Anschluss or Bust; A GD1938 AAR and Test Game

[Bombur]

June 1939-Soviet turn

Took moderate losses from Germany attacks in the Northern Front. The Germans were able to cross the river at Byalstock. It´s possible we will lose the Blatic countries in the next turns....
The last Afghan troops are destroyed.

[Jeffrey H.]

ORIGINAL: ernieschwitz

Lost in the shuffle of the war, diplomats from Luxembourg protest as their country is run over by Germany.

Meanwhile, the Germans report hitting a few speed bumps on their way through Luxembourg.......

[Krafty]

Id hardly quantify it as even a speed bump. I think it had 15 Rifleman, some general purpose mgs, vickers or maxims, something like that. Maybe some outdated infantry guns. And staff. Which I find surprisingly tough. They wont kill anything, but the staff ive attacked ive attacked with a sizable advantage in combat value, it dies stubbornly, and retreats quickly. But still. Its staff..



Theres been some more turns taken but im on my laptop and havent been able to do a proper AAR


Long story short, France is all but out, they seem to be trying to bleed the german and italian army rather than escape. Tho then again I had 70 or 80 SFTs of sub IIIs in the channel and around the french coast. Took the last 2 turns for GB to remove the threat. Now France can evacuate safely. Tho theres not much left. Paris is almost surrounded. Maginot was surrounded and destroyed.

Cav and same tanks are all that hold the south of France. The Italians are pretty dominant, though the way in the Spain is there if the French want to cause some more damage before theyre out, they did make some good attacks in the area. I know if I was Ernie in this situation id go for it because A im already doomed on the entire european mainland B its totally unexpected. That move I think is doomed to failure, but france is already doomed to failure. It at least would put the fight on the seas, supplying the fleeing french, instead of in France, though itd mean basically giving up paris and marsielle and I dont know if thats the right call in the long run, both those cities have another turn or two of life left them for the allies. With the americans looking like theyre a long way from waking up, the best strategy might be what Ernie is doing now, and simply causing as much damage, holding as much production away from the germans for as long as possible.

No BEF ever showed up. Dunno if Ernie simply didnt want to, or if my subs prevented that, he could answer it better.

Ive been pumping fighters for quite a while but still dont have air superiority. Now being close to england, at least one hex a turn really feels the bite. Ive gotten heavy flak about, and in most of the useful locations, unless they come with a veritable horde of bombers, those guns stop any attack.


Pulled all my naval assets back to port as they were about to be out of supplies. Down to 74 Subs. First time ive dipped below 90 since I started Kiel on subs. 2 Turns ill be back in action on the high seas. Like I said this is Frances chance to get out of dodge, or england to drop the BEF. Dunno what he'll do.


In North Africa, and the Middle East, the Axis is Winlosing....the armies of eygpt, jordan, and I guess india, are advancing slowly westward. All my attention is gonna go to these areas now that theres no chance of pressure from the west. Ive still got a ways to go over there, but its not like France is gonna suddenly start gaining ground. However I think Fez, Morocco and Algeria are gonna fall to axis control. After France falls thats going to be the next goal in the west, so I can trap the french and english battleships in the med, and slowly kill them off. That plan is already underway and unless they get extremely lucky theyre already pretty trapped in there.

In Turkey fortunately the Russians havent involved themselves, ive expect to see road start to come out of the fog of war through Van but it just never happens. The brits and French are making good ground however, and my defense east of Batemon was untennable and I was forced to withdraw.

I did get some armor in the area into Ankara, so the plains to the east of the city can always be cleared.

Greece continues to hold, and will until I own the med. Even if I take Gibraltar and Marsaille theres enough production in India to supply them by sea through any of those ports indefinitly. I wont actually hurt their readiness until theyre short on supplies, so for now theyre simply a training ground for artillery, bombers, and fighters, before they go to other areas with the xp they gain pounding on the poor greek soldiers.

