"...and directly led to the War for the Horn of Africa just a few years after WW2." WHAT THE HECK?? RuleBrittania is a raving loon, but he's not loony enough to pull an entire war out of his ass! Just WHAT happened? Can't be good.
The Great Crusade (Reds! Part 3)
- Thread starter Aelita
- Start date
Probably related to the Gulf of Aden, that's a good area right near Saudi Arabia, which has a lot of oil....
There was mention of a war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which serves as the analog to the Korean War. I'd show you the post, but the search function doesn't work on phones, apparently. Someone else might be able to.
I believe it is supposed to the equivalent of the Korean War and has been referenced a few times. Will be interesting to see how it pans out...
teg
It's been hinted at before. A rough equivalent to the Korean War with the UASR supporting the communist government in the part of Somalia it occupied against the British East African allies/colonies.
It's also not treated like a thing he made up, one person just gives the UASR narrative of it being a war to liberate the African horn from imperial domination.
MSTKing Reactionary Propaganda (in-universe)
(The following is in script format with MST3k comments from board members on a livestreaming site and was co-written with Jello Biafra)
5....4...3...2....1
KittehKommiteh: Does anyone do these countdowns unironically anymore?
Cesar Pedro: I really doubt it.
Bellicose Rooskie: That is a big negatory.
(Opening titles for "THE WORLD WAR AND YOU" appear; colourized by the makers of the DVD for the benefit of modern audiences, with a date showing the movie was made in February of 1941, old timey fanfare plays)
LeninsBeard: Oh sweet, they even put color in it.
RearAdmiralJinges: Can't let the new generations think colour wasn't invented yet now can we?
Mental Omega: Wow that crown looming over the title looks totally goofy.
RuleBritannia: It's majestic you yankee twit.
exoBiomechanist: Nope, totally fit for a goober
Otakitten: Hush, you're injuring his national pride. He might explode if we keep pushing him. :B
(In large letters, the companies that produced the Newsreel and financed it flash on the screen, including the Daily Mail and a number of anti-war conservative and outright fascist organizations and personas, with the Daily Telegraph in small, almost embarrassed to be there letters.)
Eiffel de Maroon: Ah Oswald Mosley you silly git.
RuleBritannia: Who let half the Soviet Homestuck fan mafia in here? Urgh.
RearAdmiralJingles: Keep that attitude up and I'll invite the whole bloody MSPA forum.
LordNemesis: Eh what?
DeOpresso Liber: It's after our generation.
Mental Omega: Ah the Torygraph, never change.
Admiral Sanders: I won't have you bad mouth the telegraph, it may be biased but its consistently factual. Now the Mail on the other hand...
FlibbertyGibbet: Don't get me started on the daily fail.
(The movie begins with the crack of cannon and the sudden roar of dramatic music as shouting can be heard in German, Italian, Portoguese, and Japanese, with sweeping shots of hordes of tanks pouring across the camera's field of view, followed by Half-tracks while air planes roar overhead. Explosions can be seen while Japanese officers shout orders before charging out of trench lines, and British Chimera tanks with Brazilian and Venezuelan symbols can be seen shooting at something in the distance.)
Narrator: War across three continents has erupted, placing the Empire of Japan, the German Reich, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Federation of Brazil and their allies against the Union of American Socialist Republics, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Republic of China and their own allies. A great clash of civilizations is taking place now in a war of a scale not seen since the great war. Though that had been a great struggle to contain Germany's imperialist ambitions and those of its allies, the Anti-Communist war waged by Germany and her allies now finds the Reich pitted in struggle against red colossi.
Otakitten: Woooow, self serving to the end huh?
Mental Omega: Behold our bold and glorious heroes.
RearAdmiralJingles: You can tell it's before Britain entered the war because they aren't trying to hide the obviously British tanks used by the Brazilians.
DeOpresso Liber: Ah yes, all the hurried rug sweeping that had to be done once it turned out that Britain would not be joining Germany, Brazil, and Japan in trying to take over the world today.
Otakitten: Not appearing in this film; the piles of the dead and dying civilians of the countries overrun.
LeninsBeard: Now that would just be contradicting the message!
(The clip now shows China, the Soviet Union, and America highlighted on the map, the Soviets having a purely red covering with the hammer and sickle at the center, America being Red and Black with its Hammer and Gear symbol, and China being red and blue with the sun disc symbol. The flags of the other, smaller communist countries also pop up, including Iran.)
Allende Fan: Gotta show everyone the spread of the red menace.
Mental Omega: FEAAAAR THEM!
Bellicose Rooskie: Harbingers of DOOOOOOM!
Admiral Sanders: It's not like they hadn't done quite a lot to receive a great deal of mistrust from the western European capitalist states mind you.
Narrator: See now how large this bloc is. This is the Communist Internationale. Though it had once been limited to the Soviet Union and Mongolia, it had grown, it had spread across the world and country after country would fall into its grip. An edifice of revolutionary tyranny that makes the works of Robespierre and Bonaparte before them pale in comparison to the new bywords of tyranny; Stalin and Foster.
(A series of images are shown of Robespierre, showing footage of a film about the terror, and then of Napoleon's armies on the march while "Chant du depart" is faintly heard in the distance)
Eiffel de Maroon: I wonder how the French felt about this.
Admiral Sanders: There were French newspapers that harpooned the newsreel for this scene in particular.
Zeppelin Overlord: I can't imagine why.
(Then it shows Stalin receiving a standing ovation from an RKKA meeting, shuffling around as he always does; then to Foster inspecting a new battleship)
The Red Dragon: Ah, showing the communists as being as militaristic as they can to try and scare the audience. Classic propaganda tactics.
Cesar Pedro: With how large the Soviet army and the American navy was most people had good reasons to be afraid.
Narrator: But whereas the revolutionaries of France were readers of such humanists as Voltaire and Locke, these new revolutionaries read from far more barbaric sources
(Excerpts from Voltaire and Locke's works are shown, and then out of context passages taken from various communist thinkers are shown to try and smear them as bloodthirsty murderers out to eat the rich.)
Otakitten: Aaaaaah! Watch it you'll poke out somebody's eye with that alarmism! <_<
Mental Omega: Whooaaaaa out of context quote time!
Title Card: The Liberation of South America
Narrator: On 22 June 1940, Brazilian Generalissimo Plinio Salgado set his armies forth to liberate the South American continent from the forces of International Communism. The stakes were high: he had to strike immediately to pre-empt Argentinian aggression, and take the fight to the Communists before they took it to him.
(Shots of the Brazilian Army on parade. Imported Matilda II tanks lead the columns, as Hawker Hurricanes fly overhead.)
RearAdmiralJingles: Of course, disregarding how the Argentine plans were at the time, to wait for American aided full industrialization before attempting any revolution in Brazil. But then, BuF favouring news reels are well known for being not entirely accurate.
LeninsBeard: Donchaknow that every war is a desperate defense against maniacal aggressors, especially if you’re the one who started it.
BellicoseRooskie: I’m going to bet that they’re going to talk about how the Brazilians used “mass support to mobilize large armies” instead of “a bunch of people who worked for maybe five dollars...a day if they were lucky, leaped at the chance to fight some people they were fed propaganda regarding how evil they were for five years for like, five times more money. Or just outright conscripted.”
Narrator: The fighting is brutal. The Argentinians are known for disregarding the laws of war, and murdering prisoners. Still, the brave Brazilian Army soldiers on with their fearless Uruguayan and Paraguayan allies. In a month of heavy fighting, they have secured half of Buenos Aires and much of the North in the country.
DeOppressoLiber: Understatement of the year there; the Brazilians traded 5:1 in the first month. Crossing rivers sucks, and the Argentine military was better organized.
