The Great Crusade (Reds! Part 3)

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

Panzer 25 Gepard tank

Type: Medium Tank
Place of Origin: Nazi Germany
Used by: Nazi Germany, Kingdom of Hungary, Kingdom of Bulgaria, Kingdom of Romania, Italian Social Republic, West Germany, Petainist France, Falangist Spain Kingdom of Jordan, Kingdom of Arabia, Kingdom of Egypt, Syria, Second Brazillian Empire, Venezuela, Kingdom of Belgium, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kingdom of Norway, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Denmark, Republic of Finland, Kingdom of Spain, Empire of Ethiopia, Kingdom of Thailand,
In service: 1943-57
Wars: Second World War, War for the African Horn, Palestinian War of Independence, First Palestinian War

Designer: Alkett/Porsche/Ford
Designed: 1939-41
Produced: 1942-53
Number built: (To be decided, it's Germany's most produced tank though)
Variants:

Specifications: )
Mass: 35 tonnes
Length: (TBD)
Width: (TBD)
Height: (TBD
Crew: 4
Armor: Hull upper front 65 mm/55°, lower front 45 mm/0-56°, upper side 40 mm, lower sides 35mm, 5-mm thick side skirts, rear 50 mm, top 25 mm, bottom 40 mm; Turret front 45 mm/45°, mantlet 50mm, sides 30, rear 30 mm, top 25 mm (1944 turret: Turret front 65 mm/45°, mantlet 65mm, sides 30, rear 30 mm, top 25 mm)
Primary Armament: 7,5 cm Kw.K. 40 L/48, 8,8 cm Kw.K. 36 l/56, or 7,5 cm Kw.K. 41 L/75*; demolition variants equipped with 10,5 cm Kw.K. 38 L/28
Secondary Armament: 2 x MG-42 7.92 x 57mm machine gun
Engine: Ford-Maybach HL 220 TRM P25 525 kw
Power to mass: 15 kW/tonne
Suspension: leaf-spring
Operational Range: 300 km
Speed: 60 km/hr, potential top speed of 75 km/hr without a speed governor

Germany's most heavily produced medium tank of the war, the Gepard was given its name for its impressive top speed and was the winning design in the contest held to produce a highly standardized line of armored fighting vehicles for the third reich and its european allies with many being produced in Hungary and Romania. Replacing the Panzer III; which was seen as reaching the end of its upgradeability, the Gepard would be incrementally phased in before it completely replaced the Panzer III by 1943. Specifications called for a tank that was well protected from the front; was able to mount powerful weaponry; and would be able to overmatch the British Chimera Tank, the American T-4, and the Soviet T-34. Drawing from lessons learned in the "Prufung Krieg" conflicts with Yugoslavia, Greece, Czechoslovakia and Poland as well as the war with the Soviet Union later on, the Gepard was made to be a world beater; an engine of war made for total war.

While some in German command felt that the current mark of Panzer III was sufficient; others; including powerful voices such as Speer, Ford, and the Fuhrer himself; believed that Germany didn't quite have the population to try matching the Comintern; and later the Allies in terms of sheer numbers of tanks. Similarly; this new tank would actually require fewer man hours to build than the Panzer III, as it would be built and designed according to Fordist assembly line principles and the complete interchangeability of parts. While it would be somewhat weightier; the powerful new engine would allow it to reach unrivaled speeds and carry powerful weapons with ease; including a potent howitzer to shatter fortification and disrupt infantry.

It would also be easily convertible into an open-topped waffentrager design, a self propelled artillery gun, a mortar carrier, a tank recovery vehicle, an anti-aircraft vehicle equipped with an eclectic array of rapid fire weapons depending on the variant, a direct fire assault gun and a tank destroyer; and in a more novel idea, some were built to have a much lighter armament to make room for the ferrying of troops into combat situations too dangerous for German half tracks to move in. While not as glamarous as its larger brothers in the Panzer 50 Jaguar, the Panzer 75 Tiger**, or the gargantuan Panzer 100 Smilodon; the Gepard would form the backbone of the Panzerkorps' war machine and would be used in just about every imaginable role.

The winning design was created by a team including many expatriates from America; including the infamous Henry Ford himself who wanted to make the "Model T of Tanks" with the Gepard with the aid of the Porsche company and the Alkett factory which Ford had helped to "bring into the modern era of mass production". The turret ring in particular was made to be quite expansive to allow for continuous upgrades while the overpowered engine allowed the Gepard to function in roles nobody would have ever expected it to. Wet stowage was copied from captured examples of the American T-4 to increase crew safety; and the enlarged escape hatches allowed for the precious crew to escape a ruined vehicle with ease. As the ford designers put it "it was a tanker's tank", though its eight degrees of gun depression (ten with a turret deployed from 1944 onwards) was inferior to the amazing twelve degrees managed by the T-4.

The armour envelope would focus on the defense of the front, with relatively weak side armour that would later end up accounting for many being lost to M1 Dynamic Reaction Cannons (Colloquially called "bazookas") and Soviet anti-tank rifles as well as Entente PIAT anti-tank warhead launchers. The relatively weak top armour would also account for a number being lost to artillery fire and air attack; with the PTAB bombs used by the IL-2 becoming particularly dreaded by operators of the tank. However, the dramatically sloped frontal armor was intended to give the Gepard the edge in a fire fight; allowing the Gepard to act with knowledge that it was safe from the fire of its enemies while its own gun could be used to devastate the opposition; particularly those equipped with the long L/70 gun; though the 8.8 cm equipped models would predominate due to the more potent high explosive shells available to them. Given the distinctive profile; with relatively flat side armor but dramatically sloped frontal armor, some took to calling it "Der Kiel" or "The Wedge" while later military enthusiasts in the internet age would nickname them "Tie Fighters" after the iconic Imperial fighter in the Star Wars series thanks to their distinctive side-skirts.

The first Gepards would start entering the ongoing conflict at the ost-front in 1943; while plagued by some teething issues, managed to make a striking first impression; looking imposing and modern next to older German vehicles that participated in the parade through Paris with the pronouncement of the French National Republic. The Gepard's potent power to weight ratio and significantly greater top speed in particular was a marked improvement over the Panzer III; allowing it to quickly climb over obstacles in its path and race into counter-attacks and offensives. Though as the war turned inexorably against the Reich the Gepard would find itself moving less and less as the Fuel situation for Germany grew increasingly dire with the loss of the Libyan and then the Romanian oil fields and the synthetic oil plant bombing offensives and Germany's increasing encirclement by the Allies to the west and the Comintern to the east and both to the South as Italy collapsed. However at the end of the war thousands had found themselves into United Nations hands where they would soon be used to re-arm the new Kaiserlich Deustchbund under Alfred Hugenburg's first (and last) chancellorship and would be distributed to the Alliance of Free States; and would even continue to be produced in rebuilt factories in the Ruhr river valley years after the war's end; something most of its far larger siblings could not boast of outside of a handful of cases. Some turrets would even continue to be made for usage in static defenses.


* Denotes a fictional gun
**A design similar to the OTL Tiger I was readied in time for the 1940 and 1941 offensives and was named the Panzer IV Nashorn (or "Rhino tank") in this timeline.

Variants

Vk 30.0.01, 1940 prototype, 4 built, anti-tank focus, Spring Leaf suspension 7.5 cm Kw.K 40 L/48, 500 kW engine
Vk 30.0.01.1 1941 prototype, 5 built, general purpose focus, Spring leaf suspension, 8.8 cm Kw.K 36 L/56, 525 kW engine, approved for mass production.

Pzkfw 25: Standard variation equipped with the 7.5 cm gun; side skirts were added from the prototype in light of tank losses to side ambushes.
Pzkfw 25 Ausf A: Variation equipped with the 8.8 cm gun for additional punch and firepower as well as an upgraded transmission for added reliability
Pzkfw 25 Ausf B: Variation most iconically outfitted with the 10.5 cm howitzer for infantry support and demolition purposes; though in truth most were armed with the 8.8 or the 7.5; with the primary changes being to the side skirts; which were slightly thickened by 2.5 milimeters to provide additional protection.
Pzkfw 25 Ausf C: Often called the "Jaeger" variant, these vehicles were most iconically fitted with the 7.5 cm L/75 gun with some modifications to the turret mechanisms to deal with the problems caused by the length of the gun and were loaded out with Armor-piercing composite rigid shells and even some HEAT for the purpose of killing United Nations tanks. An added change was done to the periscope and the optics to deal with complaints that the gunner lacked versatility with his field of view.
Pzkfw 25 Ausf D: Fitted with the new "Henschel" turret, the Ausf D would also boast of somewhat thickened frontal armour by about five additional millimeters and a significantly more durable turret that boasted of greater gun depression, a new 575 kW engine was fitted to maintain the power to weight ratio; while additional spaced armour was fitted to the sides beneath the side-skirts to increase protection against heat shells.

Commander variant (applicable to all prior variants): Fits an additional crewman specifically to operate the radio for the commander. Complaints about lack of space lead to the Jaguar and Tiger being the preferred Commander tanks.

Jgdpzkfw 25: Turretless tank destroyer variant equipped with either the 8.8 cm l/71 gun or the 7.5 cm l/100 gun.
STuG 25: Turretless assault gun variant equipped with a 15cm howitzer primarily.
Waffentrager Pzkfw 25: A waffentrager variant equipped with a 15cm gun, a 10.5 cm extremely long gun, or most often the 12.8cm long gun; while primarily a bomber killer the Waffentrager would find use in anti-tank roles frequently.
Flakpanzer Gepard: Fitted with either twin bofors 40mm autocannons, triple 30mm autocannons, or quadruple 20mm autocannons (or hextuple 15mm machine guns in one variant and another fitted with twin quadruple 13.2mm machine guns), the Flakpanzer was meant to deal with fighter-bombers and close air support aircraft; but would frequently be turned against infantry and soft vehicles; giving it the nickname of "Hitler's sewing machine".
Tpz 25: Using a German 15cm heavy machine gun (or a 20mm in some variant) as its principle armament, the Tpz 25 was built for the purpose of serving as a durable transport for infantry. Though it would not serve in such a role as often as its designers would have liked as the Axis' fuel situation deteriorated, the vehicle drew some interest and comparison to United Nations armoured personnel carrier designs. Another variation of the Tpz 25 would serve as an ammunition carrier.
G.W Pzkfw 25: Self propelled artillery vehicle with a 15cm indirect firing artillery weapon.
Pzkfw 25 (Nebelwerfer): Inspired by Comintern "rocket tanks" that fitted rocket launch rails onto existing tanks, this particular vehicle was considered a cheap and reliable means of getting more rocket launchers on the field; and many existing Gepards would be modified to fit these nebelwerfer 8, 10, 15, or 21cm rockets. Though the 8cm rocket was by far the most commonly fitted.
Gepard recovery vehicle: Unarmed save for machine guns, this recovery vehicle's primary purpose was to move disabled vehicles back for repairs or free stuck ones.

Char 25: A french variation of the Pzkfw 25 that used some French modifications such as a Hotchkiss 13.2mm pintle mounted machine gun.

Pzkfw 25 (S): A Swedish variation that utilized a diesel engine to allow for improved operations at low temperatures that served in the Auroran war alongside native built Swedish tanks; also served in the Finnish military and was bought by Germany for use in the Norwegian garrison.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

The Auroran War Part 1: Finland's wrath and Operation Ragnar.

In the lead up to the second world war Finland had been diplomatically pressured into surrendering a significant amount of territory; and with Finland feeling unable to resist the combined might of the UASR and USSR the government felt little choice but to concede to a bitter agreement to Stalin's demands. This was needless to say; immensely unpopular with the Finnish people and was a buoy to those in the camp that held that Finland's future was with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy rather than the British Empire or French Republic that had allowed the Soviet Union's bullying to go through despite all the arms build up Finland had done ever since the American revolution when it was feared that Stalin would soon spearhead a general offensive across Europe with American aid. The vote of no confidence that followed soon replaced the standing Finnish government with a much more millitant and hawkish one in 1939; and secret deals were quickly being made with neighboring Sweden and the Third Reich. At the time; Sweden was not yet interested in war with the Soviet Union and America; feeling that the Third Reich would be able to handle the Russian bear without its help, but Finland was very much of the mindset that a war of revenge was needed to restore Finnish territory and honor. Thus Finland joined with Germany and her partners in amassing troops on the numerous shared borders with the Soviet Union.

With a perhaps eclectic arsenal of weapons made in Finland proper and those bought from such varied suppliers as Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden; Finland's army was a rather rag tag force, but one of somewhat surprising size with some two hundred thousand soldiers being readied for the offensive with about their number being held in reserve. Joining them were about twenty thousand volunteers who believed that the Communist menace should be contained and Finland's honor should be restored; but were not enamored enough with Fascism to join the Waffen SS or the Italian army proper, a Waffen SS division posted to aid in the southward offensive towards Leningrad, as well as a division of Italian troops and a division of German troops trained in the alps to help take the Kola peninsula. The plan was to quickly retake the territory lost to the Soviets and shut down the port at Murmansk, while towards the south Leningrad would be pincered between German and Finnish forces and if possible the tank factories at Arkhangelsk would also be put under threat. Axis aircraft would be allowed to use Finland as an airbase and put more of the vast Soviet union under the threatening glare of the Axis' bombers.

When war at last came at 3:15 A.M, 19 May 1940; the general offensive at a pace that was deemed acceptable to joint Axis command as the Finnish army advanced with the age old order of "Hakka pelitta!"; moving to rapidly break the Soviet defenses facing them with the hopes of at the very least cutting off the port of Murmansk from the rest of the Soviet Union and getting within shelling range of Leningrad. With Soviet forces reeling from the Axis offensives to the South; the Finns at first had an easy time of things as they were met with ill prepared Soviet defenses which had little time to prepare their new lines of defense against the vengeful Finns. Bombers using Finnish air fields were almost immediately able to launch air raids on numerous cities in the soviet union; with Murmansk and Leningrad receiving the worst of it as the Luftwaffe attempted to ensure that the USSR would stand alone and isolated from any possible aid. In desperation Stalin recalled Boris Shaposhikov from his retirement; who agreed to help manage the defense of the Northwest of the USSR despite his chronic health issues.

Shaposhikov determined that the Finnish Army's likely greatest weakness was its lack of manpower and its heavy dependence on foreign supplies to function in a modern capacity. He similarly identified Murmansk as utterly and vitally important to the Soviet war effort and devoted as much of the resources at his disposal as he could to ensure that Murmansk and the route to the rest of the Soviet Union would remain open at all times. He made sure that plenty of anti-aircraft guns were available for the defense of Murmansk to keep the bombers away and colluded with his counterpart in the navy to keep the Soviet Arctic fleet active; turning its mighty guns to the sky to shoot down incoming bombers and bombard Axis troops if they ever came close enough to the coast to put them in the range of the Soviet Navy's guns. Similarly; he had the Soviet union's artillery, still regarded as some of the world's finest; distributed to ensure that the Finns would not have any easy advances. Infantry would advance through a storm of indirect artillery fire while tanks would be trained on by direct fire weapons of all sorts to ensure that the Finnish would not be able to advance without coming under fire from multiple directions.

Land mines, barbed wire, tank traps, and ditches were all placed for the sole purpose of slowing down the enemy's advance as the Finnish under Mannerheim pressed forward. While the momentum of the Axis; like at the other fronts; could not be halted entirely, it could be slowed down and time was bought. What was supposed to be a quick six week offensive to regain lost Finnish territory dragged into months as operation Teutonic began to slow down. Even as the foot mobile infantry were brought up and the mountain troopers tried to push into the Kola Peninsula, Shaposhikov's forces remained resolute in their determination to bleed the Axis dry. Ever were their eyes on the ports of Murmansk, waiting for the first ships bearing the red and black flag to arrive and bring salvation as the Finnish took a pause with their offensive operations to bring up reserves; train up new troops and prepare for another push to take their objectives; with lake borne gunboats and transports being readied to launch additional attacks in tandem with land based offensives in Karellia and additional foreign volunteers could arrive.

Throughout July there was something of a doldrum in the fighting in the northwest as the two sides tried to probe each other for weaknesses and seize the initiative. Artillery fire was repeatedly traded between the two sides and Axis aircraft would repeatedly strafe the Soviet positions; with the Soviet Air Force only making occasional appearances due to the strength of enemy air superiority. Snipers and special forces would filter between the two lines to try and cause havoc; with the infamous Simo Hayha making his debut in this particular front. By august, the second Finnish offensive had begun with the intent of driving all the way to their objectives. However whereas the initial offensives from Finland sent the Soviets into disarray and forced them to rapidly realign and reorganize in the face of the general Axis offensive; this time Soviet forces had been more prepared and this time the Finnish paid a heavier price for their attempted attack for less land gained. The farthest advance of Axis forces came within a few kilometers of the coast and within artillery range of Murmansk; but Shaposhikov unveiled his trump card.

The Soviet Battleship Stal'naya, built as part of Soviet naval cooperation with the United States was attatched to the Soviet arctic fleet and sailed up with an escort of cruisers and destroyers to the shore line and turned their guns towards the Kola Peninsula as the Finnish tried to funnel an offensive of a hundred tanks and many more german built half-tracks through the rough terrain and moved up thousands of foot or horse mobile troops. The Soviet air force made a brave sally to buy the fleet the time it needed as the guns of the Stal'naya and its escorts roared to life. Lieutenant General Woldemar Hägglund was directly struck with a 16 inch shell that landed on his planning table (rumors that it landed on his head are something of an exaggeration) and was killed instantly; along with most of his command and a third of the tanks pushed into the Kola offensive; or a full tenth of the entire Finnish tank inventory as well as several hundred trucks; were destroyed in the bombardment. Attempts to sink the arctic fleet by air were thwarted when the 7th Aviation division flew in and cut the German and Finnish aircraft down in a surprise maneuver; allowing the Arctic fleet to slip back to safe harbor in Arkhangelsk having taken the teeth out of the Kola offensive which crashed into the first American units to arrive at the front under General Oliver Law

While the Finnish air force at first could run rampant as it willed due to the devastation inflicted on its Soviet counterpart by the Italian and German Air Forces in the initial wave of attacks the American air force was highly modern and well trained; and reaped significant casualties on the surprised Finns and Axis air units to the North while General Oliver Law's troops quickly mobilized to deal with the confused Finnish attack; left leaderless by Woldemar's atomization via battleship shell. Cooperating with his Soviet counterpart, Law's forces drove the Finnish offensive safely away from the vital port city. The front soon once again began to stabilize as both sides prepared for operations in the autumn of that year; the Finns pulling back to lick their wounds while the Americans and Soviets did their best to organize in the north. However to the south, the Finnish offensives had succeeded in pushing the front line past the Karelian lakes and had put them dangerously close to Leningrad; with Finnish guns being readied to bombard the city as they sought to enclose the city with Timoshenko and Patton in it.

Recognizing that the Germans were the primary threat, Patton sent word to his subordinate Omar Bradley to work with Leonid Govorov's forces to his north to "Give those bastards from the nutsack of Europe a good old kick." Facing them was Karl Lennart Oesch; one of the best generals of the Finnish Army; who had at his disposal some one hundred thousand troops and a full ten thousand volunteers who had managed to push this far south. A hundred and fifty tanks were at his disposal along with fifty tanks from a Waffen SS division that had been deployed to Finland before the war and Jarl Lundqvist's air forces would try and keep the Comintern's forces pinned down. As Oesch ordered his forces to move to "within shelling range of Leningrad" in October of 1940, Bradley and Govorov decided to surprise the Finnish forces with an offensive of their own. The cream of the Finnish crop drove the British Chimera and Custodian tanks; while others had in their command German Panzers; including about thirty Nashorns; facing them were Soviet T-34s and KVs, and American T-4s and T-5s. Bradley had at his disposal some Eighty T-4 tanks and twenty T-5s and roughly fifty armoured cars; while Govorov had at hand sixty T-34s, twenty KV-1s and ten BT-76 tanks and sixty armoured cars. Oesch had with him in total about two hundred armoured cars and a hundred and eighty assault guns to the comintern's one hundred and twenty total; but Govorov had a superiority in artillery which the general would acquire a reputation for using "like an orchestra."

The Finnish advance was met with almost immediate extremely heavy artillery bombardment from guns large and small and quickly moved up anti-tank guns almost immediately began firing into their advance. American and Soviet aircraft dueled furiously with their Axis counterparts as they both tried to win the skies to allow their own aircraft to attack; and at last the Finnish advance was met with the startling revelation of the Comintern's forces emerging to meet their attack rather than wait and see as they expected. A furious tank melee erupted north of Leningrad while the infantry struggled with each other in the open fields and in small villages. Many of Oesch's vehicles had suffered heavily from the initial artillery bombardment and their numerical advantage in armoured cars and assault guns was proving difficult to leverage against Bradley's extremely mobile attacks and Govorov's utilization of extreme firepower. Trying to pin the Comintern down, Oesch drew them in for the vicious clash at Vyborg; hoping to press his advantage in numbers with a massive armoured clash in the sight of the old castle. As several hundred armoured vehicles on both sides fought; American and Soviet troops took the fight to the ancient castle itself; battling with Finnish, Waffen SS, and Volunteer troops in the ancient halls of the medieval castle to drive the Axis out of there and prevent them from using it as a commanding point. American and Soviet shock troopers equipped with steel bibs and armed with PPshK and Thompson submachine guns cleared the castle out room by room after infiltrating the castle via some positively medieval tactics; including climbing up the long disused chamber pot chute to open the gate. At the end of the battle the Finnish forces; badly mauled and having lost half of their armoured vehicles while the Comintern lost about a third of theirs; decided to pull away from the castle to established to the east and recover their strength; though Comintern forces would not stay at Vyborg for very long as it was determined to be unmaintainable in the long term. Some twenty thousand troops on the Axis side were KIA and some five thousand were captured to the loss of a roughly equivalent number of comintern soldiers.

However as 1941 rolled on and the front began to slow down with the onset of a bitterly cold winter, there were alarming rumblings picked up in Comintern intelligence circles. The Swedish National Socialist movement had been a commanding force in Swedish politics throughout the 30s and with the King appointing one of the Fascists as Prime Minister in 1941 their grip had now solidly clenched itself over Swedish governance and was in the process of final negotiations with Germany and Finland. Sweden had territorial designs on Estonia and soviet Baltic port cities such as Leningrad and throughout Sweden's period of neutrality it had been building up its military for the purpose of a war with the Soviets and Americans. The Swedish would be able to commit more than three hundred thousand soldiers to a new offensive alongside a new wave of Finnish recruits and a further three hundred thousand reserves; and whereas Finland was dependent on outside materiel aid; Swedish industries were more than sophisticated enough to build their own arsenal and Swedish volunteers in Spain and the war so far had filtered their lessons down to the Swedish military. Furthermore; Sweden agreed to help Germany divide up Norway and Denmark within secret clauses in the so called "Nordic Friendship pacts". In the new world order Sweden would dominate the North of the new Reich and serve as an enthusiastic brother to Germany in the division of Europe. Of course, Sweden would necessarily have to serve in a subordinate role to its southern "brother", being a smaller and less populous nation; but with the securing of vital Swedish Iron ore and military assistance; Germany could rest easy with regards to its resources with Tungsten from Nationalist Spain and annexed Austria, Iron from Sweden, Oil from Romania, Austria, and Libya, and most of Europe to tap into for anything else.

The Swedish moved their military as clandestinely as possible to get everyone in place for what was being termed "Operation Ragnar" after the legendary Viking who sacked Paris and rampaged across northern Europe for decades before meeting his end in what is now Britain. Like the vikings of old, the Swedish navy would be an important part of this operation; with the powerful sverige class coastal defense ships being able to sally forth alongside other Swedish ships; along with transports to place two divisions in captured ports or undefended coastline in the Baltic and thus immediately bring the Swedish military to bear while others went overland across Finland to strike at Comintern forces as part of Operation Valkyrie. The first sign that the comintern was now at war with Sweden was the radio call of "Vapnen sätter på", broadcasted as the Swedish military began to clash with Comintern assets that were attempting to counter attack into Finland proper and hopefully knock the little nordic country out of the war sooner rather than later. However the Swedish intervention; when combined with the sudden deepening of Finnish resolve meant that the Comintern's planned northern counter-attack began to sputter and then started to get rolled back as the Swedish military; buoyed by an investment boom from western Europe as well as Germany who saw it as a valuable ally against possible soviet aggression; proved to be surprisingly well equipped and lead despite Sweden's diminutive size population wise.

Swedish and Finnish forces as well as the German Norwegian Garrison (and Waffen SS formations) would fight well despite the small size of their combined armies and the gruelling conflict would come to be known as the Auroran war due to being fought in the sight of the Aurora Borealis come every winter. Rarely before had the arctic circle been the site of conflict, but the far north of Russia would bear witness to a second great northern war as the Axis repeatedly sought to control the North for its own purposes and the continuing threat to Murmansk ensured that plans to expand Arkhangelsk's ports went ahead to ensure that even in the case of Murmansk's fall supplies and troops could continue to reach the Soviet Union. Swedish planes repeatedly stalked the arctic ocean in the search of convoys to assault and Swedish submarines would soon start moving from the Baltic ocean into the Arctic to make use of German submarine facilities and join the Kriegsmarine in continually harassing convoys. On land the Axis forces in Scandinavia continued to have three primary objectives; Leningrad, Murmansk, and Arkhangelsk; though the latter would continue to remain out of reach, operation Ragnar would allow Scandinavian forces to join the enclosure of Leningrad and partake in its siege while the Swedish fleet patrolled the Baltic waters alongside the Kriegsmarine and its looted vessels and on a number of occasions the Sverige class defense ships would even turn their 280mm guns on the city itself. Sweden preferred to make use of its own vehicles whenever possible; but a number of designs from Germany and Italy nevertheless made it into its own armouries as Sweden moved itself into a total war footing with the Comintern almost immediately upon entering the war.

Swedish troops would gladly participate in the massacres; with the Swedish Nazi movement even organizing its own Einsatzgruppen and speaking with its German counterparts on organizing a final solution to the question of the undesireables. Sweden itself saw the need to cleanse the space that was destined to become part of Birger's "Nordarikki", a Northern Realm that would span from Greenland to much of the northern parts of Russia that Germany held relatively little interest. The Slavic population were unclean, undesirable, and taking up land that rightfully belonged to the Nordic people. While smaller scale than the atrocities committed by Germany proper from simply having fewer resources at hand, the Swedes were ultimately no less cruel a task master and enacted their own hunger plan; stripping fields of their harvests to allow Swedish soldiers and civilians to continue to eat as they pleased while Soviet civilians starved. The looting of cultural artifacts from the Baltics and the Soviet Union was compared to a second Swedish deluge; with many priceless items of history being taken back to Sweden and Finland as war spoils, and many such cultural artifacts remain unreturned to the Soviet Union even given the detente that exists in the modern era. The Swedish Nazi movement was in particular very interested in taking anything relating to the Viking era, particularly anything that would prove that the ancient Rus were; as according to the dominant theories then and now; Norse settlers who carved out kingdoms in Slavic lands; which would in their mind prove that the Slavic people were always meant to be servants of the Nordics.

However the most infamous moment in Swedish history would come later that year as Germany decided to secure Denmark and Norway against potential American landings. In a secret cable to his counterpart in Sweden; Hitler made an agreement with Sweden to deal with its neighbors. In a sudden and unprovoked invasion the Kriegsmarine sallied out in its second largest sortie next to operation Hanseatic while troops on the Danish border advanced into the flat and poorly defended country while Swedish troops landed in the islands. Norway was then caught between the Swedish army and the German military landing at its beaches; Norway's coastal defense fleets and forts rapidly being seized at lighter than expected cost when Swedish treachery caught many of Norway's defenses off guard; and with Britain and France paralyzed by initial indecision the Axis rapidly took control over the majority of Scandinavia; leaving America to quickly move in to secure Greenland and Iceland before Nazi outposts could be set up on the islands and threaten North America itself. On the continent itself; the Swedish Ragnar offensives brought troops to within uncomfortably close range of Murmansk, with Axis troops entering the city's suburbs while mountaineering troops attempted to close off Murmansk entirely. The battleship Stal'naya once again steamed into battle; accompanied by an American carrier group that helped to push back the attempted Axis conquest of Murmansk in a battle that General Law said "might have been the most important one in the whole damn war" following the retreat of Axis forces from Murmansk in October of that year in a battle that swallowed tens of thousands of lives and cost hundreds of armoured vehicles and aircraft on both sides and saw the Luftwaffe sinking the carrier Kitty Hawk (CV-2) when German and Swedish land based aircraft penetrated her screen and delivered a fatal number of bombs; though the aircraft attempting to sink the Gettysburg were thwarted by the Stal'naya's anti-aircraft armament and the redoubled efforts by the comintern fleet.

The attempted Swedish offensive was eventually repulsed by renewed counterattacks as the weather worsened and the bitterly cold autumn and winter of 1941 began to settle in. Heavy snowfalls began to drag down all offensive operations and General Law and his soviet counterpart grew increasingly familiar with Scandinavian military tactics and adjusted their own operations accordingly. Law in particular was said to "get a kick out of watching the Swedish Nazis try to explain how they could be getting whipped by a Black General" as operation Valkyrie and Ragnar began to run out of steam as winter fell. A final offensive was ordered to fall in december to coincide with the last attempt to push into Moscow; the northern lights lighting up the sky as battle was engaged in a battlefield where the sun never rose. By January of that year; the Germans, the Swedish, and the Finns remained unable to close off Murmansk and had lost some forty thousand soldiers to the Comintern's seventy thousand troops in the snowy battlegrounds and had gained rather little ground in the far north; though there were more impressive gains towards the south, the offensive towards Arkhangelsk had not even pinched off Arkhangelsk from the land route to murmansk and the city remained frustratingly out of reach for Axis high command. Operation Ragnar was called off in January 11th of 1942 and had done relatively little but show that there would be no easy victory for either side in the roof of the world.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

I'd tell you more about the contexts behind these tanks but it'd get a bit into spoiler territory. Also I just wanted to get these out now. Instead I will provide you with some humorous quotes and write down the primers on them later.


Panzerkampfenwagen 50 “Jaguar”


Type: Medium tank

Place of Origin: Germany

Used by: Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, French State, Kingdom of Italy

In service: 1943 to 1946

Wars: Second World War


Designer: Henschel, Ford-Werke GmbH

Designed: 1941-42

Produced: 1942-46

Number built: ~8,000

Variants:


Specifications (Ausf. A, 1943)

Mass: 49.1 tonnes

Length: 6.86 meters

Width: 3.41 meters

Height: 2.99 meters

Crew: 5

Armor: Hull front 80 mm/55°, hull side 50 mm, rear 31 mm, top 30 mm, bottom 25 mm

Turret front 120 mm/20°, 120mm mantlet, turret side 60mm, 40mm turret roof.

Primary Armament: 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56 gun or 8,8 cm Kw.K. 42 l/71 or 10,5 cm Kw.K. 43 L/52 Ausf. B or 8,8 cm Kw.K. 44 L/100

Secondary Armament: 1 x MG34 7.92 mm x 57 mm machine gun

Engine: Ford-Maybach HL 235, 900 PS (661 kW) or Ford-Maybach HL 240

Power to mass:

Suspension: conical spring

Operational Range: 300 km

Speed: 51 km/hr

"What the devil is Jerry throwing at us now?" -Field marshal Montgomery

"The intelligence people tell me they call it a jaguar." - LeClerc

"Awful long way from the Amazon isn't it?" - Montgomery.

"It's a bit fat for a cat don't you think?" - LeClerc

Specifications (Ausf. M, 1945)

Mass: 67 tonnes

Length: 7 meters

Width: 3.41 meters

Height: 2.99 meters

Crew: 5

Armor: Hull front 150 mm/55°, hull side 80 mm, rear 80 mm, top 30 mm, bottom 25 mm

Turret front 120 mm/20°, 120mm mantlet, turret side 60mm, 40mm turret roof.

Primary Armament: 10,5 cm Kw.K. 43 L/52 Ausf. B or 8,8 cm Kw.K. 44 L/100

Secondary Armament: 1 x MG34 7.92 mm x 57 mm machine gun

Engine: Ford-Maybach HL 240, 1200 PS (882 kw)

Power to mass: 13.16

Suspension: conical spring

Operational Range: 250 km

Speed: 60 km/hr (Ausf M)

"So much for your heavy tank eh Fritz?" - Samusenko to a captured German tanker.

"Actually it is a medium tank you stupid bitch." - Tanker

"What the fuck kind of medium tank weighs 67 tonnes?" - Samusenko's response.

Panzerkampfenwagen 75 “Tiger”


Type: Heavy Tank

Place of Origin: Germany

Used by: Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS,

In service: 1943 to 1946

Wars: Second World War


Designer: Porsche, Ford-Werke GmbH

Designed: 1942-1944

Produced: 1943-46

Number built: ~1500

Variants: G.W 75 Tiger (Self propelled gun, 100 built), STuG 75 Tiger (Assault gun with rocket mortar, 100 built), Jagzpanzer 75 Tiger (Tank destroyer, 300 built), Waffentrager 75 Tiger (Anti-air vehicle, 100 built), Tpz 75 Tiger (prototype ‘assault transport” vehicle), Bergepanzer 75 (Recovery vehicle, 100 built)


Specifications (Ausf. A, 1943)

Mass: 93 tonnes

Length: 8.34 meters

Width: 3.9 meters

Height: 3.15 meters

Crew: 6

Armor: Hull front 160 mm/55°, hull side 120 mm, rear 120 mm, top 40 mm, bottom 40-60 mm

Turret front 185 mm/20°, 150mm mantlet, turret side 80mm, 40mm turret roof.

Primary Armament: 10,5 cm Kw.K. L/68 or 12.8 cm KwK 44 L/55



Secondary Armament: 7.92 mm MG34, MG150 20mm autocannon (pintle mount)

Engine: Ford-Maybach HL 240, 1200 PS (882 kw)

Power to mass: 9.5

Suspension: conical spring

Operational Range: 220 km

Speed: 40 km/hr

"Tell command we have spotted some sort of turreted empalcements; call the demolition troops; they'll have work to do this night." - French Commando

"Actually jean, I think it's moving." - Second French Commando.

"Do not speak such nonsense it cannot possi-" First Commando before being interrupted by the roar of an engine.

"...How?" - First Commando

"Hrm, I believe the wife of the designer must be a very unsatisfied woman." - Second Commando.


Panzerkampfenwagen 100 “Smilodon”


Type: Superheavy tank

Place of Origin: Germany

Used by: Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS,

In service: 1944 to 1946

Wars: Second World War


Designer: Henschel, Porsche, Ford-Werke GmbH

Designed: 1942-1944

Produced: 1944-46

Number built: ~450

Variants: G.W 100 Smilodon (Self propelled gun, 25 built), STuG 100 Smilodon (Assault gun with rocket mortar, 25 built), Jagzpanzer 100 Smilodon (Tank destroyer, 75 built), Waffentrager 100 Smilodon (Anti-air vehicle, 25 built), Tpz 100 Smilodon (prototype ‘assault transport” vehicle), Bergepanzer 100 (Recovery vehicle, 25 built)


Specifications (Ausf. A, 1944)

Mass: 140 tonnes

Length: 10.27 meters

Width: 4.48 meters

Height: 3.29 meters

Crew: 6

Armor: Hull front 150-200 mm/55°, hull side 120 with 60mm side skirts, rear 120-150 mm, top 40 mm, bottom 40-80 mm

Turret front 250 mm/20°, 200mm mantlet turret side 120-150mm, 40mm turret roof.

Primary Armament: 12.8 cm KwK 44 L/55/15 cm KwK 44 L/38



Secondary Armament: co-axial 75 mm KwK 44 L/36.5, 7.92 mm MG34, MG150 20mm autocannon (pintle mount)

Engine: Ford-Maybach HL 275, 1750 PS (1287.123 kw)

Power to mass: 9.2

Suspension: conical spring

Operational Range: 190 km

Speed: 30 km/hr

"Uncle Debs' balls, what is that? What the fuck is that? What is that Ford?!" - General Patton.

"What are your orders then sir?" - Unknown Tanker

"Get the fucking artillery on the line because that piece of kraut shit over there has its own damn zip code." - Patton.

Specifications (Jagdpanzer 100 1944)

Mass: 145 tonnes

Length: 10.27 meters

Width: 4.48 meters

Height: 3.29 meters

Crew: 6

Armor: Hull front 150-200 mm/55°, hull side 120-150 mm, rear 120-150 mm, top 40 mm, bottom 40-80 mm

Superstructure front 250 mm/30°, 50mm additional plate, 250mm gun mantlet Superstructure side 120-150mm, 40mm superstructure roof.

Primary Armament: 17 cm KwK 44 L/55


Secondary Armament: co-axial 75 mm KwK 44 L/36.5, 7.92 mm MG34, MG150 20mm autocannon (pintle mount)

Engine: Ford-Maybach HL 275, 1750 PS (1287.123 kW)

Power to mass: 8.9

Suspension: conical spring

Operational Range: 150 km

Speed: 30 km/hr

"It's not about how big it is, it's about how well you use it." - Panzerkommandant Heinrich Jäger

"Then why is it so big?" - Georg Schultz


Also maps!

1939

1940 before the war

Operation Teutonic

Operation Valkyrie

Post-Valkyrie counter-offensives

The darkest hour

The counter-attacks begin in earnest

The great thing about these maps is that they're very easy to edit on msPaint. Just use the dropper tool for the colours and do correct me if you think I've made any mistakes.

 

[Aelita]

Post-Revolution Battleships of the WFRN

Name: Monitor-class
Operators: Workers' and Farmers' Red Navy
Preceded by: Comintern-class (ex-South Dakota-class)
Succeeded by: Wat Tyler-class

Built: 1934-1938
In commission: 1936-1951
Planned: 5
Completed: 5

Type: Fast battleship
Displacement: 40,220 tonnes (standard)

49,500 tonnes (full load)​

Length: 225.1 meters
Beam: 33 meters
Draft: 10.8 meters (full load)
Installed power: 105,000 kW (140,000 shp)
Propulsion: four geared steam turbines, four shafts, 8 boilers
Speed: 54.6 km/h (29.5 kts)
Range: 24,000 km at 28 km/hr
Armament:
3 x 3 – 41 cm/50 caliber Mark 6 guns
10 x 2 – 125 mm/40 caliber Mark 18 guns
10 x 2 – 37 mm L/60 MG-37-NS1 AA guns
25 – 20 mm MG-20-A1 AA guns
Armor:
Belt: 325 mm on 25 mm STS, inclined 19 degrees
Barbette: 295-435 mm
Conning tower: 75 mm
Turret: 178-410 mm
Deck: 178-210 mm total
Bulkheads: 290 mm

Ships
Monitor (BB-57)
Ulysses (BB-58)
Gaius Marius (BB-59)
Sons of Liberty (BB-60)
Minuteman (BB-61)

Planning for what would eventually become the Monitor-class began years before the revolution. The General Board of the US Navy, the de facto general staff of the pre-revolution navy, ordered preliminary design work for a successor to the South Dakota-class in the fall of 1925. Two preliminary studies, A and B, were prepared to the exacting specifications of the Washington Naval Treaty, armed with sixteen 14-inch and twelve 16-inch guns respectively. Though the 14-inch Mark 4 gun had fallen out of favor with the Navy brass, it was considered prudent to prepare for the outcome of an expected London Naval Conference, where the British would undoubtedly push again for a 14-inch armament restriction.