I guess life is hard in the soviet union. But my god they have alot of tanks. Since they attacked me when I was going through poland and never had a chance to set up a masterful opener, im not gonna get so amazing barbarossa victory. That sucks. Fortunately bombur cant move his white russia production, so thatll help even things out. Im gonna need a massive inflation of the forces in the area though to do anything serious to him. I could take territory sure, exhaust myself, and give him the chance for a counter assault, that is gonna most likely take the wind right of germanys sails. At some point, maybe already, theyre gonna have built enough staff to get their 100% bonus everywhere. Then their units are on par with my newly trained units. At that point its going to be a massive blood bath I dont really want.

As in my play style, I dont much like blood baths. I perfer to move along the path of least resistance until I can achieve wins and low losses. Surrounding my objectives on multiple sides and with massive numbers advantage. Its weird to say, I guess its just ATG, but theres not much of that will happen in our game in Russia...its not going to be big sweeping operations that end in encirclements of cities. Its going to be a WW1 style micromanagement blood bath...So I plan to avoid that and use the hammer of the imperial japanese army at least for the time being, to scare russia into the possibility of having to send a ton of its production east. I feel they have a huge portion of their army and resources defending against germany. If they had to deal with Japan as well theyd surely fold.

Though this brings me to the problem of japan. Japan will wrap up China within the next year and be able to help the axis. The issue is the massive front the Japanese army and navy is going to have. Russia in the north, USA in the east, Britain in the west, and Britain in the south. If im lucky ill have a few short turns of freedom in the north, west, and south, before the east is a problem.

Surely theres going to be no pearl harbor, at least not like the history books, and im going to have a strong pacific fleet to deal with.

Ive built 2 Shipyards as japan, and thatll help. I dont see any over there in California (tho maybe thats fog of war) so perhaps I can achieve an advantage.

I can see all the british subs out in the china sea and south pacific with patrol planes and such. So theres a british naval presence there, watching, waiting.

Singapore is gonna hafta fall of course. And Vladivostok. If I can take those two cities, life will be easier. There wont be a good place to put ships or planes anywhere until the phillipines wakes up with the USA. Takes alot of the pressure off.

I dont think theyd risk trying to hold Shanghai. And im tempted to leave Taiwan as a nationalist chinese enclave just for sentimental value, and for something to bomb with newly built bombers, and shell with shore bombardment for xp.

[Krafty]

Overview of the situation in China

Not much happened around the world, Kaunus falls in the soviet union, the first soviet city to fall. Greece and France barely hang on.

[Krafty]

August 21st 1939 - Germany


After 6 grueling months, France seems headed for the waste bin. They fought harder than expected and ernie brilliantly used his forces. The experiance he picked up in china was invaluable and he made good use of terrain, rivers, and counter attacks.


There is little to celebrate though, as paris has yet to fall, though its solidly encircled. Greece holds on like a champ, and while a small attack was made against the soviet union, their army still dwarfs the wehrmacht, and each turn that passes, their army gains considerable strength.

The british continue to press forward in North Africa and Turkey threatening to capture several cities.

Heres the war in the west:

[Krafty]

Japan -

Another offensive kicks off to try and knock out china. Advances are made towards the last cities in China.

Heres a loss comparison up to this point. Its not showing quite a bit of stuff destroyed on both sides.

You can see about 700,000 casualties on the chinese side, and 200,000 on the Japanese side.

Not shown are about another 100,000 casualties for the chinese, and 50,000 for the Japanese.

Well over 500 aircraft have been destroyed on both sides.

[Bombur]

October 1939-USSR

The Soviet High Command is very worried with the news about the fall of Paris and the final collapse of France. The two front war gave the USSR enough time to expand the army and build better defenses, however, the German advance on the Baltic countries simply cannot be stopped, and we wonder what will happen once the enemy brings its full power to the East. In Turkey, the Soviet airforce is giving some support to the advancing British troops, while an unfortunate German division that ended the turn trapped behind enemy lines was exterminated to the last man...In the black sea, we lost lots of patrol aircraft to enemy submarines. Vilnius is being evacuated, as we lack the resources to defend it...