Eiffel de Maroon: The great issue was always that the Argentine army could not defend its entire northern flank from a force that could afford that trade. Once the breaks in the line started forming, they were very hard to stop. Even if the Guayan-Brazilian armies took a sledgehammer approach to the issue they were meeting. (Buenos Aires under siege, the once pristine capital is now filled with the bombed up husks of buildings and streets filled with rubbles. Fires rage in many shots, and smoke fills the sky. Brazilian troops, clad in pristine green uniforms, converse and joke about. In one shot, a Brazilian officer gives part of his ration to a stray dog.)
RuleBritannia: Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, they had very fashionable uniforms.
Otakitten: Integralist Green goes very well with the red that will stain their uniforms when they’re shot by Guerros defending their homeland from a barking mad continental conqueror. ^u^;
Otakitten: Maybe not quite as good with the dusty grey of shells and bombs reducing skyscrapers and apartment blocs full of culture and people into dust clouds clinging to the faces of crying children. UvU.
Otakitten: Besides, if fashion sense excused war crimes, then greeks at an olympiad could do no wrong.
Mental Omega: Weren’t they naked?
Otakitten: Yesssh (◕‿◕✿)
(Scenes taken from Cameras mounted on the Brazilian Battleship Caxias; formerly the HMS Iron Duke, show the battleship opening fire on distant target alongside other Brazilian warships in the line of battle, then it firing at a city with impunity; then of Brazilian navy anti-aircraft guns shooting down an Argentine plane)
Narrator: Armed by the freedom loving peoples of the world, the Brazilian Navy has attained a status once enjoyed only by the established great powers, and has helped to chase the Argentine fleet out of its own waters following the battle of the Plate Estuary
RearAdmiralJingles: Not shown: the Caxias taking a torpedo and an AP bomb from the Enterprise air group, and being laid up for repairs until well after this news reel was published.
tenebrousGuile: Shit was an old 13.5 inch era BB pawned off as part of Britain and France’s post 1933 firesale of ships they felt weren’t modern enough anymore.
tenebrousGuile: Not like the old dinosaur would be able to protect itself very well against an air group instead of desperate revenge strikes.
Ubermunch: Lucky she didn’t sink outright from that. She had very little defense against modern weapons and plunging fire.
Mental Omega: I don’t think anyone was surprised when the British South Atlantic expeditionary Fleet essentially wiped out the parts of the Green Navy not handled by the Enterprise and the Chileans as easily as it did. Although the HMS Lion and HMS Excalibur facing the original three Brazilian dreadnoughts was just kicking puppies.
Title Card: The Liberation of China
(Japanese troops inspect the Forbidden Palace as they seize Beijing, Chiang Kai Shek shakes hands with his Japanese counterpart before signing a piece of paper presented. The IJN is seen sailing in full, very impressive display while Japanese soldiers follow in modern looking trucks, sometimes even halftracks, behind some tanks that show some lineage from Europe while aircraft bearing the distinctive “meatball” insignia fly in wide formation. Then a group of soldiers smile at the camera before shouting “Tenno Heika Banzai!” As the Camera cuts to modern looking cities in Japan’s colonies)
Narrator: Japan has ever been the Britain of the Orient. A guiding light of civilization and order in a continent that has often descended to anarchy and chaos. This order, which has developed Formosa, Korea, and many smaller Islands to standards befitting of a great power and has provided much of the same benefit to Manchuria, now advances into the ancient country itself.
Flibbertigibbet: Strangely no mention of the Rape of Nanjing.
RearAdmiralJingles: That awkward moment when your “guiding light” murders thirty million people and runs a system of mass rape by its soldiers.
The Red Dragon: Asiatic hordes in 3...2...1
Narrator: But to understand why we must first examine the facts about China and Japan. When we see China, we see a country that was at one point; great, a unified colossus that has remained a single civilization for nearly twice as long as the Roman Empire lived.
(Shows a reel of various pre-republican era chinese sites, all looking quite splendid; as well as some recreation footage of Imperial Era china.)
LeninsBeard: Only the dead can know peace from this ideology
Cesar Pedro: Well that’s just about the most disappointing/insulting glossing over of four thousand years of history I’ve ever seen.
Narrator: But following a disorganized and illegitimate revolution against China’s standing government in 1911, the already fractious conditions in China brought about by a series of poor emperors resulted in the complete disintegration of China; as its leader Sun Yat-Sen, sought to make a policy of leftist appeasement rather than one of strong, firm leadership. The result was decades of civil war and warlordism of greater barbarism than even our own middle ages.
(Footage of warlord era conflict is shown, explosions, gunfire, fleeing women and children, general strife and unpleasantry as well as squalor and desperation is all shown as he speaks, meant to present Sun Yat Sen in as bad a light as possible.)
KittehKommiteh: Intriguing how he leaves out Britain’s role in destabilizing the Qing imperium
Zeppelin Overlord: Opium Wars, Boxer Rebellion, Spheres of Influence; all just little things you know?
The Red Dragon: The 19th and early 20th century were essentially one great queue of disasters and embarrassments for China. Some certainly due to terrible decisions on the part of the Qing court, but Europe and America and Japan all had their parts in tearing China apart until it collapsed into anarchy. Britain was *certainly* one of the biggest culprits.
Lord Nemesis: I love how one can just squeeze a time period from the rise of Charlemagne to the fall of Constantinople under one cultural amorphous blob with such blitheness.
Allende Fan: Didn’t they flood China with Opium partly to destroy China’s social cohesion?
The Red Dragon: Correct, China’s history with European imported drugs is part of why the current Socialist Federation remains more skeptical of drug acceptance than the Soviet Union or certainly the American Republics.
Narrator: With Sun Yat Sen’s policy of working with the Chinese Communist Party, his support for internationalist socialism, and his ties to the ever greedy Soviet Union; China’s disintegration was guaranteed. And when the current bandit government in America took power, they undermined Chiang Kai-Shek who sought to purge his country of the communist plague by supporting factions of his party as well as the communist party who would eagerly sell China up a river for their masters to the north and across the pacific.
(Pictures of Chinese communists and KMT members speaking with Soviet and American leaders are shown, as well as American and Soviet people in what is identifiably China, followed by some footage of Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Jingwei; the footage smartly edited to make Wang look more sinister)
Narrator: Enter Japan, who twice forced by the chaotic conditions of China, would intervene and in both cases; brought good order, prosperity, and stability to China. First in Manchuria in 1931; provoked by Chinese bandits whom could not be controlled from Peking, then again at 1936 at the Marco Polo incident, which lead to Japan deciding that for the good of Asia; China must be brought under one stern government until the day would come that it could take a proper seat in the assembly of nations.(Shots of Chiang Kai-Shek meeting with his IJA counterparts in Nanjing.)
Narrator: That leader is Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, fervent anti-communist and patriotic Chinese leader. Firm in his desire to lead China away from the clutches of international communism, he leads Nationalist China in alliance with the Japanese to put down Wang led Comintern puppet regime in Chonqing.
The Red Dragon: A
Y
Y
L M A O
RuleBritannia: Weew Lad…
Otakitten: So patriotic he sold his country out to an army hellbent on raping and pillaging the country on a scale not seen since Temujin. ^_^;
LeninsBeard: I don’t know how much more I can take
Title Card: Germany’s War for Survival
(Long panning shot of what many would immediately recognize as the 1940 May Day Red Army parade in Moscow. Columns of Soviet troops and tanks march down Red Square.)
Narrator: May 1940. The German High Command has intelligence of imminent Soviet invasion. With the Reich’s future in jeopardy, Hitler orders an ambitious pre-emptive attack. Caught off guard, the Soviet frontier forces rout.(German propaganda footage of captured Soviet troops, beaten, hungry and demoralized, herded by the triumphant Germans.)
