South American War 1941 Timeline
South American war 1941 Timeline
January 1st-21th: Two additional mexican divisions and a Central American one arrive in Colombia to help with the new years counter offensive, pushing the enemy advance back to Bogata and away from Medellin. American light tanks are crucial in helping to secure the advantage; having the ability to go toe to toe with the heavy Cockatrice armoured cars while light 76mm gun equipped assault guns help bring decisive firepower to the fray in “Operation Workman” while the first deployment of the Mexican first airborne division helps to push an enemy offensive at Monteria where the enemy was coming perilously close to being able to threaten Panama itself, surrounding and trapping the vanguard element of a Brazilian push to try and pincer Comintern forces.
January 4th-January 21st: In what is simply known as Operation Crush the Brazilian army pushes forward with a strike force of some three hundred thousand soldiers in a massive hammer blow meant to break apart the Chilean and Argentine armies before the American Southern Cone Expeditionary force can significantly bolster the heavily outnumbered Comintern. In a steamroller offensive the Brazilian second army group advances sixty kilometers towards Cordoba from its bases midway from Santiago del Estero. The chilean 29th division, an all mapuche fighting force is left to face the overwhelming onslaught when other formations before it withdraw, holding bridgeheads at the Primero river with grim determination despite being outnumbered by almost thirty to one. The second green guard division “titurador de osso” is finally committed to drive the Chileans from the bridge only for Argentine reinforcements and Haldeman’s expeditionary force can arrive; dragging the offensive to a halt in the indecisive battle at Cordoba.
January 22nd-February 27tth: In response to setbacks in the northern front, in a fury Salgado orders the nearby city of Sincelejo to be “laid to waste, let not even the smallest flower grow there ever again”, and the city is virtually demolished as it is looted of everything of military value; with even the structures being pulled down to utilize the building materials for military fortifications. In the meantime Bolivian forces effectively reclaim their pre-war of the pacific borders after months of heavy fighting. Even the threat of Chilean warships is not enough to prevent the Bolivian dictator from making a public spectacle of kissing the soil of the beach and proclaiming the fulfillment of Bolivia’s ambitions to once again be a maritime nation. Axis forces however, are in need of consolidation and pause offensive operations in the Andean front, with an order being given to dig in and regroup for the next set of offensives.
February 11th - March 3rd: The evacuation of Civilians and retreating troops from San Juan to Chile is harried by the Brazilian army as advanced motorized, cavalry, and air elements assault the civilian convoys for seemingly no reason beyond sheer spite as the Brazilian forces turn their efforts towards the massacre or capture of the convoy’s panicked and fleeing civilians. Aircraft of little use against military targets find that streams of civilians weighed down by their worldly possessions and exhausted Chilean-Argentine troops trying to defend them are a far easier target. In a vicious brazilian air attack against a village housing some resting elements of the Argentine army, the film maker Juan Mendoza takes a reel that captures the very nature of the war; a panicked little girl dropping her favorite doll into the rubble of her ruined home as Brazilian aircraft stitch the ground with weapons fire; an image that haunts Mendoza until his suicide after the war.
Feruary 23rd: Premier Reed announces an expansion of the Lend-Lease program to include the South American parts of the comintern drafted by himself, Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the DFLP, and others in the Central Executive Committee. The program is to provide an upswing in the allocation of war goods to the South American comintern; including modern tanks, aircraft, small arms, and food from both American and Mexican factories to make up for the devastating loss of much of the prime farmland in Colombia and Argentina to the enemy advance to keep them in the fight and avert mass famine as Salgado has the ample food production of the occupied territories; particularly in the Platine region, forwarded to his own holdings in a South American version of the hunger plan.