[Bombur]

November 1939

-Vilnius fall but we won enough time to build strong defenses. Bridges were blew and forts are being raised. While overall losses were high, the Soviet production was more than enough to replace losses and still increase the overall size of our army and airforce.

[Bombur]

After a small bug, we are back again.
USSR
Germany offensive in USSR stalled, for now, the enemy attacked our forces with aircraft, killing about 40 infantry, we returned the favor destroying 8 artillery (also by air attack).
In Turkey, it seems we also have a stalemate between British/Soviet and German forces. Our patrol aircraft sunk a German submarine in the Baltic.

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[Krafty]

Sorry the game is still underway ive just been really lazy about posting updates. Its also been a grind, and after the turns are completed im exhausted.


Here is Axis Europe. The battle of britian currently rages, the UK has larger airforce than germany (on the western front, currently the luftwaffe is split between two fronts), but alot of it is light bombers, early spitfires, and night bombers which have had a minimal impact this far.

Now that Ive noticed engineers can repair bombed cities, im going to start putting engineers in my AA units that ive placed in every city and important hex in europe have have begun filling up with Heavy Flak. Originally just turkish guns, but now german factories are producing them as well. Theyve had great effect so far. If they dont shoot something down, they at least reduce significantly the impact of bombing.

So far I have yet to have one even lose much readiness, so thats a good sign.

However these guns are expensive, we'll see if its the right strategy to persue building so many of them. Who knows I may be using more production on AA guns than id lose if I just let them bomb away.

I havent had to spend any PPs on night fighters or radar yet because of the heavy flak, thats a bonus. Those are fairly expensive to tech up properly, while the heavy flak seems fairly effective at level 1.

Since greece has fallen, the slavic armies are able to move on to Turkey to help Kemal keep the allies at bay. Some very large air battles have taken place over turkey, and now with advanced german light armor entering the arena, things have hit a stalemate where before I was losing ground. I expect to be able to push back in the area by next year.

The US enters the war. Thats bad. Things are about to get challenging.

Though Ive had sub patrols off their coast for a while, and what I saw didnt alarm me. They have a good number of factories, though all on the east coast should I ever brazen in the atlantic, and they havent reorganized their military, I didnt see any advanced units in new england, they dont appear to have annexed anyone, or have moved any troops to or from their out lying territories.

Surely these things will be corrected, but its just good they werent before they entered the war. A huge fleet prepared already off the coast of england would be terrifying, but fortunately I know that isnt so.

Oh yeah heres the picture.

[Krafty]

In Italy, things are getting back to normal after France falls, Marseille hung around for 3 more turns than expected, making it the last french mainland city to fall. The italians played a critical roll in the fall of france, Ernie had prepared a very good defense of paris, but let himself get thinned out sparring with the Italians in the south. Italy annexed both Spain and Switzerland, and was able to spread out the forces of the french a bit, with the help of a good number of Tankettes, the french forces on the southern border with spain, eventually got into a match they couldnt keep winning without weakening themselves elsewhere. A good solid punch to take the southern Alps and Italy wasnt going to be dislodged again from french territory. With inevitable war of attrition turning to the axis, it was just a matter of time before a breakout occured. That was the Italians in this reality, where they broke through from spain and the alps, cutting frances southern region off from the north for a critical month. French forces were forced to respond southwardly, and the armored claw of the panzergrenadiers pushed on to paris. After months of careful advance, France falls without evacuating hardly any of its forces. France fought to the last drop, there was no phony war in our reality.

The big winners here were the Italians, who picked up 16k production points from France, leaving only a few northern cities, and paris, in german hands.

I had intended this to really be Italys game, and it seems to be happening, I have enough PP production now Italy wont fall terribly behind in important technology, and can hopefully do something to free the med from allied hands. After that who knows.

One big descision was to not send any Italian troops to Greece, this weakened germany elsewhere, but I was confident it was worth it to have all those Italian forces against france.

Ive been drastically slowed down in Russia because of this, and the threat from the west pins the western german armies in defensive potitions in Madrid and Paris. So no help is coming immediately.

