack mod for the first time to create an artificial truce between Russia and Germany until their CB expired.

As this is the first time mentioning the mods I'm using I might add that the only other mods I'm using besides Toolpack and Rt56 are various cosmetic mods dealing with things like oceans, map text, some portraits, and (adding some work to the editing process) flags. Those and Player-Led Peace Conferences to prevent bordergore.

I will try not to use any other cheats or gamey tactics for the rest of the campaign, with the exception of using state-transfer tool only to buff-out whatever border-gore the AI may make in the future, and only in a way that does not give myself an unearned advantage.

I suppose I should also mention that I'm playing on a pre-NSB beta, hence the 20-40 width meta.

Warsaw fell to Germany one month after Danzig. Despite some slowdowns (which Russian observers attributed to the purging of talent from the German general staff) the German Red Army maintained a steady advance through their eastern neighbor.

Some ethnic German communities in Poland cheered on the Panzers as they moved through their villages and towns, but the most enthusiastic of them were later picked up by the Stasi for the charge of being "Junker settler-imperialists" (the term "Junker" had become in Soviet Germany a slur similar to "Kulak" in Soviet Russia, and like the latter it gradually expanded to include many not traditionally associated with the social strata).

In Belgrade, worried Russian negotiators conceded to additional trade concessions to Germany in exchange for a gentleman's agreement of mutual non-aggression for the next four months. Germany responded by raising the possibility of recognizing Russian claims over Bessarabia and the Baltic.

On the 20th, the last of Poland's routed armies either surrendered to Germany or retreated into neutral Romania.
The occupation of Poland by the German Red Army was announced by Ernst Thalmann in a triumphant speech at the Berlin Sportpalast as a "temporary measure until Poland has been purged of militarist, reactionary, and anti-Semitic elements which drove the Polish nation into a futile aggressive war against our workers' state".
"In due time," he announced, "the Polish people will be liberated from the false-consciousness of nationalism, and re-forged under a soviet socialist republic of their own. From then on, our two peoples will stride side-by-side in international brotherhood."

In occupied Poland, non-Polish nationalist movements saw the collapse of Polish authority as an opportunity to achieve sovereignty by collaborating with the Germans. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists organized an uprising in Lwów which proclaimed an "independent Galician Ukrainian republic allied to Germany against the capitalist powers" (and proclaimed that the city would henceforth be known only as "Lviv") but, instead of an alliance, they were met with arrests and suppression by the Stasi.

By April the government of Romania, after letting Polish troops flee through their borders toward Britain and France, sensed which way the winds were blowing on the continent and caved to German demands that the Romanian Communist Party be given more seats in government. Carol II hoped that by bending to the Germans he could maintain Romania's political independence amidst the rise of a new Soviet German hegemony, at least until the war turned against Germany. Flexibility was his foreign policy doctrine. Romania may be too small to resist falling into the orbit of larger states (his earlier attempt to use Russia as a counter-balance against German influence had failed) but, he hoped, she could still save herself from fully falling to communism.

On the 4th of May, Greece formally joined the Franco-British Alliance and declared war on Germany and Yugoslavia. This was achieved with a non-insignificant amount of pressure from London, but also by the sincere anti-communist stance of the Metaxas regime. Fighting broke out in the mountainous region of Macedonia but soon ground to a standstill.

The new Allied strategy for the war, after the unexpectedly quick collapse of Poland, was to constrain Germany and Yugoslavia to their current positions, cutting off trade from the Atlantic and Mediterranean while Britain and France caught up to Germany in terms of arms and aircraft production. Hopefully, Germany and Russia would find themselves at war soon, at which point an attack would be made through Belgium toward the Ruhr, beginning a two-front war that Thalmann couldn't win. Rather than pure pacifism, the stalling for time until the British war machine could overpower Germany and Russian intervention could be counted on had been a motivating factor behind Chamberlain's policy of appeasement at Munich.

As part of this strategy, British mine-layers would sink as much German shipping as possible in not only the North Sea but also the coastal waters of Norway through which Iron ore was transported from Sweden to Germany during the Winter when the Gulf of Bothnia was frozen.

On the 27th of June, Ernst Thalmann made a speech directed at the British demanding that the British cease their violation of Norwegian neutrality. Four days later Germany demanded that Denmark stand down its army and submit to German occupation. The Germans planned for a quick Danish submission so that German troops and aircraft could swiftly move north and attack Norway, but Denmark's stubborn decision to resist German invasion put a dent in those plans.

The invasion of Denmark began with an air-raid on Copenhagen aimed at decapitating the Danish government as the first panzers crossed the border into Jutland. Naval landings were also made in southern Sjælland and moved to encircle the capitol and cut lines of communication with Jutland. A hasty joint statement announced Denmark's entry into the Franco-British Alliance as the Red Army bared down on the small nation.

At this time, the Norwegian government submitted to pressure from Britain to allow Allied troops, navies, and aircraft to set up bases in their country. Thalmann announced that this effectively made Norway at war with Germany. "This has not gone according to plan." the Chairman remarked in private to Red Army staff, "We were supposed to be in Oslo by now, but that has to wait until the Danes have been dealt with. By the time we're done with them the English navy will have set up a thorough blockade through the Skagerrak".

As July turned to August, talks between Russia and Germany in Belgrade were now bearing more fruit. German negotiators had conceded the Baltic states to Russia's sphere on the condition that Germany be allowed to annex the Memelland. Russia gladly accepted.

On the 3rd a German ultimatum was sent to Lithuania that, with an example being made of Denmark across the Baltic, the small country could not refuse.

The 3rd also saw an administrative reorganization of occupied Poland. Due to the number of German-speakers living within the borders of the former German Empire, it was decided that the restoration of a civil administration over most of these regions would improve the state's ability to govern them. Cautiously avoiding a nationalist tone, Thalmann announced that Germany's pre-1918 eastern borders would be restored (except the majority-Polish portion of Upper Silesia ceded to Poland in 1922). In the Southeast, the Ukrainian-Speaking regions of the former Polish Republic were broken off into their own occupation zone, which was planned to become the Galician Soviet Socialist Republic at some point in the future. In the strip of land, claimed by Lithuania, containing the Polish-majority city of Vilno (officially renamed Vilne), a Jewish Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was established within the planned Polish SSR.

At the time, the German administrators tasked with organizing these new zones were unaware of the secret talks currently underway which would place them under fascist Russian control.

On the 8th, the Hungarian People's Republic was admitted to the Axis alliance. A declaration of war against Britain was announced by Mátyás Rákosi at the conclusion of a speech in Budapest. In reality, the declaration changed little for Hungary. Trade with Britain had already largely been cut off since the outbreak of war, and close cooperation with Soviet Germany had already been underway following the occupation of southern Slovakia the previous year. The event still made headlines in the Western press that week, and many observers were beginning to wonder whether the strategy of containing the communists to a limited economic space would prove possible.

Kossuth_Lajos_tér,_választási_nagygyűlés,_a_Parlament_főbejárata_elé_épített_emelvény._Rákosi_...jpg

Also on the 8th, Japan approached Russia with an offer for a non-aggression pact, which was readily accepted.