March 5th-24th: General Haldeman and his Argentine counterpart General Cortes make a plan known as operation “Five to one” to clear a path for critical Comintern supply convoys to reach the frontline and delay the Brazilian attempts to crush the Platine pocket and allow for a controlled withdrawal towards Patagonia rather than a mass rout. Spy efforts uncovered numerous roadblocks placed in an attempt to delay convoys put up by forward forces using faster assets to try and secure them before the heavier forces could arise; leading to the deployment of “Jeep fleets”, special forces driving American built jeeps accompanied only by the fastest of light tanks and armoured cars who would race into position to duel with these faster integralist elements and clear them from the supply lines. With the benefit of greater comintern access to radios, Haldeman and Cortes’ forces are able to lay out an ambush against the forces meant to link up with the advance elements of the integralist armies. Frustrated, Brazilian general Ordega launches a vicious counter-attack with heavier assets in the following week to try and close the supply routes; and while he makes advances, Comintern forces are able to withdraw in a fighting retreat, costing Ordega numerous tanks and armoured cars as Cortes calmly pulls his forces at the pace he sets.
March 26th: The Brazilian Navy sets sail with much of the Argentine fleet busy on other duties, including its entire battleship and heavy cruiser strength on an unknown mission. Arriving at 5 PM that day at the city of Necochea Admiral Rafael of the Brazilian fleet reveals the true nature of his orders as the Brazilian fleet turns its guns on the Argentine city and completely destroys the city in a three hour long bombardment; devastating not only the supply ports there but killing nearly seven thousand people.
March 28th: The Argentine and Chilean fleets set sail in an attempt to catch the Brazilian navy in battle to avenge the destruction dealt to Necochea
March 28th-June 16th: Renewed offensives occur across the Andean front as Bolivian and Brazilian forces have fully rested and prepared themselves for further advances. The Bolivians advance towards Santiago with the aim of capturing the city and forcing terms on the Chilean government while towards the north the Brazilian army presses hard against their outnumbered Peruvian and Ecuadorian counterparts. The fighting is some of the most miserable in the entire war, with biting cold and dangerous falls being the backdrop of many harerained offensive schemes that include the likes of rigging whole mountain tops to explode while other soldiers concentrate into bloody conflicts for controls of the valleys and plateaus they can find. Ground is given neither lightly nor cheaply and every inch that Axis forces advance is written in their own blood, and by the time that winter arrives in earnest Axis forces have been bled of some seventy thousand men to the Comintern’s fifty nine thousand for glory of advancing fifty kilometers over three months.
March 29th: The battle of the Platine River Gulf commences as Admiral Rafael engages with his Comintern counterpart; Admiral Lola; the first female admiral in chilean if not world history (with the exception of Artemisa). The engagement proves to be largely indecisive, but as the Brazilian fleet slinks away; aircraft from the American carrier Enterprise; too late to join the battle proper; deal crippling damage to the Brazilian Battleship Caxias; forcing it to spend months in repair and leading the Brazilian navy to become increasingly less active in the war.
April 1st-13th: In the “April fool’s” strike, Brazilian forces find their advance frustrated by numerous light formations of Jeeps, Armoured Cars and Light tanks racing ahead of the Comintern’s armed forces to take out numerous key bridges allowing for the crossing of many minor rivers; greatly slowing down the Brazilian advance as it tries to advance in the face of heavy artillery fire from enemy enemy forces before the advance has to come to a halt in Colombia; leaving them “stuck in their homes of mud” as one commander quipped as Brazilian tanks struggled to extricate themselves from the mud before him. The Jeep fleet tactic is perfected in these engagements, where roving fleets of Jeeps would race to engage Axis forces; either mounted or dismounted and depending on their availability; would often roll alongside Armoured Cars and Light Tanks for added firepower; and would retreat long before serious retaliation could catch them.
April 14th: Salgado organizes a secret commission to determine the costs and benefits of using chemical weapons in the war to try and speed the Axis advance and secretly orders the increase in the usage of indentured labor to man the factories, mines, and refineries of the Axis in the face of the enormous production capabilities of America which was producing an unimaginable amount of military material as it moved into a total war footing. The Green Guard, eager to engage their communist foe more often, is given permission to start taking on increasing frontline roles; with many in the Integralist government seeing the paramilitary as a means to advance their own careers by offering to supply them with all the best equipment Brazil could create.