Both designs continued the philosophy of their predecessors, a modest 23 knot top speed while focusing design efforts towards high survivability in a heavy “all-or-nothing” armor configuration. There was little urgency to this work, as all of the Great Powers had adhered to the dictates of the Treaty, and discontent over ship ratios had not yet overcome the reluctance of peacetime post-war governments to engage in large new arms expenditures.

The next phase in the design progress began in 1929, when the General Board ordered a feasibility study on a “heavy battlecruiser” to address the perceived inadequacies of the Lexington-class battlecruisers. The large and very expensive battlecruisers would be forced to serve as a fast wing in any hypothetical fleet engagement (usually assumed to be the Royal Navy or the Imperial Japanese Navy), and many captains had severe reservations about their survivability in this role.

Two further designs, C and D, were developed, shedding a gun turret from the previous designs to gain more machinery space. Study C was lengthened by twenty meters. The longer, finer hull profile, coupled with newer, more efficient boilers and lighter geared steam turbines, gave the design additional 5 knots of top speed with only a minor reduction in belt armor. Study D was more radical, adopting the all-forward turret layout of the British Revenge-class battlecruiser and slightly thinner armor to further reduce weight. Study D devoted weight savings to longer hull profile, and more machinery, enabling a 33 knot tops speed.

Ultimately Study C was placed on hold. Study D would be ordered as the United States-class battlecruiser in 1930, slated to replace the Nevada and Pennsylvania-class battleships now that the Treaty mandated shipbuilding moratorium had expired. While many in the Navy considered it a flawed compromise, the battlecruiser advocates had the ear of President Hoover. With the onset of the Great Depression, construction on the United States and her sister ships continued in fits and starts as controversial make-work programs, while the Navy’s budget for repair and refit dwindled.

Study C would be revived thanks to the Civil War. With the loss of so many ships either to defection, scuttling or battle damage, the newly forged Workers and Farmers Revolutionary Navy would need reinforcement to defend the revolution. The Provisional Government revived capital ship planning in November 1933, while fighting was still winding down but the new regime beginning to assert itself.

The Naval Operations Committee, the successor to the General Board, selected Study C for modernization due to its 1) adherence to Treaty limits 2) advanced state of development. Three new variants, C1 through C3, were developed to study new strategies for weight reduction. C3 was the most radical, adopting all welded construction and using part of the ship’s armor as a structural member, untested ideas unsuited for a ship the Navy wanted laid down as soon as possible.

The more intensive design study revealed that previous studies had been too generous with their weight assumptions. C had used the 16-inch/50 caliber Mark 2 of its predecessors, and the earlier design had been too optimistic about how small of a turret and barbette would be needed to mount the very large and heavy guns. The finalized design for the BB-57-class was able to fit within Treaty mandated standard displacement (albeit with some creative accounting) thanks to the efforts of the Bureau of Ordnance developing a lighter, more modern replacement for the 16-inch Mark 2.

The final design, approved by the Naval Operations Committee, and accepted by Defense Secretary Abern, would be ordered on 2 November 1934. The lead ship of the class, Monitor, was laid down at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard in a highly publicized ceremony on Christmas Eve. The next four ships of the class would be laid down over the next year. The name Monitor was selected by Navy Commissioner-General(1) Harry Bridges both in homage to the Navy’s first ironclad warship, and for its archaic meaning: “one who admonishes and corrects wrongdoers.”

The Monitor-class would be the first and only class of capital ship that America would complete to the limits of the Naval Treaties. Even the Toledo-class (ex-United States), which were completed concurrently with the Monitor-class, were secretly modified while under construction to abrogation of the terms of the treaties, a fact that would not be disclosed until after the Foster government repudiated the Treaty in 1936.

The Monitor-class was a well-rounded design, fast enough for operations with the detached wing of the fleet, but sturdy enough to survive in the line-of-battle against her toughest contemporaries. She mounted nine of the 41cm/50 caliber Mark 6 guns(2) that would serve as the backbone of modern fleet in three turrets, two forward and one aft. Their 1250kg shells, the “super heavy” AP Mark 8 shells, designed in light of the experience gained in the Battle of the Straits of Florida, would be the gold-standard for capital ship weapons for the next decade. Able to penetrate 440mm of belt armor and 130mm of deck armor at 22km, few extant capital ships would have any immune zone at all against the Monitor.

Monitor’s own armor was excellent though limited against weaponry equivalent to her own. The armored belt, 325mm thick backed by 25mm of Special Treatment Steel, was inclined outward 19 degrees from the keel, tapered down as it connected to the double bottom and torpedo protection arrangements. The internal inclined belt saved a significant amount of weight, and provided protection equivalent to 480mm of vertical armor. Multiple armored decks protected the ship against long range plunging fire and armor piercing bombs; a 40mm STS weather deck to arm fuzes and yaw penetrating shells to increase their penetration angle, a combined 150mm of Class B armor and STS to stop shells or resist detonation, and a further 20mm STS splinter deck to catch shell splinters and spalling.

Combined, this would give the Monitor a zone of immunity against her own guns between 21 and 32 kilometers. Underwater protection was advanced; two tanks outside the belt armor, separated by bulkheads, and filled with water or fuel oil, to absorb the force of torpedo detonation and prevent any splinters from piercing into the armored raft section. In practice, the torpedo defense system would prove less effective than prior systems and would need overhaul in later classes.

At commission, Monitor’s anti-aircraft weaponry was considered almost excessive. A secondary battery of twenty 125mm dual purpose guns, mounted in ten twin turrets, provided long-range anti-aircraft fire (as well as defense against small surface combatants). Twenty 37mm autocannons in ten twin mountings provided a mid-range protection envelope, supplemented by twenty-five 20mm machine guns for point defense. This protection would be further augmented in wartime refits with additional 37mm and 20mm mounts.

(1) Senior civilian administrator of the Navy, direct subordinate of the People’s Secretary for Defense, and thus analogous to the modern US Secretary of the Navy.

(2) Though the bore is slightly larger (16.14-inches), the Navy considers 16-inch and 41cm guns to be part of the same series. During refit and modernization, older battleships would have their guns relined to a 41cm bore to ensure shell commonality.

 

[Aelita]

Excerpts from Elias Z. Young*, Pacific 1943: The Search for Decisive Battle, (Annapolis: Revolutionary Naval Academy, 1981)

The conduct of the Pacific War throughout 1942 had been dictated by two vastly discordant political aims. The military-political cliques dominating Imperial Japanese political life had since the Red May Revolution identified the UASR and communism as the primary threat to the empire. As our prologue detailed, this political attitude among the ranking military leaders, industrialists and members of the Imperial court was neurotic to the point of paranoia. External aggression and internal subversion were taken a priori to be the aim of communist philosophy in a direct mirror to the Imperial Way.

This obsession with safeguarding the nation and inoculating the body-politic from deviation drove a decade of state policy, from the extraordinarily expensive naval spending programs, repeated military adventures in China, to the centralization of political/economic power in the erection of a Japanese brand of fascist totalitarianism. Imperial Japan would thus build fleets of battleships and carriers it could ill afford, tie down millions of men in military service, and conquer territories it could not govern, in an effort to prepare for a conflict that the Great Adversary had little intention of engaging in.

By contrast, the political leadership of the UASR had little interest in a pan-Pacific conflict. Military preparation in the 1930s had been focused on the other side of the world from Japan, tearing down the British Empire. The economic might of Great Britain, backed by the powerful Royal Navy, had been identified as the primary obstacle to world revolution. In this analysis, Japan was little more than a nuisance. The terms of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1934 had brought the two Empires into a close military pact, but this was not expected to amount to much.

The vastness of the Pacific Ocean, littered with tiny islands of little economic value, could only be the venue of a Quixotic conflict. The Philippines had been occupied by the British in collaboration with anti-communist nationalists, and had set up a quasi-independent dominion. With no overseas empire to protect, there seemed little reason to fight the Japanese now. The main focus would be in the Atlantic, and in the event of war the WFRN planned to fight a cautious, defensive war with a minimal amount of ships, and negotiate a white peace with Japan after achieving war aims against Britain.

These two powers would nonetheless be locked in a knock-down, drag-out fight for numerous material and philosophical reasons. America’s increasing involvement in internal Chinese politics and defending the Soviet Union from fascist encirclement made total war an inevitable outcome.

…The IJN’s grand strategy in the Pacific War mandated that a decisive battle be fought. Nothing less than a second Tsushima Strait would suffice. The Imperial Court wanted generous terms, including the cession Hawai’i, the end of political/economic aid to the Republic of China, and a generous war indemnity. While much has been written about the Imperial leadership’s overly rosy assessments of their military situation, it must be noted that the Imperial War Ministry and the Cabinet were at least dimly aware of the unbalanced nature of conflict with the American Republics.

While serving as War Minister in 1941, Hideki Tojo informed the Cabinet that, “In terms of tonnage, the American Navy grossly outclasses us. This much we have always known. We have comforted ourselves with the delusion that our British allies preoccupy much of their strength. This is a fool’s hope; we must not give in to indolence. We must be prepared to fight against communist encroachment alone if necessary. We must convince the American that it is not worth testing his mettle against our national spirit.”

…Since his appointment as Commander of the Combined Fleet in December 1939, Yamamoto had been searching for The Decisive Battle. In 1940 and 41, this had been an academic exercise. Those years of work would culminate in sinking or heavily damaging much of the WFRN Pacific Fleet at anchor in the infamous surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It was the greatest naval victory since Tsushima, and yet the definite article still eluded him.

The UASR had not shown any sign of capitulation, and in spite of being involved in several naval engagements throughout 1942, they had shrewdly avoided giving the admirals of the Combined Fleet much purchase. Like in the hypothetical war they’d been theorizing in the 30s, the American Republics focused on Europe and the Atlantic. And while Yamamoto took the reins to plot the final ruination of the American Pacific Fleet, Deleon-Debs remained aloof, busy with engineering the ruin of the Regia Marina and the Marine Nationale.

…Midway was a flat little atoll near the end of the Hawai’ian Archipelago, so named because it is the midpoint between Asia and the Americas. The atoll had been fortified prior to the outbreak of the Pacific War, and further reinforced after Pearl Harbor. In itself, it was not especially important to Yamamoto’s grand strategy, but he correctly deduced that it would be considered an important defensive outpost.

As we shall see in this chapter, Yamamoto’s plans for Midway were intricate, almost excessively so. In brief, Yamamoto dispersed the impressive force he had assembled into multiple task forces that were highly dispersed. The battle would develop in multiple phases, as his fast carrier group hit the atoll hard to prepare for marine landings, and grappled with any American reinforcements while the main body closed to take the islands and grapple with American reinforcements, a necessary compromise to ensure surprise.

Under his leadership, the IJN was not as rigid as they were often held to be in popular perception. The frustrations of 1942’s campaigns had produced notable reforms in fleet doctrine. The issue of pilot attrition was addressed by July 1942, though with some difficulty. After several carriers missed potentially decisive engagements to rebuild their air complement, the IJN was forced to decouple air crew training from carrier crews. Like their adversaries, squadrons would now be rotated in and out of carriers as needed. Veteran pilots would be used to instruct new recruits and build new squadrons. This would only be felt fully after June 1943, when the outcome of the Battle of Midway and the subsequent Oahu operation in October would validate the new system.

Under the old system of pilot training, the air crew attrition alone could have kept the Kidō Butai out of action for at least 9 months, if not longer.

…Vice Admiral Chuichi Hara took command of the Kidō Butai on 3 May 1943. He would have barely a month to prepare to lead the vanguard of the Combined Fleet to execute Operation MI. He would have at his disposal a mighty force of seven fleet carriers and nearly 550 aircraft: his flagship Taihō, Tatsumaki, Shokaku, Hiryu, Soryu, Akagi and Amagi. They would be accompanied by two fast battleships, Haruna and Kirishima, three heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and seven destroyers, plus attached supply ships.

Yamamoto’s main force, divided into two separate task forces, had eight battleships of varying quality, three light carriers, twelve cruisers, two dozen destroyers, seven submarines, and various troop carriers to support amphibious invasion.

…Rear Admiral William Halsey would command Task Force 22 in the battle. Halsey had at his disposal four fleet carriers: Solidarity (CV-6), Enterprise (CV-7), Hornet (CV-9) and Union (CV-11). Two battleships, Monitor (BB-57) and Ulysses (BB-58) would escort them, along with six light cruisers and twelve destroyers.

At face value, this presented an enormous disparity of force. However, the land-based air assets on Midway Atoll would total some 130 combat aircraft, nearly two additional carrier decks worth, in addition to four squadrons of long-range reconnaissance seaplanes.

…The unravelling of the Sorge ring in Japan had temporarily crippled military intelligence against Japan. While the MID worked to rebuild its networks via infiltrating neutral Dutch commercial interests in the Japanese controlled East Indies, the IJN was implementing its own home-brewed Enigma variant, undoing years of codebreaking work.

In summary, Stavka had an excellent appreciation of Japanese naval assets, the qualities of its leadership, and their naval doctrine, but had very little concrete information about the disposition of forces from January 1943 onwards. Admiral John Henry Towers, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific fleet since April, correctly deduced that his opposition were preparing for major operations.

Based on his assessments, he secured the transfer of several major surface assets from the Atlantic Fleet, including the Hornet. However, he still had limited resources compared to Yamamoto presently, and little means to discover Imperial intentions. The mobilization of marines and carriers pointed to an amphibious operation, but there were several likely targets identified by Stavka’s March 1943 report. New Caledonia, Ceylon, Midway, and the Aleutians were the most likely targets.

Midway itself had been fortified quite extensively. The airfield housed two squadrons of F6F-3 Sabocats, totaling 24 aircraft, a composite squadron of 19 SBD Dauntless dive bombers and 7 SBTC torpedo/bombers, and a squadron of 12 newer BTM “Mauler” torpedo/bombers. The Navy recently transferred two additional squadrons, one of twelve F7F twin engine interceptors, and a squadron of twelve PBN “Shillelagh” twin-engine bombers.

28 older F3D fighters rounded out the Navy air complement on the Island. The Army contributed two squadrons of F-35D “Yeoman” fighters, well suited for long-range work over the ocean.

The approaches and beaches of Midway had been littered with obstacles to frustrate an amphibious landing. Defensive works, including concrete pillboxes, linked with tunnels to bunkers, allowed the two battalions of the 5th Naval Regiment to fiercely resist amphibious assault. Additional batteries of anti-aircraft guns, and casemated shore batteries, including two 38cm heavy guns, rounded out the Midway fortress.

…As well fortified as Midway Atoll was, it could not hope to match the Imperial fleet steaming towards her. The Midway garrison had a handful of patrol boats, tenders, and three destroyers in the vicinity, and they were mostly concerned with anti-submarine work. Halsey’s task force, since it could not afford to commit without intelligence of Japanese intentions, was still at Pearl Harbor, over 1100 nautical miles away. Steaming at flank speed, Task Force 22 would be two days away.

Hara’s approaching fleet was spotted at 540 on 12 June 1943 by a PBY seaplane. The patrol plane radioed that it had detected probably a heavy cruiser and three destroyers steaming towards the Midway Atoll. Post-war evaluations of Japanese naval archives have confirmed the crew’s assessment; the positions of the heavy cruiser Ibuki, and the destroyers Shimakaze, Akigumo, and Suzunami correspond to Lieutenant Joseph Kennedy’s reports.

The report brought the Midway garrison to full readiness within minutes. Alerted by secure cable, Halsey made the decision to put to sea immediately, calculating that this was likely a portent of a larger force given its proximity to an important defensive island.

At 620, the Midway radar stations detected a large flight of hostile aircraft inbound, 110 nautical miles out. The already prepared aircraft began their sorties immediately; Midway garrison commander Brigadier Maxwell Church* deduced he would have one chance to “use it or lose it”, and directed his patrol bombers and torpedo planes to begin hunting for the enemy fleet.

…The aircraft encountered by the combat air patrol Sabocats of VF-61 were unlike those encountered in previous engagements. While the MID had whisperings of refitting major fleet carrier air assets, the first visual corroboration was established at Midway. Frontline IJN units had continued to use older A6M5 Reisen fighters, B5N3 torpedo bombers and D3A dive bombers in the South Pacific theater.

The unknown capabilities of the new A7M Reppu fighters constituted another layer of surprise. Sabocats had largely outclassed the older Reisen except in maneuverability. The Reppu retained the excellent maneuverability of the older fighter, but could also outmatch the top speed and climb rate of the Sabocat. The Reppu’s four Type 99 20mm cannons with 200 rounds per gun were powerful and accurate, and even the heavily constructed Sabocat could not endure such firepower. The powerful 1600 kW Mitsubishi Ha-43 engine give the Reppu a top speed of 642 km/hr, and a climb to 6000 meters in just under six minutes.

The new B7A Ryusei torpedo bombers and D4Y Suisei dive bombers gave similar improvements to the carrier bombing forces. Both were much faster, with better engines and aerodynamics as well as better payloads.

The initial clash between VF-61 and the Japanese raiders would be indicative of the rest of the battle. The Sabocats attacked with an altitude advantage afforded by their better superchargers, and utilized their superior dive speed and stability to conduct slashing attacks on Japanese bombers. This advantage would quickly evaporate, and the Sabocat pilots struggled to avoid being drawn into losing dogfights with the Reppus. VF-61 suffered heavy casualties, losing 7 aircraft to shoot down 5 Suiseis and 3 Reppus.

…The Japanese raiders countered additional waves of defending fighters, and struggled to thwart the heavy land-based F7Fs, which could manage nearly 100km/hr faster than the Reppu at altitude. But the weight of numbers was heavily in their favor, and relief was still two days sailing away.

The bombers encountered a thick curtain of flak as they approached the Atoll. Radar gun-directors and the secretive VT fused immensely improved lethality, but the huge 220 plane raid was able to overwhelm the defenses. At high cost, the AA batteries began to be silenced by bombs, rockets and strafing cannon fire. The airfields were cratered, fuel stores were hit, and the dive bombers began targeting visible defensive emplacements.

…The search radars of the PBY pickets were zeroing in on Hara’s carriers during this maelstrom. While a third of the launched attackers were forced to turn back by the time their location were identified, the remaining Maulers, Dauntlesses and Shillelaghs homed in on the fleet.

They attacked unescorted, gravely fighting off combat air patrol Reisens and anti-aircraft fire to deliver their payload. The 20mm tail turrets of the twelve Shillelagh’s claimed seven enemy fighters, but in the end they were only able to deliver a single torpedo hit on the Hiryu, ultimately forcing her to retire.

The Maulers were faster, and able to sink a heavy cruiser and damage the battleship Kirishima. The Dauntlesses delivered a number of bomb hits including one on the armored deck of the Tatsumaki, but the 500kg armor piercing bomb failed to penetrate, and did minimal damage to the ship. (The deck crews, and half a dozen planes did not fare as well against the bomb splinters).

Of the 40 planes that made the attack, only 10 were able to return to Midway. Hara considered the American pilots gallant and worthy foes, and ordered the survivors rescued and treated in a manner befitting captured nobles in the Sengoku.

…Hara’s first raid had lost some 60 planes in total, including those that returned too damaged to fly again. In addition to the 30 bombers shot down, the Midway air group lost 40 fighters, just over half its force. Anti-aircraft batteries were at thirty percent readiness, and several important defensive works were wrecked. Worse, the radar installations were knocked out, and the main supplies of aviation fuel were burning wrecks. With only enough fuel remaining for a quixotic sortie, Church ordered the air crew, and non-essential personnel to evacuate by flying boat, patrol boat, and the destroyer Sentinel. Salvaging what fuel he could, the advanced F7Fs would ferry to safety.

Church and his marines would hold the line and await reinforcement. The damaged aircraft were cannibalized, and their armament used to make additional improvised anti-aircraft positions. The rest. The remaining twelve undamaged Yeoman and Sabocats would sortie against the next raid, with avgas salvaged from burning stockpiles.

…As the Japanese continued to pummel Midway, Halsey worked to reacquire the carrier fleet. Now facing six confirmed carriers (the Hiryu was spotted retiring by the submarine Sturgeon (SS-187), but was unable to obtain a firing solution), Halsey hoped to achieve surprise of his own.

Hara remained diligent in searching out potential adversaries. Having rung the bell, it was all but certain that an American response would come, and Yamamoto would achieve the decisive battle he sought. With the main force still four days away, Hara expected the WFRN would sortie all available assets from Pearl to drive him away, including an expected six fast battleships or battlecruisers that might be able to close the distance on his carriers while he was settling accounts with Midway.

Carriers weighed more heavily on his mind; one only had to look at the hull numbers of American CVs to see how many they had in inventory, and the IJN had difficulty ascertaining their whereabouts. Hara’s fear, confessed in his personal log, was that the trap he was setting would snare the Kido Butai, like the Battle of the Denmark Straits the previous fall. Hara was reluctant to trust Axis French naval intelligence reports about American assets, and the American penchant for maskirovka had already confounded Japanese planners. Ships thought sunk at Pearl Harbor had popped in numerous other theaters. Early reports of sinking three of the newer fast battleships had proved erroneous; older battleships mocked up to appear more like the Monitor or Toledo-class had been struck instead, and reported in disinformation campaigns as lost.

Hara’s estimates for enemy carrier strength were very accurate. Two at the lowest, six at the highest, with four the most likely. Had the attack occurred one month later, the Shiloh (CV-5) and Bonhomme Richard (CV-15), and their associated escorts would have completed transfer to Pearl from the Atlantic Fleet.

…Halsey spotted the Japanese carriers first, as they maneuvered west of Midway, on the morning of 14 June. The patrol seaplane was diverted to Midway, as planned, to cast doubt on whether an American relief fleet had arrived. Task Force 22 steamed at flank speed into striking range, launching a sortie of 25 AM torpedo bombers, 25 SB2C “Corsair” dive bombers, and 45 F6F fighters. Just after they cleared the horizon, a scout plane from the cruiser Ibuki discovered the lead elements of Task Force 22 before being driven off by patrolling Sabocats.

With American carriers verified, but strength undetermined, Hara turned his attention to the decisive portion of decisive battle. With Midway decimated, he had a free hand to plot the ruin of Halsey’s carriers, and began preparing a sortie. Additional scouts continued to track the movements of the American fleet as his aircraft began taking off.

…Japanese radar detected the attack coming at 80 nautical miles, just enough time to launch readied fighters. The American squadrons attacked with greater coordination than previous carrier engagements, where poor communication had often led squadrons in piecemeal. They attacked in force and furiously. Briefed on new Japanese capabilities, the attackers were slightly better prepared than Midway’s defenders. Still, they encountered a well-drilled adversary with competent AA screens, and very effective battlefield maneuvers, resulting in many torpedos missing their mark.

The carriers were the primary target and most effort was focused on them. The Taiho was hit was three armor piercing bombs, only one perforating her armored deck and sending spalling and splinters into the hanger area. Amagi was hit by two armor piercing bombs, which started an inferno in her hanger deck, and an additional torpedo hit. Shokaku took a single armor piercing bomb, but was able to better contain the damage. The rest of the carriers took minor damage from near misses, but otherwise evaded torpedoes directed at them. The battleship Haruna took three torpedoes and would eventually capsize.

…Hara was placed in a difficult position. In a single stroke, Halsey had taken two of his decks out of action. Amagi would continue to thwart attempts to bring her fires under control, and would eventually be scuttled, and Shokaku was unable to conduct operations until her flight deck was patched. Additionally, Taiho herself would be able to conduct limited operations only while her engineers made emergency patches on her armored deck. Hara calculated he faced no less than three, more likely four enemy carriers. The odds were at least even. His blind sortie would decide the outcome. If it failed to do significant damage, the next American raid would decimate his carriers, and his remaining ships would be sitting ducks. Yamamoto was still a day and a half away, and could not afford to engage without air cover.

The 50 Ryusei, 40 Suisei, and 40 Reppu of Hara’s sortie discovered Halsey’s carriers at 1330. The four ships steamed in a combat box, flanked by battleships and anti-aircraft cruisers. Braving a maelstrom of sortieing Sabocats and a hail of VT fuze gun batteries, his planes attacked.

After heavy losses, the first bombs hit home. Three AP bombs struck one after the other in a neat line down the center of Union’s flight deck. Hornet was hit next by two bombs. Two destroyers and a cruiser were hit as well. A second wave arrived 30 minutes after the first, carrying the second half of the raiders. Two torpedoes struck home on the Hornet, followed by a bomb and a torpedo hitting the Solidarity.

Japanese aircrews took savage casualties, and in the final minutes two damaged bombers crashed into the already burning Solidarity.

…Halsey’s second wave struck at Hara’s carriers not long after the Japanese raid began to retire. The already damaged Shokaku was hit by two more bombs, ending any hopes of getting her battle ready again, and the Tatsumaki took and additional two bombs that failed to penetrate her armored deck. An additional cruiser was torpedoed, as the Maulers failed to penetrated into the carrier box. They would return to find only a single carrier deck operational. As destroyers hurriedly evacuated the damaged carriers, deck crews frantically pushed damaged or even operational planes off the deck of the Enterprise to make way for air crews.

It was a bitter sight that none would forget. Halsey gave the order to retire as soon as air crews were recovered, with only a token force remaining to finish evacuations. The fires and flooding were staunched on the Solidarity, and she would be towed in a harrowing journey back to Pearl Harbor, constantly fearing air attack. But the Union and Hornet proved to be lost causes, and were scuttled just after nightfall.

…Yamamoto’s main force arrived on the 16th. Though no one yet knew it, the Battle of Midway was essentially over. Unable to confirm with certainty how many carriers were lost, he prepared his fleets for a surface duel that would never come. After intense gunnery bombardment, Japanese marines waded ashore on Midway to face a stubborn, fanatical defense by her garrison. With little cover save for the American’s defensive works, it was a slaughter of machine guns and mortars. The Japanese marines got their first taste of an opposed amphibious landing, and could barely stomach it

After the defenders endured ninety percent casualties lost a comparable portion of the island, the Japanese Marine commander Takeshi Omura* offered terms to the American commander, a move that surprised many of his subordinates. Terms were accepted by Major Richard R. Shaft*, currently the ranking officer among the remnants of the 5th Naval. Brigadier Church had been killed in action evacuating wounded men to their final redoubt, an act which would earn him the Hero of Socialist Labor medal upon the release of prisoners of war and the final acts of the Battle of Midway became known.

…Yamamoto had pushed the borders of the Co-Prosperity Sphere yet again. Hara had defeated the American carrier task force at the cost of a carrier and a battleship. The cost in terms of planes and pilots was high but tolerable, and certainly less than the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force had endured in the abortive Northern Campaign.

But this victory was hollow. The bulk of the Pacific Fleet had not engaged, and the decisive battle that he had sought and so many of his men had given their lives for had been denied.

Through the difficult trials on the battlefields of the Soviet Union, the American political and military leadership had learned of the necessity of giving ground and denying action to the enemy. They would not be so easily goaded into fighting battles on a losing footing, and even outnumbered, they hit back at the IJN hard. Yamamoto would be forced back to the drawing board to engineer another decisive battle against the WFRN.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

Co-written with Jello Biafra

Excerpt from the Alternate History.com thread “AH Challenge; Earlier Iberian Campaign”

Oh bloody hell no, it’s the Monty and Carty show again.

Monty and Carty show? Wuzzat my gnomiest of mods?

When the Allied contribution to the western european theater of world war two comes up there’s this alarming tendency, especially in bad pop histories like you can find on the EBC History Channel; for it to devolve into a nightmare of waxing philosophical about Montgomery and Catroux and their duel with Rommel and Gambera.

If you’re lucky, they might remember that some other generals and field marshals existed like Franco, Von Arnim and Laure for the Axis or George Pearkes, Charles DeGaulle, and Manuel Oliveria for the Allies. But nine times out of ten in movies you will see all these people dressed as nothing but Entente soldiers against Germano-Italians. Sometimes they don’t even remember the Italians.

Just the slightest, and I do mean the slightest bit odd when Spanish and French troops made up the bulk of the Axis’ forces in Iberia for the longest time.

But oh yes on Monty and Carty. You have all these books, documentaries and internet forumites and bloggers arguing in circles about whether Montgomery was a great commander or not. Whether he was a brilliant mover of men, a hack who only won through having more guns; or someone who was brilliant because he could get those guns in place. Not once will you ever hear someone in pop-history circles mention that “you know, we might just be missing the rest of the forest while we’re arguing about this here tree.” It’s not like there were hundreds of commanders and many other field marshals besides the future supreme commander and president of France. Oh no, we’ve got to idolize these two as if world war two were a buddy cop show.

Oh and don’t get me started on how we give undue exposure to the Americuban force there. Two divisions and two brigades does not make a crucial contribution. It gets you a gold star for participating but not the bloody medal. When I watched that old movie from the 70s “The second Reconquista” and saw this soldier say with the most rapt and wide eyed awe “who are those soldiers?” and Monty’s actor to reply with blistering deadpan seriousness “why the Americans of course” when MacArthur’s G.i’s moved in to reinforce a position after a German attack I wanted to reach my crusty old hands backwards in time and strangle that bloody director and script writer.

Not even a whiff of the Nigerian, French Central African, or South African soldiers who played such a crucial part. Oh there were some token indians too; but otherwise? Whiter than your little brother’s bad ghost costume, I guarantee it.

Whaaaaaaat? Man that’s a load of bunkus man. You can’t just write all the African soldiers out like that; there were way more of them than the Cubans or Canadians. And what? Not even a mention of Gbeismola*? Bunkus.

I’d bet you real money that the director never heard of him.

Back to the topic at hand:


My gut reaction is no, you’re not getting an earlier Iberian campaign. Summer 1943 was extremely quick, tbh. The troops raised by the recruitment drives and conscription in Spring 1942 were barely ready as it was. With the exception of Free French troops and Royal Air Force squadrons, precious little of the 1943 order of battle were veterans; the pre-war army was already engaged elsewhere.


They committed twelve divisions, including two armored divisions, to Portugal in 1943. That was enough to stop the Spanish in their tracks, but it wasn’t enough to make a rapid breakout into Spain proper. Starting earlier means having fewer divisions ready to go into combat, and ask the Soviets what happens when you are forced to rush divisions into battle with minimal training and organization.


Plus, you have to take into account the American/Mexican landings in Morocco in late July; these were planned in cooperation with the WAllies, and they had their own rigid timetable. They captured several important airfields which would be used to support the October breakout into Spain.

The Spanish also had far more soldiers to commit at the time. Sanjurjo’s boasting of his army’s size was just a little bit exaggerative, especially since he had many troops working with the Einsatzgruppen to commit genocide in Basque country, Galicia, and Catalonia but the Spanish outnumbered the Allies significantly at the battle in terms of infantry. Trying to press into an offensive before we were absolutely ready would have been, well it would been outright suicidal really!


They were just facing a much better equipped army that was quickly able to chase their planes out of the sky. Something also overlooked is the amount of effort Portugal threw into its own defenses. The Portuguese army essentially mobilized everything to honor the ancient alliance; going earlier would have probably meant many of the forces they committed would still be in the process of being mobilized out of reserves.

But I do tire of watching the fellatio of Montgomery and Catroux; last week’s Doctor Who Episode where the Doctor gushes over meeting Montgomery and Catroux made me want to die inside. It was just so...cringe worthy I can’t really find the words. I’m really quite mad that they allowed a notorious Tory like Roland write that script and follow through with it. I’m especially sick of how people are quick to forgive Montgomery of things like his defense of anti-sodomy laws and how free french leaders like LeClerc, DeGaulle, and Catroux are essentially secular saints to this day in France.

You can’t criticize them on anything like their support of the Adolphus plan where we caused an international crisis with the Soviet union by putting an entire army group and five hundred medium range nuclear missiles on their border with Finland without committing political suicide in any but the reddest or ironically; the most fascist of circles. Some on the fringe are still...let’s be polite and just call it mad at him for not bowing to Petain after all.

Sounds like they’ve been trying to make up for the flak they caught from the Karen Gillan years.


Whovians wanted the staleness of the Dr Who formula to change, were not prepared for what that wrought. (Physically) young female Doctor going through a midlife crisis, all counterculture and vaguely left-wing in habits and plots of the week? It was probably an overcorrection but I fucking enjoyed every minute of it.


If you want a good movie about the Penninsular Campaign, you should try 2002’s Anthem. It was going to be titled in homage to Wilfred Owen’s poem “Anthem for a Doomed Youth,” but the producers didn’t want to get the jingoist audiences up in arms. Matt Smith plays a seemingly generic Tommy Atkins type role, a replacement joining up with a now veteran tank crew in spring 1944. It’s a cinematic tour de force, showcasing the stark beauty of the Spanish countryside, the regalness of traditional architecture and culture, and the savage destruction that war unleashes on it.


It’s probably the closest equivalent you have to the standard of Soviet and American WW2 cinema, the art film that doesn’t shy away from the savageries of war and offers little in the way of comforts. Even most Ententists have seen Come and See or In Defense of Lost Causes by now, and Anthem is almost a love note to that style of cinema.


Even the gearheads who love to complain about the nitty gritty of war films generally loved it. Even the nuts and bolts on the tanks are in the right place, and their depiction of combat between Jaguars and Gepards against Carnifexes and Cairns cut through the myths while still being entertaining and tense.

All I remember about Anthem is my college roommate being peeved cuz they accurately depicted the use of Lend-Lease American tanks, infantry carriers and aircraft. Didn’t fit with his view of the glorious struggle.


Or was that another movie? It was college, and when I wasn’t studying, I was drinking heavily and trying to get laid. Emphasis on the trying part.

In terms of Montgomery Fellatiopics you can hardly top Montgomery the movie. Three hours of relentlessly glorifying the man, his sidekick Catroux and his nemesis Rommel and Gambera.

Nevermind that Rommel seemed to regard supplies and logistics as a polite suggestion and wasted hour after hour after hour inspecting the positions of his troops down to the last foxhole instead of doing the more important work of managing his supply lines; work that Franco and Laure had to do for him to keep his panzers from literally running out of gas.

The man himself had perhaps an acceptable, maybe even good grasp at tactics and operations, but was mediocre at best in his appreciation for strategy (something he left to his subordinates and allies), and among the worst major commanders of the war at logistics. He was someone who should have never left the position of brigadier but yet ended up as a Field marshal and it thoroughly showed in his appalling ability to communicate with his allies and getting enough bullets for his troops.

Gambera at least by all accounts understood logistics and proved to be a quite capable and wily tank commander and adversary. His primary fault was perhaps being a bit too cautious; cool where Rommel was hot, and this difference in command style lead to a number of issues that the Spanish and Fascist French had to mediate more than a few times in order to keep the Axis’ wheeling counter offensives and mobile defensives from stalling.

And may heaven strike down the next film maker who decides to portray the Iberian peninsula as a chivalrous duel between the Allies and the Axis and “unlike the barbarism of the Axis-Comintern eastern front” while brushing away the Basque, Galician, and Catalan genocides or saying the Spanish were running that particular horror show with no aid at all from the honorable Iberia korps.

I’m not sure what it is about Catalonia, Galicia, and Basque Country that slips through historical memory.


It’s not simply the scale of the atrocities. Sure it pales in comparison to the numbers killed in Eastern Europe, but it’s quite comparable to more well known atrocities like Japanese comfort women, the mass murder of many Taiwanese and Korean nationalists, the renewed genocide against Armenians and the butchering of the Kurds. It may be only a couple hundred thousand in total, but that still an entire city worth of people annihilated for their face.


Maybe it’s because it lacks death camps. The liberation of the camps littered across Eastern Europe is a profound cultural memory here, as are the huge crowds of POWs and other populations being worked to death. Same in Turkey, it was a sort of death by hunger and overwork sort of campaign, deliberately cruel in the extreme.


Maybe it’s because people drug out of their homes in the dark of night and shot in a dark alley get lost in the other victims of war. Maybe it’s because Britain and France cannot escape culpability, because they enabled the Falange at every step of the way.

While I agree that moving up the date for the Iberian campaign is implausible, I’m going to have to take issue with your characterizations of Volksmarschall Rommel’s acumen.


I think these attacks on his character are sustained only by an unfair comparison with the men fighting in the East, who for obvious reasons got the lion’s share of reinforcement and supplies, and tended to get new equipment sooner than in the West.


Rommel’s logistical issues make much more sense given the length of the supply lines, and difficulties of allied cooperation.


He remains a gifted leader of men, inspiring to his troops during his time in the East, and he brought that elan to the Iberian campaign. And unlike Monty, who sipped cognac in Spanish castillo while his men bled and died on the battlefield, Rommel was in the bloody battlefields right beside his men. He responded quickly and decisively to changing tactical situations while Monty spent his time playing with map markers detached from the realities of war.

Um… you do realize Germany lost the war, right?


You can look down on the way the other side did things and call it stupid all you like, I suppose. But if it’s stupid and it works, well then I guess it wasn’t so stupid after all.

To answer your question, LeninsBeard, I believe it is due to the inherent logic of statist belief systems.


The end result of any creed that demands we live for others is going to be mass murder, and I defy you to find a counterexample. Living for others and dying for others are intertwined, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s communism or fascism.


You all must suppress man’s natural impulse to liberty at gunpoint, and refuse to let a man live for himself. If you can take the fruit of a man’s labors, the sweat from his brow, then you can take anything from him.

Since I know how much you hate free rides, Cyber Doctor, keep it up and you might get a free trip to Lubankya.


In other words, stay on topic and keep it quarantined in PolChat or you’ll be purged.

*Denotes fictional persons.

 

[Aelita]

Excerpts from Theophile Durand*, When Titans Clashed: How the Comintern Stopped Hitler (University of Paris, 1995)(1)

From Pallas to Zitadelle

Hitler’s ambitions were at their zenith on 16 December 1942. In two and a half years of protracted struggle, the Axis alliance stretched from Lusitania in the west to the Volga River in the east, and from Scandinavia in the north all the way into the heart of West Africa. It was a seemingly invincible phalanx of totalitarian fascist states, advancing on all fronts.

In truth, Hitler’s dream of a thousand year reich was already nearing its end. The Entente was recovering from the battering it had received the previous year. The Luftwaffe terror campaigns had done nothing but steel the resolve of the British public. Bomber Command continued to intensify its air war against the Reich, joined by contingents of the Revolutionary Army Air Forces. The battle lines were already beginning to reverse in the Near East.

These events mattered little to Hitler and the OKW; it had always been known that the war would be won or lost in the East, in the vastness of the Soviet Union. German military forces would reach peak total strength in 1943: 6,920,000 Heer and Waffen-SS, 3,540,000 Luftwaffe, and 710,000 Kriegsmarine. 70 percent of the Heer/Waffen-SS and 60 percent of the Luftwaffe would be deployed to the East. Traitor French forces in the East reached nearly 500,000 by Operation Zitadelle, with a comparable Italian presence. Minor Axis rounded out the Axis presence on the Eastern Front, including considerable contributions by Sweden and Finland in the North.

But on the eve of the Operation Pallas counterattack, Axis readiness had been worn down to a nub by a six-month campaign of fierce fighting in nearly every sector. The Caucasus campaign had stalled before reaching its objectives: Baku, Stalingrad and Astrakhan still remained firmly in Comintern hands.

…The short undeclared war with Japan had disrupted, but failed to stop Stavka’s counterattack preparations. With the Iran route secure, and the Murmansk/Archangelsk routes still holding, men and materiel continued to flow into the Soviet Union, including the vanguard of the UASR’s “Victory Program” divisions. As battle began to wind down in the Far East, a dozen Central Asian divisions, fresh and well-trained, were transferred to the Stalingrad Front. Observing strict camouflage discipline, Stavka concealed the movement of nearly five hundred thousand combat and support troops, three thousand tanks and AFVs, four hundred combat aircraft, and five thousand artillery pieces. Trucks and trains moved only at night, without lights, and put up camouflage in the day. Well-rehearsed deception plans concealed the rotation of battered divisions to rear for recovery and retraining, and their replacement by fresh troops.