Denmark finally surrendered in the morning of the 12th of August after 43 days (1,032 hours) of war. The country was placed under the control of the Red Army and leaders from the Communist Party of Denmark were recruited to begin setting up a collaboration government. Some of the Danish communists who volunteered too eagerly were suspected of trying to re-gain Danish independence from within the occupation regime, and were earmarked for arrest and execution once the war was won.

On the 15th the United States of America, which had been steadily rearming since Europe's instability became apparent, occupied the formerly Danish Island of Greenland. In the days following the capitulation of Denmark, Greenland had become hotly contested by small British and German naval detachments seeking to establish weather stations on the arctic island and gain a monopoly on meteorological data in the North Atlantic. A nation possessing this edge in information would have an advantage in the ongoing naval war over the Atlantic.

America's occupation of the island supposedly restored its status as neutral territory, but German diplomats denounced the move as an intervention on behalf of the imperialist powers and a violation of America's own commitments to neutrality.

After the DSSR's annexation of Memel, work began on finalizing the negotiations that had been taking place in Belgrade over the past two years. The final agreement included a non-aggression pact, trade agreements and, most importantly, a secret mutual recognition of spheres of interest. The day after the treaty was ratified in St. Petersburg, Konstantin Rodzaevsky announced that, as the Soviet State no longer existed, neither did the treaties it had made recognizing the independence of the Baltic states formed in the aftermath of Brest-Litovsk. This announcement was received with horror by the non-Russian denizens of the countries now claimed by the Empire, many of whom hastily began throwing clothes and belongings in suitcases and went about buying boat tickets to Sweden for themselves and their families.

"A toast to our new Bolshevik friends!"

Russia had used Norway's entry into the war as an excuse to deploy military assets in the country's cold north. To make it appear that Russia was threatening Allied control in the Arctic, trans-polar flights were authorized whereby Russia would demonstrate its ability to control the skies to her north, all the way to Canada if necessary. This anti-Western posturing further warmed relations with Berlin.

By the time of the treaty with Germany, three armies had been assembled on Russia's Northwest frontiers. The largest of these was the Karelian Front under General Rokossovsky mobilized along Finland's southern border near St. Petersburg and across Lake Ladoga in the namesake region of Karelia. The main objective of this group was the annihilation of Finnish units stationed along the border after which the units were to fan out and capture Finland's population centers in the south of the country.

To the north was the smaller Lapland Front under demoted General Vlasov. The only objectives of this group were the seizure of the city of Salla and the arctic port of Petsamo.

Smaller still was the force of 9 divisions positioned against Estonia under Vatutin. This group's main objective was to threaten Estonia into ceding basing rights to Russia so that the country could be used as a staging ground for amphibious operations against Finland. If Estonia did not give in to diplomatic pressure, the army was prepared to take the country by force.

Five days after Russia unilaterally revoked its recognition of Estonian independence, a list of demands were sent to Tallinn citing the "egregious mistreatment of the Russian minority in Estonia" which called for Estonia to allow Russian armed forces to cross the border and station themselves in the country and for its current government to resign.

A week later, Thalmann honored his end of the deal and withdrew German units westward to the agreed-upon partition line. As German occupiers departed from the cities of what was once Poland's eastern provinces, chaos ensued. Riots broke out as authority vanished from the ASSR of Vilne and Polish nationalists rampaged through the city vandalizing Lithuanian and Jewish businesses. After Lithuanian troops moved in to restore order, a secondary riot broke out that saw the Polish section of the city bear the brunt of damages.

The Russian Army moved in to occupy the rest of the lands evacuated by the Germans. In the north and south, two plebiscites were held (so as to give some legitimacy to the naked power politics taking place) in the areas planned to be annexed to the White and Little Russian grand viceroyalties. The validity of these plebiscites came into question by the inhabitants of these areas when it was announced that 97% in Galicia and 94% in Belarus had voted for union with the Russian Empire before many had even finished casting their votes.

The region surrounding Suwalki, now an enclave from the rest of the Polish SSR, was attached to the province of East Prussia as a nominally autonomous region.

1016px-Belorussian_SSR_in_1940_after_annexation_of_eastern_Poland.jpg

Western_Ukrainian_SSR_1940_after_annexation_of_eastern_Poland.jpg

In ~~Lviv~~ Lvov, the OUN had fractured into an "M" faction under Andriy Melnyk who believed Ukrainian sovereignty could be achieved gradually by cooperating with the Russians, and a radical "B" faction under Stepan Bandera (having just escaped a Polish life-sentence for terrorism during the chaos of the German invasion) who sought immediate Ukrainian independence though violent resistance. The OUN-B was immediately noted by the Okhrana as a serious obstacle for the region's pacification.

The appearance of Russia's occupation and annexation of Eastern Poland in international newspapers the next day caused worry for Western readers and panic for those living near Russia's borders. Estonia, previously trying to drag out negotiations with St. Petersburg, shifted course and submitted to the demands, fearing that the Imperial Russian Army would invade their country next. Like Czecho-Slovak leaders the previous year, Estonia's first and only President Konstatin Päts decided that Estonia would be better off not sending its men to their deaths in a futile fight. And besides, even with Russian Bases Estonia would surely retain some political independence.

As Russian divisions moved into Estonia, Russia's diplomats were redirected at Romania. The region of Bessarabia was annexed by Romania during the final days of the last war, and was claimed by the Soviet Union for its entire existence. The Russian Empire now demanded the region be handed over or else Russia "may be forced to consider drastic measures to rescue the Little Russian minority from their oppression. When Romania responded with a counter offer for only the cession of the Ukrainian-speaking portions, Russia dismissed the offer and began playing up stories of Romanian atrocities in the press.

"Let's hope they don't call our bluff" Rodvaevsky expressed to a senior Russian diplomat. "They are still guaranteed by the French, and given what the West thinks of the state of our army following the red purges, I don't doubt the French would make good on their guarantee. They already see us as in league with the Germans after the treaty and our seizure of Estonia. And it's not just Russia that they expect to eventually tip the scales against Germany. The United States is already on a path toward intervention in this war; they'd be willing to take on us and the Germans simultaneously if need be. And getting Russia into a war with London would be against my fundamental foreign policy objectives anyway, 'victory' in that case would mean communist domination of Europe which, if united, would serve them as a launching point for world revolution. Lenin said as much himself. The world was in danger as it was when it was the Russian Empire that they captured and wielded at their disposal; now they are in control of Germany, a far more powerful tool toward their ends."

Meanwhile in China...

"Congratulations Chiang, You've lured them in."

On the 10th of October, the Kingdom of Romania capitulated to Russian demands for the cession of Bessarabia. Russian agents in Bucharest had successfully played up the West's abandonment of Czechoslovakia to discredit France's guarantee, leading Carol II to once again feel isolated. Between a rock and a hard place (Romania was bordered by two communist states to its West and a revanchist Bulgaria to its south), Romania could no longer entertain the notion of "flexible" neutrality, and committed to full cooperation with Berlin. The Imperial Russian Army crossed the Dniester on the 11th.

On the 21st of October, in the interest of ensuring the security of the Russian capitol of St. Petersburg, demands were made to Finland for the cession of territory north of the city. Negotiations broke down after one week and existing plans for an invasion of Finland were given a green light.