April 15th-August 19th: Operation Smash is launched from the Axis with the aim of breaking the Comintern's will in the Southern front of the war. The westernmost formation of Axis troops pivots towards Chile with the intent of seizing as much of the country as possible and dealing a crushing defeat to the Comintern in the Andean front. Chilean forces, forewarned by message intercepts by Comintern spy rings pivot to hold against the two pronged offensive from the North and the East. In what is widely regarded as Chile's darkest hour, much of the Northern half of the country cracks under the weight of the third army group even as they take heavy losses in the face of Chile's favorable defensive terrain. However a heroic defensive effort allows for the Chilean army to withdraw to consolidate its supply lines even in the face of giving up so much land to the Axis hordes to avoid letting the majority of the country's military become encircled and the enemy is stopped at the coastal city of Chanaral under threat of fire from the guns of the Chilean navy.
April 17th-August 31st: Operation Ten to One is launched by the Integralists in the hopes of driving the Argentines to the brink of annihilation as the first troops trained in the prior year (primarily in the southern fall season before the start of hostilities) start coming into service and arrive at the front; increasing the presence of the Brazilian army in the field. The operation's name is a reference to the numerical superiority of the Brazilian army in certain sectors of the front. Three new divisions of the Green Guard also enter service at this time to join in the offensive. The ferocity of the attack sees the Brazilian army seize most of the Platine river basin and thus the vital farmland of Argentina and the penetration of Integralist forces into Patagonia as they try to outrun the move of Argentine factories southwards; an effort that ultimately fails. Some one million integralist troops take part in this massive offensive, but logistical issues and the increasingly stiff defenses of the enemy (along with some freshly arrived mexican divisions and the one token Soviet division given to Argentina as a mark of Soviet-Argentine friendship in summer of 1939-1940 which had finished its acclimation training) start to see the offensive begin to crack under its own weight.
August 5th-31st: The Battle of the Colorado river rages as Argentine forces under General Cortes; having been driven southwards by the overwhelming force of the Brazilian push against them out of the Platine entirely; make a stand at the northern borders of Patagonia after having pushed some tentative thrusts over the river back, meeting the main Integralist push in a titanic struggle; the largest of the first year of the war. Some three hundred thousand troops on the comintern side hold the line against twice their number in Integralist attackers. With their backs to the River and the fate of South America possibly on the line, the Comintern sees off waves of enemy attacks which must struggle with being at the very end of their supply lines and interservice conflicts between the Green Guard and the Military Establishment. The Comintern gradually wins air superiority over its Axis counterparts in the battle; the furious furballs of fighters engaging overhead giving the cover needed for well dug in defenders to blunt the thrust of the enemy's advance and soften them up for a counterpush once the 3rd Argentine tank division arrives at the scene and causes the over-extended Brazilians' lines to finally snap, forcing them to retreat a healthy distance from the Colorado river. With a total of two hundred and thirty thousand dead on both sides (one hundred thousand dead; sixty thousand Axis to forty thousand Comintern; thirty thousand missing; twenty thousand axis to ten thousand comintern; and another hundred thousand wounded with seventy thousand axis to thirty thousand comintern) the battle is the deadliest so far in the history of either nations and has resulted in the destruction of much of the outdated equipment in the Brazilian military; destroying nearly every pre-integralist regime military asset commited to the southern Cone; with an attempted breakout from Buenos Aires leading to the cancelation of operation Ten to One.