RearAdmiralJingles: Of course ignoring that Stalin rather famously had disagreements with the aggressive segments of the comintern who wanted a war with Germany quite soon; and at most wanted an Anglo-French/Germano-Italian war that would leave both sides exhausted and easy pickings. To the point he got his country’s voting privileges in the Comintern suspended over it.
RuleBrittania: Ugh, my stomach is starting to turn. Definite least favorite part of this era, the cheerleading of the Final Solution. Nine out of every ten of those captured soldiers will be worked to death.
LeninsBeard: This has become increasingly less fun as it goes.
DeOppressoLiber: They didn’t know the full extent of what was going on. But it really couldn’t be hidden. The Red Cross had complained about the treatment of POWs. They downplayed or suppressed anything that made the Germans appear anything less than angels.
Narrator: Germany, exultant with victory, begins its campaign to liberate Russia from the Bolshevik yoke. In Ukraine and White Russia, German troops were greeted as liberators. (German propaganda footage of grateful Ukrainian villages giving flowers to German soldiers)
tenebrousGuile: Of course, we’ll just pretend there was no ”commissar order” nor a Wehrmacht and Waffen SS unofficial policy of looking the other way when their soldiers captured female Communist soldiers and “showed them a woman’s proper place”. Or that wherever the Waffen SS, Wehrmacht, and the Axis minors went; the Einsatzgruppen or shit like the Iron Guard’s pogrom brigades followed. Oh and also a quarter of Byelorussia's population would not be coming home due to this war. Don't you just love bullshit? :^)
Mental Omega: The Axis Minors were very, very much not innocents dragged along into a war by the Germans. The homegrown fascist movements of most of these countries produced their own bevy of monsters. I’d say perhaps only Finland approached anything remotely resembling “acceptable” behavior. The worst were probably the Croats, Hungarians, and Romanians by far though. You would not be having a good time if you were LGBT, Roma, Jewish, Asiatic, or Disabled and Germany’s allies caught up to you, or Germany proper for that matter.
Narrator: The Americans rally to the aid of the Soviet gangsters, saving the beast from being put down in the Winter Campaign of 1940.
Mental Omega: The Axis logistical line would have snapped and broke if they tried to go all the way to Moscow in 1940. The materiel for an advance that far simply did not exist and though I am loathe to give him credit for anything, Hitler made the right call in calling off the advance and ordering Axis troops to hunker down where they were for the winter. (The film reel ends with a British War Department map, estimating the positions of the frontlines in the war.)
Bellicose Rooskie: Man where did Mosley’s bunch even get the funding for this shit?
Otakitten: Take four wild guesses. ;^u^; The fascist regimes of Brazil, Italy, Germany, and Japan were all very interested in trying to get Britain, France, and the other western European nations on their side. It was an effort that even succeeded in places like Sweden; resulting in the Swedish intervention in Operation Valkyrie and it produced some results in France to make the Petain-Bucard regime not like...100% completely hated. v_v
5....4...3...2....1
KittehKommiteh: Does anyone do these countdowns unironically anymore?
Cesar Pedro: I really doubt it.
Bellicose Rooskie: That is a big negatory.
(Opening titles for "THE WORLD WAR AND YOU" appear; colourized by the makers of the DVD for the benefit of modern audiences, with a date showing the movie was made in February of 1941, old timey fanfare plays)
LeninsBeard: Oh sweet, they even put color in it.
RearAdmiralJinges: Can't let the new generations think colour wasn't invented yet now can we?
Mental Omega: Wow that crown looming over the title looks totally goofy.
RuleBritannia: It's majestic you yankee twit.
exoBiomechanist: Nope, totally fit for a goober
Otakitten: Hush, you're injuring his national pride. He might explode if we keep pushing him. :B
(In large letters, the companies that produced the Newsreel and financed it flash on the screen, including the Daily Mail and a number of anti-war conservative and outright fascist organizations and personas, with the Daily Telegraph in small, almost embarrassed to be there letters.)
Eiffel de Maroon: Ah Oswald Mosley you silly git.
RuleBritannia: Who let half the Soviet Homestuck fan mafia in here? Urgh.
RearAdmiralJingles: Keep that attitude up and I'll invite the whole bloody MSPA forum.
LordNemesis: Eh what?
DeOpresso Liber: It's after our generation.
Mental Omega: Ah the Torygraph, never change.
Admiral Sanders: I won't have you bad mouth the telegraph, it may be biased but its consistently factual. Now the Mail on the other hand...
FlibbertyGibbet: Don't get me started on the daily fail.
(The movie begins with the crack of cannon and the sudden roar of dramatic music as shouting can be heard in German, Italian, Portoguese, and Japanese, with sweeping shots of hordes of tanks pouring across the camera's field of view, followed by Half-tracks while air planes roar overhead. Explosions can be seen while Japanese officers shout orders before charging out of trench lines, and British Chimera tanks with Brazilian and Venezuelan symbols can be seen shooting at something in the distance.)
Narrator: War across three continents has erupted, placing the Empire of Japan, the German Reich, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Federation of Brazil and their allies against the Union of American Socialist Republics, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Republic of China and their own allies. A great clash of civilizations is taking place now in a war of a scale not seen since the great war. Though that had been a great struggle to contain Germany's imperialist ambitions and those of its allies, the Anti-Communist war waged by Germany and her allies now finds the Reich pitted in struggle against red colossi.
Otakitten: Woooow, self serving to the end huh?
Mental Omega: Behold our bold and glorious heroes.
RearAdmiralJingles: You can tell it's before Britain entered the war because they aren't trying to hide the obviously British tanks used by the Brazilians.
DeOpresso Liber: Ah yes, all the hurried rug sweeping that had to be done once it turned out that Britain would not be joining Germany, Brazil, and Japan in trying to take over the world today.
Otakitten: Not appearing in this film; the piles of the dead and dying civilians of the countries overrun.
LeninsBeard: Now that would just be contradicting the message!
(The clip now shows China, the Soviet Union, and America highlighted on the map, the Soviets having a purely red covering with the hammer and sickle at the center, America being Red and Black with its Hammer and Gear symbol, and China being red and blue with the sun disc symbol. The flags of the other, smaller communist countries also pop up, including Iran.)
Allende Fan: Gotta show everyone the spread of the red menace.
Mental Omega: FEAAAAR THEM!
Bellicose Rooskie: Harbingers of DOOOOOOM!
Admiral Sanders: It's not like they hadn't done quite a lot to receive a great deal of mistrust from the western European capitalist states mind you.
Narrator: See now how large this bloc is. This is the Communist Internationale. Though it had once been limited to the Soviet Union and Mongolia, it had grown, it had spread across the world and country after country would fall into its grip. An edifice of revolutionary tyranny that makes the works of Robespierre and Bonaparte before them pale in comparison to the new bywords of tyranny; Stalin and Foster.
(A series of images are shown of Robespierre, showing footage of a film about the terror, and then of Napoleon's armies on the march while "Chant du depart" is faintly heard in the distance)
Eiffel de Maroon: I wonder how the French felt about this.
Admiral Sanders: There were French newspapers that harpooned the newsreel for this scene in particular.
Zeppelin Overlord: I can't imagine why.
(Then it shows Stalin receiving a standing ovation from an RKKA meeting, shuffling around as he always does; then to Foster inspecting a new battleship)
The Red Dragon: Ah, showing the communists as being as militaristic as they can to try and scare the audience. Classic propaganda tactics.
Cesar Pedro: With how large the Soviet army and the American navy was most people had good reasons to be afraid.