When the first elements of the 22nd Army began pushing across the Volga River on 17 December, the Army Group Volga headquarters still believed they were fighting the battered veterans of the past campaign. The seemingly quixotic counterattack developing along the flanks of German positions in Stalingrad was ignored as diversionary until after the bulk of Soviet and American mobile forces had begun breaking out of the bridgeheads.

Ground attacks and interdictions increased in tempo as the operation developed. Volksmarschall(2) Manstein began evacuating the Twelfth Army from the city when the threat became apparent, but by then the damage had been done. Twelfth Army’s retreat from the city was orderly and disciplined, but fuel shortages necessitated the abandonment and destruction of significant artillery and armored assets, including many damaged vehicles that might have returned to service in time. Exposed on the cold, open steps, the damage caused by air attack, and the sickle cuts of [Lt. General Maurice] Rose’s mechanized troops mounted.

Many would not escape, trapped between the 22nd Army’s vanguard, the VIII Guards Mechanized Corps.(3) Rose’s execution of the encirclement was masterful. VIII Guards Mech. linked up with the III Cavalry-Mechanized Group near Kalach-na-Don. The trapped echelons of the Twelfth Army, pressed between the 51st and 66th Army breaking out of the city, and the encircling 22nd Army, were already cold and starving. Surrender was inevitable; Operation Pallas killed or captured fifty-seven thousand German troops, including most of the 1st Panzer Division and the 101st Infanterie. Twelfth Army escaped, but was obliterated as an effective fighting force.

Manstein attempted to wheel the III Panzer Corps in action to disrupt the Comintern advance, but continued supply issues ensured this would be abortive. After four days of inconclusive fighting, Manstein paused offensive operations to prepare a more substantive operation. This seed could not germinate in the cold Russian winter, but would serve as the nucleus of the spring’s Operation Zitadelle.

At the conclusion of Operation Pallas, the Voronezh Front began offensive operations in the adjacent sector. Using similar maskirovka, General Eisenhower concealed the movement of the 3rd Army—nine full strength American divisions—from the Stavka reserve in Moscow. While Pallas was winding down, probing action by air power and commandos determined points of enemy weakness and strength.

Having been stripped of a full German corps to contain the Stalingrad breakout, Army Group Centre’s Second Army had been tasked to hold the line in what was assumed to be a quiet sector with predominantly Rumanian and Hungarian troops. These troops, relatively green conscripts, were effectively ruined by 16 January 1943. 3rd Army pressed through in a series of rapid dagger thrusts, bowling the Axis minor troops out of the way to begin striking at the flanks of the Fifth Army.

By this time, the news of the defeats on the frontier had percolated up to Hitler. With his typical fury, Hitler excoriated SS-Obergruppenführer Eicke, commanding officer of the Fifth Army, to contain the situation. When it became apparent that Eicke’s exhausted force was too overextended, Hitler intervened in the OKH’s planning directly.

The OKH leadership was shaken up, and General Georg-Wilhelm Postel was elevated to titular head of their staff. But the net result was a continued increase in the Waffen-SS’s grip over the German military. Generalfeldmarschall Guderian was dispatched to immediately replace Jodl as head of Army Group Centre.

…The winter battles of 1943 had consistently bloodied the German’s noses along the entirety of the Eastern Front. As the treacherous mud of the spring Rasputitsa began to set in late February, the battle lines temporarily paused. The Comintern accepted the halt in operations to fully exploit the open sea lanes, and build up forces for the summer campaign. The Germans judged this fortunate, believing they could make better use of the time to prepare for the next campaign season.

Manstein had believed Case Blue to be a failure, and had recommended reorienting forces to try for Moscow again. With Baku and Astrakhan so temptingly close, Hitler could not accept this. Nevertheless, he was quite aware of the precarious situation that two of his Army Groups had been placed in. The frontline had been pushed back to the Don River, and in spite of the defensible west bank of the Don, the Comintern had seized some precarious bridgeheads south of Voronezh. German lines followed the bend of the Don to Kotelnikov, and then swung north back towards the Volga.

The Stalingrad salient pointed like a dagger towards Rostov. A powerful attack, now not outside of the realm of possibility in Hitler’s mind, could cut off the bulk of two army groups. Hitler wished to reduce the Stalingrad salient, and take the city. This plan, Operation Zitadelle, would be the first step in renewing efforts to take Baku and Astrakhan.

It was an obvious point of attack. So obvious, that the newly minted Stavka representative Eisenhower, freshly promoted to General of the Army, had already begun planning for the defense and counterattack even before Enigma intercepts confirmed it.

The Comintern’s own plan, by coincidence also called Operation Citadel in its first iteration, would turn the Stalingrad salient into a fortress of concentric defensive rings, littered with anti-tank guns, mines, and bunkers.

…The Germans chose Zitadelle to be the en masse debut of a number of new weapon systems, of varying degrees of practicality. Most well-known would be the first of the E-Series tanks, the Panzer 25 Gepard and the Panzer 50 Jaguar, which were now replacing Panzer III Ausf. H and Panzer IV Nashorns in the factories.

This meant that Axis forces began Zitadelle saddled with a ludicrous supply burden by the bewildering array of vehicles in inventory. The Germans alone operated several mutually incompatible marks of the Panzer III and Narshorn, the temperamental new E-series units, 5 different tank destroyers based, respectively, on the 38t (Marder), Panzer III (StuG), Panzer IV, (Jagdpanzer IV), Panzer 25, (Jagdpanzer 25) and the rejected Panzer V (Panzerjaeger Panther), as well multiple marks of self-propelled artillery and APC, each with effectively no parts commonality.

Traitor French forces, which would contribute a full field army, had their own incompatible supply lines. While they continued to put the cheap and effective ARL 42 tank destroyer/assault gun to good effect, the tank forces had numerous conversions of obsolete Char B1 and S35s complicating their supply lines. The new Char G2 medium tank was a modern design, as well armored as the Panzer 25, and using a gun that was ammunition compatible with the 8.8 cm KwK 36, but this accounted for only a quarter of the tank inventory on the Eastern Front. The rest used older G1s and S40s. With such a long supply line, supply complications were maddeningly frequent.

…the Luftwaffe believed it could wrest control of the skies still, continued to keep pace with the Comintern air forces in terms of equipment. Ta 190Ds could fight on even terms with new marks of the F-35 Yeoman and the improved F-39 Nightshade, and were superior in speed and climb rate to the Il-3 and MiG-5s of the VVS. Both sides improved their ground attack inventory with shape-charge bomblets, and flying tank busters.

However, they had lost ground in pilot performance. The Luftwaffe was slow and haphazard in reacting to the high attrition rates among combat pilots. Veteran aces were rarely rotated out to train new pilots, and many continued to fly with their units until they succumbed, taking all of their experience with them to the grave. With kill counts inflated for propaganda purposes, and dubious record-keeping, the myth of the legendary Luftwaffe ace continues to endure.

…The German plan in Zitadelle committed most of the Axis forces in the East to engaging in or supporting the offensive. Germany was scraping the bottom of the barrel in man power, and remobilized a number of divisions to support the operation, sending new infantry units haphazard to other fronts to pull more organized divisions to support the attack. War production was maintained by intensifying forced labor in occupied territories. The annihilationism of the 1940 campaign, suspended in 41 to keep the war economy intact, would return in an even more ghastly form.

Population transfers in occupied Soviet territory and the Balkans became much more common. The Polish people, though, hardest hit. Industrial labor camps in Poland supported the extraction of raw materials in increasingly brutal conditions, an adjunct to the death camps of the final solution. Over a million others would be relocated to other areas of the Reich, where they along with Comintern POWs would be worked to death to support the Reich’s war machine.

Nazi directives made it abundantly clear that the forced labor program served a dual purpose of eliminating undesirable populations as well as supporting the war effort. In 1943, this translated into a barely adequately equipped military presiding over the intended genocide of one hundred million people, a program stopped only by the deliberate and forceful action of the Armed Forces of the Communist International.

…The OKH’s final plan for Zitadelle was approved in early May 1943. Hitler was hesitant to commit, but found ultimately that anything but continued offensive was politically unfeasible. The plan called for Guderian’s Army Group Centre to begin a diversionary attack near Voronezh. Combined with a deception campaign, including faking the leaking orders to partisans, would attempt to convince Stavka that another attempt to take Moscow would be beginning. This campaign would begin at the earliest possible opportunity in late May, late enough to be credible but still preserving the summer campaign season for the main attack.

Once Stavka took the bait, Army Group Volga would begin a double pincer attack on the edges of the Stalingrad salient. It would be here that the Germans would commit their best troops, guarded on the flanks by Army Group Caucasus and the veteran French 1st Field Army.

The pincers would close on Stalingrad, rapidly rushing to seize the city, and trap six armies: the bulk of the Stalingrad Front. Luftwaffe airborne troops would paradrop or glide into the city and the far bank to disrupt the demolition of the mighty Red Banner Bridge to enable further exploit operations.

The final disposition of forces did not depend on the intact seizure of the bridge. Post Zitadelle, the Axis would shift south to Astrakhan, and Army Group Caucasus would renew efforts to take Baku.

…Unbeknownst to the Germans, Enigma intercepts and the Rote Kappelle intelligence network had thoroughly penetrated German operational planning. Eisenhower, in coordination with Smolensk Front commanding officer General Arkady Tartakovsky*, organized a counter-deception. Utilizing a full suite of techniques, including convincing inflatable rubber tanks and artillery pieces, and fake comm chatter, they would convince German aerial reconnaissance that they had taken the bait while forces relocated to the south.

…German operational planning had, at least this case, accurately assessed the quality of the formations opposing them in Zitadelle. They did not underestimate Soviet formations as Slavic subhumans unable to react or adapt, and they did not underrate, as they so often had in the previous campaigns, the willingness of American troops to fight to the death. In spite of this, outcome was more lopsided than any previous military campaign, and it left German commanders puzzling for months.

The Germans encountered more men, more guns and more tanks than they thought possible at Stalingrad. The answer is simple: the strategic scale of the war had already been decided. A suite of multiple factors came together in 1943 to give the Comintern the utter preponderance of military force.

The first is that the relocation of Soviet industry and populations had essentially completed. Military production more than doubled in 1943. New formations raised and recovering formations had ample time to train and coordinate, and would not be haphazardly rushed into battle. Logistical networks had been improved, and the Luftwaffe could not achieve sufficient air superiority to disrupt them like they had in previous years.

Similarly, the Americans were nearing full mobilization in 1943. The u-boat threat had been largely conquered, and the French and Italian navies were content to stay bottled up in the Mediterranean, having lost too many cruisers in attempts at commerce raiding. The allied navies had taken mastery of the Atlantic, and filled it with a massive merchant marine to move troops and supplies through virtually unhindered. The disruptive war in the Far East had wrapped up, allowing the unhindered transport of materiel across the Trans-Siberian railway.

This contributed to a powerful surge of well-trained and competently led American troops to the Soviet theater alongside the Soviet’s own efforts. The WFRA had reached a mobilized strength of over ten million by year end 1942, and twelve million by year end 1943. By the beginning of Zitadelle, this translated into 207 active ground divisions out of a planned 300, and 227 active air regiments.

In spite of the heavy logistical toll required, American forces in the Soviet Union in May 1943 amounted to 154 divisions, 101 aviation regiments, and nearly 4.5 million men. Since under the terms of the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of December 1942, no American forces could be stationed east of the Ural Mountains, these forces were focused entirely on directly engaging in or supporting combat operations against the Axis by Summer 1943. During Zitadelle, 42 percent of combat troops in the Central Theater were American or IVA volunteers. Many of these divisions had been training in country since 1941, guarding Central Asia or the Far East. The forces that crushed the Kwantung Army would now face the Germans in earnest.

…The Comintern planned for defense in depth around Stalingrad. The planned defense and counteroffensive, now called Operation Mars, would slow German armored spearheads with rings of fortifications. Highly mobile tank destroyer battalions, equipped with a mix of 76mm and 90mm armed TD-7 Sabocat tank destroyers, would move to blunt spearheads in preparation for tank counterattack. Once the Germans were fully-engaged in a slow attritional struggle, forces in adjacent sectors would reposition for counteroffensive operations.

When Guderian’s diversion began on 28 May, Comintern forces followed the script well. Operational security was extremely disciplined; many troops were unaware of the true nature of operations until just before they began. The attack on the Voronezh Front seem to proceed smoothly; the Soviet troops were stubborn but outmatched, and Luftwaffe aerial recon watched the intricate ballet of troop movements.

Manstein’s attack began on 22 June amid overcast skies. Close air support was hindered on both sides, a net advantage for the Germans. In the north, the First Volksarmee(4) under Oberst-Gruppenführer Rommel fought tenaciously. While intelligence had expected fierce Soviet resistance from the 50th and 52nd Armies, Rommel’s forces were not prepared for the true mass of anti-tank guns, mines, and artillery. Every centimeter of ground was hard fought, even with the local preponderance of force.

The Ninth Volksarmee under Hausser in the south encountered similarly fierce defense, and bogged down quickly. After two days, the skies cleared, and Manstein brought Luftflotte 2 in full force at the problem.

Aerial fighting was nearly as savage as the ground fighting, and the new advances in mobile AA guns increased attrition in ground attack units on both sides.

…After a week of mild progress in the north and little in the south, Manstein was at a crossroads. His own correspondence indicated he had at least briefly contemplated suspending offensive operations at this point, but did not ever communicate this to the OKH, let alone to Hitler. Manstein began committing forces intended for exploit operations to his main attack, a risk he felt justified given how seemingly close a break through seemed.

On 1 July, he seemingly got his breakthrough. The I SS Panzerkorps(5) had broken through the final defensive belt in the early morning hours, and was now pushing towards the city of Stalingrad. The most prestigious divisions of the SS, and perhaps the only ones deserving of their crack reputation, had not let him down, while the mixed Werhmacht/SS forces of the Ninth Volksarmee continued to disappoint.

The battle was far from over. The 3rd SS Panzer “Totenkopf” ran headlong into Kollontai’s* 2nd Guards Tank Army(6) outside the town of Grachi. Sabocat skirmishers forced a temporary halt to the whole I SS Panzerkorps. By 1300, the well camouflaged and highly mobile Sabocat tank destroyers knocked out thirty-six Gepards and sixteen Jaguars at a cost of twenty-four of their own, a highly favorable trade. The tank destroyer men, already well informed on the new adversaries abilities by intelligence efforts, gave the Waffen-SS a bloody nose they would not forget, contributing to the TD’s fearsome reputation.

That afternoon, the VT fuze(7) made its first operational use in field artillery artillery, as a steel rain of artillery and Katyusha fire hammered the SS with devastating effect. The whole of the Stalingrad Front’s frontal artillery rained down on the I SS Panzer Corps, a level of fire coordination that had not been achievable until now. These “gridfire” barrages would characterize the brutality of war in the East: a sudden, inescapable blanketing of intense, accurate artillery bombardment, arriving without warning and ending just as suddenly.

In the haze of dust and smoke, the 2nd Guards began its counterattack. The Jaguars and Gepards of the I SS Panzerkorps grappled with the T-9s and T-43s in the largest mass tank battle of the war yet. 1100 Comintern tanks met nearly 700 German tanks in three days of fierce fighting.

Tanks of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier “St. George” division tried to push through to relieve their fellows. Their arrival on 4 July did nothing but increase the ferocity of the predominantly American tank crews facing the Traitor British units. Major fighting ended just after dusk, just as Lt. Colonel Creighton Abrams’ 2nd Battalion/37th Tank Regiment cut off two battalions of the St. George division, including its panzer battalion. St. George, which was made up of Americuban and British volunteers who enlisted prior to Britain’s entry in the war, had amassed a record of brutality that stood out even from the rest of the SS. In reprisal for St. George’s actions at Kharkov and indiscriminate enforcement of the infamous “Commissar Order”, the trapped battalions died to a man, drowning in a river of blood.

The Battle of Grachi left the 2nd Guards Tank Army battered. But I SS Panzerkorps was practically annihilated. When it withdrew back to German lines on the 5th, it was a shell with perhaps seventy tanks still operational. Many damaged tanks had been captured, and still others were destroyed when it became clear they couldn’t be recovered before they were overrun. Its six divisions, plus the St. George had taken thirty thousand causalities, most irretrievable.

With Operation Mars fulfilled, Operation Jupiter began. On the 7th of July, General Rokossovsky’s Saratov Front began pushing southwest across the Don River, straight towards Voroshilovgrad. It sliced into the Italian Eighth Army guarding the north flank of Army Group South. The 9th Tank Army under Chuikov lead the assault, cleaving in between Army Group Centre and Army Group Volga. The fury of artillery and air attack was a portent that could not be ignored, as Rokossovsky steadily rolled up the front lines of the Italian and German troops. The relocation of the German XXXVI Corps, already moving south to reinforce the barrier around Stalingrad, was reversed, and the troops began marching northward to meet the Soviet attack.

Simultaneously, the Comintern 7th Army began the Astrakhan Front’s counterattack against the French First Army, which had also been detaching units to reinforce its German allies. Again, those orders were hastily reversed. The Astrakhan Front steadily drove westward towards Rostov, its own modest tank contingents spearheading the charge.

Two days later, the powerful Steppe Front, held in reserve on the far side of the Volga, was moved into play. Fresh mechanized forces, including the veteran 1st Army, began attacking south from Stalingrad. The exhausted Ninth Volksarmee was pummeled, and could not prevent a breakout of the Stalingrad Front.

The Voronezh Front pulled its extensive reserve into action, and began offensive operations the next day, supporting the Saratov Front’s actions. Driving west-by-southwest, the Voronezh Front engaged the bulk of Army Group Centre’s strength in its drive towards Kursk. Three German army groups were under heavy offensive action, and communications between the three headquarters broke down in the chaos. Without a coordinated battle plan, defense was haphazard. Eisenhower exploited this by focusing operational initiative along the boundaries between army groups.

As Army Group Caucasus shrank away from its objectives to meet the divisions seeking to cleave it from Army Group South, the battered Baku and Transcaucasian Fronts moved forward to exploit, nipping on Volksmarschall Dietrich’s heels as he gave ground.

The German defense began to stiffen initially on 11 July, as some semblance of command order was re-established, but the Comintern forces pressed on even with the mounting combat losses. But the logistical situation could not sustain such intense operations. German equipment failure rates, the depletion of ammunition and fuel reserves exceeded all tolerable limits. By 15 July, the Comintern tank spearheads began breaking into rear areas. Army Group Volga took the brunt of this battering, under constant attack from three Fronts (Saratov, Stalingrad, Steppe).

The calamity in the East had reverberated up the chain of command. The news pouring in of Entente troops securing Portugal, returning to the continent after over a year of absence had left Hitler cursing “that swine Sanjurjo”. Now he faced a constant stream of news from the East, all of it bad. While in truth there was little that he could do, the lack of resolute guidance from above contributed to the shock in the command elements in the East.

Manstein fought hard to turn back the tide, but the weight of the engine of world production was now focused on him. On 25 July, he attempted to secure a new defensive line on the Donets River. But the focused attacks of three Fronts had already broken he back of Army Group Volga. Army Group Caucasus’ retreat was fast turning into a route. Soviet forces had already liberated Novorossisk, Maikop and Grozny, and continued to press forward in spite of their exhaustion.

On 1 August, the lead elements of the Steppe Front reached Rostov, cutting off land-based lines of communication. In an uncharacteristic show of humility, Hitler appealed directly to Mussolini to aid the cut off troops of Army Group Caucasus. Braving the advancing umbrella of Comintern air power, ships of the Regia Marina began evacuating troops across the Sea of Azov, an action that saved some two hundred twelve thousand troops from capture, at the cost of seven destroyers and two cruisers, and the exhaustion of a significant portion of the Italian merchant marine.

After breaching the Donets, the Saratov Front paused to recuperate on 2 August eighty kilometers from Denepropetrovsk. The Voronezh Front had liberated Kursk was breaching into the Ukraine at this time. Operation Jupiter had exceeded all of Stavka’s expectations; Eisenhower and his staff had spent the last week of July busily preparing a succeeding operation to solidify their gains. Preparations for Operation Saturn commenced on 4 August with the dissolution of the Steppe and Astrakhan Fronts, and the transfer of their assets to reinforce the Voronezh, Saratov and Stalingrad Fronts. It was an incredible logistical feat, rapidly moving both combat units and supply dumps to in a week of furious activity. Losses to Luftwaffe air attack were considerable, but overall air superiority was maintained. Both the Comintern Army Air Forces and the Luftwaffe experienced significant attrition in personnel and equipment due to the furious tempo of operations, but the Germans were simply unable to sustain such losses. Chased from the skies, the Luftwaffe could not bail out the disorganized frontline Axis troops.

Operation Saturn began on 10 August. The Voronezh front wheeled south towards Kharkov, slamming into the disorganized troops of Army Group Volga. The following morning, the Saratov Front hooked northward. The Stalingrad Front resumed its drive westward, continuing to savage Manstein’s forces as they rolled towards the Dneiper.

…Operation Saturn achieved its goals amidst little fanfare. Marshal Frunze had had finally achieved what had eluded him for nearly three years: complete operational superiority against the invader.

However measured, the battles of Stalingrad are titanic in scale. For our purposes, the overall Second Battle of Stalingrad and the subsequent exploitation operations Jupiter and Saturn constitute a single logical unit. This massive battle was fought along a frontier stretching from Voronezh to Baku, nearly fifteen hundred kilometers of frontier, though most of the fighting was focused in the Volga, Don and Donets river basins.

The Axis committed three army groups under overall German command. At the beginning of Zitadelle, these three army groups had 2,275,000 soldiers engaged between them in 132 divisions, of which 35 were armored or mechanized. Axis forces committed some 6,450 tanks and armored fighting vehicles, 2,472 aircraft, and 15,182 guns and mortars. By comparison, with the exception of aircraft this is comparable to the entire strength of the Entente Army in June 1943.

The Comintern fielded a total of 4,078,000 (1,762,000 American, 2,209,000 Soviet, 112,000 IVA) troops in seven fronts, constituted out of 221 division equivalents. With a nearly 2:1 preponderance of force achieved, the Comintern had already seized the strategic initiative prior to the battle. Including operational reserves, Comintern forces had 13,712 tanks and armored fighting vehicles, 7,918 aircraft, and 49,015 guns and mortars.

Losses were similarly staggering. Methodologically comparing Axis and Comintern loss and kill claims produces reliable aggregate figures. On the Axis side, we arrive at a staggering figure of ~909,000 casualties, of which approximately 579,000 were irretrievable. Comintern sources meticulously log the taking of 412,301 prisoners.

Comintern casualties similarly high. 1,550,000 total causalities, including 512,000 killed or missing. But even this number is misleading, as many prisoners taken would be subsequently liberated by the relentless pace of the advance, but official record keeping still record them as irretrievable casualties.

Evaluating the loss of equipment is more difficult due to different accounting standards. German tank losses ultimately totaled ~2500 units, with a further 1,198 recorded as non-operational by 1 September 1943. By comparison, Comintern tank losses as recorded in the Stavka archives were 6,521, of which 3,512 were would be considered total losses. But this too is misleading, as there is a lack of data concerning the details of battle damage, and at least in the Comintern case, some units were recorded as a loss multiple times, repaired and returned to action relatively quickly.

Losses in guns and aircraft were similarly staggering, though Comintern record keeping was more meticulous given the level of chaos sewn in Axis forces: 4,012 guns, and 1,180 aircraft lost. Combat records indicate achieving near complete air superiority by August, indicating the inflicting of disproportionate losses on the Luftwaffe. Manstein’s own estimates are not rosy: 4,000 guns and mortars lost, and 1,100 aircraft.

On a purely quantitative level, Stalingrad was a decisive Soviet victory, completely evicting the Axis from the Caucasus, and pressing onward into Ukraine after two months of heavy fighting. But the qualitative loss is much more difficult to measure. For the Comintern, the three planetary operations were instrumental in separating the wheat from the chaff, building a strong institutional core of divisional, corps and army level leaders that would lead the army to victory, and temper the soldiers and junior officers in the fires of battle.

But for the Axis, so much of the institutional memory of the military was killed, maimed or captured, and it became increasingly impossible to recover from the loss. The loss of divisional, corps and even army level leaders was completely unprecedented, with nearly a quarter of flag officers in Army Group Volga killed or captured. The backbone of the Wehrmacht and SS, the steely core of NCOs, many of with over a decade of service, was being progressively decimated.

Army Group Volga had its back broken. Army Group Caucasus had practically disintegrated, and even mighty Centre had been severely mauled. Army Group South would be reconstituted from the remnants of Army Groups Volga and Caucasus, and stiffened by hastily repurposed occupation security troops. In Germany, the age of conscription would be lowered to 16, and the Reich’s previous policies on pushing women out of the labour force were quietly relaxed. The manpower gap would be made up with by the increased use of collaborators, including from some groups within the Soviet Union, throughout Nazi occupied territories.

…The scale of the Comintern victory was so astounding that reports of it were first dismissed as embellished propaganda in the West. But the corroboration of Entente journalists own accounts forced the General Staff to reassess its analysis. With now Volksmarschall Rommel arriving in the Penninsula in the fall to direct the Axis war effort in the Penninsular Campaign, and the arrival of Franco-German reinforcements to the beleaguered Falangist Army, General Montgomery's efforts were stalling. Morale was still fragile, and the Germans still seemed invincible. Attlee’s government quickly seized upon Stalingrad in a series of news reels and animated propaganda shorts. Victory was now within sight, they contended, and the mighty colossus was not invincible.

…The heads of the three powers met starting 12 October in the momentous Tehran Conference. Attlee, Blum, Molotov and Reed staged a historic photo-op, sitting together relaxed, drinking tea. The real substance of the talks were continued efforts to improve Entente-American cooperation, and the first plans for the post-war situation.

The United Nations iterated its first demand of unconditional surrender to the leadership of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Traitor France, backed a promise of lenient treatment to enemy leadership if promptly accepted. No one expected it to be seriously entertained.

In recognition of the immense role the Comintern was playing in the war effort, certain concessions were granted. The Spanish Free Soviet Republic would be restored, and American occupation zones in Spanish colonial possessions would be restored to Red Spain. Similarly, the formation of an Eritrean and a Somali people’s republics from the captured territory of Italian East Africa was endorsed (thought British Somaliland would be restored to Entente administration, and Emperor Haile Selassie restored to the throne of Ethiopia.

Comintern military control of the Bosporus was guaranteed, though the final fate of Turkey was yet undecided. Tepid support for the current joint Jewish-Arab socialist government in the Palestine Mandate was extended, with full independence expected at the end of the war in Europe.

Reed brokered universal amnesty for British and French subjects who had joined the IVA, an offence that carried significant punishment including the loss of citizenship if convicted. Franco-British IVA veterans would be repatriated and integrated into the Entente Army to support the fight in the West.

The first arrangements for judicial measures against the leadership and war criminals in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were also made. Reed summarized this agreement by stating that “DeNazification can only occur at the gallows.”

1) The title is a reference to David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House’s book When Titans Clashed, one of the first popular history books to written with the benefit of Soviet archive access. Our fictional author here has a similar bio: an officer in the Entente Army and academic, previously contributing technical work to military doctrine based on assessing military history, and now a full time academic with the occasional popular focused book.

2) The highest rank in the Waffen-SS, equivalent to Generalfeldmarschall in the Heer, Field Marshal in the Entente Army, and General of the Army in the Comintern Army. The continued assimilation of much of the Heer into the Waffen-SS has, by 1943, pushed the Heer into the junior partner role.

3) Guards units are prestige units, drawing from the military tradition of Imperial Russia. Like OTL, they were re-established in the Soviet military to boost morale, and subsequently adopted by the American military as well. Guards units tend to have a stronger esprit de corps, and hold members to a higher standard. Assignment to a Guards unit is a significant honor, but more is asked in return. Guards units typically are entrusted with more dangerous assignments, and give new weapons and doctrines their baptism by fire.

4) Ostensibly the Waffen-SS equivalent of a field army. But German tables of organization, like OTL, are a contradictory mess. In practice, there’s no difference between a Heer field armies and Waffen-SS field armies, and while corps units are more likely to be nominatively correct, it is not unknown to have an SS corps with no SS divisions in it, or a Heer corps constituted entirely of SS divisions.

5) Panzer corps and Panzer armies are made from tank and mechanized units typically, though they’ll often be padded out with motorized infantry units. Aside from their mobile role, they’re not much different in organization from the predominantly foot mobile, train + horse cart supplied corps and armies that make up the bulk of the German military.

6) By contrast, a Comintern Tank Army is a very different beast; Comintern forces are almost completely motorized in the Soviet/German war. Tank Armies are smaller than regular field armies, closer to a beefed-up corps in size, and typically “front heavy”. They’ll have more personnel in line divisions (typically tank or grenadier divisions), and fewer organic support assets. They are the tip of the spear, and rely on Front level support assets in offensive action. Normal or “Combined Arms” armies are typically subdivided into corps as the main manipular unit, though this wasn’t the case through most of 1941/early 1942, have more organic artillery, engineer and even aviation units.

7) Like OTL, it’s the nominative camouflage for radar proximity fuzes. While first developed as an anti-air weapon, in a field artillery role they greatly enhance lethality by causing shells to air burst over targets rather than bury into the dirt and explode. This more efficiently spreads shrapnel and blast effects, and negates much of the protection foxholes and trenches provide.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

Excerpts from: "To defend freedom"; the war in South America - Salvador Allende, Published 1962


The Second World War was without precedent in South America; never before had it experienced the sort of continent spanning wars that Europe had cycled through once or even twice every century, at least since the Hundred years war and arguably since the days of Xerxes. The closest; the War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay; falls very short by every metric save for devastation to Paraguay itself. Never before had the continent seen a war that could devour a million lives, nevermind ten million, and with good fortune we will not see its likes again. Like millions of others I was called to defend the revolution and since then I have felt compelled to share with the world the importance of this often forgotten theater of the conflict.


To some simply looking at the war in terms of the numbers of war machines and soldiers each country was producing the war in South America might seem small; most of the weapons involved were designed from those outside the continent and even Brazil had under half the self-styled Greater German Reich's population. But the importance of this theater goes beyond that. So long as fascism remained in South America the submarines of the enemy could reach out and touch the shores of America with impunity. So long as the fight against Salgado's butchers continued the battle hardened soldiers of South America who had proved vital for securing many a victory in the theaters against Germany, Italy, and Japan would be tied down. As long as threat to the canals existed from Venezuela; caution that continuously cost precious time would need to be taken.


........


The war in South America begun on the tenth of October, 1940. The fascist brass in Japan, Germany, and Italy had long spoken to the Integralists in Salgado's court and those of his minions; a war in South America would keep the Comintern divided and provide a point of access into the UASR for future designs against the heart of global socialism. Salgado felt more than up to the challenge; Brazil was a rapidly growing country, not through Salgado's economic genius as his apologists will surely tell you today, as they did then, but from the outpouring of money from the Capitalist world that were so eager to sell their souls to the fascists to contain and perhaps even reverse the spread of socialism. Not just German and Italian or even some Japanese investment was sunk into Brazil and its allies; but significant money from Britain, France, the low countries and others who hoped Brazil could counterbalance the red tide.


With this Salgado had built a great war machine and had quickly mobilized an army some two million strong in the months leading up to the war. From his vassals in Paraguay and Uruguay he had tithed a hundred thousand soldiers each to join his mad crusade. Bolivia made ready for war with two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers mobilized from the reserves for October, Venezuela raised three hundred thousand men for its dreams of creating a fascist gran colombia. Salgado prepared an invasion force one million strong against Argentina while he dispatched one army group to Bolivia and one to Venezuela; each consisting of some two hundred and fifty thousand men. The Green Guard who would in time be a name remembered in infamy was not yet the monster it grew into later in the war; having but two Brazillian divisions and a single brigade from each of Brazil's allies joined into the third Hispanophone division; some fifty thousand men all told.


From the arsenals of Europe and from factories producing vehicles on license with rather little in the design of original weapons, Salgado had at his disposal some two and a half thousand tanks, assault guns, self propelled guns, and tank destroyers. The bulk of which were aging vehicles: German Panzer I and II light tanks, British Matilda II and Valentine infantry tanks, as well as old Cruiser Mk Is. Some older French Renault FTs were still in the Brazilian inventory as well, and saw action in 1940. In the 1940 campaign, only a handful of the available tanks were were modern Chimeras, Custodians, and Carousels; though at the very least they put some standardization on their tank forces by making their own guns.


The tank forces were supplemented forces by an impressive four thousand armored cars; many of which were of indigenous design, as well as imported WWI era vehicles and a thousand tankettes. Given the terrain of the South American war, it was felt that light vehicles such as tankettes, light tanks, and armoured cars would play a crucial role by both the Axis and the Comintern; and the first wheeled tank destroyers would also make their appearances in Salgado’s army; enlarged armoured cars known as the Cockatrice cars carrying fifty millimeter anti-tank guns meant to dominate car engagements and deal with tanks.


The Brazilian Army Air Force had some three thousand planes, many of which were old biplanes like the Hawker Fury, and none were newer than the Hawker Hurricane or Bf 109E. In spite of its intended role as the “handmaiden” of the ground forces, they possessed few competent attack aircraft. Infantry support would be carried out by old biplane bombers, highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.


Of utility vehicles such as combat cars, half-tracks, universal carriers, and trucks Salgado could count perhaps fifty thousand in total (the bulk of which were trucks followed by cars akin to the American Jeep or the German Kubelwagen, then by Bren Carriers and Half-tracks) while most of his troops would rely on the third of a million draft horses, oxen, and pack mules drafted to the cause. Paraguay and Uruguay had a motor pool perhaps a twentieth the size of their masters', Venezuela and Bolivia perhaps a tenth.


At sea Brazil was now in the possession of a great number of ships that the navies of Europe had felt outlived their use including old dreadnought battleships had seen the First World War. Most of these ships were acquired at fairly generous prices between 1937 and 1940, including the former British dreadnoughts Iron Duke and Benbow.


To an outside observer the fleets of the Integralists may have even seemed to have gotten lost on their way to the battle of Jutland, with haphazard and half-completed modifications to try to keep them up to date. Nothing could disguise obsolescence born of outmoded schools of armour lay out or battleships whose guns had become meager as technology marched forward.


All this came at a price of debts and money that could and should have gone to other fruits of production besides the pit of the military. If every dollar spent on the military is a dollar robbed from the people then the Integralists were the greatest thieves in the history of this continent. Their economies had been brought to the brink to fund this war even with the generous aid of Europe's liberal and fascist powers and any further delay would result in the illusion coming apart at the seams.


On the morning of the 10th of October as his hordes rolled through South America like a great green tide Salgado and his stooges announced to the world that:

"In response to provocations and violent incidents at our borders, this Axis of Integralist powers has no choice but to avenge the brave men slave fighting against Communist perfidy. For the insurgent bombings of our factories and our officials that we have for too long tolerated, for the violation of our borders by Comintern aircraft pursuing our flights and opening fire on our airmen, and for the interdiction of ships of supply and commerce from our friends abroad; the Estado Novo of Brazil, in concert with its allies Venezuela, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay, declare a state of war exists between us and all nations chained to the leash of Bolshevism. We act not as aggressors, but to pre-empt the threat of imminent communist invasion by the forces of the Republic of Argentina already massing on our borders. Ours shall be the armies that liberate the New World once and for all from the chains of Yankee-American and Russian red-imperialism, and cast down their false gods of Reed and Stalin. May God smile on our Axis and may the Holy Mother bless our armies! God speed my crusaders! Death before dishonor!"


In truth, the planned invasion of Argentina had already commenced fifteen minutes before the broadcast began.


Facing the vast forces arrayed against them was a Comintern not yet ready for war. Argentina had only mobilized three hundred thousand soldiers to meet the offensive and had more military vehicles than it had trained crews for them. Chile had two hundred thousand troops ready, much of them in two naval infantry divisions trained to help American forces in potential offensives against the British and Japanese empires in the Pacific. Peru and Colombia each had but a hundred thousand troops to their name; having been caught in the midst of training new formations of soldiers; and little Ecuador had but fifty thousand soldiers to its name. While generously equipped and developed by America and the Soviet Union who considered them valuable trade partners and allies, they had expected war to begin in the next year at earliest; believing that Salgado would have waited for the commissioning of a pair of ships delivered from Britain earlier in the year as well as for the drier conditions of the Argentinian fall.


Argentina and the one hundred thousand Chilean soldiers joining them at the border received the hardest blow; its forces outnumbered three to one across most of the front; Brazilian forces suffered heavily in their offensive, with the worst fronts seeing the loss of five integralist soldiers to every Comintern soldier lost as they were scythed down in their attempts to attack across the many rivers of the Platine basin; but the logic of military force concentrations saw the defense in depth of the rivers broken one line after the other.


Most dangerously; the breakout of four hundred thousand troops from fascist Uruguay following the week long battle of the Uruguay river meant that Buenos Aires was under immediate threat. Though the shallowness of the Rio de Plata offered some shield against the enemy fleet simply dropping anchor immediately before the city and opening fire; the threat of bombers from Uruguay had seen the Argentine navy reduce its naval presence near Buenos Aires, a decision vindicated when the naval force stationed there was attacked with a massed raid of some three hundred aircraft; including many dive, tactical, and naval bombers that preceded a Brazilian naval sortie that destroyed or severely damaged a heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, four destroyers, three submarines still in dock, and fifteen coastal patrol vessels and boats. With the Brazilian fleet covered by an umbrella of air power, they could begin to shell Buenos Aires with impunity; joining the land based artillery who had placed the city in their sights and had begun firing as soon as they had got in range. Under cover of daily terror bombing, massed artillery and naval bombardment, the Brazilian Army moved to seize the city.


With another formation advancing from Paraguay and another from the Brazilian-Argentine border; the situation rapidly grew desperate. With the threat of encirclement and even occupation of Buenos Aires a very real one, the majority of the Argentine government chose to evacuate farther south as premier Baldi called for a mass evacuation of people and industries farther south as fast as possible; and while he had initially wanted to stay he was convinced that once Buenos Aires was encircled coordination with his government would be impossible and evacuated by means of a secret underground passage completed year prior. The city itself would be swiftly made into a death trap for the enemy's forces as the vastly outnumbered military, militia, and police defenders resolved to defend the city to the death. Brazilian propaganda would be quick to label Baldi a coward and a rat fleeing a sinking ship, but Baldi vowed to continue the resistance against Brazilian aggression from deeper within the country.

As Baldi fled the capital to the safety of Patagonia to the south he made the now famous November 19th address as it seemed certain that Argentina might fall beneath the overwhelming pressure of the massive Brazilian invasion:


“Our government at Buenos Aires has in recent days been forced to retreat from it in the face of the overwhelming onslaught from our neighbors in Brazil. It is true, we were, we are, overwhelmed by the mechanical and infantry ground and air forces of the enemy. Infinitely more than their skill or their passion, it is the weight of numbers and the element of surprise and perfidy of the Fascists which are causing us to retreat. It was the numbers, surprise, and perfidy that has forced us to flee Buenos Aires or be trapped by land, sea and air.”


"But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!