September 1st-December 13th: Operation Big foot begins in an attempt to drive the Axis back farther in a series of heavy hitting counter attacks on all fronts. The mexican and central American nations are at this point fully mobilized and move against their Brazilian and Venezuelan counterparts to bolster the fortunes of Colombia; working to push the enemy farther back from the Panama canal as the Enterprise's carrier group thwarts attempted air attack on the important waterway. The Argentine army makes significant headway into the platine river basin; making usage of rapid maneuver tactics to try to overwhelm the "Clumsy maneuvers of the enemy beast" while the Chilean and Peruvian armies do their best to put the squeeze on the andean front in two directions; with Ecuador's military committing increasingly to trying to push the Bolivians and Brazilians back from their points of advance. Despite the apparent exhaustion of the enemy's advance they manage to recover enough strength to not only eventually grind the Comintern advance to a halt but launch a counter-counter offensive meant to regain the ground lost over the months of Communist assault. Within a month of the recapture of Bogata, Axis forces re-recapture the city with the commitment of additional and freshly raised brazilian divisions to the front who take advantage of the overextension of a number of Central American divisions who grew overconfident in their pushes against Venezuelan forces.
December 3rd-January 4th: In a rage at the city's defiance of his forces, Salgado orders the entire city of Bogata to be completely destroyed "in a manner so that if the world is seen from the heavens they will see Bogata burning", with the Green Guard carrying out much of the acts of destruction from the generous applications of incendiaries and explosives with the famous images of flamethrower teams setting fire to the National Capitol of the Columbian government (before it was leveled with demolition charges and artillery fire) to the liquidation of people in the city who refused to come peacefully. By the end of the destruction efforts no buildings of the city are left standing and the city's population; if not killed outright; has been deported for indentured labor in Axis countries. Aerial reconnaisance of the city by Comintern forces lead to the lament that "not a single brick has been left unbroken" by the end of the orgy of destruction that is widely compared to Nanking as the Brazilian and Venezuelan armies fall upon the city's long suffering people in a horrific orgy of loot and slaughter. All items of value that do not disappear into the pockets and rucksacks of the soldiers are quickly transferred to Venezuela and Brazil, including many cultural artifacts that have yet to be returned to this day by Brazil or were taken by Americuban forces later in the war.
December 14th: The second battle of the Platine river basin takes place as the Brazilian fleet meets with its comintern counterparts that are attempting to break the blockade around the city of Buenos Aires once and for all. While the aging dreadnought Amazonia is sunk, along with a heavy cruiser; two light crusiers and three destroyers; the Argentines lose the Rivadavia, two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, two destroyers, and two frigates; making the battle ultimately inconclusive. Many of the Sunk ships will be raised later; having been sunk in the very shallow waters of the River Basin.
December 13th-February 2nd: Little in the way of major advances are made on either side as the war settles into a months long meat grinder stage as both sides wage a brutal battle of attrition to try and advantage themselves in their planned future offensives. By now the pre-war formations have been joined by; and largely outnumbered by fresh troop formations called up since the beginning of the war and new soldiers throw themselves into the maelstrom of war. Some two and a half million casualties, two thirds of which have been civilians; have been produced in the first full year of the war and all economies are entering a total war stage as the leaders of each side recognize that this is likely to be a long and gruesome war. Drowned out in the violence taking place in China and in eastern Europe; the South American war is a war of ferocious savagery as the continent's war is as much a settling of national grievances from the prior century and prior regimes as it is a war of ideology.
December 31st: The Famous poem "río sangre" is composed by the Chilean soldier Hannah Diaz upon seeing the sight of a mountain stream stained red with the dead bodies of so many and most starkingly; the corpses of a village family just trying to get water before being gunned down by Brazilian soldiers before the battle started. This and other works inspired by the war do much to convince the world of the savagery of the Integralist army as the continent is torn apart by a war of a scale it has never seen before. Support for the integralists declines in Europe even in the face of trepidations regarding the advance of communism, and opposition figures in Britain and France such as Leon Blum, Churchill, and Attlee make statements condemning the "evil nature of the barbarian fascist regimes taking marching orders from a brutish little stick of a man who fancies himself the ruler of a continent" in the words of Churchill.