The war began two hours after Russian diplomats had departed from Helsinki. Armored units concentrated to the north of St. Petersburg attacked vastly weaker Finnish defenders with the objective of capturing the city of Viipuri. A simultaneous air campaign quickly established Russian superiority in the skies. Heavy bombers destroyed the small Finnish air force on the ground and bombed Finland's navy in its ports. Because the Vozhd planned for all of Finland to be administered by Russia after the war, he forbade the destruction of Finnish cities due to the consideration of how great an inconvenience it would be to rebuild them later. Many more close air support squadrons bombed Finnish ground troops.

(I've heard that groups of ~100 is ideal for CAS bc of limits on the # which can be engaged in ground battles at a time)

Vlasov's campaign in the far north made some progress in the first day but quickly slowed to a stop as losses proved higher than what was deemed acceptable. Russian troops advanced toward the cities of Petsamo and Salla but failed to capture them before being halted by Finnish defenders.

Things progressed more smoothly in the south. The speed of Russian armored divisions had led to the encirclement and destruction of a large part of the Finnish infantry deployed near the border. The only continued resistance Russia faced on its path to Helsinki came from Finnish divisions being redeployed from the north of the country to the south. Amphibious landings had captured the Åland Islands and established a Russian foothold to the west of Helsinki.

On the 5th of November Finland offered an armistice on the terms that they would cede to Russia those territories initially demanded with the addition of Salla. St. Petersburg rejected this offer citing the national security risk Russia would face from allowing the continued existence of an independent and belligerent Finland to its northwest flank.

Believing that Russia was now jumping into a global conflict, Japanese diplomats approached Russia with an offer of membership in their alliance. Russian intelligence detected that, with the US threatening to cut oil exports to Japan, the Japanese were considering a preemptive strike on the Americans with the intention of siezing British and Dutch oil and rubber-producing regions of Southeast Asia, something Rodzaevsky wanted no part of, and the offer was declined.

By early November the Finnish frontline was collapsing. Russian armored spearheads were fanning out into the country's interior to mop up what futile resistance remained. It was only now that Finnish losses were starting to outnumber Russian ones. Despite the failure of the ever-embarrased Vlasov to achieve his objectives in the Arctic, a formal Finnish surrender was expected in the near future.

"Thank God we can say we won this war without taking more casualties than we inflicted on the Finns. What an embarrassment that would have been for our nation."

By late November Finnish resistance was crumbling. At Rovaniemi on the 22nd Finland signed an instrument of surrender to the Russian Empire, which established a temporary military administration over Finland with the objective of establishing a new grand viceroyality over the country. Only the region of Petsamo was annexed to Great Russia outright. As part of the treaty, Finland would transfer to Russia all the industrial equipment of one of its arms manufacturies as reparations. The reason for this provision being included in the terms of surrender was for Russia to move this equipment somewhere out of reach of future Finnish saboteurs.

On the 24th a grand military parade was held in St. Petersburg by returning columns of the victorious Imperial Russian Army.

On the 18th of December the Republic of Latvia agreed to demands for the installation of a new Russophile government whose first and only act was to petition for union with the Russian Empire. The newly occupied country was merged with the military government of Estonia to form the Baltic grand viceroyalty. The region of Vitebsk was directly annexed to Great Russia.

On the 26th King Carol II was forced to abdicate by his own pro-Berlin government. He immediately absconded to Mexico with much of his country's wealth and the new Romanian People's Republic entered an alliance with Germany the same day.

On the 30th, Lithuania caved to Russian demands and allowed the Imperial Army to enter the country, which was then reorganized into a grand viceroyalty separate from the Baltic viceroyalty to its north. Aside from the threat of Russian invasion, Lithuania's leadership was also fearful that if they did not submit to Russia they would fall under the control of the German communists. After the incorporation with Russia, most of Lithuania's communists fled West into Prussia.

Europe was now divided into four blocs. To the west was the Franco-British alliance and the various democratic nations aligned to it. To the south was an Italo-Spanish entente which was still weighing its options as to which side of the conflict they would intervene against, if at all. In the center was the Soviet Socialist Republic of Germany and the four smaller European communist states which had fallen into its orbit. And to the East was the expanse of the Russian Empire, which had just augmented her territory by an additional ~500,000 square miles.

As dawn broke on the first day of 1941, the Vozhd pondered the direction the war would take before its conclusion in the form of a memo sent to high-ranking members of the RFP:
"The English are clearly acting as though time is on their side. They believe that the eventual involvement of us and the Americans will turn the tide against Thalmann, and I am inclined to believe they are right. But until then it would be against Russia's interests to see Germany fall to Allied invasion; if this happens before we are ready to enter the war, the democratic powers would have bases right on our newly-acquired Western frontiers, and with Germany wiped out, our only possible allies against these plutocracies would be the Italians and Japanese, a highly uncertain scenario. For now, Germany will have to be supported as a buffer against the West until the time comes when we can destroy the reds ourselves. New steel mills must be constructed to support the heightened demand for exports coming from Germany.
-K. Rodzaevsky"

Only seven copies of the note were produced for distribution to RFP officials. All but the original were ordered to be destroyed after reading.

The Vozhd redirected his gaze to a map laying on the table of his office. It was a large-scale reproduction of one he had seen in a history book as a child. The map depicted the regions that Slavic tribes had occupied from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. "What a shame it was that our peoples did not possess a strong central government at the time of the migrations." he thought, "Instead, they became scattered and divided among the various states they formed in the lands they overran. The resulting weakness and political division allowed the Germans to colonize or subjugate much of Europe's heartland, pushing back the frontier of Slavic civilization far to the East. This terrible accident of history will be avenged. The mission of the Russian Empire is to bind these disunited Slavic peoples into a mighty faggot, one which will posses the combined power to determine the future of the entire world."

That was longer than I expected it would be. Now that the war has begun and more is happening at a faster rate perhaps it would be better to break each in-game year into 2 posts instead of just one.

thinking_waffle · Mar 21, 2022

It's interesting to see people giving a slightly different narrative spin to some decisions I wrote a while ago.
Very interesting.

The Menace · Mar 23, 2022

thinking_waffle said:
It's interesting to see people giving a slightly different narrative spin to some decisions I wrote a while ago.
Very interesting.

Thank you.

-1941-World at War

When the Nazi regime was overthrown by the KPD in 1938, a sudden realignment occurred in American politics. Staunch isolationists like Charles Lindbergh began speaking of the danger posed to the United States and Western Civilization by communist world revolution fomented by Berlin.

The American left largely shifted to a pacifist stance, but some Trotskyists continued to call for intervention against the "red fascists" of Thalmann's Stalinist Germany. Some of these Trotskyists (later dubbed "new conservatives") even found common cause with the anti-communist America First Committee and migrated fully onto the political right. The movement's leading figure was the 20 year old student organizer Irving Kristol, who in 1939 spoke at a rally in New York about the threat posed by Thalmann's communists "who, blinded by a religious adherence to the well-intentioned but flawed ideas of Marx, now wage war against all the freedoms we Americans hold dear. Should they be allowed to win this war, Europe would be plunged into a dark age of atheistic authoritarianism. It is America's mission that democracy, free enterprise, and freedom of religion not only be defended here but also abroad".

"International law is a fiction abused callously, or ignored ruthlessly, by those nations that, unlike the Western democracies, never took it seriously in the first place."

