September 22, 1944
EAST FRONT
North-As expected, the Germans hit back in the salient NW of Warsaw, easily driving back 34th Army with a single attack from 3 infantry corps. German mobile assets are not in front line use any longer, as her withdrawal has allowed them to moved into a mobile reserve role.
In an effort to widen the salient and reduce the ability of Wehrmacht forces to strike Russian infantry armies from the flank, Stavka again targets a German infantry corps north of the salient. Using the standard Russian method, heavy ground strikes precede an attack on multiple sides, with 2 Russian armies and a tank army driving back the German XII Corps with heavy losses on both sides.
In addition, Stavka is moving specialized bridging formations into the line east of Warsaw for a possible cross river assault vs the 6th Panzer Grenadiers occupying a bend in the river. This op will have a low probability of success, but at this point, only poor options for offensive action are available to the Russians.
- north.JPG (199.54 KiB) Viewed 1181 times
South-In the south, the Axis retreat continues. They have moved to a defensive line that utilizes the Vistula in the north and then the rugged mountain terrain running from Krakow to Galati. Stavka is examining some areas that might be possible to exploit, but in truth, nothing promising currently reveals itself. As stated last turn, the abject failure of JACK-HAMMER has left this front in an operational quandary-these forces were never expected or designed to be able to create and maintain offensive momentum.
- south.JPG (118.5 KiB) Viewed 1179 times
It is time to examine the overall doctrine of the Allies, as it seems we are facing a doctrinal failure.
The overall strategy has been one of maximum attrition, even in cases where Allied casualties would expectedly exceed German casualties. The hope was that eventually, superior Allied production and numbers, combined with the strategic bombing campaign and forcing Germany to apportion her troops to as many fronts as possible would ultimately lead to a crisis of overall force strength, allowing the Allies to simply overwhelm the Axis on some fronts.
At this point, we must accept that though we seem to have been successful in some facets-creating multiple fronts, inflicting fairly heavy step losses, effective industrial bombing-we have NOT succeeded in creating a force crisis for Axis units-not only do they have more than enough units to man all fronts, but now have created a powerful mobile reserve in the east as well as local reserves on all fronts. In fact, the Axis force situation is demonstrably better now than it was one year ago-even WITH the breakthrough in the east, the success of MATADOR in creating a new front in Spain and the expansion of the Greek front.
I am not sure how this is possible, but can only conclude that the entire strategy did not have a chance to prevail given Nirosi's conservative defensive plan in the east and his ability to consistently prevent any large scale losses for his forces.
At this point, I have 'fired every bullet in the guns', and to be honest, have been more successful than anticipated. I strongly expected at least one disaster in 1944, and that has not really occurred. Still, the overall failure of the grand plan must be acknowledged, and a new plan, utilizing what little time is left, should be formulated.
Unfortunately, at this point, I lack both ideas and resources to either open new fronts or somehow achieve force superiority in any existing fronts.
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