January 1st-21th: Two additional mexican divisions and a Central American one arrive in Colombia to help with the new years counter offensive, pushing the enemy advance back to Bogata and away from Medellin. American light tanks are crucial in helping to secure the advantage; having the ability to go toe to toe with the heavy Cockatrice armoured cars while light 76mm gun equipped assault guns help bring decisive firepower to the fray in “Operation Workman” while the first deployment of the Mexican first airborne division helps to push an enemy offensive at Monteria where the enemy was coming perilously close to being able to threaten Panama itself, surrounding and trapping the vanguard element of a Brazilian push to try and pincer Comintern forces.
January 4th-January 21st: In what is simply known as Operation Crush the Brazilian army pushes forward with a strike force of some three hundred thousand soldiers in a massive hammer blow meant to break apart the Chilean and Argentine armies before the American Southern Cone Expeditionary force can significantly bolster the heavily outnumbered Comintern. In a steamroller offensive the Brazilian second army group advances sixty kilometers towards Cordoba from its bases midway from Santiago del Estero. The chilean 29th division, an all mapuche fighting force is left to face the overwhelming onslaught when other formations before it withdraw, holding bridgeheads at the Primero river with grim determination despite being outnumbered by almost thirty to one. The second green guard division “titurador de osso” is finally committed to drive the Chileans from the bridge only for Argentine reinforcements and Haldeman’s expeditionary force can arrive; dragging the offensive to a halt in the indecisive battle at Cordoba.
January 22nd-February 27tth: In response to setbacks in the northern front, in a fury Salgado orders the nearby city of Sincelejo to be “laid to waste, let not even the smallest flower grow there ever again”, and the city is virtually demolished as it is looted of everything of military value; with even the structures being pulled down to utilize the building materials for military fortifications. In the meantime Bolivian forces effectively reclaim their pre-war of the pacific borders after months of heavy fighting. Even the threat of Chilean warships is not enough to prevent the Bolivian dictator from making a public spectacle of kissing the soil of the beach and proclaiming the fulfillment of Bolivia’s ambitions to once again be a maritime nation. Axis forces however, are in need of consolidation and pause offensive operations in the Andean front, with an order being given to dig in and regroup for the next set of offensives.
February 11th - March 3rd: The evacuation of Civilians and retreating troops from San Juan to Chile is harried by the Brazilian army as advanced motorized, cavalry, and air elements assault the civilian convoys for seemingly no reason beyond sheer spite as the Brazilian forces turn their efforts towards the massacre or capture of the convoy’s panicked and fleeing civilians. Aircraft of little use against military targets find that streams of civilians weighed down by their worldly possessions and exhausted Chilean-Argentine troops trying to defend them are a far easier target. In a vicious brazilian air attack against a village housing some resting elements of the Argentine army, the film maker Juan Mendoza takes a reel that captures the very nature of the war; a panicked little girl dropping her favorite doll into the rubble of her ruined home as Brazilian aircraft stitch the ground with weapons fire; an image that haunts Mendoza until his suicide after the war.
Feruary 23rd: Premier Reed announces an expansion of the Lend-Lease program to include the South American parts of the comintern drafted by himself, Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the DFLP, and others in the Central Executive Committee. The program is to provide an upswing in the allocation of war goods to the South American comintern; including modern tanks, aircraft, small arms, and food from both American and Mexican factories to make up for the devastating loss of much of the prime farmland in Colombia and Argentina to the enemy advance to keep them in the fight and avert mass famine as Salgado has the ample food production of the occupied territories; particularly in the Platine region, forwarded to his own holdings in a South American version of the hunger plan.