From 1938-1940 the New Conservative movement would grow beyond just its ex-Trotskyist founding stock and find support from conservative Americans who were dissatisfied with FDR's progressive platform as well as the Jewish and White Southerner segments of FDR's New Deal coalition. This gave them the power to deal serious damage to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's re-election chances if his foreign policy did not align with theirs.

FDR had his own reasons for wishing to see the democratic powers come out of this conflict victorious. The late 19th and early 20th century had so far seen the rise of the United States as, if not an empire in the traditional sense of Britain or France, one of the world's leading economic powers. After the passage of the Gold Reserve Act in 1933, the US was able to raise the price of gold to $35/troy ounce and subsequently received a large influx of gold reserves from other nations, tripling pre-1933 reserve levels and paving the way for a money supply expansion that allowed the US to lower interest rates and achieve 8% annual GNP growth. These conditions also strengthened the status of the US Dollar such that it was now a close second to the Pound Sterling as an international reserve currency. The Pound had emerged from the Great War weakened, and was not expected to survive another such Phyrric victory.

Despite the re-nationalization of German industry following the communist takeover, the new government of the German Soviet Socialist Republic still suffered from a lack of foreign exchange reserves and was inclined to continue the mercantile policy of the National Socialists. Rather than using reserve currency to pay for imports, Germany paid back its trade partners in German bank accounts that could only be used to purchase German goods of equivalent value. Germany's trade partners, primarily smaller European states, were compelled to agree to these deals because of the above-market offers Germany made for their goods and the weight of German military power. As observed by The Economist in London: "...in order to reduce the frozen clearing balances, Jugoslavia was compelled to buy huge quantities of aspirin, Roumania bought many thousands of typewriters, and Greece bought mouth-organs by the hundred thousand."

Thalmann's aim of overthrowing the government of France was clearly the first step of a planned communist world revolution. If Germany was victorious in Europe, their control over the traditional center of global industrial power would allow them to implement their Balkan trade policy globally, crowding America out of all the export markets that American industry relied on. Then, perhaps a decade or so later, the communists would turn their arms against a greatly weakened and isolated America to complete their bloody revolution. It was a matter of national security that this be prevented.

1280px-Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt_signs_Gold_Bill_1934.jpg

The Roosevelt Administration took the first step to circumvent the neutrality acts and aid the Anglo-French war effort by making a deal whereby fifty destroyers would be sent to the United Kingdom in exchange for basing rights on eight British territories near America's East Coast.

The-islands-of-the-Destroyers-for-Bases-deal-Source-Kluckhohn-1940b-1.png

The second step away from neutrality occurred when the United States occupied the Danish territory of Greenland as the latter country fell to Soviet German invasion. This operation brought the American Navy far closer to the Atlantic submarine war than it had been previously, and in 1940 the first combat between American and German navies occurred when an American destroyer sunk a German U-boat that had torpedoed a British convoy off the coast of Greenland.

Still, a majority of Americans remained opposed to war not for particular ideological reasons, but because of the perception that the conflict in Europe was simply not worth spilling American blood over. Roosevelt realized that if the American people were to gain the will to fight the enemies of democracy, the enemy would have to fire the first shot.

In the UK, Neville Chamberlain had been blamed for the concessions he made at Munich and resigned amid declining health. Churchill had attempted to take the office of Prime Minister for himself, but his arguments for war with both the red Germans and the fascist Russians were unpopular. Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax took the job instead in late 1940, and promised to bring the war to a victorious conclusion. The Viscount arranged secret talks with German representatives, offering to recognize Poland as part of Germany's sphere of interest on the condition that Germany's treaty with Russia be annulled, but Thalmann responded by reiterating his demand that France allow a communist government to take power. Halifax rejected this proposal and the Germans broke off negotiations.

In France, Paul Reynaud succeeded Édouard Daladier, who had been seen as too soft on Germany, as prime minister. Reynaud, unknown to the British, also engaged in secret negotiations with the Germans, offering a compromise where France would be reformed into a socialist state with a multi-party democracy but this too was rejected.

At the start of 1941 the Imperial Russian Army had one million soldiers engaging in exercises along the border with Germany and its puppet the Polish Soviet Socialist Republic. On the other side of the border, a much smaller number of German and Hungarian divisions began to worry that the pact with Russia was coming undone. When questioned by German diplomats, Russia claimed that the exercises were directed against the mutual enemy of Polish and Ukrainian nationalist partisans.

To the south were an additional 230 thousand soldiers doing military exercises along the new border with Romania.

Behind these armies were two thinly-manned defensive lines. Despite the current deployment of the bulk of the German Red Army to the west in preparation of an attack on France, Russian planners were preparing for a worst-case scenario where a negotiated peace was made between Germany and the West, allowing them to redeploy to the East. The idea of war with Germany was regarded as a certain eventuality by the Vozhd, but the questions of when and who would strike first were still up in the air.

The Imperial Russian Air Service consisted of 3,200 fighters, 750 close air support craft, 100 naval bombers, 280 medium bombers, and 72 strategic bombers; the majority were deployed in the European portion of the country. Russian air power was still far behind Germany's Luftwaffe, estimated at 8,000 craft, but was quickly catching up.

In Germany, the first units of the elite "National People's Army" were deployed on the field. The group had previously been Thalmann's personal bodyguard force, but had greatly expanded membership since the communist seizure of power.

Tensions in Asia between Japan and the West had grown ever since the former's invasion of Manchuria and withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933. Now, with Japanese armies having overrun nearly all of China and stories of Japanese atrocities all over American newspapers, those tensions were at a boiling point. In early February, American secretary of state Cordel Hull sent Japan a note calling for Japan to withdraw their forces from China in exhange for a lifting of the American embargo on oil and scrap metal (which had made up a great majority of Japan's imports). It was not clear whether "China" included Manchuria or just meant the areas occupied since 1937 and there was no time-limit imposed on this offer, but was presented to the Emperor by Minister of War Hideki Tojo as an American ultimatum.

Imperial Japanese Army leadership now saw a preemptive war with the United States as a necessity for Japan to seize the Southern Resource Zone and acquire the oil needed to finish the war with China. Even if Japan were to win the war with China before fuel reserves ran dry, Japan would become an international pariah and the embargoes would remain in place.

In late February, Prince Funimaro Konoe resigned resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Hideki Tojo at the suggestion of Privy Seal Keeper Koichi Kido and the approval of the Emperor.

On the 6th of March, Tojo announced that the Empire of Japan was now at war with the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands. An IJN task force had been dispatched a week prior consisting of six aircraft carriers that launched an aerial bombardment of the Hawaiian naval base of Pearl Harbor. At the conclusion of his speech was a recitation of a poem from the Nara-period Man'yōshū set to music.

"At sea be my body water-soaked,
On land be it with grass overgrown.
Let me die by the side of my Sovereign!
Never will I look back."

The United States announced an alliance with Britain the next day. Ernst Thalmann, in a speech praising Japan's efforts to "liberate the peoples of Asia chafing under British, French, and Dutch imperialism" declared war on the United States later that week. The declaration was followed with a call for "all the colored peoples of the world to rise up against their oppressors".