"Believe me, I who am speaking to you with full knowledge of the facts, and who tell you that nothing is lost for Argentina and the global movement of freedom, liberty, and safety for our peoples and the workers and peasants of the world. The same means that overcame us can bring us victory one day. For we are not alone! We were not alone! And we shall never be alone! Ours is a vast country and ours are a fierce and brave people who will not surrender the fight because of some shifts in the boundaries of maps, with us stand allies such as Chile and Mexico who will ever stand besides us; and the vast industries of our friends labouring for the global cause in America can be used by us without limit.

"This war is not limited to the unfortunate territory of our country. This war is not over as a result of the battle of the Platine. This war is a world war. All the mistakes, all the delays, all the suffering, do not alter the fact that there are, in the world, all the means necessary to crush our enemies one day. Vanquished today by a mechanical force of numbers and surprise, in the future we will be able to overcome by a superior mechanical force. The fate of the world depends on it”[1]

The message helped provide a rallying effect, but in truth it was just at the head of a vast effort to mobilize Argentina through diplomatic efforts to the people[2] and the total mobilization of all industries as they were evacuated from the platine basin deep into Patagonia where they would be safe. Having already expected that Northern Argentina might fall in any war with Brazil; the UASR had cooperated with its allies in Chile and Argentina to build up port facilities and railway networks in patagonia and Terra Del Fuego so that American shipping could arrive through the uncontested pacific route and bring supplies, vehicles, and even some troops such as the somewhat clumsily named American Southern Cone Expeditionary Force. While there was little Salgado could do to derrail Pacific shipments; the Atlantic route would be infested by submarines.

While not as advanced as those of Germany, Italy, or Japan’s; Submarines are small and required relatively little infrastructure to build compared to larger surface warships and could pose a serious danger to any convoys hoping to cross the Southern Atlantic; already having to brave through Axis submarines from Europe crawling through the seas; and many Axis Submarines would even take up refuge in Brazil to extend their reach into the southern Atlantic. This meant that any convoy hoping to reach Argentina through the atlantic would face one of the longest and most dangerous routes in the world as potential submarine attack existed at every level; and in the early parts of the war the losses suffered by those in the merchant marine were appalling.

However, America had prepared for a global war from the very start. Any conflict with the British Empire and its network of allies would by its very nature be one that would have to be waged all over the world. And this would mean having to address the concern of having to face submarines just as they had been battled in the first world war. Through cooperation with the UASR, the South American nations had learned more about how to properly escort ships against the threat of surface raiders and submarines and though most of their escort ships would be destroyers, frigates, and light cruisers; these would be enough to help build a wall of steel against the threat of the enemy’s navies and the continuing threat of engagement by the American Navy; including the Aircraft Carrier battlegroup centered around the Enterprise; would help keep the Brazilian Navy bottled up whenever the carrier group was free to patrol in South American waters; limiting the Brazilian navy’s sorties to the periods where the fleet would be switching its duties with another fleet or was confirmed to be in Venezuelan waters.

This would help to keep Buenos Aires from falling completely as the American fleet coordinated with a brave and stubborn defense by the first Argentine army would hold a sliver of land at the coast open through which some trucks were able to arrive at the city; though under constant threat of attack. Such slivers of hope were set against a quite bleak background however, as was the tone for the first months of the war when the Axis seemed virtually invincible; moving from victory to victory with little in the way of long term or serious setbacks suffered by them as it seemed that South America and the Soviet Union would fall to the iron grip of fascism.

In the North; Venezuela openly boasted about the reformation of Gran Colombia and the vision of Simon Bolivar, Gomez; its de jure President had found himself overthrown by his chief of the Navy, Tomas Contreras-Villalobos, with the assistance of Brazil and Italy and the acquiescence of France and Great Britain.


Contreras was a partisan for the dream of a new Gran Colombia and an admirer of the Integralist movement and by 1940; Contreras had mobilized his country for his dream. Moving in sync with Salgado’s declaration of war; the Venezuelan army and its Brazilian backers had penetrated deep into Colombia and the Colombian military struggled frantically to mobilize enough soldiers in time to stop the relentless advance to Panama. To the extent there was an Axis grand strategy at all, Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo had agreed had that shutting the Panama and Nicaraguan canals would be necessary to divide the American fleet.

Colombia was poor terrain to say the least and the Venezuelan-Brazilian advance was often frustrated by dense jungle and rough hills that made the kind of masses of medium and heavy tanks seen in europe simply unfeasible. The South American theater was always something of a light vehicle’s battlefield, and in the Colombian front this was especially true; with armored cars, tankettes, and light tanks making the majority of the armoured components of the two armies. Whereas the Cockatrice would in Europe be considered a fairly average if heavily armed armoured car; in Colombia the handfuls of the vehicles that would see service would be considered the Nashorns of Gran Colombia; their guns scourging the lighter armoured cars of the Colombian army repeatedly. Thanks to Venezuela’s oil riches, the army would be relatively well supplied with fuel; prompting the Colombians to set up “hunter” brigades who would stalk through the unbeaten paths of Colombia to raid the fuel truck supplies of the enemy; doing all they could in cooperation with more standard partisans to try and slow down the advance of the cars of Contreras’ hordes.


By the end of the year the Venezuelan army had reached shelling range of Bartanquilla after having broken through the Colombian lines and the expectation was that Bartanquilla would fall by Christmas. However; the first elements of the Mexican, Ecuadorian, and Central American armies had arrived in time to offer their assistance to the beleaguered Colombian forces; doubling their strength near the city and buying the city enough time to evacuate its people and important administration. The allied forces battled with the Integralists over the course of a three month long battle before they engaged a controlled withdrawal further east and North. The frustrated Integralists were left without so much as a hapless civilian population to take out their frustrations on. For much of the rest of Colombia however, the massacres would begin almost immediately as Venezuela’s conscript armies let loose a cavalcade of horror upon the people whom they believed to be godless and whorish; unleashing particular horror upon the native populations of Colombia that they saw as rootless and uncivilized.

In the Andes, the Bolivian army had extensively studied the campaigns of the Italian theater of the First World War to achieve a dream of vengeance against Peru and most especially Chile. The fascist Revolutionary Nationalist Movement had long nurtured a grudge against the other Andean countries; calling endlessly to attention the “insult” of the War of the Pacific of 1879-1883 where Chile had annexed the coastline of Bolivia and turned it into a land locked nation. David Toro, once only vaguely committed to a recreation of Italian Fascism, had been increasingly radicalized by the successes of Integralist Brazil and the revolutions in Chile and Peru, and had spent most of his presidency up to this point building a war machine ready for his vision of a Bolivia that would not only retake the land lost in 1883; but “expand vigorously so that Bolivia may become the Pacific power it was destined to be”. His rather fanciful plans sought to essentially double the size of the country with land taken from Peru and Chile.



With a core of their mountaineering army based around the Osados, an intentional copy of the Italian Arditis from the First World War, the great masses of the Bolivian army would concentrate on the old and hated enemy of Chile while their Brazilian detachment would focus more on Peru. In campaigns that were in essence; a repeat of the Alpine campaigns of Italy that lead to the collapse of the Hapsburg reich in 1918, the Bolivian and Brazilian armies would move across the border under the cover of darkness and overwhelmed the border guards with infiltration tactics and trench raids to open the way for heavier assets; the Osados living up to their reputation and heavy training with their purported fearlessness in battle as the Integralist armies advanced an impressive (by the Andean front’s standards) twelve kilometers in the first day. The drive to the sea managed to advance Bolivia’s borders by twenty one kilometers.


For the Chileans; the land that Bolivia demanded the return of had been the home of those who had been living there for generations; very few who remembered the War of the Pacific still lived; but to Bolivia their very presence was a stain on Bolivia’s honor and territorial integrity; and as such they were to be “removed”, whether by bullet or by deportation they would be taken away from their homes and replaced by Bolivian settlers once the area had been secured. The very nature of the terrain however, meant that Bolivia could not hope to maintain this pace of advance against two larger countries no matter the initial disparity in forces and advances for the remainder of the initial offensive would slowly but surely begin to grind down to ever slower paces punctuated by occasional breakouts that would see a return to the earlier phases of dynamism; though the advantage the Chileans and Peruvians had in the air would ensure that the Bolivian army would need to get creative to maintain its advances.


[1] Text adapted from Charles de Gaulle’s speech.

[2] A polite term for Propaganda


Author's note: I'm looking for anyone who can help me catch up to the "present" in the European theater.

 

[Aelita]

Excerpts from the AH.com thread "Good PODs for the Sand Struggle?" (Cowritten with The_Red_Star_Rising)

In terms of popular historical memory, it feels like we gloss over the first year or so of the Mediterranean/North African theatre. Whether it’s the shock of France falling, or not wanting to dwell on past historical embarrassment, but it seems like we skip straight to the Peninsula campaign.

I remember first booting up War Chronicle as a wee lad, listening to the whir of the Acorn Gamestation’s gigantic fans as the loading screen crawled along. Jump into the first mission, and where do we start? I’m some Tommy Atkins racing across the Portuguese country-side trying to secure Lisbon with nothing but my trusty Enfield Selfloader and a handful of Mills bombs.

It felt odd then, because even then I knew that there had been over a year of heavy fighting before then. This pattern continues in popular movies, historical fiction books, and even here at AH.com, where it seems to get a lot less attention.

So let’s talk about some PODs for the war, starting with the Malta campaign.

I’ve often wondered how the Battle of the Ionian Sea might have turned out if Illustrious, Revenge and Beatty, and their associated escorts had not been transferred to the Far East. Illustrious had the most experience handling the new monoplanes like the Sea Hurricane and Barracuda. To say nothing of the fact that the two battlecruisers were tougher and harder hitting than most of the Italian fleet, as their sister ship Invincible proved.

The British Mediterranean fleet would have still been quite outnumbered, but the gap would be closed. Does anyone know of any professional wargames done to this effect, and how they turned out?

The main threat would have been La Manos (the Kido Butai of the west to some). The British carriers would have been severely outnumbered if Il Duce committed every finger of his “hand” to the Ionian Sea; as he likely would have if he had additional battlecruisers and another carrier to deal with. Alfreddo Rocco was hellbent on a Decisive battle; the “one sharp blow; a new Ecnomus” to give the Kingdom command of the mediterranean. If that meant committing the entire fleet then so be it. I fear that if we had more ships at sea Rocco would have just dispatched as many capital ships as he could to ensure a crushing victory; and the balance of force naturally favors Italy with most of the French fleet in Axis hands and Britain’s fleet positioned against America.

Skillful evacuation of your troops just isn’t very romantic I’m afraid.

Losing Malta was a major blow. The surprise attack knocked out a powerful garrison, and resulted in the destruction or capture of several hundred planes, many of them new model Spitfires.

You can’t really plan for surprise betrayal like that, and I think that while you love to castigate Attlee for the seeming obviousness of this betrayal, your country had been cooperating with the Italians, particularly in naval matters, because you feared with considerable justification that either Turkey would go Comintern, or the emboldened Soviets would force the Bosporus during the seemingly inevitable showdown between America and Britain. The Americans were bringing the Soviets up to tech in naval matters and this required a response.

And then they used that against you when the it became clear they’d have to choose between Germany and the UK, since by all appearances Germany appeared to be winning.

Mussolini did quite a lot to make sure that his concept of Mare Nostrum was not quite spelled out. While it was in hindsight; obvious that he essentially wanted the eastern mediterranean and red sea under his thumb; at the time many were convinced that he’d probably expand primarily at the expense of those little countries like Albania, Yugoslavia, and Greece and the likes of Turkey and Hashemite Arabia. Well, to be very fair indeed; he seemed to be following that script perfectly with his expansions to claim the Adriatic Sea as his personal bath tub before Italy’s Imperial ambitions seemed to be put on hold to support the war in Russia. Throughout the years between this and his declaration of war on Britain he made every effort to appear to be a friendly; reasonable power to France and Britain. A voice of reason in the Axis who didn’t speak in terms of race war rhetoric and could be engaged with in all the usual pleasantries of power politics. In that way, he was perhaps more sinister than Hitler; while there were plenty even at the height of Pro-Axis sentiment who had their misgivings about Germany, Brazil, and especially Japan; Mussolini put a very charming face on his Italy even as he dreamed of his third Rome. “There was the time of the Rome of the Emperors, the Rome of the Popes, now is the time of the Rome of Fascism.” Yes, but what would that mean? The betrayal by Italy was a shocking one, like an old friend twisting a knife in your back. And they had read the British playbook perfectly well as they revealed that they would be completing their “Mare Nostrum” with British lands. I’m not sure you can arrange the war in a way that prevents the ground phase of the sand struggle from launching, in fact, I’m really quite doubtful!

Sanders old boy! They just released the first trailer for a movie that you’ll no doubt enjoy, and quite topical too. It’s called Invincible, and it’s a big budget special effects showcase about the titular battlecruiser during the Battle of the Levantine Sea as well her daring escape to safety.

I think Eiffel is quite correct: holding Malta won’t stop the African Legion from attacking into Egypt. Egypt provided the clearest threat to the burgeoning Libyan oil fields and their fuel that would drive the Axis war effort, whether by land, air or sea. Keeping the supply safe meant neutralizing British forces in Egypt and taking Suez. And East Africa was just gravy at that point. I think they had something like 3:1 numerical superiority in the operation, a natural side effect of having made so many commitments in Canada, the Carribean and trying to keep the peace in India. But if someone saw the writing on the wall, having more tanks and anti-tank guns available, and more troops in Egypt might go a long way to stopping their advance. They were still getting their feet under them in the Egypt operation, they wouldn’t be the stubborn zealots we had to slowly chase out of North Africa quite yet.

And from where exactly would these come from? You would need someone to put in the orders for those before the point of divergence to get those guns and tanks on the field. I think defending Egypt is possible, but you’d need a PoD a bit earlier than when Italy has just declared war on Britain.

Quite. I’ve done my research on the North Africa campaign, and I think the previous posters were understating the lack of preparedness.

The Italian Tenth Army attacked into Egypt on the 3rd of July with six divisions, including the Ferrata armored division. They quickly reached the British 7th Armoured at Mersa Matruh. The British had two more divisions in the Nile Delta, but they were still mobilizing. Bagdolio had twice as many tanks in his force, and six times the men, not counting reserves. The British may have had better motorization in their divisions, but the African Legion had the weight behind them, and they threw it around. Worse, 7th Armoured was still using older Cruiser Mk 1s and Valentine tanks, and weren’t scheduled to refit until after they rotated out.

They had a bit more even fight at El-Alamein later in the campaign, but 7th Armoured was already battered, and the Egyptian division pressed into service was still unreliable.

What I wish to know is how the British were not able to defend the Suez when they were able to repel the Ottomans in the last war working from shorter supply lines and with so much time to try before the campaign pushed away from North Africa. Surely the distraction of Turkey and Iraq (and to some extent the Bulgarian troops who joined the fight in western asia) could not have been that crippling? What made a defense of the Suez in a manner similar to the defense of the Panama from the green tide impossible?

In WWI, we had full control of the Mediterranean Sea. The Italians were our allies that time. This time, they were our enemies, and we quickly lost naval control of the sea lanes to the Italian Regia Marina and the traitor ships of the Marine Nationale. Controlling the Suez no longer counted for much, since all merchant traffic and military logistics would now have to go around the Cape of Good Hope. Forces in Egypt had to make do with what they had on hand, or what could be supplied from India, which was not yet committed to the war effort. This made a huge difference, and when coupled with the fact that the Italians knew our playbook, air, sea and land, as well as we knew theres, and it was a recipe for defeat. In truth, Iraq and Turkey played very little role in the outcomes at Mersa Mutrah, El-Alamein, Cairo and the Suez.

Ah, thanks for pointing that out RB! As you can guess, I love me my naval stuff. I’ve been trying to keep an eye out for movies to see with my girlfriend and this looks like just the thing.

Wait a minute, girlfriend?

Has our board’s shut-in military otaku gotten himself ensnared by one of the fairer sex now?

Why not? If Mental Omega and Otakitten can have their odd little teenaged romance filled with fandom speak that drives an amusing number of you up a wall I don’t see any reason why Sanders can’t find his own vice admiral.

Aren’t you yourself getting engaged with the Portuguese streamer?

Why yes, you must have seen my latest video upload. After two years of going steady I figured it was time to tie the old knot; I’m already deep into my middle age, I may as well find love and lo and behold; I found it!

Yes. A fellow grad student, a wonderful outgoing New York Jew studying here on cultural exchange.

ROFLMAO

Oh man, you really are a closet Revaboo aintcha. Not only are you a self-described Marxian Tory, with a username taken from a French-American RevNavy admiral, who writing glowing appraisals of Communist military right after leafletting for the Tories, now you even have an American girlfriend!

Protip my friend: if she asks you try pegging, don’t say yes until you find out what it is!

Well, unlike Otakitten I don’t think Sanders’ girlfriend is going to be writing yaoi smut about her SO.

Wh-what?

You clearly don’t understand how the new generations express love.

Alright I think we’ve had enough ribbing about bedsheet fun. On the topic; I think the battle of the Golan Heights is worth quite a few looks. Defeat here would give Italy a much freer hand to link up with its Turko-Iraqi-Bulgarian allies with the forces pushing through Africa (though some divisions were just outright deployed to Turkey) and simply a harsher mauling of the defenders would likely lead to a number of interesting paths for the Arab-Jewish resistance with the density of important figureheads there (yes, a bit great manist I know). Though it’s a bit out of character for them since the SS was sent to aid Il Douchebag for the express purpose of annihilating Judaism at the source; more of the SS detachment showing up to help the Italian army might be of some help in getting them a better result out of the battle.

Look at all the fun you guys have while we’re asleep in Commieland.

Now that I’ve had my coffee...I’d like to see more TLs focus on the Arabian side of the conflict. Since looking at all the times the Middle East has become a flashpoint in the Cold War, even minor divergences might lead to some interesting results.

Then-Hashemite Arabia is an interesting case; they weren’t too friendly with the British due to falling out after the taking of the Levant from the Ottomans in WW1 and how that was all carved up. But when Iran went red, and Britain needed oil they started warming up to them, and King Ali was more than willing to warm up to the British. Spiking oil prices and British development aid, as well as the symbolic strength of controlling Mecca, made the country quite potent.

When Ali committed his forces to the war effort, there’s some speculation that he did so with the British promise to support his Pan-Arab aspirations, and the FBU certainly did its fair share after the war to enable him.

And his rather famous call to Jihad after personally visiting Jerusalem and seeing the devastation that Fascists had wrought is another underused POD. Had he not made the religious pilgrimage to the holy city, he might not have taken the politically perilous path.

Also, congrats Sanders!

Interesting points LB. The Arab Sultanate is not well utilized in alternate history. Too often it gets hyper-expanded into some randomoid caliphate because too many people can’t tell the difference between Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism.

There was one TL by Sharif-of-Nottingham, from back on the old board where Sultan Ali didn’t involve himself in the disastrous mess that was the Somaliland plebiscite, leading to a clearer, less divisive outcome and no War for the Horn of Africa, but I’ve been having trouble finding it.

Another one I can think of, also incomplete, was the Sultanate unitary monarchy rather than the federal state it was IOTL. But that was abandoned just as the alternate Kurdistan Liberation War was starting.

Disregarding the above tangent about my friends; it’s rather amazing that anyone in Italy and Turkey really believed that having the bombers and artillerymen avoid targeting the holy sites was going to truly dampen the anger that would erupt at bombing Jerusalem. Or that waving around the images of the Ottoman and Roman Empires wasn’t going to be a propaganda coup for everyone who was opposed to the Imperial dreams of the two. The Hashemites joining when they did probably did a lot to help counterbalance the entrance of Turkey into the war. Even with the money put into Iran and Arabia; I think it was pretty clear that even after its defeat in the first world war Turkey was /the/ power to beat in the region. For all the wealth of Arabia and the support of the Comintern, the Turks had a more modern army than either. The Jihad was probably a pretty major factor in helping to undermine the Turk’s cause, though the Kurdish rebellions against them and the Iraqis that went into full swing as both the socialists and the more religiously focused kurds raised their ire against the Turks as a result of the Jihad and the Iranian aid was likely the primary factor that lead to Turkey and Iraq deciding that they had to purge the Kurds. Removing the King’s call to arms probably will affect the Turkish decision to launch the Kurdish genocide. Of course, there were already many elements in Turkish society who already saw the Kurds as a problem element and a communist and ethnic fifth column, so it probably won’t eliminate it entirely.

That old thing is still getting referenced? Damn kids get off my lawn…

I would like to point out, KibbutzKid, that Iraq really didn’t exist as a separate entity when the attempted purge of the Kurds was launched. Iraq was mostly in allied hands, and much of the state apparatus was effectively being controlled by King Ali’s ministers; his own son was put on the throne to replace his wayward brother. And the part still in Axis hands was an innefectual Turkish puppet.

While Turkish forces were quite good pound-for-pound, I’d still say that the Iranian Revolutionary Army had the edge in quality. They had, after all, been trained and equipped by the Americans to fight in Russia as part of the IVA before they were diverted to support the Entente.

The biggest long term effects of the Turkish massacres in WW2 was that they did a great job of destroying traditional Kurdish power structures. The body count was high, but it was concentrated most heavily on tribal chiefs, their warriors, clerics, and their families. The Turks obliterated reactionary political forces and did very little to disrupt the small (at the time) communist partisan groups, who expanded to fill the leadership vacuum post liberation. This set a ticking time bomb under Arab Iraq, Syria and even Comintern Turkey, which continued to be repressive to minorities.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

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.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

Media about the South American theater (Co-written with Jello_Biafra)

While I’m sure that in most circles the South American theater is greatly eclipsed by the European, Asian, and African-Mediterranean theaters; I figured that some discussion about the media revolving around it could inspire people to seek out more information about it and stir some discussion for use in future timelines. If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend “Southern Storm: World War Two in South America”, it’s probably the most digestible documentary series that tries to be comprehensive and even features bonus episodes about the deployment of Latin American troops to the Pacific and Europe after the Monarchist coup in Brazil. It’s available for free on the internet and has been well dubbed into English and features some very stellar production values.

The movie “Backs to the Colorado” is also a pretty recent, albeit American flick if you’re interested in Haldeman and Cortes’ efforts to stop the Brazilian advance at the Colorado river at the climax of Operation Ten to One and prevent them from breaking into Patagonia. And if your tastes are more Russian you could go for the movie “Far away from Home” which touches on the experience of the Soviet units that were sent to Argentina as a symbol of cooperation only to get swept up in the conflict.

There’s also the Americuban movie “Fuel of War” released last year, though I’m less keen on its emphasis on a commando unit trying to hamper Venezuelan fuel shipments instead of a more sweeping narrative. It can also very often feel like more of an action movie than a war movie which I’m not too keen on, but maybe that’s just my general distaste for one liners outside of outright comedies.

In terms of video games, War Chronicle 1942 and the sequel 1943 both devote some attention to the South American front. The focus is more on entente forces; rather annoyingly, but there’s a few levels for the Comintern’s struggles to keep down Brazil. I noticed that the game didn’t go into too much detail about why the Integralists were bad; at times making them feel like just another generic horde of FPS enemies to mow down as surely as most enemies in other early 2000s and 90s FPS games (43 was a bit better about this), but apparently some of the developers felt that the Integralists; particularly towards the late war, would be difficult to believe as villains if they pulled no punches. Sounds like a bullshit excuse to me when Salgado was a living cartoon villain who strangled one of the members of his general staff to death when he found out he deliberately fed false information to one of Salgado’s favorites to make himself look better and had cities reduced to rubble in petulant fits, but sure whatever.

For American audiences, I think a lot of the best movies on the subject were made in the 70s. The war movie genre had gotten pretty stale by the mid 50s, and Hollywood gave it a much needed break.


The genre itself was revitalized by the 1974 classic Lacrimae Rerum directed by John Milius. Milius chose to focus the drama away from the well known set pieces of the steppes of Ukraine, the Pacific Islands, the drive on Berlin or the invasion of the Japanese home islands, putting the action in the less well known theater of Colombia. Shot on location in gorgeous 70mm film, Lacrimae Rerum focuses on a group of commandos in desperate straits in 1941. The main character, a half-Mexican half-Russian WFRA soldier leading a group of Colombian partisans in resisting the Brazilian invasion.


Most of the dialogue is in Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese, so expect subtitles. Basically, our hero Alexei fights desperately to keep his men alive amidst the brutalities of war. It includes a frank portrayal of the depravity of war that was highly controversial at the time. Alexei’s increasing moral flexibility is made visible by the accumulation of injuries and scars; his body and his moral sense are maimed. The biggest controversy surrounded Alexei’s group engaging in reprisals against collaborators, and the targeting of civilians by his and other partisan forces.

I did find the final level in the tactical shooter “Thunder of the South’ to be a rather hair raising experience as your single battalion has to hold against an entire corps of the Green Guard; based on the desperate defense of the 333rd Chilean battalion against the 4th Green Guard corps in 1944 at Paraguay. Of course, it is the late war green guard so the skill their fans often claim them to have had long eroded, but even when inexperienced; an enemy with a hundred to one numerical advantage is overwhelming for even the best soldiers. I rather liked the artistic touch of not allowing you to stay focused on any one thing in the level unless you wanted to do, feeling the stress of combat by being overwhelmed with near constant threats rushing at you in an attempt to drive you from your defensive position in the town and the constricting feeling of having to fight with a vision restricting gas mask due to the heavy deployment of poison by the enemy. The ammo supplies in the map are specifically designed to be exhausted towards the end and have to fight with nothing but your shovel and your bayonets against some of the last parts of the final wave to steal weapons from them before the cavalry finally arrives in the form of tanks to save your life and the ragged remains of your battalion; of whom only twenty percent have survived. I think that, more than anything else I’ve played gets across the terror of trying to survive that kind of battle.

Oh wow, I think I saw that film, SeriousSam. I couldn’t remember the title for the life of me til you brought it up.


I was maybe 15 and I was master of the house for a week that summer. So like any teenager I stayed up way too late watching cable, browsing through the premium channels for anything that might have been titilating because that’s what teens do the world over. It was on one of those art movie channels that loves to import Commiefilms, so I figured I had a decent chance of getting softcore.


By jove, I got more than i bargained for. Way too many mass graves for my enjoyment. I prefer to watch movies to escape, not to see the terrors of our violent history.


For something a bit more uplifting there’s an EBC special on the final battle of the Brazilian battleship Caxias, aptly titled “The Death of an Empire”. I rather prefer naval battles...there’s unlikely to be civilians involved to make things morally complicated.


It’s sort of an Operation Ten-Go style suicide mission, only much more farcical. You get both sides portrayed, including the captain who was basically given this mission because he was politically unreliable to the Integralists, yet he’s so determined to do his duty to his country, and then there’s the American captain who has orders to take the ship intact if possible because the Restoration is already in motion and they want to play nice and not cause any excess loss of life.

The outcome of the naval war was never really in doubt once America and Britain started sending ships to deal with Salgado’s aging fleet was it? The series...Jeanne 360 I think, about the Jeanne D’arc’s career throughout the war, covered her deployment to the southern atlantic. It struck me as a bit sensationalist with how they kept on trying to maintain dramatic tension even if it gets more than a bit hammy at many points. Like speaking of a wing of land based torpedo bombers and hurricanes approaching the fleet as if it were the end of the world even though I’m sure the fleet’s AA guns alone could have taken most of the bite out of the attack.


As for the Green Guard, most of those at that battle with the 333rd were probably recruited from integralist youth groups to find more fanatics to try and fight to the death for Salgado’s dreams of brazilian hegemony on the continent and driving back the communists. The actual experienced hardass warriors? They were mostly all dead by 1944 or kept to the first corps. The 333rd was essentially fighting a horde of kids fed lies for up to nine years.

I don’t cross paths with SeriousSam much, but I always love it when he posts. Such exuberance for cinema, and it always reminds me that I need to stop watching trashy soaps and see more good films.


Anyway, I mostly came here for recommendations. I don’t have much to contribute that hasn’t already been said; I’ve played enough War Chronicle 1943 that I could walk the Rio de Janeiro map blindfolded.

Um...Sam is a she Admiral. How did you miss the hullaballoo over her coming out as trans? Somehow it turned into yet another front of the fight to save traditional values the world over, and quite a few board members got purged over it. Something about trans* being counterrevolutionary or other such nonsense.


Anyway...I tend to prefer war movies with civilians as protagonists. This macho war stuff is a major turn off, and I can’t help but think that Truffaut was right: there are no anti-war movies. All war movies just feed nationalism and jingoism.


I liked Guillermo del Toro’s movie Magdalena, concerning the eponymous heroine’s plight in surviving the war in Argentina.


Most of the plot is concerned with her spiritual survival, not the physical. She’s has to learn to live again, and find joy in life after losing her family to bombings, and all of the degrading things she is forced to endure to survive physically.


The scene where, desperate and delirious from hunger, Magdalena sells her body for food and a roof over her head...and after the GI leaves her thinking she’s still asleep, she curls up into a ball and cries...argh I’ve not been moved to tears quite like that in a long time.

I think we’re a bit too focused on movies here and not enough on other artistic formats. Cinema is great, but so far I’ve seen only one person speak about games, and two about documentaries. Are you all sure there are no paintings, sculptures, games, books, or the like worth talking about here?

You should check out the game "True War: Guns of the Tropics" then, a first person shooter that tells the true story of the war and not this heavily propagandized nonsense. A game that dares to show the conflict from the Brazilian side.

Oh mãe de Deus that game.

You seem rather concerned.

Perhaps they haven't heard this in the far east but some years ago some Salgado apologists who had a game company decided to crap out games to show the "true side" of world war two. Which meant a series of six shitdiscs loaded with Axis apologia. You'll see it all, commie hordes and war crimes, civilian deaths were partisans, "beloved leader" Salgado, super elite army crunching badass Green Guardsmen, traditional Japan fetishism, and Hitler/Mussolini fellatio. As games they're competent for sure, not particularly revolutionary but god the stories of the campaigns are so terrible. Thankfully by the fifth game they decided to just start labeling it as alternate history so they could wank without historians smacking them.

It's particularly amusing how none of the women in that series have a cup size smaller than D and how many throw themselves at whatever variety of El Blandico Generico Shootyman protagonist they're using in the game for all they call the Communists rapists who make whores out of women.

*Raaaaaaaaises eyebrows*

Clearly you would not understand it, Pedro. How a man like you can claim to love the Empire and the Emperor and yet spurn the man who prevented Communism from bringing famine and despotism to our country is beyond me. I expected such an attitude from "artisticSpirit", you are so very much like the rest of your friends; drinking in the lies of the Socialist Union of Eurasian Communes even as it dissolves the cultures of western Asia, Siberia, and Eastern Europe into a dreadful homogenous blob. You refute even your very Russian identities! Terrible! A game that speaks of the values of nationalism and patriotic love of the fatherland would never appeal to such internationalists. Especially one who cannot understand the value of a good man's man instead of those...boys you are so fond of drawing..

It's called Bishonen. And so what if I like softer men and don't find square jaws, mustaches, and biceps like tree-trunks appealing? It's hardly your business. I don't see how the anti-nationalist values of the SEUC concern this thread either. And I'm sorry but the game's dialogue is just laughable and the shootyman gameplay isn't quite good enough to pave that over. It's like watching an old man yell at kids about how they don't "know what it was really like" for ten hours. But a quick search tells me no one in the company is over forty. But as for Pedro not liking Salgado, have you in your heart of hearts ever considered the possibility that a man who snaps the neck of a general in front of his peers for trying to screw one of his favourites over is not a particularly good leader? But I dunno. In the words of otakitten "*shruggu*"

Alright Patriot I'm going to warn you about ranting about internationalists again before you spray shit all over this thread like you did with the Uruguayan war thread and gave us a lengthy rant about how the UASR was destroying hispanic nationalism. You're starting to sound like a broken record and you know what I do with broken records? I throw them out. Keep your personal bugbears in your trousers where they belong unless it's a thread where that's explicitly okayed. Now be a good boy and play nice before I make an opening in the salt mines for you.

Now, how can we have gone on so long through this thread without mentioning Haldeman's American Expeditionary Force. More specifically, the glory that is General Haldeman's Walrus mustache.

Ah yes, the legendary Memestache. I know it well.

In light of spirit's request that we speak less of movies, there is an animated series about the American Soldiers sent to the Southern Cone. Marines, Armymen, Army-air force men. "Home is where you make it" I believe it's called. Twenty four episodes long and quite well animated. Haldeman in particular carries a quite charismatic presence whenever he appears; but I suppose any character voiced by Peter Culling would be charismatic.

The choice to render the Green Guard as CGI in contrast to everyone else; rendered in traditional animation, was a quite amazing choice in my opinion. It really emphasized how alien of a force they were with their own private internal language, the intentional monotone meant to be devoid of emotion or inflection, dehumanizing face concealing masks and gloves and their steel bibs worn to make them seem more threatening and menacing to Comintern forces.

The scene where the American marines find the Green Guard calmly lining up the population of a history class and the sergeant shooting them one by one in the most menacing of silences in particular is what will always haunt me. That cold...unfeeling menace of the pre-decay Green Guard when they actually lived up to their reputation as the Elite of the Brazilian army and the almost robotic way they carried themselves. This is also shown in an excellent recent adaptation of the Waververse story "Conquest and Hate at La Plata" which I also recommend.

I don't recommend bringing your kids to see it though. The "desolation" scene where the Green Guard sprays people with their first ever deployment of "Desolator Defoliant" is nightmarish and based on actual accounts the effects the chemicals that fell under that designation had on human flesh. The reference to the "Pesticides" meme made me laugh though, I'll admit I was caught off guard by that. Yeah buddy I really wanna know what kind of bugs need direct application of Flesh melting chemicals to the face to kill.

Oh shit a world war two animated series?

And with that pedigree of the animators behind it?

Yeah I know what I'm bingewatching on Saturday now!

 

[Aelita]

Excerpts from Joachim Peiper, Reflections on the War in the East, (Sandhurst, 1957)

…The 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte arrived in Vilnius on 8 July 1943. I followed fresh on their heels. Fresh from the infirmary, I was yearning to rejoin the fight. The division finished detraining right as I arrived with my orders to report to SS-Gruppenführer Fritz Witt.

I saw the weariness on his face as I reported. While I did not know him intimately, we had fought in the same battles in the service of the Reich. I trusted him implicitly, and his face seemed to light up on seeing mine. He told me he was glad to see an old soldier like me returning to the division, and confided to me his dismay at the many fresh faced young boys of seventeen, fresh from the Hitler Youth, now filling the ranks of the SS.

He said to me, “War is the profession of old men like us, Jochen,” as he led me to the 1st SS-Panzer Regiment headquarters. He was thirty-five, and I twenty-eight, though neither of us looked it. We had grown far beyond our years.

I took command of my old regiment that afternoon. It was not the joyous occasion I had dreamt of. We were preparing to join Heeresgruppe Nord’s next attempt to excise the Bolshevik tumor in the besieged city of Leningrad. But there was a pall cast over the headquarters. We were already hearing rumblings of calamity in the South.

…Operation Wotan began, as planned, on the morning of 4 September. In retrospect, the decision to press forward was foolhardy. In spite of the severe injunctions against “defeatism”, the scale of the defeat at Stalingrad could not be hidden. The Communists had summoned all of their strength into that titanic clash, and given Europa a thrashing it would not forget. In light of the annihilation of our operational reserves of men and equipment, pressing the attack in the northern sector was a gamble. We hoped that the apparent displacement of men and materiel would give us the space to finish the Siege of Leningrad.

Our offensive began some thirty kilometers south-by-southeast of the city. We intended to hook northward and drive to the main rail connections near Lake Lagoda. Meanwhile, the Finns and Swedes pressed their attack in Karelia, aiming to finish the encirclement of the city. The earthworks, immense and imposing, lay before us brimming with artillery and machine guns nests, while the hordes of Bolshevik soldiers crawled over them like soldier-ants.

The Sturmgeschützen(1) inched forward with the panzer-grenadier escort, blasting the defenders out of their bunkers. The Russian soldiers, fearing their commissars more than our guns, fought on tenaciously. I followed the vanguard closely in my command tank, watching the battle unfold. The haze and clouds were welcome. We wouldn’t fear a rain of PTAB bomblets just yet.

It was slow work, digging the Russian infantrymen out of their works like termites. They glared out from the slit trenches defiantly, unshaven dirty faces under olive pot helmets. And while most of our men still used the reliable Mauser 98k, American largesse had equipped the Russians with a bevy of repeating and fully automatic rifles.

It took a considerable scourging but we finally drove them from their outer perimeter around 3:00 PM that day, and could finally begin our break through. Our main effort, six kilometers wide, now cleared, we began our offensive stroke. After making a short stop to reorganize and quench my parched throat, I ordered the company commanders to form detachments from the youth, each led by a veteran NCO, for prisoner detail.(2)

We pushed forward well past nightfall, encountering sporadic resistance. We advanced nearly ten kilometers in our sector that day, though on our right and left flank the 6th and 8th SS Panzer were encountering greater difficulties.

That sleepless night gave me ample time for quiet contemplation. Watching the fires on the horizon, the endless flashes of flak batteries emanating from Lenin’s city, I was immediately reminded of Walkürie. I had barely made Sturmbannführer when our armies rushed, giddy with success, towards the beating heart of Bolshevism. Through great cost, we came within sight of our objective, only to find the jaws closing around us.

I had a premonition we were yet again running into the jaws of death. Our attack was understrength. Half of the units that were to take part in the attack never arrived. They’d been mauled in the Ukraine, or diverted their to shore up our weak southern flank.

...Progress had slowed immensely since the first day. Red Air Force interdictions had stretched our supply lines to the breaking point. Resistance at the front had stiffened, and we found ourselves slowly crawling forward on sips of petrol.

We had lost contact with an advance unit on the morning of the 10th. A composite group of tanks and panzergrenadiers had gone silent. I had my orders; continue the advance. I resolved to lead from the front, and suss out the danger cautiously. My command tank and an echelon of other Jaguars pressed towards the last known contact point, flanked by infantry.

We could smell the ash as we neared the edge of a bog. A single elevated causeway was the only path through. Following the smell of burned petrol, we were able to find the path our reconnaissance detachment had taken around the bog, through a section of rolling wooded hills.

We found the five PzKfpw 25 knocked out on the narrow trail ahead. The armored half-tracks were scattered along the road. Through my field glasses, I saw tankers huddled behind a knocked out Gepard. He noticed my tank and frantically motioned for me to get down. I ordered the infantry to disperse and probe forward, and for the tanks to button up.

It was none too soon. Even inside my tank, I heard the reverberating crunch of panzergranate(3) striking armor. The loud supersonic crack was followed quickly by the boom of an American 7.6cm anti-tank gun.

I scanned through the cupola viewing ports. I already knew in my heart what had happened. The rear tank in the column had been hit. My tank would be next. I shouted through the intercom for my driver, Knecht, to put the Jaguar into the ditch. The mighty Ford-Maybach engine roared as we lurched to the left and forward. The movement and the changed angle spoiled the American’s shot; I heard the shell ping off the turret armor.

The ditch gave us something close to a hull down position, and some favorable angling. The 12 cm of angled frontal turret armor was sufficiently resistant to 7.6cm guns. But if they had APCR, or one of their newer 9cm guns we were in trouble.

The rest of the column followed my lead. The rearmost tank, commanded by Oberscharführer Teichmann, was already immolated. The hatches were blown open, but i could see no tankers running to safety. I quaked with fury as began searching for our assailants.

