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We'll start with the Finnish front.
With the arrival of the Germans in the previous turn, Finland was saved. However there the forces involved still favoured the Russians. At the commencement of war, as in the previously uploaded screenshots (a couple of which are repeated in this GIF for clarity), the Soviets only reserve placement in this front was the Leningrad militia (which of course has to go there).
The German marine corps of course moved across and took Tallinn, before moving towards Leningrad after the weather cleared, solely to block the railing out of the blue factory.
Then I realised that the Finns could attack the OOS infantry army in the centre, so that was duly dispatched. Unfortunately without an HQ or at least one additional army, I couldn't do much more. At the end of the turn, in the Allies' last impulse, my oppponent Bomber Harris decided to use the Soviet offensive chit and attack the Mannerheim line at Viipuri.
Partly because of the rain plus a point of TAC ground support, the attack was something of a failure, the Soviets only getting a shattered result. Timoshenko certainly had a good deal of explaining to do back at STAVKA. ...if he got that far.
I'm really not sure why my opponent wasted his offensive chit here - but I guess it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

The Northern Front - May/Jun 1941

Well this is probably the biggie. There are 13 frames for this GIF. Enjoy.
Unfortunately I got the screenshots in the wrong place for the first impulse, therefore this one can only be started after the Axis first moves into Russia. But if you refer to previous postings you can see the dispositions before the Germans moved.

So, as previously mentioned, I decided to attack even though it was rain in the Arctic zone. Of course this means one cannot get very far into the USSR on the first turn, indeed on this front, we weren't even in a position to attack anything!
Most disappointing. However the Luftwaffe had done their work well, disorganizing a unit at Minsk as well as both the 3rd Mechanized Army and the 2nd Tank Army at Vilna. If I could outflank the rest of the Soviet armies, both of those could be cut off and easily destroyed.
The Soviets were having none of it, and used one of their TB-3s to reorganize the 2nd Tank army. Nor did they retreat initially, instead moving the 3rd Motorized forward (only a little, thanks to the rain), and abandoning Riga. That was a mistake, because he hadn't realised I could move into Riga from the forest hex to the west (the land connection is admittedly very narrow).
In the 3rd Axis impulse they moved forward and tried to block the pocked that was now beginning to form around Minsk and Vilna from being able to retreat, in doing so also cutting off the two INF armies next to Riga.
The Soviets now moved Yeremenko back one hex and disrupted one of the two corps next to Riga in order to regain supply. They also retreated one INF army from the nose of the Vilna-Minsk bulge. This was the obvious point to attack first, and with reasonable odds the Wehrmacht's northern front now claimed its first victim. It was also the first time they had clear weather!
With armies still disorganized the Soviets were loath to leave anyone behind if they didn't have to, and again continued trying to form a line rather than a headlong retreat. This left a perfect opportunity for a pincer-crush manoevre, which was executed perfectly in the 5th impulse (despite the return of the rain).
After the Allies' 5th impulse the turn ended, with the Germans experiencing just one impulse of clear weather in the Arctic zone. In terms of losses the Russians got away with losing just three corps in this zone in the turn.
However at the start of Jul/Aug 41, as you will see, they had precious few reinforcements coming, were now very poorly positioned and had not nearly enough armies remaining on this front. And the weather for July is expected to be a fair bit better...


Please note some screenshots weren't taken during the phase itself, but in the following impulse before the next player moved, so the weather as shown may not be quite correct for the impulse in question.

In the Ukraine Front in May/Jun 1941, the Germans main opponent was the weather.

With rain for the first two impulses, the fact that there was (almost) no one to attack for Guderian's Army Group South was of little comfort. The Luftwaffe successfully disorganized the two Soviet units near the border, but once they were out of the way there was nothing to do but slog through the mud. As previously posted, the Romanian Cavalry corps paid for their dash and elan with their lives, but this was not a great loss for the Wehrmacht.
Only at the end of the turn did they actually meet up with more Russian armies, but it was too late.

With just two Soviet armies destroyed in May/Jun 41, the war had so far gone quite badly for the Germans in the Ukraine. Indeed the Soviets quickly railed out a number of factories from the area.
Guderian can't wait for the next month with the clear weather.



(For some reason the yellow colour in this gif has gone light green! No idea why).

This GIF shows the wider view of the Eastern Front during the May/Jun 1941 turn.
I haven't labelled each screen as you can refer to the previous posts for more detail anyway.
This GIF also skips a few phases. But you get the idea.

Losses for May/Jun 1941:

The Nationalist production is now down to 1. So only the Cavalry division can be replaced, and it will be the last Chinese unit built for a long time now, if ever.
The Soviet losses are less than half the size of the reserves which arrived upon the German declaration of war. So in those terms it was a good first turn of the war for the USSR. But their forces are still badly positioned to hold back the tide of Panzers in the next turn. They have to hope it will be a short one.
The British continue to lose cruisers - but this time around they're happy to have sunk a German 'cruiser', which given the small size of the Kriegsmarine, is a good exchange.