Narrator: But whereas the revolutionaries of France were readers of such humanists as Voltaire and Locke, these new revolutionaries read from far more barbaric sources
(Excerpts from Voltaire and Locke's works are shown, and then out of context passages taken from various communist thinkers are shown to try and smear them as bloodthirsty murderers out to eat the rich.)
Otakitten: Aaaaaah! Watch it you'll poke out somebody's eye with that alarmism! <_<
Mental Omega: Whooaaaaa out of context quote time!
Title Card: The Liberation of South America
Narrator: On 22 June 1940, Brazilian Generalissimo Plinio Salgado set his armies forth to liberate the South American continent from the forces of International Communism. The stakes were high: he had to strike immediately to pre-empt Argentinian aggression, and take the fight to the Communists before they took it to him.
(Shots of the Brazilian Army on parade. Imported Matilda II tanks lead the columns, as Hawker Hurricanes fly overhead.)
RearAdmiralJingles: Of course, disregarding how the Argentine plans were at the time, to wait for American aided full industrialization before attempting any revolution in Brazil. But then, BuF favouring news reels are well known for being not entirely accurate.
LeninsBeard: Donchaknow that every war is a desperate defense against maniacal aggressors, especially if you’re the one who started it.
BellicoseRooskie: I’m going to bet that they’re going to talk about how the Brazilians used “mass support to mobilize large armies” instead of “a bunch of people who worked for maybe five dollars...a day if they were lucky, leaped at the chance to fight some people they were fed propaganda regarding how evil they were for five years for like, five times more money. Or just outright conscripted.”
Narrator: The fighting is brutal. The Argentinians are known for disregarding the laws of war, and murdering prisoners. Still, the brave Brazilian Army soldiers on with their fearless Uruguayan and Paraguayan allies. In a month of heavy fighting, they have secured half of Buenos Aires and much of the North in the country.
DeOppressoLiber: Understatement of the year there; the Brazilians traded 5:1 in the first month. Crossing rivers sucks, and the Argentine military was better organized.
Eiffel de Maroon: The great issue was always that the Argentine army could not defend its entire northern flank from a force that could afford that trade. Once the breaks in the line started forming, they were very hard to stop. Even if the Guayan-Brazilian armies took a sledgehammer approach to the issue they were meeting. (Buenos Aires under siege, the once pristine capital is now filled with the bombed up husks of buildings and streets filled with rubbles. Fires rage in many shots, and smoke fills the sky. Brazilian troops, clad in pristine green uniforms, converse and joke about. In one shot, a Brazilian officer gives part of his ration to a stray dog.)
RuleBritannia: Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, they had very fashionable uniforms.
Otakitten: Integralist Green goes very well with the red that will stain their uniforms when they’re shot by Guerros defending their homeland from a barking mad continental conqueror. ^u^;
Otakitten: Maybe not quite as good with the dusty grey of shells and bombs reducing skyscrapers and apartment blocs full of culture and people into dust clouds clinging to the faces of crying children. UvU.
Otakitten: Besides, if fashion sense excused war crimes, then greeks at an olympiad could do no wrong.
Mental Omega: Weren’t they naked?
Otakitten: Yesssh (◕‿◕✿)
(Scenes taken from Cameras mounted on the Brazilian Battleship Caxias; formerly the HMS Iron Duke, show the battleship opening fire on distant target alongside other Brazilian warships in the line of battle, then it firing at a city with impunity; then of Brazilian navy anti-aircraft guns shooting down an Argentine plane)
Narrator: Armed by the freedom loving peoples of the world, the Brazilian Navy has attained a status once enjoyed only by the established great powers, and has helped to chase the Argentine fleet out of its own waters following the battle of the Plate Estuary
RearAdmiralJingles: Not shown: the Caxias taking a torpedo and an AP bomb from the Enterprise air group, and being laid up for repairs until well after this news reel was published.
tenebrousGuile: Shit was an old 13.5 inch era BB pawned off as part of Britain and France’s post 1933 firesale of ships they felt weren’t modern enough anymore.
tenebrousGuile: Not like the old dinosaur would be able to protect itself very well against an air group instead of desperate revenge strikes.
Ubermunch: Lucky she didn’t sink outright from that. She had very little defense against modern weapons and plunging fire.
Mental Omega: I don’t think anyone was surprised when the British South Atlantic expeditionary Fleet essentially wiped out the parts of the Green Navy not handled by the Enterprise and the Chileans as easily as it did. Although the HMS Lion and HMS Excalibur facing the original three Brazilian dreadnoughts was just kicking puppies.
Title Card: The Liberation of China
(Japanese troops inspect the Forbidden Palace as they seize Beijing, Chiang Kai Shek shakes hands with his Japanese counterpart before signing a piece of paper presented. The IJN is seen sailing in full, very impressive display while Japanese soldiers follow in modern looking trucks, sometimes even halftracks, behind some tanks that show some lineage from Europe while aircraft bearing the distinctive “meatball” insignia fly in wide formation. Then a group of soldiers smile at the camera before shouting “Tenno Heika Banzai!” As the Camera cuts to modern looking cities in Japan’s colonies)
Narrator: Japan has ever been the Britain of the Orient. A guiding light of civilization and order in a continent that has often descended to anarchy and chaos. This order, which has developed Formosa, Korea, and many smaller Islands to standards befitting of a great power and has provided much of the same benefit to Manchuria, now advances into the ancient country itself.
Flibbertigibbet: Strangely no mention of the Rape of Nanjing.
RearAdmiralJingles: That awkward moment when your “guiding light” murders thirty million people and runs a system of mass rape by its soldiers.
The Red Dragon: Asiatic hordes in 3...2...1
Narrator: But to understand why we must first examine the facts about China and Japan. When we see China, we see a country that was at one point; great, a unified colossus that has remained a single civilization for nearly twice as long as the Roman Empire lived.
(Shows a reel of various pre-republican era chinese sites, all looking quite splendid; as well as some recreation footage of Imperial Era china.)
LeninsBeard: Only the dead can know peace from this ideology
Cesar Pedro: Well that’s just about the most disappointing/insulting glossing over of four thousand years of history I’ve ever seen.
Narrator: But following a disorganized and illegitimate revolution against China’s standing government in 1911, the already fractious conditions in China brought about by a series of poor emperors resulted in the complete disintegration of China; as its leader Sun Yat-Sen, sought to make a policy of leftist appeasement rather than one of strong, firm leadership. The result was decades of civil war and warlordism of greater barbarism than even our own middle ages.
(Footage of warlord era conflict is shown, explosions, gunfire, fleeing women and children, general strife and unpleasantry as well as squalor and desperation is all shown as he speaks, meant to present Sun Yat Sen in as bad a light as possible.)
KittehKommiteh: Intriguing how he leaves out Britain’s role in destabilizing the Qing imperium
Zeppelin Overlord: Opium Wars, Boxer Rebellion, Spheres of Influence; all just little things you know?
The Red Dragon: The 19th and early 20th century were essentially one great queue of disasters and embarrassments for China. Some certainly due to terrible decisions on the part of the Qing court, but Europe and America and Japan all had their parts in tearing China apart until it collapsed into anarchy. Britain was *certainly* one of the biggest culprits.
Lord Nemesis: I love how one can just squeeze a time period from the rise of Charlemagne to the fall of Constantinople under one cultural amorphous blob with such blitheness.
Allende Fan: Didn’t they flood China with Opium partly to destroy China’s social cohesion?
The Red Dragon: Correct, China’s history with European imported drugs is part of why the current Socialist Federation remains more skeptical of drug acceptance than the Soviet Union or certainly the American Republics.