I caught a glimpse of an American tank destroyer, one of their “Sabocats”, darting behind a ridge. It was performing what the Americans called “shoot and scoot”. Tank destroyers would ambush in a camouflaged position. After firing two or three rounds at most, they would rapidly disengage and creep into another shooting position.

For such a powerful gun, they were very small vehicles. And very fast. With our tanks denying easy side shots, they began targeting the half tracks. The normal APHE rounds had a devastating effect. Two of the Hanomag Sd.Kfz. 251s were hit. One brewed up instantly, the second was was hit in the engine. Before scooting, the commander of the Sabocat took the opportunity to rake the crew compartment of the Hanomag with his pintle-mounted 14.5mm machine gun.

My gunner responded without even being ordered. He lined up and took the shot quickly, but unable to discern the silhouette of the enemy behind the brush, the shot either missed or only winged the side of the turret. It scampered behind the ridge, denying a chance for a second shot.

The engagement continued for near to twenty minutes like this. Our infantry cautiously pushed forward with Panzershreks, but found themselves beaten back by tenacious American paratroopers. The tank destroyers would pop up and plink at our tanks with APCR. And slowly the number of tanks on my side dwindled.

A flight of Me 210s had been dispatched to give us some close air support, but were driven away, as I learned, by a flight of Soviet MiG-5s. Artillery proved to be of little help for either side. We endured a rocket attack by an Su-6, but came out unharmed.

The air was impregnated with the smell of cordite and burning flesh. Two more tanks were rendered unserviceable after several plinkings by enemy APCR. My gunner Schmidt managed to knock out a Sabocat. While it began to burn furiously after several seconds, I saw most of the men make their escape through the turret’s open top. The coax machine gun was unable to claim any.

The stalemate ended when our relief arrived. Five Gepards pushed cautiously through the brush on the Sabocat’s flanks. They chose to withdraw rather than contest the ground. But the young Untersturmführer leading the platoon was overzealous, and chose to give chase against an enemy more agile than his tanks. As my echelon began to move to more favorable ground, I heard the thump of tank guns in the distance. As I learned, he got his own Gepard shot out from under him, and lost an additional tank while claiming no losses against the enemy.

We could neither advance nor withdraw for lack of fuel. As I waited for resupply, I contemplated the ever diminishing chances of our success.

...By mid-September, the whole of Operation Wotan had bogged down. Further North, the Finns and Swedes had achieved little more success than we had. By the traditional beginning of Autumn, our front lines were being slowly inched backwards towards our starting points. Our abortive offensive was over.

As I understand it, at home Germany had run out of young boys and able-bodied men to put in uniform. Our units all across the front were increasingly skeletonized. The pitiless logic of strategic bombing was beginning to strangle the German volk to death.

As we began to depart, orders came down from the OKW to step up recruitment of volunteers in the occupied territories. In practice this only meant the very worst and most opportunistic of the racial trash joined our volunteer units for the promise of a few more grams of bread per day.(4)

The actions of 10 September notwithstanding, my regiment acquitted itself well in the battle against the Leningrad Front.(5) But I would be remiss if I did not note that with all our might, my regiment could not overcome the soldiers of the 717th Ind. Tank Destroyer Battalion. They stopped our tank spearheads cold in the unfavorable terrain, and inflicted disproportionate losses against us.

Our bitter retreat, facing constant harassment by enemy tanks and air power, left little time for contemplation. But once we were safely back to our lines, a crushing realization hit me. At that moment, I realized the war was lost.

I’ve had years to reflect on our defeat. At the time, I was enraged and sought to blame our failures on a stab-in-the-back. It seemed obvious at the time that home front was littered with Communist fifth columnists. In the final days of the war, they rose up and welcomed the Bolshevik invaders from their factories. The old stuffed shirts of the Wehrmacht had doubted the Führer at every turn, and gotten cold feet with every one of his gambits. They must have been plotting against the NSDAP and the German Volk.

This was the lashing out of an angry young man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. In the ten years since my exoneration, I’ve had bountiful time to reflect.

We had sorely underestimated our foes at every turn. We considered America a country sapped by Judeo-Bolshevik degeneracy, hopelessly mongrelized. Hedonists and libertines, especially by the standards of the day. The Russians were a mongrel race of subhumans, thoroughly compromised by Judaism.

While I remain committed to the ideals of National Socialism, in reflection, it is clear that all of us, from the Führer on down, were mistaken about our enemy. Bolshevism was not the effete, degenerating influence we believed it to be. It was far more insidious; it was the dark mirror of our Aryan civilization. It was a Judaic National Socialism, committed to Judaic values and opposed our Volkisch spirit.

The goals are different: the mongrelization of races and sapping of the vital essence of Nordic civilization as opposed to their preservation. But the methods are the same. In America today as in during the war you will find a nation united in military collectivism. The American education system raises men--and women--to be the soldiers of Judaism, and instills within them the vital will to fight that is now so lacking in the West. They are united under a singular will, an esoteric Kabbalah of unfolding of Man’s history, advanced by a unified bloc of parties that act as a single Party in the service of Bolshevism, and consequently are stronger than the sum of their parts.

The awesome scale of the American and Russian armies that were arrayed against us in the East now sits near the heart of Europe, occupying fully half of my country and our Italian brothers in National Socialism. All of Europe east of Piedmont and the Wesser River are staging grounds for an eventual showdown with the West.

The Group of Comintern Forces in Germany will hopelessly over-power the combined might of Western Europe. The prognosis of any conventional war is grim. Only the awesome and terrible majesty of the a-bomb preserves the West. Only a renewed faith in National Socialism can save the West from this threat.

1. StuG 25 specifically, a casemated assault gun equipped with the famous 8.8cm StuK 36 and also adept in the anti-tank role.

2. Liquidations of prisoners are common. Here Peiper is glossing over the details of his orders, including a zealous enforcement of the Commissar Order.

3. Literally “tank grenade”, but in German the term “grenade” encompasses both explosive grenades as well as artillery shot.

4. Peiper is a military man, and the primary aim of such “recruitment” being to forcibly deport large groups of people to the Reich as forced labor to sustain the war economy is beneath his notice.

5. They’d better. The 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler is the most prestigious unit in the entirety of the German military for obvious reasons. They get the best men and equipment, and are one of the few units that is kept at full strength after 42.

 

[Aelita]

The End in Sight: The National Committee for a Free Germany

As the Autumn Rasputitsa began to mire the Soviet theater in a sea of mud, the frontlines made their final pause. The short lull in major operations from mid-October to late November 1943 would be the last. The rest of the war would be a continuous sequence of offensives and counteroffensives between the Axis and the Comintern.

Axis front lines stretched a winding line from Lake Lagoda in the north down to the Sea of Azov in the South. Army Group North was battered by the failure of Operation Wotan, spending most of its strength in a failed attempt to tighten and finish the Siege of Leningrad. It recovered its strength, occupying a frontage from the battlements surrounding Leningrad, south to the city of Novgorod before winding to the Byelorussian border near Vitebsk.

Further south, Army Group Centre was hastily refortifying its position in Byelorussia. Following Operation Saturn, the west bank of the Dneiper River from Orsha to Kiev had been lost.

Army Group South fared slightly better. Manstein had managed under desperate circumstances to hold most of the west bank of the Dneiper south of Kiev. The higher face of the west bank made a good defensive obstacle. But the Crimean Peninsula had been cut off.

Having seized the initiative, planning for the end of the Nazi regime advanced. German prisoners had been used cautiously as intelligence sources and occasional defectors to the International Volunteer Army. Following the crushing victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, General William Henry Johnson, in his capacity as Chairman of the Main Political Administration for the RDF(1) submitted a proposal for the political subversion of German forces.

Dubbed Operation Seventh Column, the proposal was swiftly approved by the Combined Stavka. Communist infiltration and agitation among German prisoners of war was ramped up. Simultaneously, the National Committee for a Free Germany was established (Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland). The NKFD, as it was commonly known, would be a popular front of all anti-Nazi activity among German exiles.

The nascent NKFD would have difficulty recruiting among German officers initially. While many of the officers in captivity were beginning to seethe against Hitler and the NSDAP, Prussian conservatism did not make easy bedfellows with Social Democrats, let alone Communists.

There were some early successes. Generalleutnat Vincenz Müller had proved to be an enthusiastic latter-day true believer in the Communist cause, easing the collaboration process for more conservative members of the Wehrmacht.

The fully constituted NKFD made its debut in October 1943. Its central committee contained a motley collection of Communist and Social Democrat exiles, Wehrmacht officers and enlisted, German-Americans and Volga Germans.

Publicly, the NKFD’s aims were to secure the quick and peaceful surrender of the German military, the prosecution of “Nazi traitors and criminals” for treason against the Reich, the restoration of the Weimar constitution with Germany’s 1937 borders, and a just peace with no indemnities on the German people. These demands were backed publicly by the Comintern, and even referenced by Franco-British diplomats in back-channel communiques via Switzerland.

The political reality, understood even by the most conservative Heer officers in the NKFD, was that while this might sow dissent and defeatism among the German military, such terms would not be accepted, and the war would continue until Germany’s occupation and unconditional surrender, at which time a socialist state would be established in Germany.

As a war instrument, the NKFD would play a part in psychological warfare, producing propaganda broadcasts and leaflets for distribution behind German lines. Cadres of trusted German soldiers were used as infiltrators and saboteurs in “Special Units” closely monitored by political commissars. And most importantly, it would serve as the nucleus of a new order in post-war Germany, preparing the ranks of highly indoctrinated Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS soldiers for a political reality that had been hitherto unthinkable.

The NKFD would grow with each Comintern military victory. As the jaws tightened around the Axis, new POWs were increasingly disillusioned and more malleable to indoctrination by the NKFD. By mid-1944, the German-American units of the IVA merged with the Special Units to form the German Liberation Army (Deutsche Befreiungsarmee, DBA). This provoked a measure of tension among the various Comintern aligned governments-in-exile, particularly the Polish Committee of National Liberation.

Not only did the issue of collaboration with former Wehrmacht soldiers cause difficulty, the various underground states had mutually conflicting goals for the post-war world.

The NKFD itself became more openly leftist as the war progressed and the front lines. It became widely understood that the NKFD would become the partner in administrating any Comintern occupied zones in Germany. London’s diplomatic protests were ignored.

Members of the NKFD would often go on to serve in the postwar government of the Free Socialist Republic of Germany (Freie Sozialistiche Republik Deutschland), including controversially a number of former members of the Wehrmacht serving in the higher ranks of the Free People’s Army (Freie Volksarmee).

1) AKA the Political Commissariat

 

[Aelita]

Excerpts from Patrick O’Brian, Typhoon Struggle: War in the Mediterranean, (Dartmouth: Britannia Royal Naval College, 1985)

The embryonic form of the Mediterranean Strategic Offensive was conceived with the formation of the Inter-Allied Cooperation Council in January 1943. This initial consultative body, formed to provide a channel for direct military cooperation between the Comintern militaries and those of the British Commonwealth, steadily grew in importance.

As we have seen, regaining control of the Suez Canal was of vital strategic importance to the British Combined Chiefs of Staff. So long as the Mediterranean Sea was closed to Commonwealth flagged ships, the whole of the Commonwealth was practically paralyzed. Shipping constraints would hinder the transport of raw materials, durable goods and troops from India.

Similarly, the American Naval Operations Committee had been searching for a means to leverage its strength to affect the outcome of the fighting in the east. Disrupting the flow of Libyan oil to Europe would be a tremendous blow to the Axis war effort. With their interests aligned, a joint exploratory committee was formed.

…Under the guise of joint anti-submarine operations, the WFRN and RN began a series of fleet problems in the Atlantic and Caribbean aimed at establishing operational cooperation between the two fleets. This was a significant difficulty after nearly a decade of enmity that still had yet to fully cool.

Meanwhile, planners struggled with two serious problems. To wrest control of the Mediterranean from Italy and her junior partner France, their fleets needed to be annihilated. To accomplish this, they’d have to be drawn into a decisive battle. There needed to be a sufficiently provocative action to force the Supermarina’s hand, and somehow sufficiently conceal strength to give the Italians a belief that they could achieve victory.

This was greatly complicated by the confines of the Mediterranean itself. It was presently bordered on all sides by hostile territory, and by late 1943 toeholds had been barely established in the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco by the Entente and Comintern respectively. The fleet would be confronted by land-based airpower, and conventional wisdom had held that land based aircraft would have the decisive edge against carrier-borne planes.

The Pillars of Hercules were the ultimate chokepoint. The land campaign would have to advance sufficiently that the fog of war could conceal the quantity of ships passing through into the eastern Mediterranean.

…The Franco-British joint-command intensified its efforts in the Iberian peninsula, deploying the Fifth Army beginning in November 1943. This new force contained several newly raised British divisions (the Guards Armoured Division, 11th Infantry, 51st (Highland) Infantry), the 4th Canadian Armoured, and the 4th and 5th Indian Infantry divisions. The new formations, equipped with modern Enfield Selfloaders, Bren Mk II light machine guns, Universal Carriers, Carnifex tanks, reliable radios at the platoon level, and buttressed by Eastern Front veterans, finally forced a breakout from Lusitania, precipitating a general retreat by Rommel towards more defensible areas east of Madrid. While the encirclement and destruction of much of the Spanish Nationalist Army in the Battle of Madrid had invited disaster, a rump Nationalist state was propped up in Catalonia by a steady stream of German and Petainist forces.

Simultaneously, Comintern forces in French Morocco were augmented. The 18th Army was raised in Casablanca following the deployment of four Mexican divisions (51st Tank Division, 501st, 507th, 511th Rifle Divisions), and four American Red Guards divisions (28th, 39th, 46th, 47th

Rifle Divisions). Many of these Red Guards units were drawn from Louisiana and Haiti, and spoke French as well as English.

With the attached 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, the 18th Army pushed into French Algeria, facing the reconstituted remnants of 7 French North African divisions, and the regular 7th Light Mechanized Division. While formidable on paper, French forces in Algeria lacked crucial supplies, and the means to counter enemy air power, and could only yield ground against a foe with logistical and materiel superiority.

…Operation Typhoon steadily took shape. In January 1944, the Inter-Allied Council selected a basic strategy. An amphibious landing would serve as the bait to force the Axis into battle. Sardinia and Corsica were selected as primary and secondary target. Relatively lightly garrisoned, yet they held important airfields for the projection of land-based airpower into the Mediterranean. If lost, they could throttle trade in the Mediterranean, and open up the whole of Italy to Allied airpower.

The next problem was to sell it. Deception campaigns began to create the appearance of preparation elsewhere, particularly designs against France’s northern coast. But the central problem, of getting the Axis to commit to battle still remained.

An American analyst, Commander Paul Kralizec, from the Stavka Main Intelligence Directorate, suggested a careful “tipping of the hand” strategy. Referring to the accidental or intentional revealing of one’s hand in a card game, a fake intelligence leak would be created to give the Supermarina the impression they could achieve overwhelming superiority and defeat the enemy landing group.

Multiple vectors were chosen for this. The first feelers were extended by doubled Abwehr agents in America and Britain. While the Germans took the information as credible, the Italians were much more skeptical, and Petain himself was outright dismissive. Broken diplomatic intercepts showed little traction being gained.

With time running out, and the taskforces beginning to assemble in the Azores and Canaries, a more bold strategy was undertaken. Using the body of a dead vagrant dressed in Royal Navy uniforms, forged battle plan documents were planted on the French Atlantic coast by Royal Marine frogmen. The forged documents detailed a planned invasion of Sardinia and Corsica supported by a large but vulnerable mass of ships. With the supposed timetables provided, the Axis could mobilize its fleets in sufficient time to deliver a major knockout blow.

When the French military attaché provided the documents in early April, Mussolini only had a matter of days to decide to sortie the fleet. Fleet action would deplete Italy’s available heating oil reserves, and it would take some time to build them back up, with so much by necessity being needed to support the Army and the German war effort in the East. He reluctantly endorsed Grand Admiral Ricardi’s battle plan, which would commit the Regia Marina’s First and Second Squadrons, with almost 90 percent of the surface fleet to support the three squadrons of the Marine Nationale.

The Italian First Squadron would set sail from Taranto, steam at full speed through the Strait of Sicily. First Squadron would have most of the fleet’s fast capital ships, and all of her operational carriers, and would begin a coordinated attack against the Allied invasion fleet, supported by the Second Squadron from La Spezia, and the French Mediterranean Fleet.

…The Italians and Petainists expected two major task forces to engage in the Western Mediterranean. The battle plans and preliminary seaplane reconnaissance corroborated the existence of two task forces moving in the general vicinity of Sardinia: a slow wing consisting of older but still formidable battleships and escort carriers accompanying a landing force backed by numerous escort ships taking up the lead, and a fast wing on the northern flank with modern fast battleships and fleet carriers. These two task forces, TF 38 and TF 57, had seven fleet carriers, four light carriers, seven fast battleships and eight dreadnoughts between them. The eighteen escort carriers contributed another six fleet carriers worth of aircraft, but their limited complements were mostly oriented towards defence and ground attack.

The Regia Marina would muster eleven battleships, and five armored fleet carriers, supported by considerable land-based air power. The Marine Nationale would contribute a further seven fast battleships, four dreadnoughts, and four fleet carriers, also augmented by land-based airpower.

On a numerical level, they appeared to have achieved considerable superiority, a nearly two to one superiority in capital ships, and a sizeable advantage in available aircraft. But even if they had not been deceived, the outcome would not have been as favorable as numbers alone would suggest. The Axis fleets were spaced considerably apart and would have to combine at the right place and time in order to prevail, which was a shaky proposition given the continued coordination problems between French and Italian military elements that had been apparent since the Battle of the Levantine Sea.

The older French and Italian dreadnoughts, while not hopelessly outclassed, were significantly less effective than their British or American counterparts. Similarly, their fleet air arms were less well developed, flying older aircraft and utilizing a less well developed air group handling doctrine.

Had it been fought entirely on their terms, a singular Battle of Sardinia might have still resulted in a pyrrhic victory, sinking the troop ships at a huge materiel cost in ships and men. But unbeknownst to the admirals steaming towards their “Second Ecnomus”, the Allies had concealed two complete task forces entirely from their view until it was too late.

…As the Italian First Squadron, commanded by the able Admiral Inigo Campioni, completed its transit of the Strait of Sicily and headed north, on schedule, to begin a pincer attack on the landing force bombarding Sardinia, TF 45 steamed at flank speed to intercept. Campioni had unknowingly stumbled over a submarine picket. The Tang, a new fast snorkel equipped submarine type, had observed First Squadron’s passage by passive sonar, and radioed the squadron’s size, speed and heading via secure Arcana transmission.

Admiral Yitzak Levin* commanded a veritable sledgehammer of eight capital ships and four fleet carriers. The force was divided into three Task Groups. The first two, consisting of four battleships each, would approach in staggered echelons into First Squadron’s heading. Campioni would be forced to either divide his battle line, or be able to turn his broadside to one group while allowing the second to cross the tee on his line. The third group, containing the carriers, would remain several hundred kilometers behind.

…A seaplane scout discovered the approach of TG 45.1 at 0645 on 21 April 1944. Through the light rain and early morning fog, a single heavy cruiser, the Fields of Athenry, and two destroyers were positively identified.

Campioni was alerted to the possible threat by 0730. After consultations with his staff aboard his flagship Littorio, Campioni decided to press ahead cautiously. His carriers began preparing for combat operations and increased their scouting efforts.

At 0843, a Revolutionary Navy SB2D Dervish was able to make it to visual range of First Squadron before it was chased off by a flight of patrolling Re.2005 Sagittario fighters. It was an unmistakable sign of American aircraft carriers. Optimistically, Campioni rejected the hypothesis that an additional task force was presented. Nonetheless, he continued to prepare for immediate engagement.

Task Force 45 had already been identified by land-based French reconnaissance planes from Algeria. Attempts to relay this information to the Italians had been marred by poor cooperation and mistrust. By the time Campioni’s fleet, under strict orders for radio silence, received any word of an additional task force and several probable capital ships south of Sardinia, the Battle of the Straits of Sicily had already begun.

…Amid fog, intermittent rain and choppy seas, First Squadron stumbled into the jaws of TF 45 just after 1100. Radar contacts, port and starboard forward, began showing up on Italian scopes. With surface action imminent, Campioni broke radio silence and ordered his carriers one hundred kilometers behind to begin launching. Additional land based fighters and bombers scrambled from Sicily to assist

An attack force was spotted soon after. The first echelon passed overhead of Campioni’s main fleet, headed in the vicinity of the five carriers. The second began torpedo attacks on his seven capital ships. The American fighters, F8F Tomcats, swept aside the first fingers of land-based M.C. 205 Veltro and the patrolling Re.2005s. The torpedo bombers approached the battleships from the bow in three groups spaced several kilometers apart.

The battleships and their escorts filled the air with flak, but the fast American BTM Maulers were more than a match for the older Italian gun directors. As the Italian battleships maneuvered, they presented broadside profiles to at least two of the three torpedo groups. Thirty Maulers dropped their torpedoes, scoring four hits: one each on the Littorio and Roma, and two on the Cristoforo Colombo.

Damage control contained the flooding on the newer Littorio-class ships thanks to their more modern torpedo protection system. But the Colombo, a modernized super dreadnought, was effectively knocked out by the two hits to her port side. Engine room flooding and power loss would effectively leave her dead in the water and listing almost ten degrees to port before counter flooding and pumps were able to stabilize her.

As the torpedo planes retreated into the distance, losing six of their number, Campioni’s lead destroyers began coming under fire. Both fleets were reaching grappling range, and now it became apparent that the enemy intended to slug it out. Believing that he’d encountered the enemy’s fast wing shifted south, Campioni decided to press the engagement. With land based airpower, and littoral support, he believed he could overcome his presumed numerical disadvantage.

His battleships pushed onward, heedless of the danger, towards the ships of TG 45.2 under the Royal Navy’s Vice Admiral Frederick Dalrymple-Hamilton. The six remaining battleships would square off against four of the Royal Navy’s best. For forty-five minutes, they angled closer to one another in the gray skies and roiling seas as they steamed eastward, back towards the comforting safety of Sicilian air power.

…The HMS Invincible, leading the British column, began firing at 1343 at a range of 16,400 yards. Her shots straddled the Gulio Cesare. The thunderous roar of battleship guns filled the air. With an apparent numerical and broadside weight advantage, the Italians engaged with confidence. But the better British fire control and gunnery began to whittle away at that confidence. Within the first fifteen minutes, both sides had fired ~25 full salvoes at one another. The Italians scored twenty hits from their 15 and 17-inch guns. Both the Invincible and Trafalgar had received the brunt of this damage. In that time the Invincible alone had scored twelve hits on the Gulio Cesare. British shells were heavier and pierced enemy armor more effectively.

Campioni ordered his fleet to disengage to let the incoming dive and torpedo bombers settle the score. His remaining destroyers laid down smoke screens, allowing the badly damaged capital ships to increase distance. It was ultimately too late for the Gulio Cesare, who lost engine and steering control under the pitiless onslaught. At 1358, her captain ordered abandon ship, as he and a small team of subalterns and petty officers remained behind to scuttle the ship.

…At 1410, Campioni’s limping ships began steaming south by south-east. Retiring and preserving what was left of the fleet, regardless of Mussolini’s displeasure, was militarily the best course of action. Unfortunately for him, TG 45.1, was steaming at flank speed towards him, and his wounded ships had no hope of escape.

The second engagement began at 1425. By now, the carrier air group had been whittled down to the nub. Whatever hope of another torpedo attack to relieve pressure on his capital ships vanished, as a massed attack by the American fleet carriers finally located the Italian combat box.

As his carriers maneuvered desperately to avoid the enemy torpedo and dive bombers, the clouds parted to reveal four fresh American battleships now blocking the way. In the calmer seas and improved visibility, the American ships engaged at 22,700 yards.

The damaged Italian ships fought back as best they could. But with TG 45.2 beginning to re-engage on the other side, the heavily damaged Italian ships were doomed. The American 41 and 46-cm shells were just as hard-hitting and accurate as their Royal Navy counterparts. Campioni’s flagship began to founder very quickly; multiple waterline penetrations from the Jacobin compounded the earlier torpedo damage. One-by-one, the Italian battleships were silenced and unable to return fire. Campioni himself was killed by a strike to his bridge, probably from the Antietam, soon after.

First Squadron’s executive officer, Counter-Admiral Luigi Mascherpa, ran up the white flag at 1530. After a terse radio conversation, TG 45.1’s commander, Vice Admiral Nikola Marino, a first-generation Italian immigrant himself, agreed to send his destroyers to help evacuate survivors.

Meanwhile, the had ninety plane raid from TG 45.3 had pummeled the Italian carriers to oblivion. Forty-five BTM torpedo bombers, 25 SB2D dive bombers and 20 F8F fighters delivered a coup de grace against a nearly defenseless carrier fleet. With two decks knocked out of action by the previous raid, and another badly damaged, the carrier flotilla could only manage eighteen operational fighter craft.

As their carrier doctrine dictated, the Italian carriers scattered to achieve maneuvering space before the attack. The greatly reduced concentration of anti-aircraft fire left them easy prey in the now clear skies. Aquila was hit by three torpedoes, two port and one on the bow. Trajan was hit by two 1500kg AP bombs, igniting her avgas stores. The already damaged Lupa Capitolina took another bomb and two torpedoes. Sulla took by far the worst of it; three bombs and three torpedoes. Only the Scipio Africanus would escape destruction.

…First Squadron’s remaining seaworthy ships (three heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and eight destroyers) were interned as part of the surrender agreement. Accompanied by Revolutionary Navy prize crews and Fleet Marine detachments, the surrendered ships would transport Italian survivors to Casablanca. Being so-close to enemy home waters and the threat of torpedo boat attack, Admiral Levin decided to scuttle ships once evacuation was complete, both allied and enemy.

Admiral Campioni would be remembered as the man who lost the war in an afternoon. The pride of the Italian Navy was annihilated. Six of her battleships would be on the bottom of the ocean. The seventh battleship of the First Squadron, the limping Cristoforo Colombo, would join them the next day. As she steamed back to Taranto at eight knots, she tripped across the lurking submarine Tang. Tang would fire a full spread of six 54cm Mark 16 torpedoes, securing three hits.

…Late in the afternoon of 22 April, Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, commander of the Petainist Mediterranean Fleet, received the first reports of action near the Straits of Sicily. With insufficient intelligence available to him, Gensoul chose to press the attack. With darkness falling, he made the tactical decision to divide his fleet. I and IV Escadrons, with his fast battleships and carriers, would push towards TF 57 assaulting the beaches of Sardinia at flank speed under the cover of darkness.

Meanwhile, the Italian Second Squadron was preparing for a similar night attack through the dangerous Strait of Bonifacio, but perhaps the only way for the slower ships to achieve surprise.

TF 57 was arrayed close to the shore of Sardinia, bombarding the Italian defensive works of the 207th Coastal Division. Both the Petainists and the Italians believed, erroneously, that TF 38 had shifted far south to combat the First Squadron, leaving the landing force immensely vulnerable to attack.

The fourth task force, TF 51, had remained hidden in the fog of war. As it moved north under cover of darkness, it ran headlong into the Petainist fast wing. The Battle of the Balearics began at 0211, as the first Petainist destroyer, Mogador, stumbled into radar range of the Free French cruiser Algérie.

The first phase of the action was a short skirmish between destroyers and cruisers. The Allied ships had a significant advantage in radar sophistication, and in many cases were able to fire with virtual impunity against the enemy light ships.

Believing this to be a detached cruiser squadron, Gensoul pressed onwards. With the weight of numbers, he began pushing the escorts aside. The Algérie herself foundered under enemy torpedoes.

A British destroyer flotilla began an unsuccessful torpedo attack on the lead Petainist battleship, Richelieu, succeeding in sinking a heavy cruiser, Colbert, at a cost of three of their own. As the escorts began to thin, Gensoul believed victory was in sight. Mere hours away from the transport ships and vulnerable aircraft carriers, he’d achieve a knockout blow just before dawn.

However, the seven capital ships of TF 51 were already moving to block him. Admiral Horace Hood arrayed his battle line right across the Gensoul’s advance. The Petainist fleet would approach at a forty-five degree angle before meeting broad-side to broadside.

With ambush narrowly averted, battle commenced at a range between 15,000 and 20,000 years, with the Petainist rear engaging from further away. Blind accept to the flashes of one another’s guns, it was fought with radar and electromechanical gun-directors.

While the engagement appeared numerically even, the qualitative balance was once again decisively in the American/British favor. But more than armor and broadside weight, the decisive advantage lay in the immense superiority of the Allie’s fire control systems. The newest radars were able to spot the fall of their shot and feed the information to the fire control system to adjust the next salvo. In terms of accuracy, the poor state of the French radars meant they might as well have been firing blind.

Gensoul attempted to close the distance and illuminate the enemy with searchlights from his cruisers. It was too little, too late. The Richelieu exploded at 0330, and the French line began to break. In the confusion and darkness, they lost their bearings. The Normandie rammed one of her escorts accidentally. The Gascogne, swerving wildly, brought its guns to bear on the Normandie.

As dawn broke, all seven Petainist battleships were burning or sinking. Of the Allied ships, only the Wat Tyler would prove unrecoverable. Listing twenty degrees from torpedo attack, her captain ordered her abandoned and scuttled shortly after dawn. The floating wrecks of the Petainist Marine Nationale would have a similar fate.

…Just before dawn, Italian Second Squadron completed its perilous transit of the Strait of Bonifacio, and was rounding Cape Falcone. Steaming south at 25 knots, they were mere hours away from the landing zone in the Gulf of Oristano.

Most TF 57’s battleships had moved south in the night to interdict the 21st Motorized Division’s movements, and guard the expected approach route for Italy’s remaining ships. It was believed that the Italians would be too cautious to attempt the Strait of Bonifacio at night. When an early morning patrol revealed four battleships, escorted by six heavy and ten light cruisers, racing towards the troop ships, Admiral Levin scrambled to interdict them.

The assault boats carrying the 6th Marine Division ashore were just disgorging troops on the beaches. The remaining gunfire support battleships, Comintern and Matewan, would steam north to interdict the enemy battleships, accompanied by two cruisers and twelve destroyers.

Levin’s jeep carriers scrambled what planes they had to interdict the Second Squadron. But close to shore, the Second Squadron was protected by land-based fighters of the Regia Aeronautica. Twelve SB2D dive bombers and sixteen TBF torpedo bombers made an uncoordinated attack separated from their escort fighters. Almost half were shot-down by M.C. 205s of the 32nd Wing. Only two cruisers were damaged sufficiently to turn back. A single dud bomb struck the battleship Impero, which would not be disposed of before surface action began.

…Comintern and Matewan steamed into the jaws of death, meeting the Italians just after 0900. While both had undergone a full reconstruction in the late 30s, both were essentially advanced WWI era designs greatly outmatched by the Littorio-class, to say nothing of the Duce-class. What they lacked in speed, they made up for in firepower and survivability. Comintern mounted twelve 41-cm Mark 6 guns, the Matewan eight. Both had 13.5-inch thick main belts and 6-inch decks. They’d need every bit of it.

The two forces met twenty miles north of the landing zone. The Italians aggressively closed the distance, using their superior speed to attempt to cross in front of the American line. Comintern opened fire at 22,400 yards. The three faster Italian ships rapidly closed the distance, while the older Caio Dullio brought up the rear. The Comintern lost electrical power from an unlucky hit after three salvos. Sensing opportunity, the Italians surged into close range. The lead ship, Arditi, took multiple bow hits from the Matewan. Undeterred, she turned broadside at 12,000 yards, and opened up with all nine of her 17-inch guns. Vittorio Veneto and Impero followed in her wake. By modern standards, this was practically point-blank range.

Just as Comintern restored power, she came under an unrelenting salvo. She fought back tenaciously as the 17-inch and 15-inch shells penetrated her belt. At 0937, her main guns went silent. But her secondaries continued to fire furiously as the focus shifted to the Matewan. The battle would continue beyond hope of victory, refusing to surrender to buy more time for the rest of the fleet.

…While the Arditi, Vittorio Veneto and Impero continued to pound the American battleships mercilessly, the Caio Dullio attempted to push onwards to the landing zone, accompanied four cruisers and six destroyers. A single Task Unit (57.1.4), with four destroyers and two frigates interdicted them. Greatly outgunned, they made multiple gun and torpedo attacks. Though they lost both frigates and half their destroyers, they claimed two of the enemy cruisers and a destroyer, convincing the Caio Dullio to turn back.

…As the Comintern and Matewan began to abandon ship at 1042, the planes of VT-11 appeared overhead. The damaged Italian battleships faced the first of many torpedo and bombing attacks over the course of the day. The desperate delaying action had worked. Second Squadron would disengage under heavy aerial attack. Arditi would suffer four bomb hits and five torpedo hits, and be abandoned just after 1350. Impero would sink after six torpedoes and two bombs. Only Vittorio Veneto and Caio Dullio would be able to limp back to port.

…6th Marine Division took heavy losses in the opposed amphibious landing. But by the afternoon they had taken the battlements defending the beaches of Oristano. The following divisions, 1st Canadian Infantry, and the American 99th and 140th Rifle Divisions, took significantly fewer casualties expanding the beachhead.

By day’s end, the 271st Coastal was down to quarter effective strength and in full retreat. Like all coastal defense formations, it was composed of third line reservists, significantly underbilleted and armed to begin with. Two additional coastal divisions, the 209th and 240th, and the 21st Motorized, held up at Sassari, Olbia and Cagliari respectively, remained. Over the next month, they would be steadily ground into oblivion.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

South American War Timeline 1942-1944 (Written by me, Edited by Jello Biafra)


January 1st-February 9th 1942: The Green Guard grows in size. Two additional corps are activated and ready for battle. Two more on their way as the organization's increase in recruitment efforts earlier in the war start to pay off.


February 10th-March 4th 1942: Operation Twin Cannon is launched by Brazilian forces to attempt to make a drive to break the Argentine army before the crunch of the loss of British support can be felt in earnest. The entirety of the Green Guard is committed to the attack, supporting the First and Third Armies. The massive offensive is powerful but slow moving, as roads are choked with troops and supplies. Comintern forces bend and buckle in the face of the attack. Elsewhere, two fresh Brazilian divisions prepare to secure the Guyanas. In the Andes and Colombia, the Axis launches additional offensives in a roll of the dice meant to definitively break the Comintern based on intelligence reports that the Comintern in South America was losing hope and was close to breaking. This false intelligence was intentionally fed to Axis spies to coax the Axis out of their prepared defensive positions into attacking well dug in Chilean troops. However, the sheer magnitude of the Axis offensive catches many off guard and some of the war's most ferocious fighting is concentrated in this period.


March 5th: As Operation Twin Cannon enters its fifth week, Brazilian forces are perilously close to overrunning Buenos Aires. Salgado expects the morale blow to force the Argentinians to sue for peace. The dreaded I Green Guard Corps spearheads the attack. The armoured troops of its shock brigades are photographed callously burning houses with the smallest excuse. With Brazilian naval support it seems almost inevitable that the city will fall. The Soviet expeditionary division, American expeditionary force, and significant assets from the Chilean military and international volunteers move to support the Argentine counterattack as General Giovanni hopes to drive the green tide back. The siege of Buenos Aires thus becomes the battle of the Platine River basin. General MacArthur's Cuba is requested to declare war on the Axis by his counterparts in London and to some degree, in Debs D.C and Moscow. While much of the reconvened American Senate is livid at the idea of joining a war on the same side of the communists, General MacArthur proves to be an unexpected voice of reason and argues that a south America dominated by Salgado would be one that would make a puppet out of America and somewhat hypocritically labels the Brazilian dictator as a menace to liberty and American values. Off the books and "unofficial" talks to other segments of MacArthur's National Salvation coalition also argue that the Integralists are a racial threat to mollify the anger felt by these groups.


March 6th-13th: Tanks and infantry fight in the broken shadows of derelict skyscrapers while aircraft duel above, the thunder of distant cannons continually roaring in the distance. While many of the Axis troops are greenshirts, the veterans in the formation have often been fighting since 1940 and maul Comintern troops attempting to drive them from the city. A commander under the moniker of "O diabo verde"(Green Guard heavily used noms de guerre to confuse and demoralize enemies) oversees a Brazilian attempt to draw Comintern forces into attacking a section of the city that had been secretly turned into a heavily fortified position by baiting them with information about captured civilians in the process of being executed by the Guard. The provocation works and the First Corps batters all attempted rescuers in a vicious killbox nicknamed the Iron Cage by the Soviet, American, and Argentine survivors of the trap. However the battle elsewhere does not go quite as well for the Brazilians, particularly outside of the city. Comintern armoured forces threaten to push Axis forces over the river and are only prevented in doing so by the guns of the navy, forcing the siege to continue following a massive clash of infantry and artillery. The First Corps is moved out of the city by river as the offensive is called off. Across the frontlines some half million soldiers have have been killed, wounded or captured, costing the Axis heavily with little gain.


March 14th: The Andean offensive stalls as the Chileans and Peruvians are by now well adjusted to Bolivian shock tactics and have become hardened veterans of Mountain warfare. Heavy fighting in northern Chile stalls as the chill begins to set in and tempo starts to slow down as the brief mountain summer stops.


March 15th 1942: As part of the multi-lateral talks between Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the UASR; Leon Blum, Attlee and the heads of government of the assorted dominions of the FBU and the heads of state of many allied governments in exile; particularly the Netherlands whose anti-fascist government has fled to Suriname; agree to enter the war against Salgado at the request of Carlos Contreras Laberca of Chile in a joint request with other Latin Comintern delegates.


March 19th: The Carrier Group Enterprise moves to interdict a massed air raid against the Panama Canal by Axis aircraft. American aircraft fall upon the unsuspecting Integralist craft with a vengeance; joined by Central American interceptors which join a rapidly developing furball over Panama. The second wave of enemy aircraft fares little better, and by now ground and sea based anti-air is alerted and starts to open fire. The planned third wave of attacks is called off entirely when the British caribbean task force's aircraft catches its lead elements and tears through it. The debacle costs the Axis a total of three hundred precious aircraft to the loss of less than twenty United Nations aircraft in what comes to be called the Great Panama Turkey Shoot.


March 30th: The FBU and all other members of the Allies issue a joint declaration of war against Salgado and the integralist bloc, cutting off the fascist giant from its lifesblood of foreign supplies and munitions, a move that very well could be argued to be the single most devastating blow ever dealt to the Integralist dream of South America under Brazil's hegemony. Enraged, Salgado has the ambassadors of the FBU to Brazil summarily executed within moments of hearing the news and the British embassy put to the torch. The image of green guard soldiers calmly standing aside and letting the burning embassy personnel run out of the building to burn to death rather than waste ammo becomes a stark reminder of the Integralist regime's brutality and is taken as a sign of Salgado's insanity by many conservative and liberal officials in Brazil. MI6 operatives in Brazil get in touch with small elements who feel that the Republic has lead Brazil to madness and that the Empire must be restored to restore sanity to Brazil; and the first kernels of what would become the Comintern's plan to restore the Brazilian monarchy as a means to remove the Integralists from power without having to face the logistical nightmare of an invasion of Brazil and a repeat of "Solano Lopez' Paraguay" are formed.