The panzergrenadiers and a new panzer corp are headed east though, but will have to finish training before being sent into combat, but it will add a clear advantage in the area.

Now the Italian army marches on Granada, to capture Gibraltar and seal off the Med from reinforcement to the beleagured allied fleet, which is caught in a huge naval skirmish off the coast of north africa.


Over 15 german submarines, and whole of the Italian navy, including the Dorea, have pinned the english fleet at Malta, along the coast line of Tripoli. Battles continued over several days and are still continuing. While horribly outnumbered the expert british sailors are putting up a near 1:1 fight.

In bad news for the british, german uboats intercepted a large destroyer flotilla headed either to the med, or southern africa, spotted by italian planes, over 60 german submarines engaged the less than 20 ships, and sank them to the man.

This represents the greatest loss of life among the british navy in its history, since only 117 prisoners were able to be pulled from the waters of the atlantic by german uboats desperate to save the lives of the brave sailors. Even at war, this tradegy tugs heart strings high into the Riechstags upper echelons.

[Krafty]

In Japan, Imperial forces continue the push to knock out the chinese. Around 60,000 chinese soldiers are captured as Sian falls after being encircled for two months, and sieged.

The death bell is ringing for china, and 200 new Marine II companies are railed to HQ staging areas behind the lines, also are 6 new BDEs of Artillery IIIs, the first time Arty IIIs have set foot on the chinese mainland since Ernie's air attack and mass infantry charge knocked out the 6 that came ashore with the SNLF forces near Hangchow.

Only Chengtu and Chungking remain as industrial centers that can support the chinese war effort, once those are captured, Imperial forces will clear what remains of their chinese enemies, and prepare for the greater war with its axis allies.

So far this fact is unknown to the allies for all intents and purposes, and Japans diplomatic shielding has remained in place, to prevent any nasty surprises while Japan fights its land war in asia.

Heres the brutal situation of the chinese.

[Bombur]

Jan 1940-Allied turn

-USSR: The Axis offensive against the Motherland has stalled. There are a few skirmishes ans air attack with some losses for both sides. The Soviet army is being expanded, as losses are much smaller than production. The far East is being reinforced against the Japanese threat
-France: nothing to report....
-GB: The strategic bombing of German cities goes on. Now the targets were shifted to U-Boats factories in Hamburg. The situation in Gibraltar is very dangerous and the British are prepared to fight to the last man. In the mediterranean, the RN achieved a great vitory against the Italian fleet, sinking at least three Battleships, three cruisers and 6 destroyers. Long range torpedo bombers produced in the new India factory are being sent to Egypt. Hopefully, the med will become a British lake even if Gibraltar falls. In Turkey, the Germans are starting to roll back the British advance, but new units are arriving.
-USA: No major actions, production was increased and Gibraltar was reinforced with some Rifles e a few dive bombers. Hawaii was also reinforced
-China: endgame is near

[Krafty]

Europe - The battle of Britian heats up as hundreds of planes on both sides clash along the French and German coast and over England as well.

Italian forces move to the Iberian penisula to push the allies out of Spain and annex portugal. In Turkey, a stalemate has settled as assets from the attack on Greece have arrived at the front lines. Also an industrial upgrade is purchased.

The stalemate against Russia continues, as air and artillery assets duel along the 1000 mile wide front.



Asia - Japan clears another Chinese city under encirlement and moves its forces in position for some of the final blows against China.

[Bombur]

USSR: Infantry losses increased but they are still well below replacement rate.Our airbase in Turkey is threatened by German land troops. Soviet aircraft inflicted moderate losses to one German infantry division. More troops are being sent to Far East

GB: A terrible turn, with massive loss of aircraft. We lost air battles everywhere. We failed to gain air superiority over Turkey and our night bombers were shot down like flies over Hamburg. We also lost one entire fleet in the Med, as German submarines attacked the survivors of the Sea battle against the Italian fleet. At least we could reinforce Gibraltar again

USA: War production is increasing but the enemy submarine activity is preventing us from ferrying troops to Europe. Some of our new P-40´s arrived at London and they will soon see action against German air forces. We are increasing production of Transport ships, as losses will likely be heavy.