Global control at the end of the May/Jun 41 turn with Axis in grey.

Global control at the end of May/Jun 41 in colour:

Reinforcements for Jul/Aug 1941:

You can see already that the Soviets have some problems. Whilst they didn't lose much, they're not getting much either.
My opponent, Bomber Harris, elected not to purchase every single Militia unit (which admittedly I usually do) on the first Soviet turn. Whilst there are probably arguments for and against such a move, the downside being you get nothing on the following turn, but if you don't buy them, you don't get that much the very next turn.
Such is the case here, with only five Soviet armies arriving. Luckily for the Russians, there aren't many more for the Germans and their allies, and some of the Romanian ones will have to stay in Romania.

Currently we are a few impulses into the Jul/Aug 41 turn, with lots of screenshots already and play resumes tomorrow, so once the turn actually finishes I will be able to make a start on creating the GIFs to post. So that may be a few days yet.

At the start of the Jul/Aug 1941 turn the Italians began proceedings by Port-Attacking Malta, where three transports provided targets that were just too tempting.
Unfortunately they didn't get the best of the surprise rolls, but with three points available the Commonwealth could only up the AA fire a tad.

The Italian bombers were somewhat spooked by the heavy AA fire, and only managed to damage one transport, which as it happened was the worst transport in the entire British merchant marine.
Having had lots of problems with the uselessness of this particular transport, a legacy of the accidental failure to scrap it at the very start of the game, Bomber Harris was almost grateful. Now he can leave it in the repair pool and forget about it.

With the Axis getting the initiative again, the Japanese were indeed able to move into Lanchow first. The American public could not have cared less.
The Japanese then flew in supplies by air at the end of their turn, and thus any opportunity for a successful Chinese counterattack was gone.

In Southern China the Japanese begin re-deploying units southwards to take out the last Chinese factory at Kunming.
A garrison unit is slowly making its way around the perimeter of Hanoi, currently also occupied by Communists, so that it can attack from the southern side. A division is also there, waiting for the additional support.

The Japanese then attack Tianshui, as it is the last supply source for Mao and his friends.
But despite air support, the attack is a failure, and the 2nd SNLF marine division is destroyed.
The Japanese Army Command then decides to just surround the Communists armies at Tianshui, and withdraw all of the best armies for dealing with the Nationalists around Kunming.

We will return to the Eastern Front after I have completed some more GIFs.
They're gonna be fun, I promise you that.
I'm hoping to be able to cover the whole of the action on the Eastern Front in Jul/Aug in a handful of GIFs, plus maybe one other post.

And indeed, the Eastern Front was the focus of the both players for the entire turn, and it took us a couple of sessions to actually finish the Jul/Aug turn too, as it lasted a little while.

In the Mediterranean, for some reason (possibly the large pile of Axis aircraft), my opponent chose not to move any more convoys into the Eastern or Western Mediterranean sea areas. This meant that Malta remained out of supply for the whole turn.
Consequently some efforts were made to bomb it. Early in the turn, or possibly at the end of the last turn (I can't remember which), he moved some fighters to this crucial island base. But they were useless when they had no supplies at all.
By the second impulse the Axis bombing had disorganized one defending ground unit, but all other targets were missed.
Meanwhile the German 2nd Parachute Korps basked in the Sicilian sun, enjoying the Italian wine and countryside, whilst overhead the forces of the Tenth Fliegerkorps and the Regia Aeronautica were in constant operation.

While the Regia Marina patrolled the Western Med to prevent any further supplies reaching Malta, and aircraft roamed the East, Balbo and the available air transport units kept up the pressure on Malta, reorganising what strike aircraft were available (which wasn't much).
In the fourth impulse, the Germans could finally spare some air moves, and launched their own attack on the island.
But the attack failed, and although one of the British fighter units was disorganized, the defenders of Malta remained staunch and steadfast. History seemed to be disturbingly repeating itself in this game...

There's really not much to tell about the rest of the world from the Jul/Aug 1941 turn.

The Japanese continued to move units out of the north, with some being railed to ports such as Canton.

Other units, after being reorganised by Terauchi from the failed attack in the first impulse, headed directly south past Chungking.
I did take a few more screenshots of the Japanese moves, but they are a relatively pointless thing to show, given there were no attacks and the Chinese did not move at all.
This screenshot is from Impulse #9, the Axis' fifth impulse.

I'd like to be able to say that the Finnish front was really exciting in Jul/Aug 1941, but I can't.
It was the least active of the whole Eastern theater and there were precisely zero attacks by either side.
The failed Timoshenko offensive in the previous turn gained them only Viipuri and the swamp hex adjacent to it, both hexes being quickly blocked from further advance by the Finns and German units, two of which had been shattered in the May/Jun turn but returned extremely quickly to the map, as the Soviet offensive was at the end of the previous turn.
During the turn the most noteworthy thing was my oppponent realising that he didn't have enough available to actually conquer the Finns, and given the deleterious situation further south, it might be better to move some units. Of course, moving through Leningrad in clear weather is a pain, and so consequently he wasn't able to rearrange as much as he might have done.
As you can see, the weather was clear all the way through the turn (and yes, I skipped one of the Axis impulses in this GIF, but you can see that there's not much change from the one thats missing).