Two days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Benito Mussolini declared war on Britain and France and concluded an alliance with Japan. The move surprised many observers who expected the Duche to attack Yugoslavia. Americans joked that the Italians had heeded Thalmann's appeal to colored peoples.

The attack by Japan had forced the Netherlands to seek cooperation with Britain, which Germany used to immediately invade the country to prevent British forces from landing in the country and attacking the Ruhr.

By the Spring of 1941, the conflict in Europe had escalated into another world war. The only major power which had not yet become involved was the Russian Empire.

On the 8th of April the Netherlands capitulated to the German SSR. The country became an airbase for German bombardment of targets in Britain and the Red Army was redeployed to the Belgian border.

Belgium responded by doubling-down on their policy of armed neutrality. The arms in question were unable to be deployed against Germany however, as the positioning of Belgian divisions was being watched closely by Germany, and any abnormality would immediately be used to justify a preemptive strike. All Belgium could do at the moment was add French road signs to the region of Flanders to assist the movement of French troops through the country when the moment came. For the time being, Belgium was encouraged by the British to do everything possible to avoid provoking the Germans until Americans could arrive in France.

On the 21st the Vozhd issued a directive for conscription to be introduced to the Russian Empire.

Italy's formal entry into the war was followed by an invasion of Greece from the protectorate of Albania and attempted naval landings aimed at Athens. The redeployment of Greek and British divisions to counter these attacks weakened the defensive line against Macedonia. German divisions stationed in Yugoslavia siezed on the oppurtunity and broke through the Greek lines, now participating in a race for Athens with the Italians. Both offensives were eventually beaten back outside the Greek capitol.

In the East, Japanese divisions attempted an assault on British Malaya from their Thai ally, but were driven back by an Allied counter-offensive that reached Bangkok by June 21st. Soon afterward, Plaek Phibunsongkhram announced an armistice with the Allies, dealing a devastating blow to Japanese hopes for a Inazuma sensō "lightning war" through Southeast Asia.

On the 29th, Peru and Ecuador went to war over a disputed region south of the Putomayo River, but nobody cared.

"in other news..."

On August 14, the garrison of Hong Kong surrendered after 161 days of resistance.

On October 6th, the last Chinese stronghold of Chunking fell to a Japanese assault, at which point Chinese strategy shifted to the waging of a guerrilla war to the West. For the first time in the war, Chinese armies began to force the IJA to retreat; by December they had repelled Japanese detachments sent to occupy Sinkiang and Hui guerillas had liberated much of Gansu. These successes were more attributable to the withdrawal of Japanese divisions to the South than any newfound strength on the part of the Chinese, which at this point had lost many of their best fighters.

(I didn't screencap it but China was at 98% surrender progress in the first pic)

Italy had begun the war with attacks in all directions; from Ethiopia in they struck at Sudan, from Tripolitania at Tunisia, from Cyrenacia at Egypt, from Albania at Greece, and from Piedmont at Southern France. By November all of these offensives had failed and were driven back. Libya and Ethiopia had both fallen to Anglo-French invasion and American troops, in their first action of the war, had taken the island of Sardinia. In Southern France, where Italy had seen the most success, a French counter-attack had driven the main Italian force back to the mountains and cut off two pockets from supply. Mussolini was now desperate for a German invasion of France through Belgium to save Italy from an impending defeat.

That German offensive would not come in 1941. The Red Army's plan to invade France through Belgium had been delayed due to unfavorable weather and pushed back for revision multiple times. By late Fall, it was decided that the invasion would be postponed for 1942.

"Idiots." Rodzeavsky remarked, "They're playing right into England's hands. By the time they do attack, there'll be so many Americans in France that he'll never get past the northern portions of the Maginot. With the advantage of concentrated armored divisions they had a chance to achieve a quick victory over the French in 1940, and still during this year, but now with America's war machine in high-gear they've squandered it. The goddess of opportunity flirted with them and they passed her by; Russia will not make the same mistake. When the reds make their move in 1942, so shall we."

The Vozhd ordered the construction of a new corridor of roads and rail lines in areas containing spaces identified as suitable for arms factories by planners and a radar station was constructed on Lemland in the Åland archipelago.

With more of the population of the Ukrainian-speaking lands annexed from Poland willing to cooperate with Russian authorities, the Okhrana moved to destroy remaining OUN-B cells and capture its leader Stepan Bandera, who had been in hiding since the previous year.

On the 31st of December, a report from the high command of the Imperial Russian Army declared that the gaps in Army leadership resulting from the purge of communists had been filled with fresh yet capable new officers, and that Russia was now ready for an offensive war against Germany.

Crimson Lionheart · Mar 24, 2022

And so it begins, titans begin to clash on different parts of the globe while Russia patiently waits

The Menace · Mar 26, 2022

-1942 Part I- Their Land, Their Blood

The Vozhd had been losing sleep for weeks. The plans were already drawn-up, delayed, and re-drawn. Most of the divisions were in place. Russia was expected to have air superiority for the first few weeks until the Luftwaffe redeployed from the West... he had revisited every detail of the battle-plan with anxiety in the Winter of 1941-'42 but one question remained; would this be his greatest mistake?

Such was going through Konstantin Rodzeavsky's head during the first few weeks of 1942. The occupation of neutral space between Russia and Germany in 1940 was never regarded by the Vozhd as a final settlement between the two nations. He was certain the reds didn't regard it that way either. It would only be a matter of time before the two superpowers found themselves at war, but how long that time would be was still up for debate.

Many in the RFP were happy to watch the Soviets and the plutocrats duke it out until both were bled white, but something in Rodzeavsky's gut was telling him that waiting any longer would be a fatal mistake. The Germans still had an edge in total factory output; an edge that, with little direct action against the Allies, would only continue to grow. If he waited until 1943 or 1944 it might already be too late. If Germany was not forced onto a two-front war soon, they might just decide to redeploy to the East and hit Russia with everything they had while a phony war continues in the West. Russia would undoubtedly be put on the back-foot in such a war. If Thalmann were to conquer Russia, or even just the European portion, the democracies would lose hope and cave to him. A German victory over Russia would mean the Bolshevization of Europe, and from there the world. Russia was to be the last line of defense between the human species and this fate.

He decided that it would be this year. A directive named "Operation Nevsky" outlining a general plan for the invasion of the German Soviet Socialist Republic was drawn up and issued to a select few RFP Supreme Council members and generals on January 16th. This was not a commitment to an immediate attack, as the decision to set the operation in motion rested on a signal being given by the Vozhd, who was still deciding on a time-frame.

From this point on, the anti-democratic slant of the Russian press stopped, and the RFP's propaganda machine took on a completely neutral stance toward the war for the first time. The Vozhd ceased all mention of Russia's stance toward Germany in any public speeches after the signing of the directive.

Cuba joined the Axis on the 20th.

"It would be wise to wait for the Germans to make their move on Belgium before we strike." the Vozhd said privately at the start of February. "That may happen in the Spring or Summer. In the mean time we will move our divisions away from the border to make them think we're redeploying against Iran, which should encourage them." This was completed by the 7th.

On the 13th Peru and Ecuador concluded a peace treaty.

"good for them I guess"

In early March The Vozhd began preparations for an invasion of Mongolia and Tuva. Being communist states, they were expected to join the Axis upon the outbreak of war with Germany; to ensure that they would be crushed swiftly, Russia would attack these states simultaneously with the strike on Germany. The preparations also gave the Vozhd an excuse to wait longer for Thalmann to take the bait and attack France through Belgium.