March 30th-April 13th: With the seemingly weak Guyana's proving to be unexpectedly stubborn as the colonial guard of the triplet of European colonies decides to fight to the bitter end, the Integralist attempts to conquer the territory are further stymied by the arrival of the first Cuban troops with British logistical support. The Cubans provide much needed manpower to allied operations in Northern South America, and many of their units count veterans of the Second American Civil War among their NCOs as well as quite lavish equipment from British armouries. However most of these forces were expecting to fight in North America, and find the jungles of the Guyanas difficult to adjust to. The disadvantage in Shotguns, SMGs, Flamethrowers, and close quarters combat training, especially against the 33rd Cranio brigade of the Green Guard, costs the Cubans a significant amount of men. The battle lines come to a stop at Paramaribo as both sides prove incapable of pushing further against each other after the inconclusive battle of Paramaribo against Integralist troops and Petainist French and Hitler loyalist Dutch troops. Civil wars in miniature play out small battles in Suriname and the French Guyana with most of the Fascist loyal troops being forced to flee to the arms of the Integralists after finding themselves outnumbered by Allied-loyalists.


April 13th-June 12th: The fighting in South America settles into a prolonged stalemate with little in the way of advances as all sides face exhaustion. With the loss of vital fuel from Europe, the Integralist armies are now largely fed by oil fed from Venezuela southwards by means of railway systems built in the 30s as a prestige project. These railways become the center of a back and forth cloak and dagger drama of constant attempts to cut or sabotage them and ever increasingly imaginative attempts to defend them. Oil fields set up in the Chaco region as part of the Integralists' attempts to mimic Italy's Libyan jewel and smaller ones elsewhere in the continent are still relatively new and the oil is difficult to extract with current technology, but also proves to be a vital lifeline for the Axis war machine in the southern hemisphere. Both Comintern and Allied Commandos and Spies are often paradropped or otherwise inserted far behind enemy lines in an attempt to disrupt the flow of supplies across the far flung continent, and a number of small skirmishes occur within the very heart of Salgado's empire. Another major naval battle ensues with the Brazilian fleet to little substantial gain for either side.

April 20th: Salgado’s Brazil sends Hitler its congratulations for the Birthday of its ally, warmly wishing it success and fortune in its struggle against “international bolshevism and jewry”, with Hitler in return extending his own congratulations for Brazil’s “noble battle against the global cosmopolitan and communist conspiracy against the nation.” A submarine, U-110, sorties in secret from Sao Paolo. Its cargo includes a gift of looted gold intended for Hitler as a birthday present, in repayment for U-110 and its previous cargo, schematics of German weapons technology and a disassembled nashorn tank, sent to Brazil at the start of the year.

May 1st: U-110 arrives successfully in port in fascist friendly ports in France, meeting up with a Japanese submarine crew sent out on a similarly clandestine trade mission with its far flung ally. A photoshoot is held of personnel from each Axis member nation to demonstrate the unity and power of the Axis powers that becomes famous in history texts and news articles afterwards; demonstrating all of the Axis’ personnel in their uniforms.

May 13th: U-110 manages to successfully return to Brazillian port, with an additional cargo of a disassembled Ta 190 and its schematics; with Salgado personally congratulating its skipper Rodriguez Santos for his “service to our fatherland” and awarding him Brazil’s highest honor.

June 8th: A bomb explodes in the Miami naval base as Brazilian saboteurs attempt to disrupt the shipment of supplies to the Southern Cone. The saboteurs targeted a munitions shipment. The resulting explosion sends a dock crane crashing down on and sinking the Liberty Ship SS George Washington Carver. Fifty three-dockworkers, ten Red Coast Guard sailors, and six Merchant Mariners are killed. The culprits, led by Green Guard Lieutenant Jabin Márcio Rosa is apprehended after a three day manhunt during a shoot out in the Florida Everglades, along with the rest of his spy ring. Following this incident, the counter-intelligence net in America tightens to prevent any further such disasters, with further acts of Brazilian sabotage being far more limited in scale.


June 12th-October 25th: With the southern hemisphere's winter settling in, both sides continue their back and forth grinding stalemate, the logic of the Axis' poorer supply situation favouring those who argued for waiting the Axis to burn through its supplies with minor actions. Airfields in the Caribbean and in the secured parts of the Guyana soon become the sites for the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command to begin launching raids against the enemy in tandem with their American counterparts; particularly concentrating on Venezuelan oil fields. With a great deal of distance needing to be covered and few opportunities to approach stealthily as well as being significantly less flushed with resources than their counterparts in Europe, these bombing raids are dangerous and struggle to do the desired damage. While risk of interception by aircraft is low, attackers face heavy anti-aircraft fire; much of which was installed by Britain in the thirties for the very purpose of thwarting American bomber raids. The irony of weapons and flak bunkers set up by Britain to defend the imports of Venezuelan oil against America being used to carve into British and American planes is not lost on the crews of the bomber wings.

June 19th: Brazilian ships capture the Cargo Ship Seas of Dreams to be utilized in a plan concocted by Brazilian intelligence for mass destruction upon its enemies based on a reading of the Halifax disaster. The plan is relatively simple, pack the ship with explosives and munitions and steer it into a busy port and detonate it to cause as much havoc as possible, disguising the ship as an ordinary civilian ship to allow it to slip past defenses and explode during peak working hours to kill as many as possible and damage or destroy as many ships as possible. The only difficulty is in choosing a target, with Integralist officials choosing Britain as they feel that Britain could perhaps be terrorized into leaving the war against Brazil if placed under the threat of more of these "hellfire ships" as they're called.

June 28th: Sabotage at Havana leads to an important bridge collapsing with more than a hundred people still on it and crushing another one hundred and thirty one people beneath it in one of the deadliest losses of life caused by a foreign enemy to the USA’s civilian population. MacArthur orders an immediate manhunt that takes a week to resolve before eight Brazilian spies are gunned down with two being captured after being knocked out in a shootout in a hotel building leading to the deaths of twelve more civilians. As a result, the NBI attempts to screen any people in Cuba of Brazilian descent or are capable of speaking Portuguese, ironically causing enough resentment by a non-fascist Brazilian resident named Osvaldo Esteves Meireles to lead to another bombing three months later that kills thirty people. Smaller scale acts of sabotage also occur, but none as severe as the Havana bridge bombing.

July 11th: The Seas of Dreams approaches port in Britain but does not seem to respond to hails. The ship has been listed as a munitions ship and unbeknownst to the workers stationed there, is rigged to explode with the crew of this operation having escaped by life boat to Fascist France after steering the ship like a missile. The ship detonates just outside of the docking zones, blasting the area with the force of roughly nine kilotons of TNT resulting in the death of over four and a half thousand people from the blast wave, the shrapnel and a tidal wave that swamps much of the docks at Manchester. Congratulations for the attack are sent from Italy, Japan, and Germany while condemnations quickly fly from across the Allies and the Comintern. However, in response to this, inspection of incoming cargo ships is greatly tightened so as to prevent any further attempts at similar such acts of destruction, and the act is promptly considered a war crime.

July 26th: Hitler, knowing of many of the Integralists' own hatred of Jews and many other minorities to have earned Hitler’s displeasure, sends Brazil's government a secret communique asking if it would wish to participate in a “final solution” for the Jewish question to “purge the scourge of Judaism and its comrades in degeneracy in the Americas just as they must be eliminated in the old world” to which the Integralists were split into debate. Salgado was himself against Anti-Semitism, but many, including the Green Guard and others, were in favour. These targeted populations, which included liberals, leftists, "cosmopolitans" and quite often Jews, would be selected for “death work” whenever practicable, being placed into forced labour and forced to provide labour for the Axis war machine in South America until death with only starvation rations being given. Otherwise, the ancient solution of mass shootings are utilized.

August 14th: Axis forces draw condemnation from the art community with the decision to steal and sell off works of art seen as “unworthy of enshrinement” being given by Brazilian high command after a communique from the front requesting what is to be done with captured art reaches the ears of the fascist inner circle. This leads to many priceless works of art being stolen and many are simply vandalized or destroyed if they offend Integralist sensibilities sufficiently.

August 29th: Why We Fight releases the episode “the battle for South America” to inform Americans of the reasons for battling against the Brazilian state and its cronies as well as to inform them of what’s at stake in South America. The film is condemned by Salgado who orders yet another anti-american propaganda film to be created in order to drum up hatred against America within Brazil, the “realness” of death in the film stems from the fact that many of those being shot are not actors, but are prisoners being forced into playing the part of “extras” with dummy guns to be shot and killed by Brazilian soldiers performing for the movie. The South American episode of the "The Struggle Must Be Won", a British counterpart to Why We Fight, is released within the same month as Why We Fight.

September 11th: The Brazilian military prostitution system begins to expand the criteria for women to be selected to “service” the Brazilian army’s “needs”. These women are often as young as ten and are forced into horrific conditions where confirmation of venereal disease is grounds for execution and abortions (if given at all) are forced with crude methods. This particularly loathsome aspect of the Brazilian war effort becomes notorious for captured female soldiers having “high demand” among Brazilian troops, with more and more female POWs being press ganged into the system.


Ongoing throughout 1942: With the newfound hostility of Cuba and the Allies to the Axis; the threat of Axis submarines operating within the Caribbean is significantly reduced, and the intensified patrols makes the usage of Venezuela as a base risky at best. However, the addition of Petainist French convoy raiders further complicates the battle of the Atlantic, and warships from Axis held Europe from convoy hunting cruisers to submarines continually make their stops in Brazilian ports to load up on provisions and supplies before striking at merchantman shipping within spitting distance of the coastlines of Mexico and America. With open season now being declared on Allied shipping and the reinforcements provided by Petainist France, huge quantities of merchant ships are lost in the Atlantic. While greatly overshadowed by their European counterparts, some south american submarines join in attacks made on enemy convoys, only adding to the grief of ships passing by, and a naval bomber squadron repeatedly menaces convoys passing within air range of South America; forcing the commitment of escort carriers until the Enterprise's carrier group finally catches the infamous Condor squadron in July 17th. A number of European maritime bombers shipped in through means of dubious international legality during earlier parts of the war also prove to be a continual menace.


November 11th 1942: With the summer approaching, the campaign season starts to pick up again as the Axis starts to face ever growing shortages of finished materials. While small arms and ammunition are easy enough to create, the Axis in South America is severely lacking in terms of heavy industry to create vehicles, large artillery weapons, and aircraft; with production falling well short of demand. The demand for nitrates for ammunitions and explosives has caused severe shortages in fertilizer throughout Brazil and its allies. Facing difficulties with keeping his army in the field as well as providing food at home, Salgado authorizes a series of orders that give the military unlimited leave to take whatever supplies and industries they could from their occupied territories; abolishing virtually all restrictions on looting. The Integralist armies swiftly fall upon the hapless civilians of their occupied territories with a terrible fury. Resisting or even protesting their looting was grounds for execution, often by bayonet or by officer sabre to save on ammunition and virtually the entirety of the population of the occupied areas was forced into industrial or farm labor to keep the goods rolling; rescinding virtually all attempts at leniency to the occupied and taking the already extant policies of forced labor to incredible extremes. Famine, already an issue in occupied areas; becomes essentially unavoidable.


December 17th-January 3rd 1943: With temperatures rising, the Axis makes its preparations for its final major offensive of the South American theater: Operation Providence. While offensives would be made in the North and in the Andes, it would be towards the Colorado river that the Axis would drive in its earnest. Once again the Green Guard is to lead the spearhead of the attack, the I Corps under “The Green Devil”, the eternally gas mask wearing and gloved commander of the Green Guard and the "third man of Brazil" Cristiano Boaventura Leite, now joined by five other corps sized formations, in what was supposed to be a sledgehammer. But the months long grinder and the ever growing rate of expansion had diluted the Green Guard significantly. Many of its hardened veterans who had proven to be such a terror during the previous years of fighting and often were used to turn the tide in the assorted smaller scale engagements during the months of stalemate had died. Its recruitment standards had dropped considerably and an ever increasing number of frightened boys beaten and abused by their superiors were now being thrown into their increasingly ill fitting uniforms and armor. Furthermore, constant usage of terror tactics had started to make them hated, with enemy forces unable to flee them now preferring to fight to the death. Similarly, the materiel edge of the Comintern and Allies was steadily growing. The evacuated production facilities of the Latin confederation were now in full swing and fresh troops were coming in continually from recruitment centers and the north. Comintern and Allied intelligence penetration had similarly increased dramatically and the timetable of Operation Divine Intervention is thoroughly studied by its opponents.


January 4th-January 19th: Operation Divine intervention launches at 6:00 AM that morning in the Southern Cone with the hopes of catching their enemies off guard, trying to crush comintern forces in the sight of Buenos Aires at last. As the Comintern’s forces prepared to fight, Fanny Edelman famously declared “¡No pasarán!”, adopting the phrase from the Spanish Republicans. “They shall not pass, they shall never pass. Argentina shall not fall to Tyranny, the Latin American experiment shall not fade from the earth into the dustbin of history, and if they want this land, this earth, they will have to kill everyone here to do it; for never again will the people be slaves, never again will they know chains, never again shall they bow.” By this time the Comintern has definitive air superiority and flights of ground attack planes launch strafing runs against Axis forces before they can even begin to mobilize, followed up by an artillery bombardment to create further confusion as the Argentine and Chilean forces gathered lure the Brazilians into their own Iron cage, letting them crash into pillboxes and dug outs to break the tide against them. The attack on the east wing proceeds with greater success than the attempted attack on the west or the center; as despite enemy numerical superiority, their enemies prove to be doggedly stubborn against attempts to remove them from their positions. Using tactics learned on the Eastern front and in years of war, even the Green Guard's shock tactics prove unable to crack Comintern defenses. A furious tank melee of some two hundred and forty total armoured vehicles engaged each other in a recently built village called "New Hope", the largest such armoured conflict in South America as the mechanized elements of the I and II Green Guard Corps collide with the first Soviet expeditionary division as well as elements of American, Chilean, and Argentine forces present, including one hundred and ten armoured cars (70 Brazilian, 40 Comintern), forty self propelled guns (25 comintern, 15 Brazilian), eighty tanks (Roughly equal on both sides), and twenty tank destroyers (12 Brazillian, 8 Comintern). Moving to stop the Brazilians from making a breakthrough after overrunning the 21st Argentinian Artillery Division, the armoured clash also featured significant combat car and half track combat; though the numbers of these vehicles are not counted. The technical inferiority of the Brazilian vehicles began to tell in time however, and the Brazilian-Paraguayan-Uruguayan force had no choice but to withdraw after losing some three vehicles to each comintern vehicle; losing sixty armoured vehicles to the Comintern's twenty.


January 20th: Out of frustration and desperation following I Corps failed attack on a defensive line manned by Haldeman's Marines and hardened Argentine, Chilean, and Soviet troops; O diabo verde makes a now infamous order. "Ulargi knur yarst" in the constructed language of the Green Guard or "purge them". Mysterious shells soon land near Comintern positions and hissing is heard, followed by mass outbreaks of choking and gagging. With their gas masks, the Guard moves through easily and a rout ensues, as the possibility of chemical warfare had not been adequately prepared for. However the rest of the army is forced to stop as the gas sweeps over much of the battlefield, costing the offensive time and momentum and Fanny Edelman’s forces hold despite the advance of the Brazilians. However it is enough to make other Brazilian units in other fronts begin deploying gas as well as their efforts also start to flag. This allows them to make their greatest advances in over a year, but a breakdown in supply chains prevents them from capitalizing on their breakthroughs. An additional pair of Soviet divisions arrives in Chile and Panama from the Russian Far East as a gesture of Friendship and commitment to the global proletarian struggle along with fresh American and Entente troops towards the end of the fighting in Operation Providence.


January 24th-February 3rd: The United Nations counterattacks in a series of offensives collectively labeled "Operation Radio" begin as soon as they are able to; with emergency distributions of gas masks being increased now that it was known that Chemical warfare was a factor in the conflict. Drills to defend against the likes of Chlorine gas are quickly re-emphasized in drills and old safety videos are brought back to the fore. Mechanized and armoured units form the primary face of the offensive to capitalize on lackluster Brazilian anti-tank systems. The Brazilians, having few proper anti-tank guns that could deal with better armored tanks and assault guns at a distance, a weak tank park of their own, are forced to rely heavily on man-portable shaped charge systems such as rifle-grenades and improvised weapons. Now forewarned and facing an overstretched enemy the Comintern drives the Brazilians back to Buenos Aires. In other sectors of the Southern Cone front, the Comintern drives Integralist forces to cities and other areas that make for poor tank country, rolling back the exhausted enemy forces for dozens of kilometers. In the west, the Chilean and Peruvian armies make a stunning series of advances after having perfected mountain artillery and air support and even the usage of tanks in mountain terrain, squeezing in towards Bolivia's pre-pacific war borders. In the north, the commitment of the Mexican led, 27th Army, with an attached Central American IVA Corps, proves to be enough to start pushing Venezuela back towards its own borders, stopping just outside of Bogota and eliminating the threat towards Panama. Eastwards, the Cubans and a fresh division raised from Jamaica and another from South Africa land the Axis a crushing defeat at their attempt to push into the French Guiana and start to push them out of Suriname.


February 28th-March 3rd: With victory now in sight, the first conference of the "big four", MacArthur, Labarca, Baldi, and Zapata is held in Kingston, Jamaica; with delegates from the rest of the UN also attending. In the conference the four come to an agreement for the post-war world in South America. There would be no peace offered to the Integralists that would have their regimes left intact, but there would be promises to be lenient in peace even with unconditional surrender. Given the difficulty of invading Brazil, it was agreed that this should be saved for a last resort in favor of bringing about regime change from within, and a policy of de-fascization was articulated. It was agreed that free elections were to be held to determine the future governments of the Axis, and that their governments would be asked to participate in finishing the wars with Germany, Italy, and Japan. A series of non-negotiable conditions were agreed upon; the end of Integralist regimes in any shape or form, the restoration of democracy, the removal of Integralist officials from power, a return to pre-war borders, the abolition of the Green Guard, and the trying of any and all war criminals with Salgado being declared to be "Hostis Humani Generis". Secretly, it was agreed to put forward all possible effort into "Operation Regisurp" to utilize Brazil's anti-fascist elements to quickly dispose of Salgado with less resistance than attempting a communist coup might bring. Yet another largely inconclusive naval battle occurs at the River Plate; two more would occur on may and october before the climactic battle of the naval phase of the South American war with a number of smaller naval actions scattered throughout.


March 17th-21st: The UN counter-attacks launched in January and February largely start to stall once again as the Axis forces retreat to more defensible stations and previously set up fortification lines. Digging the battle hardened soldiers out of cities similarly proves to be difficult. However advancing UN troops frequently happen across sites of unspeakable atrocities. Whether because they were sloppy in covering up their tracks or because they were driven away, captured, or killed before they could hide evidence of their deeds, the first windows into the scale of devastation inflicted upon occupied south America above and beyond the simple damage dealt to urban areas in times of war became starkly visible. Salgado proves to be an eager participant in Hitler's final solution as Integralism shares Hitler's violent dislike of Semitic peoples, and a significant number of Jewish communities have seemingly entirely vanished; though with other emptied settlements they frequently go unnoticed among the other scenes of horror.

March 23rd: A major breakthrough in intelligence occurs as American spy David Brinkerhoff’s “American Carnival” spy ring, in cooperation with NKVD and MI6 spies; cracks the Green Guard’s internal language and produces a comprehensive guide book to the language that is soon smuggled out to Allied and Comintern forces. Whereas before even intercepted and decrypted Green Guard transmissions were unintelligible due to their usage of a secretive artificial language never taught to outsiders, now United Nations forces can be privy to any communication by the Green Guard and finally remove the paramilitary units’ ability to act as difficult to predict wild card due to its tendency to act independently of the regular army and the inability of intelligence networks to decipher its transmissions. Operational secrecy is put in place to make absolutely sure that the Green Guard remains confident of the secrecy of their language.


April 13th: Renewed offensives are called to continue to press the advantage after a period of rest. Mexican forces manage a break out at Bogota, pushing into the ruined city and driving Axis forces out of the ruined husk of a city at long last. Unfortunately there is nothing left in the city to save; or perhaps more succinctly, there is no city left to liberate. Following the earlier rape of Bogota, the city has essentially been completely destroyed and abandoned with only debris and a handful of Catholic Churches untouched by the occupiers left to indicate that there ever was a city; much of which was transported to the Axis' own countries to be recycled as building materials. Digging through the rubble finds a great number of bones. As a cruel joke, many of what seemed to be buildings from the air turn out to be decoys; set up there to lure Comintern forces into a pointless battle to give Venezuelan and Brazilian troops time to move to prepared defensive positions, playing on their hopes of liberating Bogata when the majority of the city was already destroyed years ago. As a final insult to injury, much of the city's ruins are riddled with mines and explosive booby traps. The Bogata charade is later found to be the work of the architect of the destruction of Bogata, Green Guard Commander Enrico Vargas during the Sao Paulo trials who explicitly intended it to waste the Comintern's time by playing on their morality.


April 16th: Chilean forces liberate Copiapo after a vicious battle with Osados and Green Guard troops, however in the final phases of the battle, much of the town is bombarded with chlorine and even mustard gas to deny it to the Chileans. Fighting ends with some twenty thousand casualties inflicted on both sides and much of the civilian population needing to be given immediate medical attention; having the desired effect of slowing the Comintern advance down as supply convoys need to be diverted to deliver medicine and doctors. The reports of the Comintern's advance grinding down to rescue civilians encourages Axis forces to commit further attacks on them in the hopes of plugging up their advance with masses of refugees, the injured, and the starving.


April 19th: Peruvian forces make their way to Ilo, aided by a number of Republican Spanish volunteers who fled to South America with the advance of Nationalist Spain; enough to form a "red division". Bad terrain forces heavy usage of smaller assault guns such as the highly popular SU-76M used across the comintern as well as light tanks able to handle and navigate the landscape; however these vehicles often prove to be highly vulnerable to anti-tank grenades and minefields. When Peruvian forces push into the city, they are met with fierce resistance and frequently have to fight shock troopers in the claustrophobic confines of port facilities and office buildings. However the Peruvian navy sails a number of warships to close range of the city once the coastal guns are dealt with and begins shelling, forcing the Bolivians and Brazilians to retreat lest they be crushed by the weight of destroyer and cruiser shells.


April 31st: The City of Mendoza is liberated by joint Chilean and Argentine forces after a protracted Urban siege and engagement. Enemy forces are hounded by aircraft and "jeep fleets" as they break, light tanks and half-tracks nipping at the enemy's heels as they flee into the fields.


May 11th: Allied forces in the Guianas drive Venezuela out of Suriname entirely and begin to advance upon the British Guiana, the flow of Cuban soldiers having become a tide. Troops recruited from Allied held parts of the Guiana and the Caribbean as well as Africa continue to arrive in the Guianas as they battle both Brazilian and Venezuelan troops in the steaming jungles of South America. Now thoroughly experienced in jungle warfare, the Allied soldiers are able to go for more than blow for blow with their enemy counterparts as they introduce such weapons of war as the "Crocodile" Flamethrower tank, which proves to be all but invulnerable to its opposition and can quickly smoke its enemies out of the Jungle brush.


May 17th: Comintern and Allied naval assets begin regular bombardment of the Venezuelan coast to batter the resolve of the fascists; committing an aging battleship, Spartacus (BB-45), and cruiser assets not suited for fighting against the French, Italian, German, or Japanese fleets and conducting regular penetrating raids with carrier borne aircraft. This is often considered something of a dress rehearsal for the cooperation seen later in Operation Typhoon in the Mediterranean or the Allied and Comintern fleets' later destruction of the Japanese navy in detail. The Green Guard under the command of the Diabo deploys "desolator defoliant" a flesh melting cocktail of chemicals for the first time in battle after testing it on Argentine civilians, using it on American marines to horrific effect.


May 25th-June 11th: Mexican forces move to close the "Medellin pocket" formed by a bulge in the front lines by the drive to Bogota and thus close up a potential weak point in the lines of the Comintern. With the aid of Colombian partisans the Mexican military manages to crush the flanks of the enemy army before filtering into the city to recapture and liberate it. Unlike Bogota, Medellin is still at least somewhat intact, and much of the city can be salvaged. Urban assault units prove vitally important as the city proves difficult for air or artillery support to be leveraged in, forcing significant and brutal hand to hand fighting. Mexican assault tactics have had ample time to study up however, and soldiers enter buildings armed with shotguns, submachine guns, ample grenades, and close combat tools to help the Colombians take their city back. While many Venezuelan and Brazilian forces manage to withdraw, some forty thousand losses have been inflicted on the enemy and the noose is clearly tightening for fascism in South America.


June 13-26th: After a significant lull in the tempo of offensive operations in Argentina, the Comintern moves to close the Santa Rosa pocket and in doing so deal the Brazilian army a harsh blow. Throughout the month of may, the Comintern moves resources to catch the Brazilians off guard while they struggle to recover from the loss of Mendoza. Operational secrecy is maintained until the day of the attack where the first news that the Brazilian Fourth Army gets of being attacked is the crash of rockets and shells all around it followed by sudden and vicious air attack. Hamstrung from both sides, the Brazilian forces only manage to withdraw any significant numbers of troops by driving panicked refugees from the city into the masses of Comintern troops as they start to flee en masse. For some thirty thousand casualties of their own, the Comintern inflicts close to seventy thousand on the Brazilians as they rout, taking massive spans of territory and opening up the terrain to the Comintern by removing a threat to Buenos Aires' flank.


June 27th-September 24th: Another general lull in the fighting ensues as the UN slows down its rate of advance to consolidate its gains. However it continues to gradually creep forward as the end of the war lays in sight, with the heaviest fighting being around Buenos Aires once again as the much benighted city becomes an infamous meatgrinder. The city is finally secured in a final push that routs or destroys the remaining Brazilian forces in the city who have not already been evacuated. By the battle's end fighting in and around Buenos Aires has claimed a staggering total of some six hundred thousand Comintern personnel's lives and roughly eight hundred thousand axis personnel. The city itself has suffered a death toll of some one point one million people, one of the worst out of any city in the war. The Argentine government finds the city unusable for governance until it is adequately repaired. It will be known as the grave of two and a half million people and a powerful reminder of the sort of foe that the Comintern faces.


October 15th: Bolivia is forced out of Calama after a bitter siege and struggle as Bolivia desperately tries to cling onto its coastal toehold. In a vicious struggle, Calama is essentially totally destroyed after a week of fighting and over seventy thousand bolivian soldiers are rendered as casualties for sake of a port and avenging a seventy year old defeat, with Comintern casualties being some one hundred and thirty thousand thanks to the unexpected ferocity of the defenders. The Bolivian army is dealt a devastating blow and the way into Bolivia itself is finally opened.


October 17th: Cuban and British forces push into Venezuela itself; starting their offensive against Venezuela's border defenses and making steady progress as to the west the Venezuelans start to lose faith in the war and the crumbling of the Venezuelan war effort begins.


October 31st: Argentine forces push the frontlines as far north as Vila Maria, with the Brazilians and the Guayans in full retreat to their borders and the confidence of the Comintern at an all time high; the Comintern marches from victory to victory as the desperate moves of the Green Guard and the Army only seem to delay what many are seeing as the inevitable defeat of the Integralist regime. In secret, Monarchist elements in Brazil hold talks with intelligence agents in the United Nations, letting it slip that much of the Brazilian officer corps would be more than willing to support a coup, however the Brazilian Navy and Air Force are the most thoroughly fascist elements in the Brazilian military with the largest number of newly indoctrinated personnel, and the navy will need to be dealt with if a coup is to go forward lest it be crushed under the guns of Brazil's battleships.


November 12th: In an attempt to provoke the Brazilian navy into sorties, the American and British fleets begin bombardment of the Brazilian coastline with both gun carrying ships as well as aircraft carrier groups. The Jeanne D'arc spends a significant amount of time here, and her aircraft repeatedly score key hits against important targets. The fleets also serve to provoke the Brazilian air force into interception missions, working to whittle down the air fleet to the nub.

November 17th: Sensing that the Cubans might get them a better deal, a huge number of Venezuelan troops choose to surrender to Cuban soldiers rather than face the wrath of the Comintern. Not being particularly committed to Fascism as an ideology, Venezuela’s leadership decides to sue for peace as Cuban forces swiftly advance through much of the country. Venezuela's surrender documents would be filed on that day as the Entente now decides to reorient its offensive into Brazil proper.


December 25th: On Christmas day, the first Comintern troops start to cross into the Uruguayan border and begin to move into Paraguay following a series of Brazilian defeats at Cordoba and at the Mesopotamian river valley; beginning Operation “Act on Instinct” intended to end the war once and for all. Most Argentine territory is now fully liberated after years of occupation and the dusk of the Integralist bloc settles in as Cuban/British forces break into the North of Brazil, seizing Boa Vista. In Bolivia Comintern forces move into Oruro and an attempted offensive by Brazil into Colombia only manages to distract the Comintern's forces rather than break the back of the Mexican Army as Salgado hopes. Within Salgado's court at Rio di Janerio, Salgado has clearly broken with reality, ranting and raving about conspiracies and suspecting traitors in every direction. Even among his loyalists, infighting and rivalries weaken the Brazilian war effort, often with lethal results. When Salgado's favoured general, the Diabo; is forced to retreat into Brazil proper after a failed offensive, Salgado launches into the process of ordering his death before his aide informs him that the reason for his failure was because Marshal Orlando deliberately with-held intelligence about the presence of Argentine armoured forces; presumably in an attempt to make him look bad in front of Salgado. In the blink of an eye, Salgado had seized Orlando in a death grip around his neck, choking the life out of him in front of his general staff and simply snarling out his disappointment before letting Orlando's corpse flop to the floor once he felt him stop struggling.


January 15th 1944: Offensives into Paraguay and Uruguay are met with fanatical resistance, even in their current state, exhausted of manpower, desperate elements wage a hopeless struggle against the enemy as the end closes all around the fascists while Allied forces approach Manaus in the lightly defended North to pinch off supply lines to forces in Colombia. The fighting through them is gruelling and slow work, and pressing into Brazil proper is met with even stiffer resistance. Salgado secretly announces his "Ghoul Plan", where the Brazilian military and people would become a guerilla force that could melt away into the high lands, swamps, and rainforests of their territory and continue to wage insurgent warfare without end until the Comintern crumbled on itself under the weight of draining and never ending war.


January 29th 1944: At the Sixth Battle of the River Plate, the Argentine, Chilean, Franco-British, and American navies lure the Brazilian Navy into a confrontation after feeding the Brazilians false information about an upcoming attempted amphibious invasion of Rio di Janerio. The presence of American and Franco-British capital ships is concealed until they are nearly in gun range. The battle is a one sided massacre, with the disparity between ships so evident that the larger ships simply steamed closer to ensure hits; contemptuous of enemy fire. Minas Geares, Sao Paolo and Rio De Jeneiro are sunk. The last Brazilian battleship left is the Caxias, which was in port at the time for repairs.


February 9th: The offensives to the south continue to make little progress due to the deplorable terrain for mechanized warfare faced by the attackers. Manaus is put to siege by Allied forces who make significant progress into the city as significant stretches of Brazil’s northern flank is now in Allied hands.


February 16th: The battle of San Pedro de Ycuamandiyu meets its most climactic and famous episode as the entirety of the IV Green Guard Corps throws itself at the 333rd Chilean Mechanized Battalion. One thousand men and women fight against a horde of fifty thousand starved, beaten, and simply psychotic fanatics and holds out for an impossible three days against utterly impossible odds, made doable by their defensive position and the erosion of skill of the Green Guard. The battalion runs out of ammunition for all of its own weapons part way through the third day and is forced to pick up the weapons of killed Green Guardsmen. By the end, only two hundred men and women of the battalion were left, huddled for a last stand in town hall before the 27th Argentine Armoured division arrived to drive back the Green Guard whose hordes of scared teenagers, psychotic grizzled veterans, and even beaten children run in panic.


February 28th: The V Green Guard Corps and the Brazilian VIII Army is wiped out in the battle of Iguaco falls by American and Soviet expeditionary forces with the aid of Argentine paratroopers. The V Corps are made out of indoctrinated fanatics of whom very few surrender, something that fails to bother the Marines who have little patience for "Salgado's Sillies" as they're often called after experiencing years of combat with the brutal cult turned paramilitary. Following this the "war criminal order" is disseminated by spies to the ranks of the Green Guard, stating that any soldiers caught with the uniform of the Green guard would be met with an automatic death sentence if they did not renounce the Green Guard and desert, upon which they would be given amnesty. This leads to mass desertions and the collapse of the Green Guard's already broken morale as countless thousands of its boys flee their taskmasters. In reality, no such order was ever given to Comintern forces. O Diabo Verde’s I Green Guard Corps reinforced by the II Corps successfully repels an attempted crossing of the Santa Lucia river in one of Brazil’s last major victories of the war after a week of intense fighting, pushing back the American 6th Marine Division and the Argentine IV and VII Shock divisions which spearheaded the crossing and mauling the other attached forces. Manaus falls to Allied forces after weeks of fighting, destroying the VI Green Guard Corps.

March 10th: Communist forces reach Florianopolis after a week of fighting and to the North Allied forces enter Belem; operation Act on Instinct is essentially unstoppable and most in Brazil are desperate for a way to exit the war without Brazil being left in ruins, the time for a coup is nigh as the country struggles to contain anti-integralist demonstrations and uprisings, with a great many proclaiming that they would welcome the Emperor back rather than go through another day of this. Massacres keep the strikes and protests down, but the end has come and many already seek ways to flee from Brazil to some place they can hide from justice. The last details of the coup plan are settled, and a means of assassinating Salgado is put into motion, reaching out to his long abused aide.

March 13th: Inserted by submarine, Dom Pedro Henrique meets up with a section of Monarchists in the military who offer him and his family a triumphant escort to Rio di Janerio. The naval bombardment of Rio di Janerio is paused to allow Pedro to enter the city safely as the battleship Caxias and the remainder of the Brazilian surface fleet makes a final, farcical suicide attack against the United Nations fleet patrolling the waters near Rio di Janerio. However, the admiral of the squadron, a politically unreliable member of the old guard, is given a radio message by the HMS Dreadnought, telling him that if he stands down and renounces Salgado, he and all of his men can live and there will be no need for this insane last ditch effort. Relieved that he had an out to save his ships and men, he accepts the offer while Brazilian society begins to rise in revolt against Salgado. Orders to have the coup plotters arrested are ignored or are only haphazardly carried out as Brazil decides to reject the man who had lead to the death of so many of its sons and constant bombardment. Salgado's final moments were recorded on a newsreel as he planned to make an address, shouting for, and receiving some tea from his favoured aide. Noting its somewhat strange but pleasant flavor, it would be only seconds before he began to double over as he realized he had been poisoned. Collapsing on the table, he angrily called his aide a traitorous bitch before she shot him twice in the chest and once in the eye, killing him as she shouted about how he had abused her for years before she herself was shot by Marshal Ricardo who said that it was long past time for this farce to end. The Brazilian government announces that it will be accepting the surrender documents as the other Integralist nations similarly surrender themselves in hopes of amnesty, losing hope for continuing the war with Brazil having left it.


March 20th: Dom Pedro Henrique attends the signing of the formal surrender documents which stipulate the recognition of the recently voted in following a quick session of the Brazilian legislature; Empire of Brazil as the legitimate government of Brazil, the formal declaration of war against the Axis powers, helping to pay for the damages caused by the war, the turning over and trying of war criminals, the repudiation of Fascism, the formal joining of the united nations, and the return of looted artifacts among other stipulations. March 20th is declared V-SA day.

March 20th-22nd: Much of the I and II Green Guard corps’ and die hards from other nearby Green Guard units launch a final suicidal offensive against Comintern forces in Uruguay, alone and unsupported, attacking forces they were supposed to be surrendering to after broadcasting the simple phrase “Death before Dishonor”. Not for any strategic reason, for the war was already lost but simply so that they could die on the battlefield rather than on the gallows. None have been recorded to have been taken alive both due to sheer fanaticism and their own record of treachery, and while they fight like madmen, the result is inevitable as air, naval, and ground assets obliterate the Guard in some of the war’s most brutal fighting, claiming upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand lives and ending with virtually the entirety of the units essentially wiped out to the last man. In an interesting enigma of the war; the Marshal of the Green Guard and Brazil's most infamous and perhaps skilled general, O Diabo himself’ is not among the dead, nor is half of the first battalion, despite intensive manhunts stretching for years, they are never seen again and disappear into the realm of Urban Legend. With his face almost never seen due to his preference to wear a fully concealing gas mask at nearly all times, his chosen Nom de Guerre being widely used and thus making whether the real Diabo was present difficult to determine, and avoidance of public appearances and most of his records destroyed in the last months of Integralist Brazil, Cristiano becomes fodder for endless theorization on his whereabouts and fates, with sightings continuing to the present day. The new government swiftly condemns the action, but no further such actions are launched outside of small cells of Integralist die hards who melt away into the Amazon. Some believe that the corps threw themselves to their deaths on orders from the Brazilian government to conceal what they knew, others by O Diabo so that whatever information they had on him would be lost, others still believe that the battle was staged so that the Communists could liquidate them all. Most however, simply put it to the Guard’s most die hard fanatics realizing they had no future left and deciding to commit suicide by cop en masse. Whatever the case, this final act of insanity puts the specter of the first Corps and its Bull’s skull banner to bed once and for all.

April 2nd: The first Latin American war veteran divisions begin transferring to the European and Pacific theaters, bringing with them not just manpower but a great deal of experience.

Aftermath: The South American War ranks as one of the world’s deadliest conflicts in and of itself. Over the course of three years, four months and twenty two days from the beginning of the invasions to the destruction of the last of the Green Guard, the entirety of the South American continent was engulfed in devastating conflict of the likes the continent had never seen before. In the course of the conflict, some 12-15 million people died, with most of them being civilians. Millions more have been displaced and horrific institutions such as Brazil's military prostitution rings and policies of "Integralization" have created thousands of children born of a troubling legacy. Many cities lie in ruins and South America's Jewish population is gutted. Some 25 million people would serve in the conflict and even more than the rise of Fascism and Communism in South America; this conflict would completely change the continent. Most of South America's future figures of prominence for the next forty or so years would serve or be affected by the conflict, and its legacy would be inescapable across the continent. Nobody on the continent would not know someone who had died. In total three million Argentinians died, one million Bolivians,a half million Chileans, half of a million Peruvians, three million Colombians, half a million Venezuelans, three and a half million Brazilians, eighty thousand Cubans, five hundred thousand Paraguayans, three hundred thousand Uruguayans, fifty thousand Ecuadorans, three hundred and fifty thousand Mexicans, one hundred and fifty thousand people across the Guyanas, one hundred and ten thousand Americans, fifteen thousand soviets, one hundred thousand Central Americans, five thousand Spaniards, forty thousand Britons, twenty thousand South Africans, ten thousand Frenchmen, fifteen thousand Canadians, ten thousand Nigerians, ten thousand Australians, five thousand New Zealanders, five thousand Dutchmen, twenty five thousand Jamaicans, ten thousand Haitans, and ten thousand Dominicans. For Colombia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Bolivia in particular the death toll is devastating, leaving their countries in shambolic ruins. The continent would need years to recover, but recover it would; with South America experiencing one of the world’s most pronounced population booms later in the 20th century as the continent rises to ever higher standards of living.