China: nothing to report

[Krafty]

Europe -

The Panzer Grenadiers hit the soviet front with a bang, routing two soviet armored corps and a 1940 Rifle Division, with the help of the Czechs and Austrians that had been holding the line south of the Pripyat Marshes, along with heavy luftwaffe bombardment.

This starts an offensive into Ukraine in attempt to capture Odessa and the soviet regions west of the Don. Eventual target, Baku, and the encirclement of soviet forces in Turkey, or at least their withdrawl.

Bombing and bombardment continues in Turkey.

A large air battle results in very few losses for both sides in the skies over the UK. Small fuel tanks give the Me109s very little time over target.

A number of US transports are sunk trying to bring men and material to the UK.

Also Gibraltar is taken by a combination of Italian CCCN, and Spanish units of Franco's Guardia Civil.

Heres a picture of spanish forces, the units with the yellow stripe, holding the region of Granada.

Armies Fulgore, and Maste, the orange and the black stripes respectively, regroup and prepare for the invasion of Portugal.

[Krafty]

German Panzer Divisions with the help of a Turkish light armored division and two infantry divisions crack through the Arabian Allied lines and head for Lebanon. The armored units split and begin pressing the multicultural Allied army in the flanks. Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Germans, face off against Arabians, British, Canadians, Russians, French, Indians, and South Africans.

Two Unterboot squadrons simultaneously dealt the Royal Navy a blow when subs snuck through anti sub nets, and sunk over 10 ships in Alexandria, and 3 ships at Glasgow naval harbor, over 1,000 miles apart.

The Med is being contested strongly now, and the British know with Uboat squadrons entering the med with impunity, and no hope of reinforcement that their days are numbered.

[Krafty]

Italy: March 4th 1940

After meeting with the Prime Minister of Portugal, a tearful government folds and is annexed peacefully by Italy.

Armies begin ferrying across from Gibraltar to Fez. Also Militia is raised in the number of Portuguese ports around the world that are now in Italian control. Covert special forces are dropped in South Africa and begin to cause problems for the British forces stationed there.

West Timor is captured by Portuguese militia in East Timor.

[Bombur]

Allied turn

-USSR: Soviet troops suffered heavy losses in the German offensive, but they were able to destroy a large number of German tanks. The spearhead of German offensive took massive losses, more than 300 tanks and 100 halftracks are destroyed.
-France: A large German surface unit was seen in the French coast. The remains of France´s surface fleet were ordered to raid the enemy unit. They were able to sink 8 destroyers and one light cruiser, but lost more shisd than the Germans in the battle. Anyway, the Admiralty now considers most surface ships obsolete, and is putting resources in submarines and ASW forces...so....
-British: The Admiralty is shocked by the loss of almost the entire Mediterranean fleet to submarines. It seems that surface fleets are obsolete. Lots of resouces are being placed on submarines and ASW platforms. The raid on Glasgow wasn´t cheap for the Germans, as aircrafts from the Coastal command destroyed every boat that took part in the action. Overall 8 submarines were sunk.
-Big news. In a suprise attack, the British were able to create a second Front in Europe. More than 10000 Riflemen disembarked in Brest, and now the city is in British hands. The RAF bombed the already mentioned surface fleet and the troops closer to Brest, with mediocre results.
-ME Front: The British HQ in ME hopes that the arrival of new reinforcements to the Turkish Front will help to contain the German offensive. At least three infantry divisions and a few light tanks arrived to Beirut. One armoured unit close to Beirut took moderate losses but the Axis air units destroyed a number of RAF aircrafts without losses to themselves.
-North African Front: British units close to Tripoli are starting to retreat. The massive submarine fleet that destroyed our ships in Alexandria were located but it´s too

USA:-American air forces from Santo Domingo started to bomb Venezuela. One German submarine was sunk by our long range patrol aircraft off the Canadian coast