Chapter 28
The invasion of Italy was not totally unforeseen.
Britain and Drakia had launched a joint invasion of Sicily during the World War, and the Italian government had long considered another such invasion by the Country of the Dragon to be a distinct possibility. There were contingency plans for an invasion of Sicily, and for an invasion of the Italian mainland, there were coastal defenses, Home Guard units drilled for the possibility, and to the degree that they could, Pan-European airpower kept a weather eye out for any possible troop-build ups in North Africa. Arthur Klein, sitting in the Tuscan villa where he was spending his very comfortable internment, wrote a letter in early 1940 to President Anthony Carmazzi of Italy in which he predicted that Drakia’s response to the continued stalemate in the Balkans would be to open another front- likely by launching an amphibious invasion of Italy.
What the Italian war-planners got wrong was that they assumed the blow would fall first in Sicily, Klein at least listed three possibilities of which Sicily was merely one, the coastal plain in southern Campania was another, and Central Italy near Rome itself was a third.
Sicily was vulnerable, it was physically close to Drakian North Africa, and Drakia had invaded it once before, giving the Noble Race some experience with the terrain and the geography. Plus, the XXII and XXIII Legions were assembling in occupied Malta, just across the Maltese Channel from Syracuse. It was a natural assumption. Unfortunately for Italy the troop-buildup in Tunisia was a feint, Bondsmen with wooden guns and wooden tanks, suffering under deliberately incomplete camouflage when Pact bombers dumped napalm and nerve gas on their camps. The
real invasion force was building up in Sardinia under the command of General Archibald Valois (he was from one of the Drakian aristocratic families that claimed descent from French nobility. Valois was certainly of French descent, but nobility? Eh…) and when it struck it struck not at Sicily but at the coastal plain of Campania south of Naples, at the town of Salerno.
The Italians had considered the possibility of an invasion from Sardinia landing in the Italian Peninsula proper, but they’d considered it to be a lower possibility than an invasion of Sicily, and assumed that the landings at Salerno were a feint- after all Drakia had used an amphibious landing near Barcelona as a distraction during its invasion of Spain. As a result not only was the response to General Valois’s Legions composed of under-strength second-line units (as most of Italy’s military was fighting in the Balkans or helping with the occupation of Russia) but that response came too late to keep him from securing Salerno, Naples, and a strong foothold in southern Italy. Meanwhile the Drakian Navy successfully took control of the Strait of Messina, preventing Italian forces in Sicily from redeploying to the mainland. Imperial forces rapidly broke out of that initial foothold and Valois pushed north towards Rome.
The Pan-European Pact scrambled to respond.
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The lost wreckage of a Hond V landcruiser destroyed by Italian defender during the Drakian invasion of Italy, resurfacing in 2018. While the Hond V- like its predecessors- suffered from a variety of minor production flaws due to issues with Bonded Labor, the Hond Corporation's first heavy landcruiser possesed better armor and firepower than the Hond IV, while remaining relatively robust, inexpensive, and reliable fighting vehicles.
Pope Clement V called a crusade, Italy withdrew its forces from Rhomania and Russia to its homeland, and Germany diverted the 1st Ukrainian Front (a division of Ukrainian soldiers nominally answering to the puppet Ukrainian government), several Jewish regiments (one of which was given to Klein to command), and two German penal battalions to help. Rome had fallen in the two months that it took the counter-offensive to get ready, with the front line pressing against Terni and Sicily under invasion by Imperial Auxiliaries. The Pact struck south to liberate Italy…
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… and won a devastating victory over the Noble Race!
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Rome was liberated (even if the Italian government remained in Florence for the time being) and Rex forces smashed through a series of hastily erected defensive lines across the occupied Italian peninsula. By the end of 1940 General Valois and his expeditionary force had fallen back to Calabria- the “toe” of Italy’s boot- where, backed by naval artillery and heavy air support, he managed to hold the line. The secondary Drakian invasion of Sicily had succeeded in occupying the island, but Italy proper remained out of Stoker’s grasp. The withdrawal of Italy’s troops from other fronts saw the Pact fall back onto the defensive in the Balkans, but the Empire’s diversion of its own focus to Italy meant that outside of a few minor gains in Russia it was unable to capitalize on its enemies’ weaknesses. The war was reduced to a stalemate in Rhomania as both sides paused to reassess their options and scrape the barrel for more materials and men.