In late March, an agreement was made whereby British holdings in the Arabian peninsula were ceded to the Saudis in exchange for oil prospecting rights in the region.

(I actually don't know why this happened)

By April the French-Italian front had partially stabilized. Italian would continue retreated out of Marseille and Toulon during the remainder of the month before a standstill was reached in the Alps.

"I suppose the Duche has earned his seat at the peace conference by now"

In early May, after falling back from Western China, Japan began planning a final offensive against the Middle Kingdom.

The war dragged on, but the one development Rodzaevsky was hoping for did not arrive. The "sitzkrieg" between France and Germany continued.

The Vozhd agonized over the decision, but was firm in his resolve not to wait another year, even if the situation was not ideal. "History is not kind to those who sit an wait for perfect opportunities to fall into their laps." he assured himself, "Caesar would have been known as only another Roman general had he, after vanquishing the Helvetii, let the vast wilderness of Gaul intimidate him and turned back to the comforts of home. Perhaps future historians would understand our reasons for hesitating now, but if we do hesitate then those historians will be communists and we will be painted as devils regardless of how patiently we sat by. It does not matter whether future generations praise us or curse us; we are entrusted by God with a mission that supersedes all other considerations."

On June 5th, the withdrawal from the border was reversed and Russian divisions began moving back into position on the western frontier.

On the 14th, Chiang Kai Shek was captured by advancing Japanese troops during the successful Ichi-Go offensive, who compelled him to issue a statement calling on the KMT to cease resistance and accept the authority of the Republic's new leader, Wang Jingwei.

German spies had been delivering Ernst Thalmann conflicting dates of a Russian invasion for months. Some said it would happen no later than May, others claimed that it would fall between July and August. The most recent was from a Russian defector who set the date at June 27th. The defector was imprisoned as a fascist agent.

Thalmann was not blind, the Russians were clearly becoming more hostile, but he doubted an attack in the near future. More likely, they would send an ultimatum demanding recognition of an expanded sphere of interest, perhaps over Sweden or Turkey, or maybe they'd demand an increase in German exports of machine tools. Either way, he believed (or perhaps hoped) that the Russian Vozhd was not so impulsive as to attack a state wielding superior arms for purely ideological reasons.

At 3am on the 26th, the code-word "ice" was given to all theater generals on the border, which signified that the attack would begin at 5am the next day. It was at this time that the soldiers were first informed of the plan and readied for action.

"God, guide our arms"

Konstantin Rodzaevsky stayed up that night going over battle-plans again. If he found a single error he would give the other code-word to call off the attack at the last minute. An armored army south of Suwalki would swing north toward Konigsberg to encircle German units in East Prussia. Another armored concentration would strike Poland from Galicia and swing north toward the Bug to connect with Russian infantry which would then attempt to cross the river, hopefully encircling more red divisions. After the destruction of what he hoped would be a significant portion of the German army, the entire front would move toward Warsaw, and from there Berlin.

In the south, another smaller concentrated armor force would try to cross the Prut river into Romania near Vaslui, after which motorized infantry would pour across this one crossing and move on Bucharest, cutting off Germany's main supply of oil.

By 3am on the 27th the window for which the invasion could be called off had passed. If he tried now, a few divisions might not receive the order in time and attack alone, losing for Russia the element of surprise.

At 4am a secret meeting of the RFP Supreme Council unilaterally annulled the non-aggression pact signed with Germany in 1940 on the invented grounds that the latter had violated it by encouraging the Mongols to attack Buryatia.

At 4:50am Russian sappers snuck across the border to cut German phone lines and position mines on roads the reds might try to use to retreat. The planes of the Imperial Russian Air Service were now taking off with the rising sun at their backs to begin their first bombing missions.

At 5:04am the Vozhd, pacing in his forward command bunker in Lithuania, received the first reports that Russian armor had crossed the border into German territory. Operation Nevsky had begun.

*********************************************************************************************

Because of the extra-detail that will go into 1941 (increasing its length) I've decided to break this year up into two parts. The second part should be posted soon, as I have already completed the gameplay part and organized the screenshots.

The Menace · Mar 30, 2022

-1942 Part II- Icebreaker

The Russo-Soviet War, also known as the Russo-German War, or the War of National Preservation and Great Anti-Fascist Struggle in contemporary Russian and German sources respectively, was the largest conflict in recorded military history. The histories of wars are usually told from the top-down perspective of political and military leaders, which offer curious readers of history an ideal bird's-eye view of events and the individual decisions that caused them to unfold. But equally real as the perspectives of these leaders are those from the ground-level; several millions of men fought along a front-line spanning from Memel in the North to the Mouth of the Danube in the South, and each one of them saw their own war. Many millions of stories of horror, cruelty, and heroism (concepts that often bled into one-another in those years) were spun and many would be lost to history upon the deaths of those who witnessed them, or upon the decisions of some who survived to keep certain experiences to themselves as long as they lived.

-

The first ground action of the war were the two thrusts of concentrated armor in northwest vectors from staging grounds in Byelstok and Lvov. These forces would run into thin German and Romanian garrisons who were taken off guard and were quickly routed.

A simultaneous attack was launched into Mongolia and Tuva with a combination of ~30 divisions including only a handful of light armor.

By the next night Romania and Yugoslavia had taken up Ernst Thalmann's call to arms against fascism and the armored thrust into Romania was initiated.

The West also reacted to the development swiftly. After strong-arming French consent and ignoring American protests, Lord Halifax of Britain extended an invitation to Rodzaevsky's Russian Empire of full intelligence and military cooperation against Germany.

The offer was pondered deeply by the Vozhd and his inner circle. Arch-Eurasianist Okhotin predictably argued against it, suggesting that after having been bled white by the war with the reds, Russia's armies could march all the way to Paris just like in 1814, and that the cowardly democratic Anglo-American leaders would cave to Russian hegemony over the continent. Rodzaevsky rebuked his subordinate's reckless idea, but considered other potential consequences:

Unlike with her western neigbor, Russia maintained cordial relations with Japan following the non-aggression pact of 1940, and the latter had not abandoned its hopes of a Russian entry into the Co-Prosperity Sphere. The outbreak of war with Germany would inevitably lead to a cooling of relations with Tokyo, as a russian victory over Berlin was opposed to Japanese interests of tying down the Allies in Europe. Russian entry into the Allies, however, would strain Russo-Japanese relations to the breaking point. Japan would inevitably mobilize on the Amur River, making a future Russian surprise attack impossible, and leading to a quicker downfall of Japan. If Japan was to be defeated before Russia could shift her forces east, an Allied presence in Manchuria would become a real possibility, and this was not in Moscow's interests.

The Vozhd declined the Viscount's offer as politely as he could, and hinted that Russia's full cooperation with the Allies would come at a later time. The Roosevelt administration chided Halifax for 'going behind our backs' regardless, and instructed American diplomats to block further negotiations between Britain and Russia. As a show of goodwill (and a repudiation of Okhotin's proposal) the Vozhd concluded non-aggression pacts with most of the states currently at war with Germany.