Narrator: With Sun Yat Sen’s policy of working with the Chinese Communist Party, his support for internationalist socialism, and his ties to the ever greedy Soviet Union; China’s disintegration was guaranteed. And when the current bandit government in America took power, they undermined Chiang Kai-Shek who sought to purge his country of the communist plague by supporting factions of his party as well as the communist party who would eagerly sell China up a river for their masters to the north and across the pacific.
(Pictures of Chinese communists and KMT members speaking with Soviet and American leaders are shown, as well as American and Soviet people in what is identifiably China, followed by some footage of Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Jingwei; the footage smartly edited to make Wang look more sinister)
Narrator: Enter Japan, who twice forced by the chaotic conditions of China, would intervene and in both cases; brought good order, prosperity, and stability to China. First in Manchuria in 1931; provoked by Chinese bandits whom could not be controlled from Peking, then again at 1936 at the Marco Polo incident, which lead to Japan deciding that for the good of Asia; China must be brought under one stern government until the day would come that it could take a proper seat in the assembly of nations.(Shots of Chiang Kai-Shek meeting with his IJA counterparts in Nanjing.)
Narrator: That leader is Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, fervent anti-communist and patriotic Chinese leader. Firm in his desire to lead China away from the clutches of international communism, he leads Nationalist China in alliance with the Japanese to put down Wang led Comintern puppet regime in Chonqing.
The Red Dragon: A
Y
Y
L M A O
RuleBritannia: Weew Lad…
Otakitten: So patriotic he sold his country out to an army hellbent on raping and pillaging the country on a scale not seen since Temujin. ^_^;
LeninsBeard: I don’t know how much more I can take
Title Card: Germany’s War for Survival
(Long panning shot of what many would immediately recognize as the 1940 May Day Red Army parade in Moscow. Columns of Soviet troops and tanks march down Red Square.)
Narrator: May 1940. The German High Command has intelligence of imminent Soviet invasion. With the Reich’s future in jeopardy, Hitler orders an ambitious pre-emptive attack. Caught off guard, the Soviet frontier forces rout.(German propaganda footage of captured Soviet troops, beaten, hungry and demoralized, herded by the triumphant Germans.)
RearAdmiralJingles: Of course ignoring that Stalin rather famously had disagreements with the aggressive segments of the comintern who wanted a war with Germany quite soon; and at most wanted an Anglo-French/Germano-Italian war that would leave both sides exhausted and easy pickings. To the point he got his country’s voting privileges in the Comintern suspended over it.
RuleBrittania: Ugh, my stomach is starting to turn. Definite least favorite part of this era, the cheerleading of the Final Solution. Nine out of every ten of those captured soldiers will be worked to death.
LeninsBeard: This has become increasingly less fun as it goes.
DeOppressoLiber: They didn’t know the full extent of what was going on. But it really couldn’t be hidden. The Red Cross had complained about the treatment of POWs. They downplayed or suppressed anything that made the Germans appear anything less than angels.
Narrator: Germany, exultant with victory, begins its campaign to liberate Russia from the Bolshevik yoke. In Ukraine and White Russia, German troops were greeted as liberators. (German propaganda footage of grateful Ukrainian villages giving flowers to German soldiers)
tenebrousGuile: Of course, we’ll just pretend there was no ”commissar order” nor a Wehrmacht and Waffen SS unofficial policy of looking the other way when their soldiers captured female Communist soldiers and “showed them a woman’s proper place”. Or that wherever the Waffen SS, Wehrmacht, and the Axis minors went; the Einsatzgruppen or shit like the Iron Guard’s pogrom brigades followed. Oh and also a quarter of Byelorussia's population would not be coming home due to this war. Don't you just love bullshit? :^)
Mental Omega: The Axis Minors were very, very much not innocents dragged along into a war by the Germans. The homegrown fascist movements of most of these countries produced their own bevy of monsters. I’d say perhaps only Finland approached anything remotely resembling “acceptable” behavior. The worst were probably the Croats, Hungarians, and Romanians by far though. You would not be having a good time if you were LGBT, Roma, Jewish, Asiatic, or Disabled and Germany’s allies caught up to you, or Germany proper for that matter.
Narrator: The Americans rally to the aid of the Soviet gangsters, saving the beast from being put down in the Winter Campaign of 1940.
Mental Omega: The Axis logistical line would have snapped and broke if they tried to go all the way to Moscow in 1940. The materiel for an advance that far simply did not exist and though I am loathe to give him credit for anything, Hitler made the right call in calling off the advance and ordering Axis troops to hunker down where they were for the winter. (The film reel ends with a British War Department map, estimating the positions of the frontlines in the war.)
Bellicose Rooskie: Man where did Mosley’s bunch even get the funding for this shit?
Otakitten: Take four wild guesses. ;^u^; The fascist regimes of Brazil, Italy, Germany, and Japan were all very interested in trying to get Britain, France, and the other western European nations on their side. It was an effort that even succeeded in places like Sweden; resulting in the Swedish intervention in Operation Valkyrie and it produced some results in France to make the Petain-Bucard regime not like...100% completely hated. v_v
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I like the foreshadowing an earlier Cold War conflict in the Horn of Africa.
I wonder if the Soviet Philippines idea is still alive, or if my country is simply going to be sold by the liberating Americans to the FBU. It's possible that the Philippines can go Red over the course of the early Cold War.
Who is replacing the role of General McArthur in the Philippine front ITTL? Will there be analogues to the Siege of Bataan? And the Quezon government is going to stay in Sydney ITTL right? Will there be a collaboration government to be lead by Laurel? Quezon specifically chose the inner circle of the collaboration government, since he hopes that the "collaborators" can lessen the impact of the Japanese invasion on the masses until the liberation comes in.
Admiral Sanders seems to be the perfect right-winger in a future communist FBU. But it can't be helped that in studying developmental economics, political economy, sociology that you are going to encounter Marx or Proudhon. Even in evolutionary science, you encounter Kropotkin. And if Noam Chomsky is doing fine ITTL, you are going to see him in linguistics, cognitive science, etc. Man, communism is everywhere in higher education. Hahaha. I can sense why Objectivism is going to be promoted, especially to those with strong anti-communist filters in their minds. It is sort of the perfect anti-communist materialist philosophy that can be used to prevent the creation of too many communists. Objectivism is going to balanced by Christian social teaching on the religious end of the spectrum or Hindu nationalism, etc. The more religious ITTL might be horrified to embrace Objectivism (unlike the US Christian Right IOTL) but the more atheistic can. I'm not sure.
I wonder if the Soviet Philippines idea is still alive, or if my country is simply going to be sold by the liberating Americans to the FBU. It's possible that the Philippines can go Red over the course of the early Cold War.
Who is replacing the role of General McArthur in the Philippine front ITTL? Will there be analogues to the Siege of Bataan? And the Quezon government is going to stay in Sydney ITTL right? Will there be a collaboration government to be lead by Laurel? Quezon specifically chose the inner circle of the collaboration government, since he hopes that the "collaborators" can lessen the impact of the Japanese invasion on the masses until the liberation comes in.
Admiral Sanders seems to be the perfect right-winger in a future communist FBU. But it can't be helped that in studying developmental economics, political economy, sociology that you are going to encounter Marx or Proudhon. Even in evolutionary science, you encounter Kropotkin. And if Noam Chomsky is doing fine ITTL, you are going to see him in linguistics, cognitive science, etc. Man, communism is everywhere in higher education. Hahaha.