A number of memorials now stand in memory of that war, including the War Against Fascism memorial that stands in the center of the rebuilt city of Bogota; the memorial whose best known feature a simple yet powerful display; a statue of a small child crying over the broken bodies of their parents. Inscribed on the statue’s base are the words “No lo olvidemos”. Inside the memorial’s museum are bits and pieces of old Bogota, reminders of what the war had taken away from so many millions of people, of things that could never be returned to this world after having been destroyed in shocking acts of cruelty. Records, testimonies, and film strips are kept there, and while it is a museum dedicated to remembering the defeat of fascism in South America, it is not a happy place, there is no sense of triumph or glory, only somber mourning for so many futures that had been stolen. Every 20th of March, the Brazilian Imperial family convenes with representatives of other combatant countries to speak about the high price of war and the dangers of fascism and makes a point to visit the victims of Integralism memorial to pay their respects. For many, this display of shame by the Imperial government rings hollow as Brazil often struggles with its past and culpability for its actions. It is recognized as a public holiday in much of the world, including the entirety of the Comintern, and Victory Day parades are held in most of the UN combatant nations that participated in the defeat of Integralism, though certainly it is in Latin America that these celebrations are at their most lavish; being as much a struggle for existence against horrific evil as the War in the Pacific is to China and the war in Europe is to the Soviet people. For Cuba, it is perhaps their finest hour; a moment most people in the so called United States of America can take some pride in. For countries such as Venezuela, it has a complicated and often confused legacy, one strained by the current leadership’s rabid hatred of the UASR. For much of the rest of the world however, it is a forgotten theater; overshadowed by the titanic struggles against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan across Africa and Eurasia.


The Sigma symbol has become synonymous with Tyranny and evil for most of the world, just as the Swastika, Littorio, and Rising Sun symbols. Much like those symbols, displaying the Sigma symbol outside of appropriate contexts (such as in ancient greek documents, historical contexts, or out of necessity such as with Integralist villains in media) is a criminal offense throughout the Comintern and greatly frowned upon by the Brazilian center, center-right, and left; though the Brazilian far right rallies to it in the hopes of restoring the Integralist dream. As the Brazilian Empire has become a global power with global influence with a population of hundreds of millions, nuclear armaments, a formidable military with a potent blue water navy, and some discuss whether it is or may soon become a superpower; the refusal of the Brazilian far right to let go of Salgado or even acknowledge him as one of history’s villains deeply troubles many. And it is the complicated relationship Brazil has with its fascist past that does much to injure Brazil’s attempts at reconciliation with the Union of Latin Socialist Republics as the two giants of the continent continue to stare down one another at the borders of Brazil’s satellites and the Latin League’s member states while their fleets pass by each other daily in the Caribbean and the South Atlantic. Ultraright Integralist guerillas; most notoriously the NGVI (Nueva Guardia Verde Integralista/Nova Guarda Verde Integralista) would be a perennial issue across South America, both for the League and the Empire, with the reactionary guerillas having essentially unlimited space to hide in the continent’s enormous and trackless forests, mountain ranges, and wetlands. And so to many, the battle against Integralism has not yet been won. Especially when many would seek to downplay, whitewash, or deny what happened.

 

[Aelita]

Excerpts from the AH.com thread “Battle of West Med: Last Decisive Fleet Battle?”

So I’ve been reading the oft recommended Naval Warfare in the European Theater, and I’ve just finished his (lengthy) chapter on the Battle of the Western Mediterranean. The authors describe it quite unambiguously as “the last decisive fleet battle” but fail to elaborate on their reasoning for this claim.

Now, I don’t know if I agree with this assessment. Naval history isn’t my forté, but it seems to ignore that the war went on for nearly three years afterwards, and there were major fleet engagements in the Pacific Theater right up until the very end.

Personally, I don’t see what the big attraction to the Battle of the Western Med. The number one and number two most powerful navies in the world team up to destroy the fourth and fifth most powerful navies.

In spite of the lack of dramatic potential in this match up, we’re getting yet another historical drama coming out this summer about it.

Well yeah, we have the benefit of hindsight, but I can imagine it would be terrifying to be a participant at the time. Was it really as one-sided as Ritter suggests?

The questions keep piling up and I haven’t even had my morning tea yet! I swear, you write one naval TL and then everyone pings you to answer questions everytime something bigger than a rubber dinghy comes up.

To answer the OP, I can see the case for it. The WFRN has, as a matter of doctrine, preferred to shun the idea of decisive battles and instead they killed their foes mostly through a thousand cuts. It was an attitude well suited to the reality of submarine warfare, and it frustrated the Imperial Japanese Navy to no end. By the time of Operation Ten-Go, they were a shadow of their former self, and their last-ditch effort to stop the juggernaut could have never amounted to anything.

The Mediterranean Strategic Offensive was pretty much the only time they ever went out of their way to cajole the enemy into a decisive fleet engagement. As for the chance of success, it was a stupendously complicated operation that relied upon maskirovka and psychological warfare to set up.

As they said at Annapolis, battle is too small of a word. That’s why we prefer to call it a “strategic offensive”.

One thing that always stood out for me was how much of the battle was decided ship to ship, and not by planes. More than half of the French/Italian capital ships were sunk by other battleships working in concert with cruisers/destroyers.

Yet in the same naval histories I’ve read (Great Patriotic War at Sea comes to mind, though I believe it was officially published in English as Naval Warfare 1940-46), the authors very clearly state that the battleship had already been eclipsed by the aircraft carrier. I’m not sure how they reconcile this; we sank a lot of Nazi-Fascist ships by battleship guns.

Those battleship duels were made possible by Naval Aviation, so it’s fairly easy to reconcile. In each of the major engagements in the Battle of the Western Med, the enemy was softened up by the use of massed carriers, and that also included achieving air superiority to conceal the movement of ships from enemy aircraft. They also sank a lot of pickets and escorts, and did major damage to a number of battleships.

And honestly, if the weather had been fairer, airpower might have sunk the majority of enemy ships. All weather aviation really wasn’t a thing in WW2, and there were some fairly serious storms that April that limited visibility, and even hampered carrier launches. It’s telling that with clear skies and good weather, airpower managed to sink three of Italy’s best near the Strait of Bonifacio.

I’m in general agreement with Ma’at and AdmSanders. I’d add that it was a decisive campaign due to the stakes for Italy, and to a lesser extent Petain. While triumphing would not have turned the tide of the war, it made it abundantly clear to everyone except maybe Mussolini’s inner circle and the diehards in the army that Italy was going to lose the war. After annihilating their naval strength, the United Nations dropped any considerations for a separate peace with Italy. Italy was repeatedly crushed on every theater in which they fought.

A month after putting the First Squadron at the bottom of the Mediterranean, the Entente Eighth Army pushed across the Suez Canal. The Italian Sixth Army, whittled down as it had been to support the disastrous war in the East, was routed, and much of it encircled at Cairo. They’d lose Libya and its precious oil within six weeks, though much of the production was already bottlenecked due to the relentless cruiser and submarine anti-shipping campaign that followed the fleet action.

Field Marshal Harold Alexander shaking hands in Tunis with General of the Army David Bellamy is one of those feel good moments of the Second World War.

Regarding the eclipse of the battleship, it’s important to remember that it’s something that happened slowly, with the occasional backtrack. Bill Mitchell sank an old German dreadnought sitting motionless, and the Navy started increasing anti-aircraft protection and correctly insisted it wasn’t a good demonstration of a ship maneuvering at general quarters. Still, the US Navy did a lot of pioneering work on carriers, though as a matter of doctrine they were “aviation cruisers”, and this is preserved to this day in the hull classification CV, standing for Cruiser, aViation.

Kitty Hawk demonstrated during the Battle of the Straits of Florida that modern aircraft could bomb and torpedo a battleship at sea, though her target, the Idaho, was old and hadn’t been modernized. It was still enough for the WFRN to reclassify carriers as capital ships and pull them from the scouting wings, though the official designation would remain until after WW2. Pretty much all the major naval powers took notice of the event, and put more research into carriers.

Carrier planes got a lot bigger and more capable by 1940, but so did the cutting edge of battleships. Like, the first post Straits of Florida battleship design, the Monitor, had more AA throw weight than the pre-civil war battleline combined, and all the surviving ships were basically reconstructed, adding greater torpedo and deck protection. Orthodoxy might get a bloody nose, but it usually doesn’t go down after a single punch.

And some of the inter-war squabbles in the WFRN were just plain silly. Like, the Boatsheviks wanted to demote new battleships to being battlecruisers, and assign them CC hull designation, to put them at parity with their aviation cruisers. They almost succeeded with the Wat Tyler-class, which was originally ordered with the hull number CC-14 before the old Admirals revolted.

Of course, what you call it says something about what it’s intended to be used for, not what it actually is. The Toledo-class had CC hull numbers, but they were used as battleships because they had the armor and firepower of one. The older Lexingtons may have officially been battlecruisers, but their actual usage in the war was as cruiser-killers. A 200mm belt is not enough to stand up to capital ship guns, and yet she was well over 40,000 tonnes standard displacement. They might have been decommissioned were it not for the war, and they spent the war guzzling oil in their old lower pressure boilers to keep up with CV task forces.

The CC hull designation got redesignated “supercruiser” and the Biennio Rosso, the actual CC-14, was designed for role of a fast, cruiser-killer fleet escort. I know Bjorn hates them with a white-hot passion, but they did a decent job in the Pacific.

I think part of the campaign’s reputation is inflated by how news and film reel coverage was massaged during the war, and how it became almost mythic in post-war historical discussions. I’d call it by its proper term, propaganda, but that’s become such a pejorative term in the Entente, and it’s used as a term of dismissal.

But I digress; the battle was built up in popular consciousness for morale reasons. Particularly here in Britain, we needed a morale boost, some real victories to make herculean task before us seem more manageable. And in that regard, it was a very important victory. Sinking enemy ships is a powerful image, and we had plenty of photographers and film cameras to catch it. Watching Littorio, named after the symbol of the Italian Fascists, who’d chased us out of the Mediterranean two years prior, founder under the guns of HMS Lion was beautiful.

Of course, there’s been a lot of research since. The Mediterranean isn’t too deep, and most of the wrecks are in a diveable condition with the right equipment. I know Annapolis and Dartmouth recently collaborated on a full 3D computer recreation of the battle based on new data; they can pretty much tell which shot hit where, thanks to the excellent record keeping and the scans from the wrecks.

There was always a lot of guesswork about these large and expensive weapons, particular back then. And we military men are generally a cautious bunch; it’s better to miss an opportunity than to invite disaster. So the Italians and French seemed more formidable than they actually turned out to be; and the projected casualty estimates (something like 3 lost CVs, 8-9 lost BBs) turned out to be wildly pessimistic.

The reconstruction proved that the Italian and French battleships had very limited protection against 16-inch super heavy shells, and absolutely none against 18-inch shells. This wouldn’t have been a problem had the pre-war strategic thinking prevailed, and those British super heavies squared off against the American ones. I’m guessing they just thought they could tank the damage and still overwhelm the anyway. Furthermore, they revealed some serious deficiencies in the torpedo protection systems, particularly of the Italian carriers. It was going to be a slaughter; as Ritter put it, the first and second most powerful navies teaming up to beat up the fourth and fifth.

I think part of the problem with the decisive battle framework is that the consequences for defeat are not symmetric. In the Mediterranean, victory by the Axis only would have delayed the inevitable, and any losses they took in ships would be permanent. Even if the Allies suffered a disastrous defeat, they could and would replace those losses.

In this respect, it’s similar to Jutland in WWI. The Grand Fleet and High Seas Fleet had wildly different consequences for failure. If Reinhard Scheer got his whole fleet shot out from under him, the course of the war would not significantly change for Germany, because Germany was a continental power and its small colonial empire was basically unimportant and already lost. But Sir John Jellicoe was the only person who could lose the war in a single afternoon. If the German Navy delivered a crippling defeat to the Royal Navy, it was game over. The Imperial Navy would break the blockade, and the British would lose their dominion over the sea. Now, you can argue whether or not that was a plausible outcome (unlikely, IMO), but it was such an important threat that Jellicoe did not attempted to press the engagement and inflict greater losses. Meanwhile, Germany didn’t have much to lose by being more aggressive than they were.

The stakes were similar for Italy. Losing meant losing Africa, and giving the Allies the means to begin bombarding the homeland. Without Libyan oil, the Axis were in serious trouble, and the morale defeat to Mussolini’s boisterous public presence forced an escalation of disastrous and demoralizing repressive measures on the home front, including the arrest and murder of King Vittorio Emanuele III. The Kingdom under the Fascist period was pretty bad, but the new Italian Social Republic was a totalitarian nightmare state falling apart at the seams.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

Excerpts from AH.Com thread: What took the South American theater so long, and why does it matter?

So looking at my second world war history textbooks I’m kind of struck by a few things like the chart showing population sizes and GDP and how small most of the south American combatants were next to the fighters in Europe, Asia and Africa. Most of Brazil’s allies had fewer people in them than a good sized metropolis in Europe even! And yet, even with so much of the world against it, it still takes about three and a half years for Brazil to bite it?

And even then, the Allies and Comintern decide to go ahead with operation Regisurp to install the monarchy instead of just going forward with operation Act on Instinct until the Brazilians collapsed entirely? Why? Seems almost like repeating the whole “let the standing government collapse and be replaced by a more peace favouring government” that lead to the whole mess with the transition from the Kaiserreich to the Weimar Republic. It doesn’t seem like they could have resisted a harder and harder push.

Though I guess you could ask how it was they could lose before everyone came over to the continent for a scrap. They had like, what, four times the population of the next biggest country? Seems like any war of attrition ought to have favored them in the long run, especially since it took a while for everyone to get their act together. Especially when they seemed so keen on taking advantage of the Comintern and Allies deciding to stick to the laws of war whenever they could; I mean why didn’t we throw gas right back at them when they decided to start breaking out the chlorine? Seems damn foolish to me.

And even then, why is it such a big deal? Even if Salgado took over South America it seems like it’d be easy to just bottle him up at Panama forever. Doesn’t seem like it’d matter as much as what would happen if Japan, Italy, or Germany got there way. But maybe I’m just a clueless Aussie here. A lot of the texts focus on those divisions that got sent out to South America in Venezuela I think. Puts a pretty big emphasis on how the Allies’ northern front and the seizure of Venezuelan oil was the big deciding factor, and how important the contribution of Commonwealth and Americuban troops were as well as how our magnanimous treatment of the defeated South American Axis turned them into friends.

Guess that is one good thing about it. We got a friend out of the whole bargain all the way on the arse end of the planet. You know, for a guy the commies here keep on calling a raging nationalistic blow hard the guy they have in charge of Venezuela is damn decent to the folks down under. But then I’m rambling, sorry. I’m not the best informed since I’m still in secondary..

Modern South America is a lot different from South America in the 1940s. South America’s bustling tourism takes advantage of modern infrastructure that simply didn’t exist then.


In the 40s, South America was rapidly developing, but still quite far behind North America or Europe. Good roads were rare. Most bridges had been designed for foot traffic, or horse and buggy, and could not support the weight of tanks. You see a lot of pictures of the Brazilian Army driving their tanks across railroad bridges, because they were the only ones that could support the weight.


My point is, that destroying infrastructure is a common tactic in war. We have to remember that especially in South America, most of the war happened at the pace of foot infantry, which were usually supplied by horse drawn carriage, over infrastructure that had been ruined by the fighting. When you have armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands, all essentially camping, just keeping them fed is a chore, let alone giving them bullets to fight. That’s the simple answer to why it took 3 and half years to end.

Do the texts talk about Diabo? I am so tired of Diabo fanboys. As for why overthrow the government instead of occupying Brazil. To be frank there were bigger fish to fry at the moment and everyone wanted the troops tied down in South America to be redeployed to Asia and to Europe and North Africa. Hitler and the Japanese I think; maybe the Italians too; I’m not super duper sure, sent Salgado cables and telegrams telling him to keep in the fight as long as he could because they wanted Brazil to stay around as a distraction for as long as possible.

I could get a transcript of one of the documents but I’d need to ask Mental to translate it first into English; my German’s pretty rubbish.

Well the texts just note that Diabo or Christiano was a really famous Green Guard Commander who got himself a pile of medals and then disappeared completely after the first and second Guard corps decided to off themselves.

Though I mean, why even decide to just off yourselves like that instead of using your guns on yourself? Not like they could win an already lost war anyway and the third corps surrendered. Think most of the others started falling apart at the end of the war, doesn’t seem to fit with their image as basically green clad monsters in gas masks with cuiraisses talking the black speech now that I think about it. Or at least, that’s how the games portray them.

Ponces were god damn tanks in that one level of Victoria Cross. Made a pretty big deal about your Tommy getting the language guidebook so you could understand what they were saying so you knew if they were calling out “found one!” or if they were just talking about a football game. Made avoiding them easier. But I noticed the game never really showed any of the child soldiers I hear about.

Killing children is usually considered distasteful.


They didn’t leave much of a record behind to establish why they chose the blaze of glory. It is important to remember that the “Old Guard” was less of a standard military fraternity and more like a cult that had military trappings. They cultivated their esprit de corps by being the ultimate in-group, utterly impenetrable to outsiders. In a lot of ways, the Green Guard was beyond the understanding or control of the more moderate Integralist party leadership (I threw up a little writing that). Salgado had their personal loyalty, but they always acted on their own initiative.


Maybe some of them thought they’d burned their bridges anyway. Others didn’t want to live in a world where their secret society was destroyed. A lot of them were probably just plain goaded or forced into it by the more fanatical.

Brazil lost the war because they were a paper tiger, utterly dependent on others for much of their strength.


The first phase of the South American war should be understood as a proxy war between the UASR and the British Empire. Much of Brazil’s warmaking capability was on loan, or purchased from Britain. Key raw materials and finished goods necessary to keep their stumbling economy working could only be obtained abroad, such as nitrates, machine tools, or ball bearings. Both agriculture and warmaking were utterly dependent on these imports, and native Brazilian chemical industry could not supply enough.


A lot of their war aims were based on this, such as the amount of support they gave to Bolivia’s attempts to seize the Atcama desert region from Chile, and thus acquire the saltpeter and guano deposits there.

As the resident Catholic convert I think I can provide some insight on the Ist & IInd corps’ decision to launch their attack when the war was technically over. Integralist Brazil was, faults and all, a country that prided itself on ultra catholicism. Or at least an idea of the mother church. The Green Guard considered itself the epitome of that new south America, one devoted to the Catholic Church under siege by what was seen as a tide of atheism and Trinitarian heresy.

One of the most repeated doctrines of the Church is that suicide is a sin. The war was lost for them, and the first and second corps almost certainly faced liquidation at the Sao Paolo trials. The third corps was in Rio itself, and as such was in a position to be arrested by the army after a brief “battle” though not before they could destroy many of their records. The first and second corps were however, in Uruguay having come off their recent victory at Santa Lucia when news of Brazil’s surrender came to them.

I would wager that they decided that they had no future, sent their most famous commander and their most die hard battalion off into hiding in some god forsaken corner of jungle to keep the dream alive, and then decided that they would exit this world. They could not kill themselves, their religion forbade it. So they decided to instead commit suicide by cop so that they could die an “honorable” death on their own terms.

It’s easy to see why the Church considers the Guard and its imitators’ deviation of the universal message to be a heresy.

Okay I found that message I was promising.

“Dear friend Salgado,

Though it may seem that the tides of providence have turned against you I must advise you to remain strong and remain in this fight against this internationalist conspiracy against our cause. You must keep the faith alive and dare to hope that you can stand against this evil and this darkness that threatens to swallow our nations. Through the power of that faith I have every confidence that you can reverse this situation or at least hold out long enough for the tides of fortune to change in the Pacific and here in Europe and Africa long enough for us to lend you your support.

Your continued struggle against the minions of Judaism; whether of the Bolshevik degenerates who pull the strings of the mongrels of soft hearted America and bestial Russia or of the pampered London financiers; is vital for our crusade for civilization. Every pawn of our enemies who is dispatched to die in vain against the spirit of noble civilization in South America is an enemy that will not raise his (or abhorrently, her) arm against us in the old world. I will endeavor to send you what aid I am able but I must implore you to destroy all defeatist talk of surrender among your people and to steel their resolve against this Communist virus and the dupes of London.


From, Adolf Hitler”

There’s more messages like this sent between the Axis whenever they were able to but man the delusion from the Axis is unreal. Just constant hoping for divine intervention or some kind of miracle rally that will suddenly make the dream stop being deader than the dodo.

On that note Cheka, what can you tell us about those Soviet Divisions that got sent over to South America? I myself don’t read Russian so I can’t read up on any Russian sources on the matter (every time I’ve tried to learn I get stuck on learning how the Cyrillic alphabet works) and your library seems more comprehensive than the Soviet MSPA youth brigade. I’m particularly looking for reports from the first Soviet expeditionary brigade at the battle of the town of New Hope. Wanted to see if their report on the theater’s largest armoured clash had anything interesting to say not in Spanish, Portuguese, or English sources.

The Soviet troops contributed to the conflict were drawn from rifle divisions attached to the Far Eastern Front, and from Soviet citizens living abroad in Latin America and the UASR. They deployed prior to the beginning of the Pacific War as a sort of brainchild of Marshal Frunze, to give Far East divisions a place to rotate to in order to gain experience, and utilize excess sea lift capacity to demonstrate the reach of Soviet power.


In other words, it was aimed at publicity and shoring up opinions of the Soviet state. It was controversial, but since we couldn’t supply any more divisions at the front line, it seemed worth the cost. Overseas, they were directly supplied by the UASR, and were largely stuck in theater until V-SA Day. They would go on to provide a Soviet presence in the North African and Italian theaters as a sort of token expeditionary force.

While we’re on this topic, I saw that there was a recently released television mini-series called “a red carnival” purported to be about David Brinkerhoff’s spy ring, particularly the process of cracking the “Uzumrik” conlang the Green Guard used. Can anyone who’s seen it first tell me how accurate it is and whether the emphasis it places on the importance of the spy ring’s efforts is fair or not?

As for the war’s importance. Some might say that from a strategic perspective that South America was the least important part of the war. The main things under threat were the Panama Canal and the Magellan strait, which could be protected even if the entire continent were to fall to Integralism.

As me and Pedro have noted in our collaborations together, this is something of an incomplete view. True none of the countries of South America were industrial giants, but they were relied upon as a source of raw materials for the war effort. Raw materials that the war sucked up in large quantities and prevented from reaching the rest of the war effort.

Similarly, the mass of freed up Latin American troops and expeditionary forces committed to the continent also offered not just a surge of fresh manpower but also a great many experienced troops hardened in combat against fascism. Many a German, Italian, or Japanese commander had made note of the commitment of Latin theater units to their theaters as something of a shock as you had a flow of hardened anti-fascist soldiers into these theaters, significantly expanding on the number of experienced soldiers that the Axis elsewhere had to face.

Also the South American theater provided something of a laboratory for naval, intelligence, and air cooperation between the Allies and the Comintern. It was the first theater of the war besides the atlantic front of the European theater where the Allies and Comintern fought together as partners rather than as co-belligerents. Addittionally, as long as the Latin Axis remained in the war, the Axis had a perilously close submarine base to the North American mainland. Even when hampered by Americuba shutting out its ports to their submarines, Venezuela and Brazil were right there to allow for Axis skippers to hide away in, resupply and launch new raids much more quickly than they could if they had to go all the way from europe.

And while there is a lot of emphasis on what Brazil did as part of the Axis, when the Empire switched sides it put as much effort as it could into providing Prachina divisions for the Allied war effort even though Brazil was going to need a lot of rebuilding afterwards. While there are many people who argue whether Brazil should have been pushed into Communist revolution rather than simply removing Salgado and placing the Emperor back in power, Henrique moved heaven and earth to try and mend the bridges he could as fast as he could. I might be biased as a captain of the Imperial palace guard, but the Emperor and the first prime minister’s cabinet did everything in their power to demonstrate their commitment to the cause of the downfall of their former allies. I think an attempt at a Communist revolution or putting in a right wing or centrist republican would have only prolonged the conflict by playing into the red scares in Brazil and thus provide even more ammunition to our rash of integralistas that plague us even today; while the right and even centrist republicans had all sold their souls to varying degrees to the Integralist movement.

I can’t help but agree with the conclusions that the U.N made when they sketched up the details for Operation Regisurp that bringing in an Anti-fascist monarch with progressive sympathies to provide an uncontroversial figure for the anti-fascists in Brazil to rally around was probably the best move possible. The Brazilian communist movement was not particularly strong; even with the upsurge in popularity from the American revolution. After a near decade of extreme repression the Brazilian Communist party was almost extinct to boot. And while the people had grown tired of Salgado, I think they still bought into the propaganda that Communism would mean becoming a colony of America and Russia, and the crucial support from the army was not really there for a red Brazil. With Emperor Henrique there was the image of Brazil making its own choice and many of the Generals and Marshals became convinced that an Emperor could save the country as the war went on and Salgado’s deepening madness became apparent.

It is quite difficult to overemphasize how important the army was in the coup. There were rumblings of discontent as early as the order to level Bogata and the order to burn the British, and Americuban embassy staff alive for daring to tell Salgado that their countries had declared war on them made others even more worried. The increasingly obscene atrocities many were undertaking to keep the war effort going, the increasingly bad relationship between the army and the Green Guard as well as the Integralized air force and navy, and Salgado’s decreasing grip on sanity all deeply worried much of the simply conservative or liberal army. After Salgado strangled Marshal Orlando to death in front of the General Staff with a headlock the brass was to put it in Marshal Ricardo’s terms “pissing their pants in terror”. By the time of the March restoration the Army had had just about enough and leapt at the chance to duck out of the war with some honor intact when Henrique made his proclamation of Salgado’s illegitimacy. I don’t think they would have shown anywhere near the same enthusiasm for an attempted Communist coup.

Hey while we’re on that, what was so special about learning Uzumrik anyway. Didn’t we basically crack their encryptions early on in the war? Shouldn’t that have let us know everything?

Also some of my Latin friends say that MacArthur’s Americuba’s role is way trumped up in the war and he shouldn’t have been allowed to sit at the big four with Baldi, Zapata, and Labarca. Some of ‘em even call the Kingston conference the “Kingston betrayal” of the workers in what’s now Blue South America. Course my Americuban mates got into a big fuss about it calling the Latinos revisionists who didn’t want to admit Americuba had a big role before the usual political bickering over the IRC chat. What’s the deal here?

It’s similar to the WFRA using Navajo and other native language speakers as a secure battlefield communication system. At the time, the languages were not well described in linguistic literature, and the literature that existed was classified due to the war.


Being unrelated to German or Romance languages, Native American languages would take a lot of dedicated work by linguists to decipher, and this was further complicated by the euphemistic nature of the language code, and the restricted sample set (intercepted radio communications).


It’s the same problem with a conlang, and one that the speakers went to great lengths to keep secret from outsiders.


The Kingston betrayal is still a sore spot here in the UASR. While they didn’t veto the subject of cooperation with the exile government in the campaign, they did place heavy pressure on Colombia to reject it. But they chose the enemy-of-my-enemy approach, and DeLeon-Debs had enough problems to deal with. In hindsight, providing a modicum of legitimacy to their regime was a clear mistake; they should’ve made London cut Cuba lose. But no sense crying over spilled milk.

If I remember the usual arguments correctly; the Comintern tends to point to the number of troops deployed overall to portray the role of the Allies as less important, while the Alliance lions tend to play up the effects their campaigns had on Brazilian oil as well as the pressure that opening up a northern front put against the regime in its dying months. “Americuba” if I do have to borrow this term for a bit, did overcompensate for its small size with quite heavy contributions to the war, especially if you mean “in proportion to population”, but I’d err on them tooting their own horn just a little. MacArthur wanted “American” troops in every theater he could get them in though; seemed like he wanted to make himself seem as important as possible. Getting to sit as one of the big four at Kingston inflated his ego something fierce at least.


As for the aftermath well, there was the long standing joke about Venezuela being “extra states” for the “USA”. Though to be fair to those old jokes, when the “extra states” jokes were at their zenith, the “USA” had rather fishy amounts of control in Venezuela, particularly with their heavy stakes in Venezuelan Oil and Luxury crops like Sugar and Chocolate bought up after the war. Then there was the Venezuelan-Cuban unification crisis in the 60s which caused quite a mess and now the joke wasn't funny anymore. Now though, the bitterness some of the “Americans” show at their government being so heavily tied to the Latin American allies will always bring a smile to my face.

As for Red Carnival; I think the series went a bit too much into the importance of infiltrating the Brazilian government and its paramilitaries. It is good fun though, but it does suffer the sin of portraying its heroes as having the weight of the world on their shoulders when this is giving them perhaps a bit too much credit.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

Excerpt from China in the Second world war by General (class AAAAA) Leang

The great betrayal and the escalation of the war

Following the rape of Nanjing, the Kuomintang was left bewildered. The American and Soviet supported leftist faction under the leadership of Wang Jingwei was quick to issue criticisms of Jiang Jieshi's leadership, with many going as far as to launch personally directed insults at him as they questioned his competence and his leadership. Adding only further stress to Jiang Jieshi's rightist faction was that the American and Soviet delegations he so desperately looked to for foreign supplies and aid both informed him that it was unlikely that the Comintern would go to war directly with Japan. The reasons for this were plainly stated, at the time Japan had close ties to the imperial powers of western Europe as well as the burgeoning fascist Axis in South America and Central Europe; war with Japan might be used as a pretext that would plunge the world into a general world war, one of an even greater scale than the last one. And the simple reality was that it was felt that the Comintern was not yet ready for the final conflict.

Preparations were made for what was seen as an inevitable second world war, a conflict many planners outright referred to as "Armageddon" due to the expected scale. The UASR and USSR and their allies would be facing the combined might of Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan and assorted allies such as the low countries, Portugal, Brazil and more. No continent would be spared and many casualty estimates peaked over one hundred million. Thus, war would be avoided until the Comintern was ready. America needed to do more than simply recover from the depression, it needed to build a fleet capable of combating the combined navies of all of its enemies at once across the entirety of the world's oceans, it needed an air force that could combat the planes of five other great powers simultaneously, and an army that could support revolutionary movements on every continent in the world. It also had to strengthen its allies; while the Comintern was very large; much of it was underindustrialized. Even the Soviet Union had perhaps a quarter of the per capita industrial output of the UASR, to say nothing of smaller allies such as Mexico.

Heavy industrialization programs were being undertaken to modernize the economic output of the Comintern and were not expected to be completed until well into the 1940s. Furthermore, a world war also demanded a network of bases and logistical chains that would girdle the entire globe. Having anticipated war with the Indo-Pacific fleets of France, Britain, Japan and the Netherlands from the very birth of the third American republic in an effort by the European Empires to distract from the primary expected front in the Atlantic, Comintern planners were in the midst of heavy militarily useful construction programs taking place in the Soviet far east, Alaska, Hawai'i and the string of pacific Islands the UASR hadn't yet lost to Japanese, British, French, or Dutch opportunism during the second revolutionary war. In a review of the progress of these programs done by a joint commission of American, Soviet, and Chilean military and civilian officials in 1936 it was deemed that it was unlikely that the pacific front would be acceptably ready for a general pacific war against the European Empires and Japan until at least 1943.

Development and military construction programs being done in Kamchatka and Transamur were proceeding according to pace, and the nucleus of a battle worthy Soviet pacific fleet were starting to take shape as plans to turn the undeveloped Soviet far east into a place at least comparable to the American pacific northwest in terms of development were underway, with pair of new cities; Alexovka and Tikhygrad having recently been founded with the intent of becoming new naval base towns. However the USSR feared attacks into the far east by Japan and the American navy felt its efforts would be better spent wresting control of the Atlantic away from its enemies as opposed to fighting a lone great power half the world away and the auxiliary fleets of three of its expected enemies. The intention of the build up in the pacific was not quite to create a military presence that could take over Japan as the paranoid cliques running Japan's fascist state believed, but rather to create something able to hold Japan off until the business with the great powers of Europe was dealt with. This is evidenced by the Atlantic and Arctic fleets of the American navy getting much more attention in the build up, while the bulk of Soviet naval expansion was being reserved for the Arctic, Baltic, and Black sea fleets with the Pacific Fleet only slated to have four capital ships (two carriers and two battleships), eight cruisers (four heavy, four light), sixteen destroyers, and thirty two frigates when expansion was complete.

All this lead to a decision to avoid official war with Japan over China but to extend credit, volunteers, advisers, and to allow for the discounted sale of weapons, industrial equipment, and vehicles to China. While the CPC and the Left Kuomintang were understanding of the decision if somewhat displeased by it Jiang Jieshi was not. The final straw however, proved to be the Comintern's silence on the question of allowing for referendums on the secession of Xinjiang, Manchuria, and a merger of Inner Mongolia to the Soviet friendly People's Republic of Mongolia and their lack of a decisive answer on the question of Tibet. These questions were still a subject of a great deal of debate within the Comintern itself as those who hoped to support their national liberation came to loggerheads with those who wanted to preserve the territorial integrity of China and thus the Comintern decided it would be best to avoid giving a definitive reply until they came to a decision themselves.

This lead to Jiang Jieshi losing faith in the Comintern, only further aggravated by the Comintern's delegates seeming to prefer to speak to Wang Jingwei and the CPC than himself or his own faction. Feeling snubbed by the reds, he turned to other means of help. His contacts with the courts of Europe found that he could count on little support against Japan which Europe hoped to retain as an ally by letting it sate its desire for a colonial empire with Chinese, Soviet, and American blood. Further frustrated by yet further reports of setbacks and defeats on the front; he did the unthinkable. By June of 1938 it was clear that Japan was marching from victory to victory, one of his advisers told him as much, but a message sent directly to him gave him reason to pause. The Japanese were looking for a "partner who can be trusted to restore order to China as a brother in our Co-prosperity sphere."

The Japanese offered many temptations, renewed relations with Western and Central Europe, aid with industrial development, training by Japanese officers, access to weapons from Europe and Japan, and help with rooting out all his enemies in the party and the communists. Furthermore, many of the warlords of China had also been extended offers to in essence, join the winning team and play their part in a new; re-organized China. Despite the nationalistic hatred many in China felt towards Japan due to the Empire's bitterly antagonistic history with China, many could be swayed by its anti-communism and others were swayed by Japan's offer to help China rise into an industrial power swiftly just as Japan once did following the Meiji restoration. Of course, in reality Japan was merely fishing for puppets who would provide an air of legitimacy for what would be Japan's vast new colony of China that would be the bedrock of Japan's ascension to the world's mightiest nation and the base with which it could build a war machine to forever keep its enemies cowering before the Empire of the Rising Sun. But the offer was tempting. Japan's spies within the KMT had informed them well of the divisions in the party, and they knew just which offers to make to sway their loyalty.

Following the link up of the Japanese southern and Northern fronts that in essence ceded the control of most of China's coast to Japan in fall of 1938 Jiang Jieshi made his decision. Driving to Japanese lines in a motorcade he asked to speak with the commanders of the Kwantung Army and began negotiations for the formation of this new government. Japan of course, negotiated from a position of strength, but Jiang Jieshi promised to mobilize the right wing of the KMT and those warlords loyal to him for the war effort, and also promised to make amends with the Chinese merchants alienated by prior reprisals against them by the Kuomintang and thus secure their support as well. With the approval of General Kenchiki Ueda and the blessing of the Japanese government, the newborn "re-organized Republic of China" was announced to the world on the twentieth of October, 1938.

Jiang Jieshi made an announcement to the Chinese people, asking them to rise up against the Anti-Chinese government that had been duped by the Red Imperialists of Moscow and Debs D.C and stand with him against the foreign tide. He made calls for pan-asian brotherhood against the ideals of westerners who sought to reduce China into a red puppet, castigating the Communist party and the left of the KMT as the slaves of foreign devils. He cited the Comintern's lack of a committed answer to the question of Chinese territorial integrity; claiming that they hoped to dismember China into weak client states. He also cited the Comintern's support for "immorality of the highest degree" by making a laundry list of allegations against Communist social values meant to rile up traditionalists in China against the left in China. He promised prosperity for those who worked hard, order and security for those who pledged their allegiance to China, a new dawn for a China that would soon industrialize into a great power as Japan had, and an end to the days when outsiders could bully China. He took every effort to paint his new allegiance as a simple alliance, making sure to stress that this would be an equal partnership rather than a dependency as the Communists would create.

This thirty minute long address was a prolonged diatribe of a paranoid man, but it and other speaking efforts by his allies in the KMT and in the Chinese bourgeoisie whom he mollified with promises of prosperity and the development of China into a wealthy nation and plentiful aid to develop themselves while offering a "solution to the question of labor that is sure to please everyone" made his intention clear. China would no longer be facing only a foreign invasion by the Japanese military but also a civil war as the tenuous peace formed by the Japanese invasion fell apart in dramatic fashion. The Warlords and cliques across China quickly pledged their allegiance and forces to one side or the other as Wang Jingwei made his own counter address condemning the "debased treason and shameless lying" of Jieshi, urging China to stand for equality, liberty, and solidarity against the "naked counter-revolution". His address made certain to remind listeners of Japan's atrocities, made promises of the establishment of democracy, of a shared common prosperity rather than a "a furious squabbling for power and wealth', land reform, and more. Prominent Chinese Communists such as Cheng Duxiu and Zhang Whetian also made their appeals, with some even making the call to Chinese Women to take up arms to defend their homelands from attack. All made sure to stress that the Comintern had only ever sought to help China with their "Generous aid in all material things" and that "even now they send their volunteers to fight alongside us as comrades."

The battle lines were drawn, with Japan and traitor forces basing themselves along the coast and along major waterways that they were able to take control of while loyalist forces sought to take control of the countryside and the hinterlands. Farmlands and cities that could be secured by the loyalists were identified by flying red banners and loyalist forces began the process of land reform immediately to try and win over the peasant masses of china. The border with Mongolia and the Soviet union would be the primary lifeline to the loyalist forces in China; far from the prying eyes of Japan would come volunteers, officers, equipment, money, and supplies. Many of these would include much needed heavy weaponry, vehicles, and aircraft. With Japan's air supremacy and the traitors' newfound access to the option to purchase aircraft from Japan and Europe, the loyalists had to constantly fear the skies and so gladly took any means of air defense they could. Many Chinese pilots would be trained in the Soviet Union by American and Soviet leaders who educated them in modern air combat tactics, and many of these were themselves trained to educate others to build a nucleus of a new air force.

Volunteer airmen from the Comintern were some of the first volunteers to help against Japanese aggression and traitor pilots, flying desperate missions against waves of Japanese bombers and attack planes that sought to both support Japanese troops on the ground and terrorize civilians into submission. As Japan identified the location of factories built or moved into loyalist territories; air raids against these territories commenced and had to be fought; with the first air victories by Volunteer fliers being by the American all female "Raptor" unit as Lea Sharett shot down a Ki-1 over a factory in Hunan.

Tanks were also of huge importance. On the vast fields of China, armoured support was invaluable and Japan had a crushing advantage in this field. Even seemingly obsolete vehicles such as the T-26 and the American T-1 were considered precious assets every time the loyalist government could acquire them; following the maxim of "an old tank is better than no tank". Though a far cry from the swirling melees of hundreds of armoured vehicles that would define the war with germany, these early tank engagements came as a surprise to Japan whose armoured corps had grown used to essential invulnerability on the battlefield with even their least capable vehicles. With most of their training being focused on infantry support due to the Kwantung army having little expectation of having to engaged in armoured warfare, these first elements of the National Revolutionary Army's armoured corps cut their teeth on the plains of inner china and accounted well for themselves. Many, such as the female tank ace Liu Han; even became celebrities of sorts.