Earlier on the 29th of June, four Axis divisions (two German, one Hungarian, and one Romanian) were encircled east of Konigsberg in what was dubbed the "Suwalki Pocket".

Also on the 29th, France responded to reports of German divisions rapidly transferring East by crossing the border into Belgium, whose government quickly declared its membership in the Anglo-Franco-American alliance. Some of the German divisions on route to the Eastern Front were then reversed and deployed on the Rosa-Luxemburg Line to defend the Rhineland, where they soon found themselves under attack.

On July 2nd, Russian submarines attempting (unsuccessfully) to sneak past the Danish Belts encountered a large German task force including four aircraft carriers. The Vozhd didn't believe the report at first claiming that the submarines must have must have made some mistake from poor visibility. Eventually, the existence of at least four German carriers was accepted as fact by Russia's high command, leading to a sinking feeling in the stomach of some in the intelligence service who now had to upwardly adjust their estimations of German industrial output. The Baltic fleet would be wholly incapable of fending off naval landings on Russia's western coastline should the Germans decide to move their naval assets east, but luckily this eventuality was considered unlikely.

The East Prussian Capitol of Konigsberg fell to Russian assault on the same day. RFP propaganda capitalized on the fall of the first major German city by comparing the victory to the failed invasion of East Prussia during the last war, declaring that the new Russia is stronger and in a better position to achieve victory than the old Tsarist state.

On the 3rd, Russian high command finalized design of medium tank divisions based on study of recent combat experience. The amount and quality of anti-tank weapons equipped by German forces was another unexpected discovery, and losses of light tanks were much higher than what was anticipated. The additional armor (60) and greater firepower (S: 502, H:266, P:74) of these divisions was expected to counter these unforeseen enemy strengths.

On Jun 30th, the Suwalki pocket was becoming incapable of continued resistance. German political commissars had orders to ensure that their units fought to the last man, but most ignored this order and commissars who tried to enforce it were sometimes fragged by their own men. When the pocket capitulated tens of thousands of German POWs were netted by the Russian Empire, still far fewer than Russian planners had hoped. It was at this point that some in the Russian high command began to realize hopes for Operation Nevsky were pinned on conflicting premises; on one hand they sought a surprise attack on an undefended border, but at the same time they sought to encircle and destroy large portions of the German Red Army in the first weeks of the invasion. Because most of Red Army was deployed to the West, the first objective was achieved but the second was impossible.

The encirclement of another four Axis divisions was achieved in Radom. Unlike the Suwalki Pocket, these divisions were more dug-in, and the armor-piercing weapons they possessed were inflicting such high losses on Russian light tanks that armored divisions had to be cycled in and out of combat to prevent being routed by the defenders.

"One has to admire their resolve." the Vozhd remarked to some generals. "If only our tank commanders had the lack of fear of death our enemy in Radom exhibits, this battle would be won by now and with fewer losses."

Those losses now numbered 30.5 thousand casualties. Adding insult to injury was the troubling fact that Russian armored spearheads had been stopped and then forced to retreat to the northeast of Krakow, and another spearhead was stopped just west of the besieged city of Radom. German reinforcements were now arriving on their Eastern Front, and had thwarted Russian momentum far sooner than planned.

In the West, German units on the border with Belgium were retreating from the southern Netherlands to a defensive line being established on the Mouth of the Rhine. French, British, and some American divisions had now crossed through Belgium and were attacking to the north toward Amsterdam and to the west toward the Ruhr. German defenders on the latter front were slowly withdrawing to the cities of Cologne and Essen, which were being fortified as future strongholds.

To the south, Bulgaria was taking advantage of the rapid movement of Axis forces to the East by stepping up demands for the cession of Macedonia by Yugoslavia. Russia eagerly hoped that negotiations would break down, causing a new front against the communists that would facilitate a breakthrough in Romania, where Russia's advance was falling far behind the planned time-frame.

A small bridgehead was been captured across the Prut, but Romanian counterattacks, while futile, were preventing the planned strike southward toward Galati. Another problem, from the Vozhd's perspective, was that his generals on the Bessarabian Front were given more autonomy in carrying out their orders than those in Poland, where Rodzaevsky had more active role in coordinating the movement of divisions. He generally viewed his generals' plans as uncreative and predictable; when not being led by the nose their plans usually involved a simple advance along a broad front, and they seemed incapable of using armor in concentrated groups to achieve encirclements, leading to missed oppurtunities in areas where the Vozhd was not paying close attention.

Tuva surrendered early on the 9th, providing stockpiles of weapons for an Imperial Army that was now increasingly experiencing shortages of them.

light tank losses had climbed so high that reserves had been fully expended and divisions were now short on their namesake vehicle. Motorized losses had also been climbing, and at the current rate reserves were expected to be exhausted in just over a month.

On the same day as Tuva surrender, Russian high command modified the light tank division template to include two new light self-propelled artillery companies. The goal of these was to increase the firepower thrown at German infantry, forcing the enemy to retreat sooner and hopefully lessen the high losses being inflicted on Russian light tanks. Some generals protested that the new size of the divisions would make them awkward to maneuver in large-scale engagements, (especially urban combat) but the necessity of mobilizing dormant resources (~2,500 light SP artillery vehicles were gathering dust in reserves) won out in the end.

But a more impactful shift was made in infantry division composition. An additional 7 infantry and two artillery companies were added. It was fully expected that this move would completely empty Russia's artillery and infantry equipment reserves, creating massive deficits, but such was the desperation of Russian leaders to salvage the momentum of Russia's armies, which was now stalling just two weeks into the invasion. "A policy of every gun in a man's hand is better than keeping our guns in large reserves, even if this leads to some hands being empty" the Vozhd argued to his generals.

On the 10th, the exhausted infantry divisions to the west of Radom were forced back by a fierce German counterattack, lifting the siege of Radom. This terrible setback was caused by a lack of divisions deployed to the sector under attack. Those which were positioned nearby did not reinforce as they were pinned down by a diversionary attack from Warsaw.

"Shameful display!"

Rodzaevsky was livid. He lambasted his generals for the blunder and demanded that they always reinforce weak positions on the front going forward. The German counterattack continued to roll on into the southern flank of what was now called the Radom Salient.

In Bessarabia, Russian troops were recalled from their bridgehead beyond the Prut. The Vozhd's fury then fell upon the Generals responsible for ordering the retreat, who justified the retreat by claiming that, as Russia was now on the defensive, the divisions would have a better position on the other side of the river. The Vozhd ordered a new offensive to re-take their previous position, assuring the generals that reaching Galati was still an attainable objective.

With a retreat from East Prussia now looking like a possible scenario, occupation forces began seizing industrial equipment for transfer farther east.

More black news came from Bessarabia. Axis forces had now crossed the pre-invasion border into the territory of the grand viceroyality of Little Russia south of Chernovtsy, and now held a bridgehead on the Russian side of the Prut. The latter fact had very troubling implications for the Russian tanks who had retook their own bridgehead, who might have to retreat again to stabilize the front.

The war in the air was the only area where Russia still seemed to posses an advantage. Despite having a great numerical superiority in fighter aircraft over Russia, the Luftwaffe was not able to achieve the air superiority they wanted over East Prussia and Western Poland due to the superior firepower and speed of Russian fighters, which achieved a 4:1 kill ratio over the enemy in some instances.