Though biological weapons had failed to achieve a knock-out blow, they had badly damaged the economies of all combatants and disrupted the delicate networks of supply and transportation needed to keep heavy industry operating at peak production. The Pact- all of which was within range of Drakian and British bombers – had suffered worse than the Empire, whose core territories in southern Africa were beyond the reach of any serious raids. Germany and its allies partially made up for this by importing munitions from neutral countries- mostly Scandinavia. France, Ireland, and the New World were happy to do business with the Rex bloc (particularly France which
was Rex and happy to let trade with Germany bypass the Draco-British blockade by going through French ports) but other than Scandinavia and Rumania most of their industrial output was dedicated to the ongoing Great Pacific War (Turkey and Arabia were devoting most of their military production to their own stockpiles). The result was that Drakia had a manufacturing advantage over its enemies even with the inherent flaws of the Bonded Labor System, but the Pan-Europeans had a small but significant numerical advantage since most of their population wasn’t being held in
de facto slavery.
How to fix these problems?
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A Drakian Bondswoman in a tin mine in Morocco. In terms of simple production the Bonded Labor System could keep up with other nation's industries, if simply because of its size, but it utterly devoured human beings.
Well, the Pan-Europeans were already tapping out their labor pool almost everywhere except for the ethnic-Russian population in occupied Russia, so they looked to recruit volunteer units from the neutral countries and lobbied hard to persuade additional nations to join the fight. The only two that were seriously interested were France and Rumania, and France was hesitant to joint the Great Patriotic War directly while it still had forces committed to the Pacific and its primary ally America would be unable to intervene.
Rumania joined the war in April 1941 however, agreeing to a separate peace with the Asia-Pacific League of Friendship and quietly dropping out of the Grand Alliance. Rumania offered fresh reserves of men (and women, the Liberal-Conservative national unity government in Bucharest was a lot more pragmatic than the more traditionalist Rex who kept their women in factories and out of uniform) and its help allowed the Pact to advance through the Rhomanian Princely State of Bulgaria and into Rhomanian territory proper.
The Empire had its own plans, however.
The first of these was to begin bringing in British divisions from the United Kingdom, which had been involved in the war at sea and in the air, but thus far had only token involvement on land. The other way that Drakia raised new troops was, for the first time in its history, to start drafting Bondsmen.
The Great Patriotic War was the first war that Drakia employed any number of white women in military roles out side of support positions. Even Drakian infantrywomen were only ever employed for guard and police duties in safe districts far behind the lines. The Empire wanted white babies!
There had always been opportunities for Bonded
volunteers during major wars when the Country of the Dragon found itself short on warm bodies, such soldiers were enrolled in Auxiliary units, and if they survived then they had their debts cancelled and became Nationals- those who distinguished themselves could even become Honorary Whites. But Drakian society had always been very cognizant that enlisting members of their slave caste against their will and giving them guns and training was a poor idea. Ironically, the idea was inspired by the German use of penal battalions and blocking units, in the case of the Rex drawn from the ranks of common criminals, political dissidents, deserters, the mentally ill, and forced labor camp inmates that they used as cannon fodder by placing smaller loyal units behind them with order to shoot anyone who failed to advance. For their part, Imperial authorities conscripted Bondsmen from non-essential roles who had known families that could face consequences if they mutinied or tried to escape. Their officers were drawn from the ranks of Native Auxiliary veterans and smaller units of Bonded volunteers would follow up behind the Conscript Units to make sure that they kept their guns on the enemy.
The first two of what would ultimately be eight Conscript Divisions were ready by June 1941, just in time for them to be used in the renewed offensive in the Caucasian Front.
The conscripts were thrown in as cannon fodder, followed up by conventional Native Auxiliary units and Regular and Reserve White Citizen troops, and when the opportunity appeared for a breakthrough no less than fourteen fresh British divisions were available to exploit it. The Societists broke through the Greater Caucasus Range into the plains of Southern Russia, prompting a wave of insurgency on the part of Russian partisans across Rex-occupied Russia. The Russian Empire- which had finally finished securing the major cities of Central Asia even if had not yet secured the countryside there- launched a far more limited offensive of its own, designed to weaken the Pan-Europeans by forcing them to devote more troops to the gargantuan task of occupying and defending Russia west of the Urals.
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Russian refugees ironically fleeing forced labor at the hands of the Rex for freedom in Societist-held territory.
Once again, the Pan-European Pact was forced to scramble, recalling units that they had dedicated to the Balkans and Italian fronts (like virtually the entire Italian Army) to the East. They were falling behind Drakia in terms of industrial production and it showed, impacting the Rex nations’ ability to make up losses of equipment and material, and forcing them to fall onto the defensive in the fight for the air. Every able body was conscripted, particularly in the occupied former RZ where the Cossacks, the Ukrainians, and the Belarussians knew what awaited them if their homelands fell under Societist control. Ethnic Russians- now considered unreliable- were pressed into forced labor
en masse. By the time the winter of ’41 put a halt to the campaigning season the Pact had failed to contain the Anglo-Drakian advance, which had linked up with the Russian at the Volga Delta in the east, reached the lower Donets River in the west, and captured the city of Tsaritsyn in the north.
It was a major setback for Germany her allies, but the Great Patriotic War wasn’t over yet.
Not by a long-shot.