However, this in turn spurred the traitor Chinese and Japan to take armoured warfare more seriously; developing more capable anti-tank weapons and tactics as well as either acquiring or developing more and better vehicles. Learning through the harsh teacher of experience further taught them to refine their anti-aircraft methods as the Chinese air force grew from virtually nonexistent to an oft cursed nuisance. Troops who once struggled to stay fed, let alone supplied on the field were now sporting more and more modern weaponry and ample rations. Furthermore, the partisan issue was a continually growing plague in China. Japanese and traitor patrols found themselves growing increasingly paranoid as more guns and explosives found their way into the hands of resistance movements against Japanese occupation. Guerilla warfare cells operated deep within enemy territory to attack supply caches, take out officers, cut communications, and inform other anti-Japanese forces of the movements and dispositions of enemy troops. Such was met with the infamous "three alls" policy; "kill all, loot all, burn all". Terror would be the primary reactionary weapon to try and keep partisans under control, if a village refused to give up the locations of partisans they could expect a bacchanalia of savage cruelty to fall upon them. Settlements were burned, women and girls found themselves forced into the comfort women battalions, men were either killed on the spot or forced into slave labor, and the production of food was swiftly placed under the authority of the Japanese Army and the traitor KMT. As a country perennially in need of Iron and other metallic resources, many of these slave laborers would be forced into mines to extract precious ores to acquire the steel Japan desperately needed for its fleet and its tanks and artillery.

Sporadic fighting carried on throughout the winter and intensified in the spring as Japan and the traitors convened for a strategy meant to deliver them a victory or at the very least expand their holdings dramatically. The generals convened agreed that the primary goal would have to be to close off the borders the Chinese Loyalists shared with Mongolia and the Soviet Union so as to cut off the flow of aid. Then it was also agreed that crucial to Japan's plans of victory would be the control of as much food production in China as possible. Guns may decide battles, but rice and salt decides wars. The theory was that once they were cut off from foreign aid and it became possible to starve out the resistance, victory would inevitably follow. The operation, codenamed Onikaze; or Demon wind, was planned to begin in the summer of 1939 as both sides prepared for renewed struggle.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

This was intended to be shorter than it is now but I kind of didn't stop writing.

Panzerkampfenwagen IV "Nashorn" (Or a brief history of the war in Europe with a focus on the Nashorn's service)


Type: Heavy Tank

Place of Origin: Germany

Used by: Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, French State, Kingdom of Italy, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Romania, Kingdom of Hungary, Croatia, Switzerland, Reichswehr, Arabian Sultunate,Kingdom of Thailand, Empire of Vietnam, Republic of Rhodesia

In service: 1939-1954

Wars: Second World War


Designer: Henschel & Son, Ford-Werke GmbH

Designed: 1937-1938

Produced: 1939-1943

Number built: 4,100

Variants: Pz.Kpfw. IV H Ausf. H1 (Nashorn H1), Panzerkampfwagen Nashorn Ausf. E


Specifications

Mass: 54/57 Tons

Length: 6.316 meters

Width: 3.56 meters

Height: 3.0 meters

Crew: 5

Armor: Hull front 120 mm Flat (Glacis strip), 100mm Flat (On the rest of the glacis) , hull side 80 mm, rear 80 mm, top 25 mm, bottom 25 mm. 140mm glacis strip, 120mm frontal, hull side 80, rear 80mm for Ausf E.

Turret front 100mm flat, 100mm mantlet, turret side 80mm, 25mm turret roof. 120mm flat, 120mm mantlet for Ausf E.

Primary Armament: 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56 gun

Secondary Armament: 1 x MG34 7.92 mm x 57 mm machine gun (Pintle), 1 x MG34 7.92 mm x 57 mm machine gun (Coaxial)

Engine: Ford-Maybach HL 215 TRM P45 (484.705 kW) or Ford-Maybach HL 220 TRM P45 (521.99 kW)

Power to mass: 8.976/9.157

Suspension: Torsion Bar

Operational Range: 195 km on roads, 110 km off road.

Speed: 45 km/h top speed, 40 km/h top sustained speed, 25 km/h cross country.

The Nashorn was the predominant heavy tank of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS in the early stages of the second world war, first seeing usage against Poland and Yugoslavia in the Prufung Krieg conflicts that lead to the second world war. The Tank is in many ways comparable to the KV-1 of the Soviet Union, the T-5 of the American Union, the Custodian of Britain, the Char B3 of France, the P38 of Italy, the Swedish Strv h/39, and the Japanese Type 5 Chi-Ho that were its contemporaries. Like most of these late inter-war heavy tanks, its gun only enjoyed modest superiority at best over its medium counterparts in terms of armour penetration but did have the advantage of substantially superior HE delivery capacity and like nearly all of the last generation of heavy tanks to be designed before the second world war's start; had roughly one hundred milimeters of effective frontal armor. Born out of essentially every country copying each other's designs, the last set of pre-war heavy tanks were not really differentiated by their firepower, armor, or speed but rather by their design philosophies, ergonomics, and other largely internal factors. The Nashorn was, by the standards of most other heavy tanks; very flat with almost no usage of armor sloping in order to allow for as much space for the crew as possible. The nashorn was also one of the tallest of the pre-war heavy tanks, only exceeded by its Japanese counterpart which was made deliberately tall to get as much gun depression as possible in Japan and Korea's hilly terrain. This lead to the nickname of "shoebox" due to its very rectangular shape and the vehicle perhaps epitomized every aspect of Pre-Eintwicklung series German tank design philosophies. Flat with a spacious interior and a quick to reload gun.

The development of the Panzerkorps started in secret during the days of the Weimar Republic when the Reichswehr secretly cooperated with the USSR on experimental test runs and tank design to get a feel for the usage and construction of tanks. Openly banned from tank development itself, Germany was lagging years behind the institutional experience built up in the entente while the Soviet Union; desperate for any sort of external trade that could help its modernization programs; was all too happy to provide for a fellow pariah state. With the ascension of Nazism to absolute control over Germany and the second American revolutionary war, the old restrictions from Versailles became worth less than the paper they were printed on. Not only was Hitler eager to flaunt them, western Europe, particularly Britain was all too happy to cease enforcing them. Out of a fear of Communism breaking its containment to the USSR and Mongolia to encompassing more than half of the New World the former entente nullified the majority of the restrictions on German weapons development. Indeed they were often outright eager to help Germany remilitarize to form a bulwark against the American supported Soviet Union and some extra industrial power to help out elsewhere in the world.

The Nazis, the Prussian military establishment, and the Junkers of Industry were all too happy to receive this blank cheque on remilitarization and began work on building a war machine to surpass even the Kaiserreich's almost immediately. Key to this was the need to develop tanks. Experience in the second American revolutionary war showed that the former British mode of thought; with Infantry and Cruiser tanks, was ill suited to the reality of mechanized warfare and so German tank development instead focused on the "Fullerist" school of thought. An armoured car, a dedicated carrier vehicle of some sort, a light tank, a medium tank, and a heavy tank whose chassis would be modified to fit whatever need was at hand. The Nashorn would be preceded by a number of prototype vehicles such as the D.W2 and a VK prototype before an acceptable design was selected from a number of entries in a contest meant to determine Germany's main line heavy tank. Porsche, Henschel, and Mercedez all submitted designs; the Porsche design placed the turret towards the front of the vehicle and had an impressive maximum thickness of more than two hundred milimeters of frontal armor across a strip across the glacis but was found to be far too front heavy a design to have acceptable cross country performance. The Mercedez design however, placed the turret at the rear and had 140 milimeters of front armor and 120 milimeters of side armor, with the intention being that the Tank would be able to use its turret placement and thick side armor to make good use of cover and only present a small portion of the tank at an extreme angle. This was rejected for the rear placement of the turret giving it poor gun depression which forced the vehicle to expose an unacceptable amount of its profile when cresting ridgelines in tests.

The Henschel design, being the most conservative of the three, thus became the chosen vehicle. Built to Ford's exacting standards for ease of replacement of parts and uniformity in manufacture, the vehicle was revealed in a military parade on Adolf Hitler's birthday in 1939 to a crowd of German citizens, military brass, and foreign observers. The vehicle would be produced in substantial numbers from a large array of factories to rival the Soviet KV-1 tank and the American T-5 in particular and was always intended to be the plated fist that would smash into the face of Communism in Europe while the Panzer III would be the spear tip. However it would not be against the Soviet Union that the Nashorn would see its first usage. Before he could start his war to destroy Slavic Socialism, Hitler and his cadres needed to complete some other steps first. First of course was the matter of getting a border with the Soviet Union so that the attack against it could begin immediately once the time came without having to first roll through a country. And of course, the Polish were but slavs; subhumans to be disposed of, displaced and enslaved in Hitler's scheme for German world domination. The Poles had been co-conspirators against the Czechoslovakians, but now they had outlived their usefulness.

As German high command already had word from France and Britain that the Allies would do nothing to help Poland the invasion was able to proceed with little more than limp wristed outrage from the rest of the world. Surrounded by German forces pouring out of East Prussia, Silesia, and occupied Czechoslovakia aided by fascist Hungary and Romania, the Polish armed forces were doomed. Outmatched, outnumbered, and outgunned by a German military gleefully helped in its reconstruction by the Imperialist countries of western Europe, the Polish gave a valiant struggle but one that could not last more than a few weeks. The Nashorn proved to be essentially invincible against the poor anti-tank armament of the Polish military, with nothing short of cumbersome heavy artillery guns being able to make any real impact against the Nashorn as it contemptuously brushed aside Poland's tankettes, multi-turreted heavy vehicles, field guns, and shattered its concrete fortifications. At the battle of Krakow, Nashorns seemed to almost ignore much of the opposition they faced, driving forward without stopping as they forced Polish lines wide open. Out of a company of nine of the heavy tanks, only one was disabled by an artillery strike at its tracks, while the other eight drove all the way from the Slovakian border to the outskirts of Krakow without any further loss. After the bombardment and fall of Warsaw, a parade formation of Nashorn tanks was lined up for a cinema operation where the disarmed and dejected Polish defenders were made to present their flags to German military officials while the country was being annexed around them.

With the fall of Poland there was one remaining obstacle to Germany and Italy's plans for eastern Europe; Yugoslavia. Having already invaded and annexed Albania earlier in the decade and freshly coming off from its conquest of Greece, Italy and Germany planned to have the invasion of Yugoslavia be a sort of "proving ground" for the Axis. Bulgaria sought Macedonia, Italy sought to dominate the adriatic via taking Montenegro and parts of Croatia s well as Serbia, Germany sought Slovenia, Hungary put in its claims for Vojvodina, and it was decided that a croatian puppet state would be put in place under the command of the fascist Ustase. Once again the Nashorn was driven into a foreign country following acts of "sabotage" at the border with Albania used as a pretext for war. Surrounded on all sides and standing against two of Europe's great powers and two of its neighbors, Yugoslavian resistance collapsed quickly. It was impossible to form a defensive frontline when they were being attacked from all angles and were under constant bombardment from air and sea, and once again the Nashorn found no worthy matches in Yugoslavia as the country quickly fell to the fascist jackboot and was partitioned out to its conquerors dreams of empire.

With Yugoslavia now out of the way, the Nashorn would have some months to cool its treads as teething issues were worked out, more crews were trained, and more tanks were built to either pad out the vehicle count of existing units or form new ones. When the order was given to launch operation Teutonic, the Nashorns were once again used as breakthrough vehicles. Charging forward in concentrated heavy tank formations, these heavy tanks found little threat from the T-26 and BT-7 tanks that still made up the bulk of the Soviet motor pool. However, the USSR had substantially better anti-tank guns than Poland and Yugoslavia, and a number of Nashorns were lost to fire from 57mm Zis-6 guns and 85mm anti-aircraft guns hurriedly pushed into service against incoming tanks. 76.2mm guns also proved to be a threat against Nashorns that exposed their flanks, and the heavy Nashorns often found it difficult to traverse the often tiny bridges in the less developed parts of the Soviet Union. The T-34 and KV-1 would prove to be the first matches of the Nashorn, with the T-34's 57mm gun able to penetrate the front of the Nashorn at a decent distance if it was unangled and able to deflect the Nashorn's shells if it angled properly from a good distance. The KV-1, fitted with an 85mm gun, was essentially the equal of the Nashorn in nearly every capacity with the advantage in turret armor and ability to handle cross country terrain, but poor coordination of Soviet armoured assets allowed the challenge offered by these tanks to be overcome as Germany pushed forwards.

However the tank's short comings started to become apparent across the enormous distances of the Soviet Union. its limited endurance and the tendency for parts to break down across prolonged travel meant that the vehicle frequently had to come to a stop and as the year dragged on the vehicle increasingly found itself stuck in the dreary autumn mud of the fields of eastern Europe. As German brutality became ever more well known among the Soviet populace, resistance only stiffened as those who might have even helped the Germans were turned aside as racial trash unworthy of breathing the same air as their German masters and those who might have normally surrendered instead chose to fight to the death against an enemy that had only slavery and death in mind for those it took as prisoners. This lead to near continuous partisan attacks that showed that even a heavy tank is by no means immune to a well placed bomb to throw off its tracks or a Sanjurjo cocktail thrown upon its engine deck or its crew being sniped by die hard freedom fighters. Facing a massive number of tanks also meant that the Soviets very quickly became masters at the art of anti-tank warfare as sheer darwinian selection demonstrated what did and did not work to them; and as Teutonic progressed at an ever slower rate more and more tank commanders became paranoid towards even the smallest of disturbances that could be the sign of an anti-tank gun or one of the soviet SU assault guns waiting for a flanking shot.

What had once been swift and easy marches through cities became grinding nightmares of block by block combat where Soviet fighters could fire onto the more vulnerable roofs of tanks from just about any direction, while a number of traps meant to exploit the weak bottom armor only further served to add to the worries of its drivers. Some more inventive tactics even involved attempting to clog the exhaust of the tank with potatoes wrapped in damp clothes if grenades weren't available to shove down, which if left unchecked could foul up the engine and require the unit to have to wait for a mechanic team to do a check up and hope that they don't need to requisition spare parts. Worse news was to come however, as the American air force began to make its appearance over the skies of Eastern Europe. While the number of vehicles destroyed by Aircraft is often exaggerated, air attack is highly effective at disrupting the momentum of armoured movements, breaking up formations as evasion is attempted, hampering the morale of those under attack, and is highly dangerous to the more vulnerable supply vehicles and horse drawn carriages and the railway bound trains upon which tanks depend on to function.

The addittion of more Waffentrager and Flakpanzers as well as "Flak-tracks" as half tracks armed for anti-air duty came to be nicknamed to Axis armoured, mechanized, and motorized units to try and ward off American aircraft that slipped by the fighter and interceptor screens only exposed the reservist units that these self propelled anti-air units were moved away from to support the front liners and the supply convoys. The worry of American or Soviet air attack even lead to the widespread adoption of the 13.2mm Hotchkiss heavy machine gun as the pintle mounted gun of choice for German tanks with some even opting for the 15mm anti-materiel machine gun for that extra bit of air defense. Others started to refuse to peel away from self propelled anti-aircraft assets even at the height of Axis Air Supremacy while others still took to all manners of inventive camouflage to try and avoid being spotted from the sky; including one misguided attempt by a Hungarian Nashorn unit to disguise their vehicles as Soviet captured tanks which lead to being bombed by Italian attack aircraft on patrol.

The first American vehicles to enter the war also provided something of a bloody nose to the Nashorn brigades' conviction in its invincibility. Whereas the Soviet T-34 and KV-1 were; while extremely good vehicles by any fair metric; scattered about in an attempt to modernize as much of the Soviet military as possible as soon as possible and often suffered from poor inter-unit communication and coordination, the American T-4 and T-5 were very formidable machines themselves and possessed something that was a standard for seemingly all American vehicles; very good gun depression. With the T-4 able to manage an amazing twelve degrees and the T-5 having similar gun depression, Nashorns were often struck from long distances by tanks they could barely see that poked little more than their gun mantlets and extremely angled frontal glacis plates to fire back at. American "fast tank destroyers" were even specialized for this sort of combat, with turrets designed to expose as little as possible from a hull down position while still having the elevation capabilities to command large portions of a battlefield. American and Soviet light tanks and armoured cars also became a routine nuisance as Comintern tactics demanded picking off the screens of Armoured Cars and Light Tanks first in an armoured engagement to allow for the flanking of the medium and heavy vehicles once their screens and their "eyes and ears" were cut off. As German doctrine called for light and fast vehicles to range far from their heavier counterparts to probe for weaknesses, engage in flanking maneuvers, and scout the area before the other vehicles arrived; they were often all too easy to pick off before the Nashorns and Panzer IIIs could arrive, who would be dealt with accordingly once located.

The first battle of Luga which saw Guderian and Kuchler's Panzers squaring against Patton and Timoshenko's tanks who had come off of a stunning upset victory at Narva that had seen many of Germany's divisions cut off without support. Out of the one thousand Axis tanks deployed to the battle, roughly one hundred were Nashorns, the bulk from the 88th Heavy Tank Brigade. The clash of tanks was perhaps the most vicious of operation Teutonic and saw more than a score of the heavy tanks taken out by Patton's aggressive tactics in an ultimately indecisive clash. However figures for tank production would speak quite clearly of what would be the war's eventual result. The number of Nashorns would only increase by a few hundred throughout the remainder of the year, and even at peak production only two thousand were manufactured in a year. The Americans could produce much larger numbers of heavy tanks to not only supply their own troops but to furnish the motor pools of all of their allies while the Soviets were able to produce some 5,500 KV-1s despite the disruption to Soviet industry caused by having to move their factories eastward and the KV-1 being phased out earlier in favor of the Vladimir Lenin series than the Nashorn was removed from service.

In the second year of the war, the Nashorn was by now thoroughly adjusted to even as more of its specialized variants such as the STuG IV Nashorn and the Waffentrager IV Nashorn were being rolled out. The weak points of its armor (particularly the lower glacis) were by now common knowledge and both American and Soviet gunners were well versed in how to pierce its armor. Operation Valkyrie saw the vehicle push even deeper into the Soviet Union until it reached the gates of Moscow in some of the war's most ferocious fighting. Desperate defenses by the Comintern saw a total of more than two hundred of the expensive vehicles meeting an irrecoverable end, with the M1 Dynamic Reaction cannon proving to be a particular scourge as the shaped charge launcher allowed infantry to seriously threaten the vehicle whose flat armor was poorly suited to repelling HEAT rounds. The vehicle did see uses in other regions, including the invasion of Denmark and Norway. With Denmark being a largely flat country with weak border defenses, a small military, and lacking the means to contest the kriegsmarine securing its islands, the country fell within a few hours of the first tanks driving over its borders. Norway proved to be a somewhat harder nut to crack, but once again, the Small country had no real weapons capable of threatening the bulk of Germany's motor pool once the landings were complete.

Britain and France's decision to enter the war also came with the German push into France. With much of France's military siding with the Germans, the scattered and demoralized Free French forces proved incapable of halting the German Blitzkrieg as so many had before them. While the French Char G2 and B3 were capable adversaries, they lacked coordination and morale with the confusion that followed the Petainist betrayal. With the aid of the fascist traitors, Hitler was able to do in a few weeks what Kaiser Wilhelm could not in four years; bring about the defeat of the French. Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fell in short order and Germany soon found itself master of the continent of Europe. To the west, only Portugal and the rump of Red Spain were left to oppose Germany, to the east the renewed offensives allowed by the movement of more than a million soldiers stationed on the French border and thousands of tanks allowed for a brutal hammer to fall upon Soviet and American forces. With total war production having been underway for more than a year at this point, thousands of new tanks could enter the fray; including more than one hundred Nashorns every month. With support for the Nazi regime at an all time high thanks to the swift victory over France and victory seeming to be just around the corner, the tanks pushed towards the Caucasian mountains. Others were shipped to the middle east and north africa as part of Waffen SS units intent on scourging Judaism out of Palestine itself, meeting Commonwealth forces in battle on occasion as well as large numbers of partisans trying to resist the march of Italy, Turkey, and Iraq while Hitler eagerly awaited for shipments of oil to start arriving from the middle east once the British mandates were subjugated.

However the vehicle was starting to show its age by this point as tactics began to be adjusted to face it. By now, T-34s began to be equipped with 85mm guns as standard and intelligence reported that the T-34 was due for a series of upgrades that would be labeled the T-43 and the T-44. The American T-4 itself received upgrades in the form of new marks of the vehicle with not only a series of under the hood improvements and better protection to counter increasing numbers of Asuf G Panzer IIIs and Ausf E Panzer IVs but also removed the 57mm in favor of a more overall capable 76mm gun. Further still was word that the KV-1 and T-5 were due to be replaced with new heavy tanks as well as the increasing deployment of more and more capable comintern tank destroyers and assault guns such as the Sabotcat, the Mother Jones, the Su-100 and 152 and more. Pakfront tactics were also now the standard of Comintern anti-tank units, something that was also spread to Allied forces fighting the Axis in the middle east and Africa where the Chimera and Custodian and even older vehicles such as the Matilda (particularly with a high velocity six pounder) were able to menace it and the famous British 17 pounder was found to be quite capable of perforating the tank at great range.

This lead to the decision to phase the tank out in favor of the Eintwicklung series of tanks that were destined to replace all other German fully tracked vehicles in production. The most direct replacement for the Nashorn in particular would be the Panzer 50 Jaguar, and the initial conceptualizaiton of the Nashorn's replacement; the Nashorn II, which featured a long 88mm 71 caliber gun, 160 degrees of sloped frontal armor, and a redesigned angular turret, was rejected by the military in favor of the monstrously large 90 ton Panzer 75 Tiger which initially fit a 105mm and then an astounding 128mm cannon. While not facing the kind of rejection the Maus, the Panther, the Lowe, and the Panzer VII Manticore would face, the Nashorn's time was clearly at an end. Production was quickly being readied to be switched over to the more modern Jaguar across most of the plants that the Nashorn was being built at. Many of the vehicles that were deemed superfluous to the German military were passed out to Germany's smaller allies such as Falangist spain, Finland, Turkey, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria or were steadily moved to reservist units while the frontliners were getting their new Jaguars and later Tigers and Smilodons. Some production would continue with the Nashorn's specialist variants such as the StuG, the Jagdnashorn, the Flaknashorn, the Waffentrager IV and the GW Nashorn as well as its recovery tank variant, but the main vehicle ceased production in its last plants in december of 1942 and its specialist variants ceasing production in 1943.

However the tank would continue to see service despite its obsolesence. In the second battle of Stalingrad a great many of the tanks would see service in second stringer German formations who were not yet equipped with Jaguars as well as in the rather ramshackle tankparks of the Axis minors who had a hodgepoge of vehicles from Germany, Italy, Sweden, France, and themselves. By 1943 however, combating the Nashorn was an old hat for most comintern gunners. The new marks of Soviet and American medium tanks could combat even the Ausf E on largely even grounds while tank crews from both the USSR and the UASR had become thoroughly experienced and well trained by this point while Germany and its allies were starting to cut their manpower pools to the bone. Worse still, the battle also saw some deployment of the Vladimir Lenin 1 and TD-12 Nikola Sacco heavy tank destroyers. Against these vehicles, the Nashorn was outright outclassed. The 122 and 100mm guns of these rival heavy tanks could penetrate through anything but the Mantlet and even then spalling was often enough to kill the crew in the event of a direct hit while the L/56 88mm gun was showing its age as a heavy tank gun; incapable of penetrating its opposition frontally even at extremely close range without striking weak points, not without utilizing APCR rounds which tankers were only allotted a limited supply of and even then these new vehicles were often proof against the Nashorn.

New air attack tactics used by both the Allies and the Comintern as well as continued refinement of artillery and field gun tactics only continued to add to the vehicle's grief, as did the continued spread of weapons like the M1 Dynamic reaction cannon and the PIAT. Attack aircraft now routinely carried powerful autocannons to punch through the armor of tanks as well as specially made PTAB bomblets that could blanket an area with HEAT rounds and devastate all vehicles in the way. With the Luftwaffe struggling to keep up with losses of both planes and pilots to the escalating air war at the front and over the skies of the Reich itself (and after the battle of Britain awarded the Axis with little but lost planes and air crews), air attack only became more and more common. Tankers who once enjoyed nearly complete freedom to operate as they pleased were now constrained by the constant risk of a wing of planes emerging over the horizon and destroying everything in sight and even the ramped up production of anti-air assets (including some rather questionable infantry portable anti-aircraft weapons such as modifications of the panzerfaust and panzershrek to fire flak rockets) was not enough to provide Nashorn drivers with peace of mind. While actually less vulnerable than the Jaguar to an autocannon strafing run thanks to its thicker side armor, the Nashorn was substantially more vulnerable to PTAB attack due to its thin roof armor and often whole companies were lost at a time to a single pass by a wing of air units.

In the west, things were little better. For the Spanish Nashorns in fact; it was quite a lot worse. Though the Allies only had rather limited numbers of Carnifex medium tanks, Cairn Heavy tanks, and Caliborn light tanks to field at Portugal; with the bulk of the tank park being made of the older Chimeras, Custodians, and Chameleons; they were still more than a match for the Spanish's park of often heavily obsolete vehicles with some late interwar tanks. Despite a heavy numerical advantage over the forces of the Entente, the Allied governments in exile, and the Portuguese military, the Spanish attempt to conquer Portugal soon became a debacle that only the assistance of the traitor French, Italians, and Germans could rescue. The British had perfected the technique of firing a shot to turn the attention of a tank to one direction and then having another gun fire into the rear once it was turned away as well as waiting for a column to approach before firing upon the lead and the rear tank to trap the formation in a killbox. Of Spain's fifty nashorns, slightly more than half were destroyed by the Allies in the battle of Portugal, and much of the remainder would be destroyed in the Allied breakout in the end of 1943 despite Rommel's attempts to preserve the Spanish army.

Throughout 1944 things would go from bad to worse for the Axis. Their attempt to take Leningrad out once and for all lead to a costly and stinging defeat that sapped Army Group North of much of its vitality and put further strain on their scandinavian allies. The Axis was largely driven out of the territory of the Russian SFSR proper as they had to pull back from the Caucasus and farther and farther away from Moscow and towards Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics. Despite Germano-Italian attempts to prop them up, Turkey would start to fall after a devastating defeat delivered by Allied Comintern forces in a rather rare example of a ground battle where the two fought side by side, driving Axis forces to the coastline of Anatolia and thrace. Following the disastrous western mediterranean strategic offensive that saw most of the surface fleet strength of Italy and National France sank to easily survivable United nations losses the tanks that had been operating in North Africa suddenly faced the loss of most of their supplies. While Fuel could be provided from Libya and the colony had some militarily useful factories to provide for parts, these were parts meant for Italian vehicles, meaning that those operating the Nashorns in Africa found themselves with a vanishingly thin supply line of spare parts. Most of the remaining Panzer IVs in north Africa would be eliminated by June of 1944 as the Entente pushed the Italians out of Egypt and began moving into Libya proper with the intent to link up with the Comintern at Tunisia. With the eastern front having priority for new vehicles, many of the remaining Nashorns would be sent westward to try and reinforce the Axis position against the Allies.

(Cut out for spoilers) ......................................

The Nashorn tank would continue to serve Nazi Germany until the end of the second world war in Europe. As Germany's allies fell one by one and its empire was picked apart, the old vehicle was increasingly outmatched but by the last months of the war the German situation was so desperate that they were sometimes throwing training vehicles into battle if it meant having some armoured support. While it may as well have been throwing rocks and harsh language at the likes of the TD-21 Spartacus, the Vladimir Lenin 3, the British Chamberlain and the Free French AMX-45 it was still better than not having a tank at all. The anti-fascist liberal and social democrat coup in Sweden was the last straw for Germany as its last ally abandoned it and Finland and helped drive it out of Norway and open a northern front in Denmark while also cutting Germany off from Iron Ore. Like Yugoslavia once was, Germany was surrounded on all sides and collapsed after a bitter final fight in the face of total exhaustion of all resources and mutinies on all fronts. Of the nashorns built, half were destroyed, more than a quarter were by now captured, and the last remaining thousand or so were surrendered to the United Nations.

After the war many would serve the new German governments set up after the war while others ended up finding their way to museums, tank collections, or were pawned off to armies in need of cheap armoured support around the world. Parts for the vehicles were still manufactured by various outlets for some time, with some even managing to find some service in Indochina; though they were poorly suited to the terrain there. The last were retired from active service in any country in nineteen sixty two when even colonial African governments couldn't justify their expense.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

Clips from For King and Country; World War Two in the West; Episode XI, We're off to see the wizard - Hosted by David Fletcher, EBC History, Broadcast March 27th, 2011 (Part 1)

A high budget television documentary series created by the EBC and the Royal War College to show a Franco-British perspective on the second world war, For King and Country aired two hour long episodes on both video streaming websites and on television throughout early 2011 and was praised for its high production values if criticized for its emphasis on the role played by the Allies in the war.

INT. LIBRARY

Mustachio'd War Historian David Fletcher is seen going over some books before he lifts his head up to the Camera and lights up as if he had just seen them. He removes his reading glasses and stands up; the focus changing to make it clear he was reading about Spanish history.

Fletcher​

"Ah, welcome back. When we left off we had just covered the battle of Lusitania which saw Spanish attempts to occupy Portugal repulsed and the Axis forced to withdraw assets from the fighting in Russia to the west."

SCENE CHANGE.

The scene seems to shift as time seems to reverse and the Library seems to unconstruct itself, revealing that this was once a humble village. Allied soldiers can be seen lounging around as they wait for battle, a stopped Custodian III tank waiting for fresh ammunition. When a round is passed for loading he briefly pauses the scene to take the round and examine it.

Fletcher​

"This is an armour piercing composite rigid round, also known as APCR. Thanks to its composition, it is able to exit the barrel at higher speeds and is better able to penetrate through armor at closer combat ranges. The secret is that this shell here is made of aluminium, but underneath is a core made of Tungsten Carbide, denser and harder than steel. Now why is this important you might ask? Not only was tungsten used for specialist shells, but also stronger, denser alloys of steel and so a stable supply of it was crucially important to mechanized warfare."

SCENE CHANGE

Fletcher is now seen in a Spanish Tungsten refining facility as molten hot materials are extracted from the ores to be used later. Fletcher at first watches the material's extraction process before turning back to the camera.

Fletcher​

The Iberian Peninsula was one of the largest producers of Tungsten in the world, with most concentrated near Portugal. While the Mitterall mine and the Matzen Oil Field was discovered in 1938 by geologists under the employ of Adolf Hitler and facilities to process these resources were set up as part of his public works program and to arm his reich for war, the Iberian mining operations were much more developed than those set up by the Third Reich by the time the war had begun. The German and Italian war machines relied heavily on Tungsten bought from Spain and Portugal to supply high penetration ammunition to their tanks as well as the materials for high quality armor for their vehicles. Thus, we see the cessation of trade with Portugal already put a heavy supply problem on Germany, and we see one of the reasons why Allied high command sought to liberate Spain as quickly as possible.

SCENE CHANGE. INT, SPANISH CASTILLO

Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery is seen meeting with his French counterpart Georges Catroux and other allied commanders such as Charles DeGaulle, Philippe LeClerc, Miles Dempsey, José Vicente de Freitas, Charles Foulkes, George Edwin Brink, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, Noel Beresford-Peirse, and Gbesmola who are discussing a plan of action on a map.

Montgomery​

"The intelligence we have suggests that the Spanish are concentrating near the midpoint between Caceras and Toledo, probably expecting us to try and make an immediate sweep for Gibraltar. Intercepts of German communications suggest they suspect much the same. Now I'm going to want the Fifth army to do exactly that. Meanwhile the Eighth army is going to be making a push towards Madrid. Now I'll want the Portuguese army to make a push further south, if we play our cards right we can ensure that the Spanish are cut in two. We'll encircle them at Madrid and in the South. We'll snap them up and swipe Sanjurjo's entire army from beneath his feet before he knows it."

DeGaulle​

And what of the Petainist Tank division spotted near the river? They are likely to be a much tougher target than the Spanish to crack.

Foulkes​

My troops can lure them away from the Spanish with some probing raids. They'll likely start to give chase once we drag them into a running battle. By the time they realize they've been had we should have pushed the Spanish line far enough away from the Petainists to finish the job.

Freitas​

Can my troops count on air and naval support while we drive across the coastline?

Catroux​

We have a squadron of battleships and carrier groups stationed at the Azores who will be able to provide and and gunnery support so long as you stay within a few dozen kilometers from the shore. Our air units will be making continuous sorties to ensure air superiority and close ground support. Heavy Bombers will come before you to reduce the heavier enemy defenses. Our reports also suggest that the enemy has numerous flak bunkers installed; we must ask of your troops to neutralize these as you locate them to make the skies safer for our pilots.

Brink​

And what are we looking at at Madrid?

Gbesmola​

The bulk of the Spanish Army and two German divisions. If we make a breakout though, Rommel will likely pull back east. I've read about how he fights in the east, he's not going to stay in terrain like this if it goes against him.

EXT. SPANISH COUNTRY SIDE

Fletcher can be seen in the interior of a Carnifex tank as it rumbles across the countryside, the lean and mean tank's seventy seven milimeter gun remaining quite on target thanks to vertical stabilizers from America as the tank takes a shot at a Panzer III in Spanish colours; causing the tank to stop dead in its tracks as the Carnifex speeds on by, a shell missing it by a substantial distance as a Spanish soldier can be seen out the viewport; eyes widening before the tank impacts him at more than forty kilometers per hour. When the scene cuts back to the tank you can hear a faint "squish" sound. Two more Carnifexes soon join alongside the lead Carnifex as it comes to a stop at an elevated road and barely crests the ridge to lower the gun and take some high explosive shots at visible infantry while closed top universal carriers rumble on behind to unload troops.

INT. CARNIFEX TANK

As the loader informs the gunner that the shell is ready, the commander orders the vehicle to fire, making the barrel jump back from the force.

Fletcher​

This is a Carnifex Tank, an evolution of the ideas behind the earlier Chimera Tank. Powering this lovely machine is a rolls royce engine that allows this vehicle to attain a top speed of over fifty kilometers per hour while the vehicle's design still allows for reasonable turning ability even at high speeds. The vehicle was renown throughout the second world war for its incredible mobility as well as its more than adequete armour protection and this powerful gun you see here. Now this gun here fires a seventy seven milimeter hell more than fast enough to punch straight through the hull of a Nashorn tank. In fact, there is at least one known case of a Carnifex's APCR round going through the front of a nashorn tank and then out the back of it; it's an incredible gun for its time.

EXT. SPANISH COUNTRY SIDE

An Indian soldier looking through his binoculars almost drops them when he sees a Panzer 50 Jaguar tank thundering towards their lines, prompting him to knock on the side of one of the Carnifex tanks and shout about the incoming Jaguar. This model clearly fits the long 88mm gun, and Gepards guard its flanks as it angles its front towards the British.

Fletcher​

Now what we see here is a Jaguar. A fifty ton beast that acquired a fearsome reputation for being nearly invulnerable from the front against most weapons of the day. Until the Tigers arrived they were the pride of the Iberiakorps.

EXT SPANISH COUNTRY SIDE.

A crack is heard as one of the carriers brews up from a direct impact while one of the Carnifex tanks takes a shell to its mantlet and hurriedly drops back behind the ridgeline as the infantry accompanying the German vehicles start laying down long ranged machine gun fire; which is met with the rapid fire and disciplined volleys of rifle fire that the British are known for. The battle is soon interrupted however, by the sound of artillery crashing nearby as British artillery begins to crash all around the battle site, with a cut showing British Chimera gun carriages; modified to fit 5.5 inch guns, open fire on the area.

Fletcher​

Heavy investment into self propelled artillery paid dividends in the Iberian campaign as Allied forces were able to practice "shoot and scoot" tactics where self propelled gun carriages would arrive at an area, lay down a few volleys of shells, then leave before the enemy's own artillery could prepare counter battery fire. This emphasis on mobile artillery also meant that swiftly moving mechanized forces would not need to constrain the pace of their advance to the speed at which towed guns could be moved into position. This allowed for a decisive edge in strategic mobility as well as for artillery support to be available virtually on demand for ground forces. The only real disadvantage of self propelled artillery, beyond cost, is that it reloads more slowly than a field gun of the same caliber.

EXT, SPANISH COUNTRY SIDE

Fletcher's point is demonstrated as the scene shows a Petainist artillery battery getting orders to fire and firing almost two shells for every one shell fired by the self propelled artillery; showering the Allied position with explosives as the French crews quickly shove shells into the breach and send them down range after covering their ears and giving the orders to fire.

Fletcher​

However at this point in the war the skies were slipping from the grasp of the Axis. Thanks to the Axis' reluctance to rotate experienced crews of any sort from the field to train new recruits, the attrition they suffered was always harder to replace than those of the Allies and the Comintern. While the skill of their air forces degraded with time, our super flying fighters only got better as the war progressed and we disseminated our tactics from our very best to the rest.

EXT. SKIES

A Supermarine Spitfire banks to the left and rolls out from a formation of other spitfires; peeling away from a flight of Mosquitos armed with heavy autocannons for tank busting while the Spitfires chase a flight of Axis bombers heading for British lines. The lead plane climbs first while the other planes move to try and catch the flanks of the enemy formation. The lead plane and its wingmen fly to make sure that any enemy pilots looking for them would have to look into the sun before diving down into the formation; opening fire with its machine guns. Several planes start to burn while the other british planes fly in and make their own passes through the formation; opening fire before flying up into a climb to build energy before they make other passes.

At the same time, the Mosquitos start to dive towards the ground; the Pilots clicking the trigger and the heavy "thump-thump-thump" of large six pounder autocannons being audible as heavy shells slam into the ground repeatedly. A line of Spanish vehicles starts to explode while infantry are sent scattering by the blasts of the autocannons before a brace of rockets and a few bombs are dropped for good measure; annihilating large sections of the spanish line before an artillery bombardment is called to help mop up before Mechanized troops move in to cut them off.

EXT. OUTSKIRTS OF MADRID

Spanish Soldiers are seen shouting over the din of combat before the scene shows the French perspective as French troops drop down into prone positions before firing with Einfeld Self-loaders while Bren machine guns chatter away. A Bren carrier fitted with a mortar rolls into position and the crew makes its own shout before opening fire; light artillery peppering the Spanish position while an officer shouts to his men to get moving. German soldiers try to slow down the British with MG42 fire, the distinct ripping like sound of the gun forcing some French soldiers into cover, but the loud and heavy boom of a five inch cannon announces the presence of a Cairn heavy tank; the high explosive shell exploding in the machine gun nest and taking out most of the structure the gunners were in to boot. A Spanish soldier who tries to pop out and fire a Panzershrek at the tank is quickly spotted and shot by an African soldier, the Spaniard making a wet gurgle before falling over from the impact while British troops with submachine guns move in to secure the urban area. An attempted attack by Spanish soldiers taking cover in the streets is quickly ripped apart by a passing Mosquito dropping a load of incendiery bombs on them, burning Spanish soldiers running away in a panic while the Allies march calmly forward.

Fletcher​

While the Germans were highly practiced at air defense tactics, the Spanish were not so fortunate, with the experience of the Spansih civil war now being years behind them and the capabilities of attack planes having grown immensely since then. Constant attack from the air and continual harassment by fast moving mechanized and motorized troops prevented the Spanish army from re-organizing from the shock of the initial offensives and having made the bulk of Axis soldiers in the area, made them a large weak link for the aggressive offensives of the Allies to punch through towards their objectives. While commanders such as Rommel thought highly of their bravery, their lack of material capability to fight the army of a modern superpower made them a favourite for allied commanders to attack.