I can sense why Objectivism is going to be promoted, especially to those with strong anti-communist filters in their minds. It is sort of the perfect anti-communist materialist philosophy that can be used to prevent the creation of too many communists. Objectivism is going to balanced by Christian social teaching on the religious end of the spectrum or Hindu nationalism, etc. The more religious ITTL might be horrified to embrace Objectivism (unlike the US Christian Right IOTL) but the more atheistic can. I'm not sure......Ok, just WHAT Happened to Homestuck and MSPA in general in TTL that leads to it becoming such flame bait as to become a legitimate weapon to threaten RuleBrittania With? Must be interesting.
It's more an artifact of the font.
Fandoms gonna fandom. Plus the Homestuck fandom even IOTL leans heavily towards the Social Justice left.
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Chiang Kai-Shek leading TTL's collaborators in the 2nd Sino-Japanese war isn't the least bit surprising - if anything, it's Wang Jingwei's loyalty to China that's a bit harder to believe. Maybe a post similar to the earlier bits detailing Henry Ford's Nazi years could be written up about Chiang.
I assume that TTL's AH.com has had an analogue to our site's Pony Wars which were instead centered around Homestuck.
I assume that TTL's AH.com has had an analogue to our site's Pony Wars which were instead centered around Homestuck.
Mental Omega, Otakitten, tenebrousGuile, and Bellicose Rooskie are known for brigading where arguing with one inevitably draws the other three (and four more as of yet unrevealed AHers); and because they're all of the same age group (all being IRL friends) and all are known as Homestuck fans and are from the USSR; they are known as the Soviet Homestuck Teen Mafia.
They clash a lot with RuleBrittania who came to bemoan the Homestuck fandom as a whole (not the least because it's generation Z heavy fanbase tends to be of the identity politicking far left) because of repeatedly being dragged into arguments with multiple people.
I am also curious of the fate of Chinese Trotskyism and Chen Dixiu, as well as the Mao faction of the party. Obviously, we also have the Indo-Chinese Trotskyists. I wonder if Ho Chi Minh tilts Zapatismo here.
I can see Chen playing a role in the Sovietization of the Republic of China. It seems to me that Soviet-American money amidst the conditions of war is going to tilt the Chinese economy towards nationalizations and building of cooperatives that soon overwhelms the remnant capitalist class. Chungking is going to look so different. I can also see how this is going to help the industrialization of the western portion of China to lessen East-West inequality gap that I believe exists at this time, only to made worse by the Deng reforms IOTL.
The Philippine campaign was a prestige project by MacArthur and largely a waste of the Allies' time meant to fuel the titanic ego of America's least likeable general. It was unnecessary for the goal of an eventual attack on Japan and without MacArthur the Comintern may just bypass the place completely. Once the IJN is largely trashed the Allies (here distinct from the Comintern) can sweep into Indonesia and the Phillipines pretty easily while the comintern fights the battles that actually matter to ending the war like Formosa, the Kurils, Hokkaido, Sakhalin, Okinawa, and other battles to put them in range of Japan for Damocles.I like the foreshadowing an earlier Cold War conflict in the Horn of Africa.
I wonder if the Soviet Philippines idea is still alive, or if my country is simply going to be sold by the liberating Americans to the FBU. It's possible that the Philippines can go Red over the course of the early Cold War.
Who is replacing the role of General McArthur in the Philippine front ITTL? Will there be analogues to the Siege of Bataan? And the Quezon government is going to stay in Sydney ITTL right? Will there be a collaboration government to be lead by Laurel? Quezon specifically chose the inner circle of the collaboration government, since he hopes that the "collaborators" can lessen the impact of the Japanese invasion on the masses until the liberation comes in.
Admiral Sanders seems to be the perfect right-winger in a future communist FBU. But it can't be helped that in studying developmental economics, political economy, sociology that you are going to encounter Marx or Proudhon. Even in evolutionary science, you encounter Kropotkin. And if Noam Chomsky is doing fine ITTL, you are going to see him in linguistics, cognitive science, etc. Man, communism is everywhere in higher education. Hahaha.
Don Basin Counteroffensive: Winter 1942
Operation Thrush: The Don Basin Counteroffensive, January – March 1942
With the Wehrmacht reeling after the Battle of Moscow, the Comintern leadership pushed for immediate extensions of the victory along the frontline. While Molotov had ascended to General Secretary of the CPSU, it became immediately clear to all but the most casual observers that power balance had dramatically shifted. The shake-up of leadership was signaled by the formation of an American-style Revolutionary Military Committee, with politically trustworthy RKKA officers ascending in influence within the party.
Marshal Frunze shared Stalin’s offensive bias, but was much more measured in his application. Rather than attempt a general theater-wide counteroffensive, Frunze’s strategy was to focus resources in a single strategic sector while preparing, if possible, for attacks of opportunity in other sectors. The strategy would be a rolling offensive; a successful offensive in one sector would force the diversion of forces to contain it, enabling a second offensive to exploit weakened sectors.
Initial plans began in early December for an Operation Kite, which would break the Siege of Leningrad. But when the first reliable stream of Enigma intercepts began filtering into Stavka HQ that month, Frunze was forced to immediately reconsider. Army Group South was at a greater strength than previous reconnaissance had suggested. Furthermore, it was preparing for its own offensive to push the Comintern army back across the Volga and flood south into the Caucasus.
Frunze settled on beating the Germans to the punch, pushing the Germans back before they could complete preparations for their spring offensive. He assigned General of the Army Zhukov to serve as the Stavka representative of the three fronts assigned to the operation. The order of battle is as follows:
They faced an Axis force of comparable fighting power. In anticipation for the coming campaign, Army Group South was being divided in two; Army Group Volga and Army Group Caucasus. Their respective strategic aims were coded into their names: Army Group Volga would be preparing to take Stalingrad and drive through to the Caspian Sea while Army Group Caucasus would drive south to Baku.
Due to the disposition of forces, Operation Thrush would be directed primarily at Army Group Volga. The German order of battle was as follows:
As the commander of the Stalingrad Front, Patton’s troops would carry the bulk of the battle. Zhukov’s operational plan was bold; the Stalingrad front would attack southwest from the Don River staging points, cleaving between 6. Panzer Armee and the 8th Italian Army. While the 9th Tank Army pushed along that frontage, the 22nd and 66th Armies would strike directly at 6. Panzer. To the south, the Southwestern Front would make supporting attacks against the 2nd Rumanian Army, while the Saratov Front attacked almost due south towards the Donets and Rostov.
Thus the plan would be for the Southwestern Front trap the Axis against the south bend of the Don River like an anvil, while the Saratov and Stalingrad fronts hammered into their troops in a brutal battle of attrition.
The timing was absolutely crucial. It was generally only known to the front level commanders and the Stavka delegations that the balance of forces would likely start to reverse after February. Foreign intelligence had gathered an inkling of German strategic plans in the west and had assumed the worst. At best, France would be knocked out of the war quickly by a rightist fifth column. At the worst, France would be an Axis member. This meant that up to 1.1 million German troops could be pulled to the Central theater by summer; they would be fresh, well trained and well equipped.
The offensive began on the 5th of January. Following a twenty-minute barrage by three front’s worth of artillery, including massed Katyusha rocket fire, the lead elements of the Saratov and Stalingrad fronts began their attacks. The Germans had been fortifying since they’d reached their stopping points last October. Pioneers worked dutifully in the early morning hours to clear obstacles and mines while the assault guns pounded away at earthworks.
The Army Air Forces had begun to deploy a new toy on their A-14 and Il-2 attackers: hollow-charge warhead cluster bombs and rockets. Though limited in availability, they significantly increased the lethality of direct attacks on enemy armor, which were generally quite resilient. Air-ground coordination had improved significantly since the last campaign, and the Soviets had finally amassed a good crop of division level officers and a backbone of NCOs for their units.