March 5th-24th: General Haldeman and his Argentine counterpart General Cortes make a plan known as operation “Five to one” to clear a path for critical Comintern supply convoys to reach the frontline and delay the Brazilian attempts to crush the Platine pocket and allow for a controlled withdrawal towards Patagonia rather than a mass rout. Spy efforts uncovered numerous roadblocks placed in an attempt to delay convoys put up by forward forces using faster assets to try and secure them before the heavier forces could arise; leading to the deployment of “Jeep fleets”, special forces driving American built jeeps accompanied only by the fastest of light tanks and armoured cars who would race into position to duel with these faster integralist elements and clear them from the supply lines. With the benefit of greater comintern access to radios, Haldeman and Cortes’ forces are able to lay out an ambush against the forces meant to link up with the advance elements of the integralist armies. Frustrated, Brazilian general Ordega launches a vicious counter-attack with heavier assets in the following week to try and close the supply routes; and while he makes advances, Comintern forces are able to withdraw in a fighting retreat, costing Ordega numerous tanks and armoured cars as Cortes calmly pulls his forces at the pace he sets.
March 26th: The Brazilian Navy sets sail with much of the Argentine fleet busy on other duties, including its entire battleship and heavy cruiser strength on an unknown mission. Arriving at 5 PM that day at the city of Necochea Admiral Rafael of the Brazilian fleet reveals the true nature of his orders as the Brazilian fleet turns its guns on the Argentine city and completely destroys the city in a three hour long bombardment; devastating not only the supply ports there but killing nearly seven thousand people.
March 28th: The Argentine and Chilean fleets set sail in an attempt to catch the Brazilian navy in battle to avenge the destruction dealt to Necochea
March 28th-June 16th: Renewed offensives occur across the Andean front as Bolivian and Brazilian forces have fully rested and prepared themselves for further advances. The Bolivians advance towards Santiago with the aim of capturing the city and forcing terms on the Chilean government while towards the north the Brazilian army presses hard against their outnumbered Peruvian and Ecuadorian counterparts. The fighting is some of the most miserable in the entire war, with biting cold and dangerous falls being the backdrop of many harerained offensive schemes that include the likes of rigging whole mountain tops to explode while other soldiers concentrate into bloody conflicts for controls of the valleys and plateaus they can find. Ground is given neither lightly nor cheaply and every inch that Axis forces advance is written in their own blood, and by the time that winter arrives in earnest Axis forces have been bled of some seventy thousand men to the Comintern’s fifty nine thousand for glory of advancing fifty kilometers over three months.
March 29th: The battle of the Platine River Gulf commences as Admiral Rafael engages with his Comintern counterpart; Admiral Lola; the first female admiral in chilean if not world history (with the exception of Artemisa). The engagement proves to be largely indecisive, but as the Brazilian fleet slinks away; aircraft from the American carrier Enterprise; too late to join the battle proper; deal crippling damage to the Brazilian Battleship Caxias; forcing it to spend months in repair and leading the Brazilian navy to become increasingly less active in the war.
April 1st-13th: In the “April fool’s” strike, Brazilian forces find their advance frustrated by numerous light formations of Jeeps, Armoured Cars and Light tanks racing ahead of the Comintern’s armed forces to take out numerous key bridges allowing for the crossing of many minor rivers; greatly slowing down the Brazilian advance as it tries to advance in the face of heavy artillery fire from enemy enemy forces before the advance has to come to a halt in Colombia; leaving them “stuck in their homes of mud” as one commander quipped as Brazilian tanks struggled to extricate themselves from the mud before him. The Jeep fleet tactic is perfected in these engagements, where roving fleets of Jeeps would race to engage Axis forces; either mounted or dismounted and depending on their availability; would often roll alongside Armoured Cars and Light Tanks for added firepower; and would retreat long before serious retaliation could catch them.
April 14th: Salgado organizes a secret commission to determine the costs and benefits of using chemical weapons in the war to try and speed the Axis advance and secretly orders the increase in the usage of indentured labor to man the factories, mines, and refineries of the Axis in the face of the enormous production capabilities of America which was producing an unimaginable amount of military material as it moved into a total war footing. The Green Guard, eager to engage their communist foe more often, is given permission to start taking on increasing frontline roles; with many in the Integralist government seeing the paramilitary as a means to advance their own careers by offering to supply them with all the best equipment Brazil could create.