Germany had redeployed half of its estimated ~8,000 aircraft from the air war against the Allies in the Low Countries. Many of these craft were still arriving at their new bases, which might offer another explanation for why Russia was faring better in the air than expected when Infantry divisions were being outfitted with AA companies in the late 30s.

But Russia's problems were not done mounting. By July it had become apparent that Rodzaevsky's new trade policy was costing Russia's war industry dearly. While policy may have aided Russia's interest in bolstering both Japan and the Allies with resource shipments, Russia clearly needed those resources more, and the amounts being imported now far outweighed the amount being sold. Rodzaevsky needed to cut this deficit, but such a sudden shift back to protectionism would make the Vohd look bad, and he had to spread his political capital thinly to control both the army and the concerned public. He would have to emerge from his forward command post soon and address the Russian people about the situation.

By late July the Russian Empire was suffering deficits of 7.3 thousand and 5.8 thousand artillery and infantry equipment. The front had stalled at Gdynia in the north and outside Warsaw in the center.

On the 27th the Vozhd addressed the nation at a rally in Moscow:

"Dearest Russian people,
It was in the interest of preserving peace that I made a decision which you all must know was difficult one, that of making a deal with Berlin. Their demands were great, the conquest of Poland, Denmark, and the spreading of revolution to the Balkans. Painfully, I agreed to stand back and silently watch as these smaller states were consumed by Bolshevism only because doing so was the only way to secure for Russia the space to the west which is so crucial to our nation's defense.

Through 1940 and 1941 I stood by my word to Berlin and did nothing to aid the enemies they faced to their west. The same could not be said of their adherence to our treaty. Over the winter of '41, red divisions steadily began amassing on our frontier at a time when the Russian Empire had done nothing to provoke such action. I assured Berlin that they had no reason to behave in such a way to their neighbor but my words fell of deaf ears.
Thalmann will surely deny this claim, just as vehemently as he denies the communist puppet leaders of Poland have fled Warsaw!
*laughter*
You know that I have always sought to resolve issues with our neighbors by peaceful means, but when a snake is raising its head before your eyes to strike, it is foolish to wait until it is too late before acting in response! Accordingly, I gave orders to mobilize for a preemptive strike against this snake to our west.
*applause*

This was not a decision I took lightly. It pained me to work in silence on this action, keeping news of it secret from the Russian people and the Russian soldiers who were then unaware at the peril they were staring in the face; but had I spoke to you earlier we would have lost the advantage of surprise over the enemy, which at that point was the only thing that could have kept the inevitable fight away from our lands, and in theirs instead.
Let me tell you now: since that first strike was made, everything has gone according to plan.
*applause*

Our brave solders march together on what can only be described as a modern crusade. The Great Russian nation is leading the charge for Europe against the greatest enemy it has seen since the hordes of Attila, and beside them are their compatriots of White Russians, Little Russians, Tatars, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Turkmens, Georgians, Azeris, Armenians, and so many others which now are being forged into a single community of struggle! When centuries from now one asks us "what makes you a Russian?" our response will be "we fought together!"
*applause*

We owe the Russian soldier more than just our eternal gratitude. When this war is won, the whole purpose of the state will be re-oriented to serving him and elevating him to a position of moral leadership for our whole people! When we go about our lives in the future, it will be the example of the stalwart Russian soldier which guides all our future endeavors to build up the prosperity of Russia, which will resume immediately as the present need for austerity is over.
The workers of our armament factories are soldiers in this fight as well, and they will receive no less gratitude from the community for their efforts.
I ask of you, Russian workers, when your burdens feel too great, to always remember those who are giving more, and redouble your efforts!
The soldier at the front must know that the entire Russian nation marches behind him!

Should we commit ourselves fully to this struggle, as our fascist doctrine in which I place my unwavering faith commands us to, The Almighty will surely grant us his assistance as well!"

Rodzaevsky put on a show of absolute confidence, one which the Russian people needed to see from their leader, but behind this facade his worries were mounting by the day.

At midnight that night Rodzaevsky was aroused from his bed (he had not been able to sleep anyway) by an urgent report from the front. "My Vozhd! Red surprise attack has cut off our salient east of Kielce! Four infantry and six whole armored divisions are encircled!"

This year is taking longer to write than I anticipated. My hope is to provide accounts of most of the major battles, and so the year will probably have to be broken up into more segments in the future.
Rt56 will be updating to NSB on the 8th, so I'll either have to finish playing through the campaign before then and write the remainder of the installments after the fact, or find some way of copying the current version of the mod so Steam Workshop doesn't auto-update it, breaking the save.

DensleyBlair · Jun 26, 2022

Enjoyed reading over your account of this hellish world. Having Red Germany still decked out in Nazi grey at the head of an ‘Axis’ pact was certainly uncanny… And the Trotskyist-to-Neocon pipeline was a nice touch. One I could well believe, considering what some former sect members get up to here in Britain.

Did the mod update end up screwing the save? Would be interested to hear whether you ever got any more done with this campaign.

Regardless – good job on an entertaining read!

The Menace · Jun 29, 2022

DensleyBlair said:
Enjoyed reading over your account of this hellish world. Having Red Germany still decked out in Nazi grey at the head of an ‘Axis’ pact was certainly uncanny… And the Trotskyist-to-Neocon pipeline was a nice touch. One I could well believe, considering what some former sect members get up to here in Britain.

Did the mod update end up screwing the save? Would be interested to hear whether you ever got any more done with this campaign.

Regardless – good job on an entertaining read!

Thanks.
I did end up finishing this campaign one night before Rt56 updated to NSB and took screenshots of most of the major events. They’re sitting in a folder somewhere so I might be able to pick it up once I have some spare time again.

It wasn’t my intention to leave the story on a cliffhanger.

DensleyBlair · Jun 29, 2022

The Menace said:
Thanks.
I did end up finishing this campaign one night before Rt56 updated to NSB and took screenshots of most of the major events. They’re sitting in a folder somewhere so I might be able to pick it up once I have some spare time again.

It wasn’t my intention to leave the story on a cliffhanger.

I'd be interested to see how things progressed if you ever do get the time. It's not a mod I've tried before, but I'm dangerously close to losing a lot of my own free time to it, I think…

Bullfilter · Jul 2, 2022

I’ve been having a read too. Up to 1940 now. I like a crazy ahistorical world and would be pleased if you eventually found the time and nervous energy to continue. Even if writing shorter updates covering less game time made it easier for you to get going again.

Whatever works.

Bullfilter · Jul 5, 2022

Ps: all up to date. The plan for the preemptive strike on the Germans was bold, though it has run into problems quickly. Which is pretty realistic. It’s good that the game AI has pushed you and made things far from certain at this point. Echoing @DensleyBlair, I do hope you find the time to continue the story: I have found it very entertaining and well done.

Cromwell · Jul 15, 2022

Enjoyed it so far and I'll be interested to see what Russia does about the advance stalling.

Turntables - A Russian Fascist AAR (Rt56)

Second Lieutenant

Attachments

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Second Lieutenant

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Second Lieutenant

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Second Lieutenant

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UP THE EUROVILLA!! (they/them)

Second Lieutenant

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Old Boardgame Grognard

Old Boardgame Grognard

Major