The Ukraine Front Jul/Aug 1941

With clear weather Guderian could finally be unleashed. The Luftwaffe started where it left off last turn, and the units at Krivoy Rog were both disrupted.
Here was where I made my first mistakes; I should have concentrated on forcing the other Russian units nearby to withdraw before isolating and destroying the two disorganized armies that were now stuck there.
Instead I launched an attack, and by not including Guderian, the Russian ground support (not pictured in the GIF), made enough of a difference to the bad roll that I got (a 6!), which disorganized half the attackers and forced Guderian to reorganize them all. From then on the Ukraine offensive relied on supplies from Antonescu, but it has to be said he did a sterling job.
After the Tank army at Krivoy Rog was finally eliminated in the next impulse, the Soviets somewhat belatedly realized that now would be a good time to retreat. The Kiev militia probably should have gone north instead of into the centre, where it became just a small speed-bump for the Wehrmacht, and afterwards the looming isolation of Kursk and the armies near Kharkov meant further Russian withdrawals and the eventual fall of Voronezh at the end of the turn.
The departure from Kursk was a lose-lose situation for the Soviets, if they'd stayed, they would have died surrounded, as it was, the two armies there were destroyed separately, one retreating north to Ryazan (to be shown later).
By the end of the impulse the Soviets had lost only four armies in the Ukraine, but the entire area was as good as lost.
The only saving grace was that the Germans would now have to take some time to eliminate Odessa and Sevastapol and the Crimea, which could delay them from advancing to other more useful areas.
They also managed to save almost all of the blue factories (apart from Odessa which was not possible anyway).

This is the screenshot of the costly first impulse battle in the Ukraine where Guderian lost a corps and two divisions in exchange for only one pathetic Soviet INF army.
As you can see above at least things improved from here.

The Central Front, USSR, Jul/Aug 1941

Well this is the one you've all been waiting for.
As previously mentioned, the weather in Russia was clear for the entire Jul/Aug turn.
At the beginning of the turn the bulk of the Wehrmacht was still mostly in the former Baltic States and Eastern Poland. With the iniative at the beginning they attacked Minsk and two armies that had been cut off near Riga. One of the latter had been disorganized by Luftwaffe ground strikes, as had a motorized army with Yeremenko. The Soviets had sent a fighter to protect Yeremenko, but whilst it wasn't shot down (nor did it stop the Stukas), the fighter could not retreat to anywhere safe.
Being already significantly outnumbered the Russian armies retreated, but they were hampered by the Yeremenko HQ's slow movement. First they retreated to Vitebsk (the factory there having been railed out of course), and the disorganized motorized army was overrun during the German movement phase in the next Axis impulse.
Then Yeremenko retreated his small army group to Smolensk (4th impulse), and again the Panzers moved but did not attack, with a few German corps moving to outflank the Russians. And it was here that Yeremenko was caught between two German corps' ZOC, and thus he would not be able to get away. I'm sure that in hindsight my opponent would have abandoned Yeremenko at Smolensk but he chose to retreat to the hex NE of the city, leaving the 33rd INF army as a sacrifice, and keeping his best army guarding the HQ (the 4th GD Mech). The Moscow militia moved forward to block Axis forces moving further west to give the HQ a chance. At the same time Soviet TB-3 bombers launched ground strikes to try to slow the Germans down. But the strikes were a failure (6th impulse).

The Germans now had just one tactical aircraft left to use. The not-really-that-good Dornier 17Z. But their poor reputation was completely undeserved, as the squadrons of bombers swooped down on the retreating Bolsheviks, they made great targets.
The Soviet columns were thrown into disarray by the accurate bombardment of the Luftwaffe Dorniers.
They returned to their airfields as heroes. The pride of the Red Army had been stopped dead (7th impulse).
Rundstedt did not immediately take advantage of this airstrike, but destroyed the 5th INF army first, at the same time making sure that the Soviets would have no choice but to abandon Yeremenko and the MECH army, else lose even more units.

Sure enough the rest of the Red Army retreated towards Moscow, while labourers desperately loaded factory equipment onto trains at Tula. They were too late at Kalinin, where the next impulse the vanguard of the German armies arrived on the outskirts of the city. Meanwhile the bulk of the German panzer force made sure of the destruction of Yeremenko's armies.

In the next impulse the Soviets retreated to a box around Moscow, with a single unit guarding Kalinin.
That city was the next target and the 29th INF army which had retreated all the way from near Vilna at the start of the war, was finally destroyed.

It was now at the end of the Axis' 6th impulse that the turn ended. If it had gone on for another four impulses then Moscow was doomed for certain. Having said that, the picture was still far from rosy. It all depended on what the weather gods had in store for us in the Sep/Oct turn...