April 15th-August 19th: Operation Smash is launched from the Axis with the aim of breaking the Comintern's will in the Southern front of the war. The westernmost formation of Axis troops pivots towards Chile with the intent of seizing as much of the country as possible and dealing a crushing defeat to the Comintern in the Andean front. Chilean forces, forewarned by message intercepts by Comintern spy rings pivot to hold against the two pronged offensive from the North and the East. In what is widely regarded as Chile's darkest hour, much of the Northern half of the country cracks under the weight of the third army group even as they take heavy losses in the face of Chile's favorable defensive terrain. However a heroic defensive effort allows for the Chilean army to withdraw to consolidate its supply lines even in the face of giving up so much land to the Axis hordes to avoid letting the majority of the country's military become encircled and the enemy is stopped at the coastal city of Chanaral under threat of fire from the guns of the Chilean navy.
April 17th-August 31st: Operation Ten to One is launched by the Integralists in the hopes of driving the Argentines to the brink of annihilation as the first troops trained in the prior year (primarily in the southern fall season before the start of hostilities) start coming into service and arrive at the front; increasing the presence of the Brazilian army in the field. The operation's name is a reference to the numerical superiority of the Brazilian army in certain sectors of the front. Three new divisions of the Green Guard also enter service at this time to join in the offensive. The ferocity of the attack sees the Brazilian army seize most of the Platine river basin and thus the vital farmland of Argentina and the penetration of Integralist forces into Patagonia as they try to outrun the move of Argentine factories southwards; an effort that ultimately fails. Some one million integralist troops take part in this massive offensive, but logistical issues and the increasingly stiff defenses of the enemy (along with some freshly arrived mexican divisions and the one token Soviet division given to Argentina as a mark of Soviet-Argentine friendship in summer of 1939-1940 which had finished its acclimation training) start to see the offensive begin to crack under its own weight.
August 5th-31st: The Battle of the Colorado river rages as Argentine forces under General Cortes; having been driven southwards by the overwhelming force of the Brazilian push against them out of the Platine entirely; make a stand at the northern borders of Patagonia after having pushed some tentative thrusts over the river back, meeting the main Integralist push in a titanic struggle; the largest of the first year of the war. Some three hundred thousand troops on the comintern side hold the line against twice their number in Integralist attackers. With their backs to the River and the fate of South America possibly on the line, the Comintern sees off waves of enemy attacks which must struggle with being at the very end of their supply lines and interservice conflicts between the Green Guard and the Military Establishment. The Comintern gradually wins air superiority over its Axis counterparts in the battle; the furious furballs of fighters engaging overhead giving the cover needed for well dug in defenders to blunt the thrust of the enemy's advance and soften them up for a counterpush once the 3rd Argentine tank division arrives at the scene and causes the over-extended Brazilians' lines to finally snap, forcing them to retreat a healthy distance from the Colorado river. With a total of two hundred and thirty thousand dead on both sides (one hundred thousand dead; sixty thousand Axis to forty thousand Comintern; thirty thousand missing; twenty thousand axis to ten thousand comintern; and another hundred thousand wounded with seventy thousand axis to thirty thousand comintern) the battle is the deadliest so far in the history of either nations and has resulted in the destruction of much of the outdated equipment in the Brazilian military; destroying nearly every pre-integralist regime military asset commited to the southern Cone; with an attempted breakout from Buenos Aires leading to the cancelation of operation Ten to One.