While the Soviets had dramatically closed the gap with their American allies, victory was not in the cards for Operation Thrush. Previous Comintern victories such as the crushing crackback in the Battle of Moscow had been won against worn out, understrength and overstretched German units. In Operation Thrush, the Comintern would strike at a relatively well dug in and supplied enemy.
While maskirovka had concealed Comintern intentions in the sector, the German military leadership reacted quickly to the attack. The surprise and shock advantage lasted perhaps a day in most sectors, though longer against the minor Axis allies. Manstein quickly coordinated counterattacks, moved up reserves, and blocked Rokossovsky and Patton’s spearheads.
A battle in three dimensions would rage across Don basin for two months. The Germans would fight as conservatively as they could, while the Comintern sought to maximize the level of attrition suffered by their enemies. This meant a savage expenditure of human life made bearable only because the frontline was inching backwards, and they were giving the Germans for the first time in the war no easy excuses for the losses they suffered. Stavka fed more reserves of men and materiel into the operation as it progressed, as the Germans were inched backwards to the bridgheads of the Donets river.
In the rear area, the Comintern made every effort possible to evacute the populations of liberated towns and villages. The roads soon became choked with civilians waiting to hitch a ride on the relay of military trunks. Many thousands were killed in deliberate terror attacks by the Luftwaffe. Such savage displays by the thoroughly Nazified Luftwaffe, along with all too common instances of German pilots machine gunning their opponents after they had bailed out, resulted in vicious reprisals, often against the orders of commanders and political commissars. The policy was not done out of humanitarian concerns; captured pilots were often excellent sources of intelligence if it could be pried out of them.
A little over a month into the operation, the offensives began to lose steam. Reserves had been used up, and the stream of replacements were not up to the task. While the Comintern was churning through equipment at a staggering rate, this was much more easily replaced than the trained pilots, tankers or infantrymen that wielded them. Worse, the news was starting to confirm Stavka’s worst fears.
After a heated argument at the Stalingrad Front HQ, during which Zhukov and Patton nearly came to blows, an agreement was finally reached. Patton wanted to continue the push in his sector; even using conservative estimates of claimed destruction of enemy materiel and men, the exchange ratios were still positive according to revolutionary warfare doctrine’s military calculus. The Comintern may have been losing more men and materiel, but the rate of German losses were exceeding sustainable attrition levels, while Comintern attrition levels were still within a comfortable margin. After some vodka, the two pugnacious officers worked out their personal problems, and agreed to continue the attack until 15 March. Weather forecasts predicted thawing soon after, and the spring rasputitsa would give time to prepare for the expected summer onslaught.
The battle continued, and Manstein continued to bend before he broke. They dug their heels in stubbornly whenever possible, and gave a little bit of ground if necessary. It was enough to keep Hitler’s frustration down to a dull roar.
When the offensive operation ceased on the 15th, the Stalingrad and Saratov fronts made a minor tactical retreat, averaging 15 to 20 kilometers, selecting superior defensive ground for the next campaign season. They’d pushed the German vanguard back almost 200 kilometers, from the Don back to the Donets, but had made no deep exploitations. The Germans still occupied the east bank of the Donets.
The casualties in the campaign were immense. The Comintern suffered nearly 600,000 killed, wounded or captured. Some 3500 tanks, 5500 artillery pieces, and 990 combat aircraft. German casualties were considerable as well; 347,000 killed or missing. In terms of materiel, 1400 tanks, 2900 artillery pieces and 940 combat aircraft were lost.
Significantly, at the end of the campaign, in spite of the greater losses the Comintern had increased the disparity of forces in the theater in their favor. German frontline divisions were exhausted, reserves of spare parts and ammunition were at critical levels, and some of the Panzer divisions had no working tanks in their inventory. Losses exceeded the rate of resupply; much of the difference had come by “borrowing” tanks, artillery and aircraft from Army Group Caucasus’ inventory.
* Denotes fictional person
With the Wehrmacht reeling after the Battle of Moscow, the Comintern leadership pushed for immediate extensions of the victory along the frontline. While Molotov had ascended to General Secretary of the CPSU, it became immediately clear to all but the most casual observers that power balance had dramatically shifted. The shake-up of leadership was signaled by the formation of an American-style Revolutionary Military Committee, with politically trustworthy RKKA officers ascending in influence within the party.
Marshal Frunze shared Stalin’s offensive bias, but was much more measured in his application. Rather than attempt a general theater-wide counteroffensive, Frunze’s strategy was to focus resources in a single strategic sector while preparing, if possible, for attacks of opportunity in other sectors. The strategy would be a rolling offensive; a successful offensive in one sector would force the diversion of forces to contain it, enabling a second offensive to exploit weakened sectors.
Initial plans began in early December for an Operation Kite, which would break the Siege of Leningrad. But when the first reliable stream of Enigma intercepts began filtering into Stavka HQ that month, Frunze was forced to immediately reconsider. Army Group South was at a greater strength than previous reconnaissance had suggested. Furthermore, it was preparing for its own offensive to push the Comintern army back across the Volga and flood south into the Caucasus.
Frunze settled on beating the Germans to the punch, pushing the Germans back before they could complete preparations for their spring offensive. He assigned General of the Army Zhukov to serve as the Stavka representative of the three fronts assigned to the operation. The order of battle is as follows:
- Saratov Front: General Konstantin Rokossovsky
- 8th Air Army: Lt. General James Doolittle
- V and IX Tactical Aviation Corps
- 15th Army: General F.S. Kollontai*
- Rifle Divisions: 41st, 62nd, 88th
- Grenadier Divisions: 1st, 4th Guards
- Tank Divisions: 7th
- 41st Army: Lt. General S.D. Dragunov*
- Rifle Divisions: 17th Guards, 99th, 114th, 140th
- Grenadier Divisions: 3rd
- Tank Brigades: 44th, 80th
- Special Brigades: 11th
- Rifle Divisions: 17th Guards, 99th, 114th, 140th
- Front Reserve: 7th Guards Rifle Division, 85th Tank Brigade
- 8th Air Army: Lt. General James Doolittle
- Stalingrad Front: General of the Army George S. Patton
- 4th Air Army: Lt. General V.I. King*
- X and XIV Tactical Aviation Corps
- 9th Tank Army: General Vasily Chuikov
- Grenadier Divisions: 2nd, 3rd, 15th
- Tank Divisions: 11th, 19th, 20th
- 22nd Army: Lt. General O.S. Zhirinovsky*
- Rifle Divisions: 37th Guards, 40th, 55th, 82nd
- Tank Brigades: 4th, 21st Guards
- Rifle Divisions: 37th Guards, 40th, 55th, 82nd
- 66th Army: Lt. General John H. Lawson
- Rifle Divisions: 9th, 33rd, 41st, 65th
- Grenadier Divisions: 8th
- Tank Divisions: 40th
- Rifle Divisions: 9th, 33rd, 41st, 65th
- Front Reserve: 1st Guards Tank Division, 5th Rifle Division
- 4th Air Army: Lt. General V.I. King*
- Southwestern Front: General A.M. Vasilevsky
- 21st Army: Maj. General K. Schultz*
- Rifle Divisions: 33rd, 42nd, 68th, 94th, 108th
- Grenadier Divisions: 13th
- Tank Brigades: 49th, 66th
- Rifle Divisions: 33rd, 42nd, 68th, 94th, 108th
- 29th Army: Maj. General V.V. Ivanov*
- Rifle Divisions: 71st, 89th, 92nd
- Tank Brigades:111th
- Rifle Divisions: 71st, 89th, 92nd
- XVII Tactical Aviation Corps
- Front Reserve: 11th IVA Brigade
- 21st Army: Maj. General K. Schultz*
They faced an Axis force of comparable fighting power. In anticipation for the coming campaign, Army Group South was being divided in two; Army Group Volga and Army Group Caucasus. Their respective strategic aims were coded into their names: Army Group Volga would be preparing to take Stalingrad and drive through to the Caspian Sea while Army Group Caucasus would drive south to Baku.
