Roma Eterna and other strange tales

[elxaime]

This isn't an AAR per se, but rather just to recount something I don't believe you see very often. In a soon-to-be-over PBEM as Axis, it is August 1945 and Germany has just surrendered with the Soviet taking of Berlin. However Italy - and Finland - seem to have decided they will take on the whole world for a bit longer (almost every country except Portugal and Spain, including Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Turkey, went Allied).

However there was no Allied invasion of Italy through the Mediterranean, but rather the Allies went overland (the game featured an Allied invasion of France in 1942 that ended up in trench warfare in Brittany for eighteen months before the Allies broke out). Hence, almost all the US and UK energies and troops went into the battle in France. Malta had remained in Allied hands, so the Axis decided to evacuate DAK and all the Italians from North Africa and the Allies took the rest without a fight.

Aside from the Italian expeditionary force in Russia, which went down with the ship when the Russians made their big push in 1944, Italy hence was unmolested for over two years. Il Duce used this respite to build up the Italian economy and military. Finland as well saw little fighting.

When the Allies did encroach on Italy in 1945 via the East, this led to a series of big naval battles in the Adriatic where the RM went to the bottom but managed to take the adventurous Soviet Black Sea fleet with them. There was also a big naval battle in the Baltic where the Kriegsmarine also went down but took the Swedish Navy with them - the Soviets on this front were able to throw in level 4 submarines. Bottom line is that Italy generated enough NM gains from the naval fighting to not surrender when Germany did. Finland, which didn't have any foreign presence on their soil, also seems not to have gotten the memo that WW2 in the ETO was over.

So just got the graphic that the US has detonated an atomic bomb over Hiroshima. I thought for sure that would convince Italy and Finland to pack it in. But apparently one more turn to go...we'll see.

Just curious what other strange occurrences people have seen in PBEM.

[Harun]

Cool!

[BillRunacre]

It's certainly unusual to see Italy hanging on like this, very interesting!

[PvtBenjamin]

Elxaime may remember better than me but I don't recall the Italian morale going down when the Germans surrendered. I think the Italian national morale was 10 or 12 and stayed there.

I am playing another game that I am certain that the German morale went down when Italy surrendered.

Excellent Axis defense Elxaime, well played.

[elxaime]

I don't remember Italian or Finnish morale going down when Germany surrendered, that may be the issue. In any case, the game seems to wrap things up anyway after Hiroshima as the remaining Axis surrendered then. I would guess the game simply lacks scripts for unusual end game situations.

Thanks - it was a fun game - I thought I was going to hold out a bit longer but the Balkan allies collapsed and since I hadn't played Axis that far into the game I was as surprised when Romania and Bulgaria went over to the allies as the Germans probably were IRL. [:D]