September 1st-December 13th: Operation Big foot begins in an attempt to drive the Axis back farther in a series of heavy hitting counter attacks on all fronts. The mexican and central American nations are at this point fully mobilized and move against their Brazilian and Venezuelan counterparts to bolster the fortunes of Colombia; working to push the enemy farther back from the Panama canal as the Enterprise's carrier group thwarts attempted air attack on the important waterway. The Argentine army makes significant headway into the platine river basin; making usage of rapid maneuver tactics to try to overwhelm the "Clumsy maneuvers of the enemy beast" while the Chilean and Peruvian armies do their best to put the squeeze on the andean front in two directions; with Ecuador's military committing increasingly to trying to push the Bolivians and Brazilians back from their points of advance. Despite the apparent exhaustion of the enemy's advance they manage to recover enough strength to not only eventually grind the Comintern advance to a halt but launch a counter-counter offensive meant to regain the ground lost over the months of Communist assault. Within a month of the recapture of Bogata, Axis forces re-recapture the city with the commitment of additional and freshly raised brazilian divisions to the front who take advantage of the overextension of a number of Central American divisions who grew overconfident in their pushes against Venezuelan forces.
December 3rd-January 4th: In a rage at the city's defiance of his forces, Salgado orders the entire city of Bogata to be completely destroyed "in a manner so that if the world is seen from the heavens they will see Bogata burning", with the Green Guard carrying out much of the acts of destruction from the generous applications of incendiaries and explosives with the famous images of flamethrower teams setting fire to the National Capitol of the Columbian government (before it was leveled with demolition charges and artillery fire) to the liquidation of people in the city who refused to come peacefully. By the end of the destruction efforts no buildings of the city are left standing and the city's population; if not killed outright; has been deported for indentured labor in Axis countries. Aerial reconnaisance of the city by Comintern forces lead to the lament that "not a single brick has been left unbroken" by the end of the orgy of destruction that is widely compared to Nanking as the Brazilian and Venezuelan armies fall upon the city's long suffering people in a horrific orgy of loot and slaughter. All items of value that do not disappear into the pockets and rucksacks of the soldiers are quickly transferred to Venezuela and Brazil, including many cultural artifacts that have yet to be returned to this day by Brazil or were taken by Americuban forces later in the war.
December 14th: The second battle of the Platine river basin takes place as the Brazilian fleet meets with its comintern counterparts that are attempting to break the blockade around the city of Buenos Aires once and for all. While the aging dreadnought Amazonia is sunk, along with a heavy cruiser; two light crusiers and three destroyers; the Argentines lose the Rivadavia, two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, two destroyers, and two frigates; making the battle ultimately inconclusive. Many of the Sunk ships will be raised later; having been sunk in the very shallow waters of the River Basin.
December 13th-February 2nd: Little in the way of major advances are made on either side as the war settles into a months long meat grinder stage as both sides wage a brutal battle of attrition to try and advantage themselves in their planned future offensives. By now the pre-war formations have been joined by; and largely outnumbered by fresh troop formations called up since the beginning of the war and new soldiers throw themselves into the maelstrom of war. Some two and a half million casualties, two thirds of which have been civilians; have been produced in the first full year of the war and all economies are entering a total war stage as the leaders of each side recognize that this is likely to be a long and gruesome war. Drowned out in the violence taking place in China and in eastern Europe; the South American war is a war of ferocious savagery as the continent's war is as much a settling of national grievances from the prior century and prior regimes as it is a war of ideology.
December 31st: The Famous poem "río sangre" is composed by the Chilean soldier Hannah Diaz upon seeing the sight of a mountain stream stained red with the dead bodies of so many and most starkingly; the corpses of a village family just trying to get water before being gunned down by Brazilian soldiers before the battle started. This and other works inspired by the war do much to convince the world of the savagery of the Integralist army as the continent is torn apart by a war of a scale it has never seen before. Support for the integralists declines in Europe even in the face of trepidations regarding the advance of communism, and opposition figures in Britain and France such as Leon Blum, Churchill, and Attlee make statements condemning the "evil nature of the barbarian fascist regimes taking marching orders from a brutish little stick of a man who fancies himself the ruler of a continent" in the words of Churchill.
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