Due to the disposition of forces, Operation Thrush would be directed primarily at Army Group Volga. The German order of battle was as follows:
- Army Group Volga: Generalfeldmarschal Erich von Manstein
- 2. Armee: Generaloberst Rudolf Schmidt
- Infantry Divisions: 29th, 40th, 44th, 121st, 276th, 301st, 334th
- Panzergrenadier Divisions: 1st SS, 2nd SS, 4th SS
- Panzer Divisions: 3rd SS, 17th, 21st[/FONT]
- 6. Panzer Armee: Generaloberst Erwin Rommel[/FONT]
- Panzergrenadier Divisions: 4th, 5th, 11th SS, 12th SS
- Panzer Divisions: 5th SS, 11th SS, 14th
- Infantry (motorized): 101st, 140th
- 8. Armee: General Hermann Hoth
- Infantry Divisions: 11th, 14th, 190th, 401st, 443rd, 480th
- Jager Divisions: 4th, 7th
- 8th Italian Army
- Infantry Divisions: 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 156th
- Mountain Divisions: 2nd, 3rd, 4th
- Motorized Divisions: 9th, 51st
- Armored: 1st
- Infantry Divisions: 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 156th
- 2nd Rumanian Army
- Infantry Divisions: 1st, 11th, 14th, 17th, 21st, 25th
- Motorized: 2nd
- Infantry Divisions: 1st, 11th, 14th, 17th, 21st, 25th
- 3rd Hungarian Army:
- Infantry Divisions: 3rd, 4th, 7th, 8th, 9th
- Luftflotte 6
- 2. Armee: Generaloberst Rudolf Schmidt
As the commander of the Stalingrad Front, Patton’s troops would carry the bulk of the battle. Zhukov’s operational plan was bold; the Stalingrad front would attack southwest from the Don River staging points, cleaving between 6. Panzer Armee and the 8th Italian Army. While the 9th Tank Army pushed along that frontage, the 22nd and 66th Armies would strike directly at 6. Panzer. To the south, the Southwestern Front would make supporting attacks against the 2nd Rumanian Army, while the Saratov Front attacked almost due south towards the Donets and Rostov.
Thus the plan would be for the Southwestern Front trap the Axis against the south bend of the Don River like an anvil, while the Saratov and Stalingrad fronts hammered into their troops in a brutal battle of attrition.
The timing was absolutely crucial. It was generally only known to the front level commanders and the Stavka delegations that the balance of forces would likely start to reverse after February. Foreign intelligence had gathered an inkling of German strategic plans in the west and had assumed the worst. At best, France would be knocked out of the war quickly by a rightist fifth column. At the worst, France would be an Axis member. This meant that up to 1.1 million German troops could be pulled to the Central theater by summer; they would be fresh, well trained and well equipped.
The offensive began on the 5th of January. Following a twenty-minute barrage by three front’s worth of artillery, including massed Katyusha rocket fire, the lead elements of the Saratov and Stalingrad fronts began their attacks. The Germans had been fortifying since they’d reached their stopping points last October. Pioneers worked dutifully in the early morning hours to clear obstacles and mines while the assault guns pounded away at earthworks.
The Army Air Forces had begun to deploy a new toy on their A-14 and Il-2 attackers: hollow-charge warhead cluster bombs and rockets. Though limited in availability, they significantly increased the lethality of direct attacks on enemy armor, which were generally quite resilient. Air-ground coordination had improved significantly since the last campaign, and the Soviets had finally amassed a good crop of division level officers and a backbone of NCOs for their units.
While the Soviets had dramatically closed the gap with their American allies, victory was not in the cards for Operation Thrush. Previous Comintern victories such as the crushing crackback in the Battle of Moscow had been won against worn out, understrength and overstretched German units. In Operation Thrush, the Comintern would strike at a relatively well dug in and supplied enemy.
While maskirovka had concealed Comintern intentions in the sector, the German military leadership reacted quickly to the attack. The surprise and shock advantage lasted perhaps a day in most sectors, though longer against the minor Axis allies. Manstein quickly coordinated counterattacks, moved up reserves, and blocked Rokossovsky and Patton’s spearheads.
A battle in three dimensions would rage across Don basin for two months. The Germans would fight as conservatively as they could, while the Comintern sought to maximize the level of attrition suffered by their enemies. This meant a savage expenditure of human life made bearable only because the frontline was inching backwards, and they were giving the Germans for the first time in the war no easy excuses for the losses they suffered. Stavka fed more reserves of men and materiel into the operation as it progressed, as the Germans were inched backwards to the bridgheads of the Donets river.
In the rear area, the Comintern made every effort possible to evacute the populations of liberated towns and villages. The roads soon became choked with civilians waiting to hitch a ride on the relay of military trunks. Many thousands were killed in deliberate terror attacks by the Luftwaffe. Such savage displays by the thoroughly Nazified Luftwaffe, along with all too common instances of German pilots machine gunning their opponents after they had bailed out, resulted in vicious reprisals, often against the orders of commanders and political commissars. The policy was not done out of humanitarian concerns; captured pilots were often excellent sources of intelligence if it could be pried out of them.
A little over a month into the operation, the offensives began to lose steam. Reserves had been used up, and the stream of replacements were not up to the task. While the Comintern was churning through equipment at a staggering rate, this was much more easily replaced than the trained pilots, tankers or infantrymen that wielded them. Worse, the news was starting to confirm Stavka’s worst fears.
After a heated argument at the Stalingrad Front HQ, during which Zhukov and Patton nearly came to blows, an agreement was finally reached. Patton wanted to continue the push in his sector; even using conservative estimates of claimed destruction of enemy materiel and men, the exchange ratios were still positive according to revolutionary warfare doctrine’s military calculus. The Comintern may have been losing more men and materiel, but the rate of German losses were exceeding sustainable attrition levels, while Comintern attrition levels were still within a comfortable margin. After some vodka, the two pugnacious officers worked out their personal problems, and agreed to continue the attack until 15 March. Weather forecasts predicted thawing soon after, and the spring rasputitsa would give time to prepare for the expected summer onslaught.
The battle continued, and Manstein continued to bend before he broke. They dug their heels in stubbornly whenever possible, and gave a little bit of ground if necessary. It was enough to keep Hitler’s frustration down to a dull roar.
When the offensive operation ceased on the 15th, the Stalingrad and Saratov fronts made a minor tactical retreat, averaging 15 to 20 kilometers, selecting superior defensive ground for the next campaign season. They’d pushed the German vanguard back almost 200 kilometers, from the Don back to the Donets, but had made no deep exploitations. The Germans still occupied the east bank of the Donets.
The casualties in the campaign were immense. The Comintern suffered nearly 600,000 killed, wounded or captured. Some 3500 tanks, 5500 artillery pieces, and 990 combat aircraft. German casualties were considerable as well; 347,000 killed or missing. In terms of materiel, 1400 tanks, 2900 artillery pieces and 940 combat aircraft were lost.
Significantly, at the end of the campaign, in spite of the greater losses the Comintern had increased the disparity of forces in the theater in their favor. German frontline divisions were exhausted, reserves of spare parts and ammunition were at critical levels, and some of the Panzer divisions had no working tanks in their inventory. Losses exceeded the rate of resupply; much of the difference had come by “borrowing” tanks, artillery and aircraft from Army Group Caucasus’ inventory.
* Denotes fictional person
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