The
Battle of Los Angeles was fought largely during the evening of the 24 and 25 of February 1942, but sporadic fighting continued in the city of Los Angeles and in its neighborhood until the 27th. In the engagement the forces of the US Auror Corps lead by Commander Amelia E. Swift and supported by Canadian aurors and a force of Mexican volunteers decisively defeated the Army of Bone and Stone’s American Legion lead by ABS General Matthew Aberly. With around 2,000 combatants, at the time it was the second largest battle ever to be fought between wizarding forces, only overshadowed by the Massacre of Kiev a year earlier. The battle happened at the end of the Seven Month Campaign, during which the US aurors systematically destroyed pro-grindelwaldist elements in the American wizarding society.
By mid February the ABS’s American Legion was devastated beyond belief, with almost 500 known members and 800 suspected supporters imprisoned. With fears that the ABS would began to hide and prolong the fighting against the US Ministry of Magic, auror commander Swift decided to set a trap for the ABS hoping that she can capture its remaining forces in a single large battle. A reduction of forces guarding the LA office of the Ministry was decided and leaked to known ABS sympathizers in the US MoM. It was hoped that the broderhoodist forces would attack the complex to capture its large supply of international potkeys and try to flee into countries that were loyal to Grindelwald’s Wizarding Empire. But even she did not expect that her plans would be so successful.
A force of around 200 ABS soldiers assaulted the building located near to LA’s harbor (and the local muggle military fort) at 7:15 pm. The defenders consisting both paid guards and experienced aurors put up a heavy fight, resisting until 9:30 pm as the office’s remaining wards failed and the ASB stormed the building. In the following hour further 100 ABS reinforcements arrived, whom immediately reset the wards and taken up defensive positions to deter a counterattack from the aurors, as at the same time a large group of supporters and family members arrived to begin the evacuation. Only then was revealed, that LA office was in fact entirely empty of portkeys. By 10 pm almost the entire mobile auror force of the US had taken up position around the office, with large support of the US Secretkeeping Task-force for Deception (or US-STD for short). Surrounded by almost 800 aurors the ABS’s position was hopeless, as even with the largely non-combatant supporters they were only equal in numbers with the well trained aurors, thus their chances of breaking out of the building was minimal.
A short period of negotiations followed, as Aberly offered the life of the 22 captured defenders, in exchange for being allowed to leave with his man, but Swift rejected this and offered that the non-combatant will be allowed to remain in home custody until they trials, if the ABS surrenders. By midnight the negotiations broke down and Aberly set up to publicly execute the prisoners, forcing an all out assault by the First Battalion against the main gates. His goal was with this to create a distraction as a massed attempt of breakout began at the same time at the rear exit of the building This caught vice-commander Goodwill’s Second Battalion as surprise and the initial lines of the auror’s were over run. By 2:20 am a small breach was secured through the lines and the ABS begun to evacuate the building. Seeing that her plans are collapsing, Swift got a broom and railed the Areal Squadron, which up until now maintained a patron of the outer defenses, against attack from outside or potential escapees. The 78 auror strong force began to harass the ABS’s line of retreat, thus giving time for the 2nd Battalion to reform and with the arrival of the Canadian forces counter-attack, sealing the breach by 2:35 am.
As the ABS forces fell back to the building desperation began to set in. Aberly seized as many brooms he could and launched his own air attack by 2:45 am. A desperate struggle began as the 1st Areal countered the 200 ABS soldiers. Although traditionally historians thought that the Aberly tried to abandon the besieged forces, as the aurors claimed at the time, but seeing that the battle in the sky lasted for two hours, recently many believe the ABS survivors’ claim that the attack was a last ditch effort to break the siege.
With many of the pro-grindelwaldian fighters now constituting better broom riders then trained soldiers, their numerical advantage failed to have an effect, especially so, as the auror forces succeeded to maintain their coordination by a cleaver utilization of light signals. The ABS already chaotic effort was also hindered as at 3:15 muggle anti-air guns (muggle devices to kill flying things) opened fire, mistaking the battle for an attack by their enemies in their own war. The areal battle lasted until 4:30 am, when the Mexican Volunteer Force, equipped with brooms and a dragon, arrived to the scene. Aberly tried to organize a retreat, but in the process he became surrounded by aurors. He managed to kill two of them, but as the survivors retaliated he was cut in two by a Reductor Curse. With their general dead the ABS’s moral collapsed, with many beginning to flee, while others retreating to the office building, where the lower levels were already secured by the aurors.
By 5 am the remaining ABS soldiers, led by High Lieutenant Sebastien Shaw, surrendered. Although groups that managed to escape tried to reform and go into hiding organized, but by the 27th the last of this groups was forced to surrender near Pasadena.
The battle concluded the Seven Month Campaign against the American ABS. With their leaders and vast majority of their members and supporters dead or captured, the American Legion (the largest of the foreign chapters of the ABS) collapsed. Although they managed to terrorize the American wizarding society for three years, after the February of 1942 they failed to even produce valuable information for the brotherhoodist cause. What was even worse for Grindelwald and his empire, this left the paranoidlly large and well trained American Auror Corps was free to dedicate its strength against them in Europe or help other ICW aligned ministries in their own civil wars after the battle.
Swift herself was lauded with praises, receiving many honors for her plan to end the ABS threat in one swoop, including the MACUSA’s Order of Merit and the British Order of Merlin (2nd class). Especially noted was her use of broomed auror and her detailed and well organized method to control such a force in a confusing night battle. This resulted that in 1943 she was appointed as the commander of the Confederate Areal Corps, serving directly under confederate supreme commander Albus Dumbledore, during the Grand Invasion of Europe. But this battle was also the main reason why, after Swift’s death in 1944, her second in command Thomas Goodwill was jumped over as the US auror commander by Chief Sheriff Norman Bailey, as his inability to rally the Second Battalion during the ground battle was perceived as a personal failure by many commentators of the time.
My first infobox, inspired by the OTL Battle of Los Angeles and a Hungarian Harry Potter fanfiction called the Nurmengard-trilogy, which had a way more detailed and reasonable Grindelwald then the Fantastic Beast's version of Mr. Hypnotizing Terrorist.
