The Silver Knight, a Lithuania Timeline
- Thread starter Augenis
- Start date
I didn't make a trope page because I follow the idea that it's up to the fans to honor a work like that, not the writer himself.
Britannia could have a choice between Unitarianism or Democracy through a Revolution or Fascism if the Monarchy is able to successfully prevent Revolution through appealing to national identity. The Fascist focus could end in "All Hail Britannia!"
Lusang could have the choice between building influence in the South Pacific(democratic), joining the Unitarians, or restoring the Ming rule over China(Fascist).
Lusang could have the choice between building influence in the South Pacific(democratic), joining the Unitarians, or restoring the Ming rule over China(Fascist).
What about the focus tree of Egypt? Maybe their Fascist focus tree could have the option of proclaiming a "restored" Ottoman Empire (IIRC, their Sultan hails from an Ottoman cadet branch). As for Persia, maybe their focus tree involves either standing alone/allying with the Lithuanians in forming a new Persian Empire (Fascist), having a domestic Unitarian revolution, or aligning with China (democratic).
Any focuses for your beloved Visegrad, BTW? I think it would be interesting to see focuses dedicated to saving it from Samsa (may he burn in the deepest layer of hell) and his gang.
I'd say that you'd get something like "At -1000 Political Power, you get the Revolution", and you have a Deluge national spirit that makes you lose a certain amount a day. You then can take focuses that modify the national spirit to take away less and less power by reforming the economy, but these also cost political power. You climax this with a Curtisesque event to negotiate with the Unitarians, which ends with you losing the spirit of the Deluge completely. HOWEVER, this results in Poland declaring independence, giving you a spirit of "Polish revolt"; if you take too long to crush Poland, the Unitarians revolt anyway. I'd also support there not being a guaranteed chance of avoiding war even if you take the right path; the paths simply have different chances of failure. That always somewhat annoyed me about the KR US; you could avoid the war with access to a guide. No one in history had a guide open of the right decisions to take.
I enjoy all these ideas for the mod, sure - but, you know, I am not a massive modder team, just one passionate guy, I have limits
Chapter 87: Fight, Hold Your Ground
Part 87: Fight, Hold Your Ground (Sep-Nov 1939)
The Lithuanian 1st Army attacked from the northwest and the 2nd Army from the southwest, thus pressing the Russians from both banks of the river and nullifying their chokepoint advantage - however, this is where the battle turned into a stalemate. While the Lithuanians enjoyed numerical superiority, it was not enough to simply break through the fortified Russian lines, and thus bloody fighting began to take place. Street by street, the Revivalist forces were pushing through the suburbs of Tver', taking heavy losses in the process. However, the Russian high command knew that a siege was not a ppreferred situation for their side, either. It was clear that standard fighting was not going to cut it, thus both sides had to resort to unconventional tactics to break this stalemate - and this is where the Lithuanians acquired an edge. Early in the battle, Lithuanian air infantry was deployed to capture the Tver Airfield, the primary base of the Russian Air Force, two kilometers to the east from the city. Although the Russians knew of the Lithuanian glider corps and shot down a number of the transports with anti-aircraft guns, this was not enough. While intense fighting was happening in the city itself, air infantry successfully captured the airfield behind enemy lines and destroyed much of the aircraft there to construct barricades from them - this was vital. The next closest Russian air base was in Nizhny Novgorod, and it only housed 100 aeroplanes - thus, in one swift stroke, the Lithuanians pretty much eliminated all Russian air capacity in the fight. Bomber squadrons were activated and began peppering munitions on the static Russian barricades, killing hundreds of defenders before they could fire a single shot. The tide in the battle itself began to turn towards the Lithuanians.
And this meant that Tver' - which still housed the entire Russian government, as well as it's dictator, by the way - was in massive danger of Heinz surrounded and turned into a second Smolensk. Faced with the situation in their hands, and knowing that a stubborn defense will only mean death, the Krutov government ordered the evacuation of the capital. Hundreds of boats were rapidly constructed for shipment across the Volga in the span of days, a few divisions were sent east to guard the railways and roads designated for evacuation, while the entire city was now placed under an evacuation order. The Russians were determined to leave nothing to the Western hordes - works of art were being packed up, all gold and money was put into bags and ferried away, even the roof files were being ripped away and sent east.
After being made aware of all this taking place, General Sidabras and the Lithuanian general staff sent orders to the 2nd Army, which was still fighting in the north, to strike east, capture the evacuation railways and finish the encirclement. However, for reasons which have now been lost to history, neither the telegraph nor the telephone lines were unable to contact the 2nd Army, and a carrier message to the army staff meant that the order was delayed by 48 hours, giving the Russians enough time to start and finish the Evacuation of Tver. Was it simply bad luck, sabotage by the Russians or by anti-Revivalist dissenters? We will never know. But what we do know is that within the span of a few days, over 200 000 people and tons of other shipment were ferried out of the city, and while a number of the boats and columns were taken out by Lithuanian bombers, most escaped to the safe east, in what was accurately dubbed by Alexei Krutov as "a miracle to rival Jesus's resurrection". Three divisions and a youth brigade were left in the city as sacrificial lambs, and the next morning, October 14th, they and the abandoned city were overrun by Lithuanian troops, who were both happy and furious at the same time.
On October 17th, Augustinas Stankevičius arrived to Tver' to make a speech to congratulate the 105 000 Lithuanian survivors with the success of Operation Glinskis, and declared that "with the fall of Tver', you all will return home by Christmas". A statue of Russian 16th century hero Ivan Kratkov in front of the University of Tver, one of the few remaining pieces of art in the city, was publicly torn down as a symbol of the new Lithuanian occupation of the city. A city which suffered a lot of fighting - and so did the armies which occupied it. 120 000 casualties were inflicted on the Lithuanians during the battle, and for a country with 30 million people (55 with the occupied Krajina), that was quite a loss. Entire divisions had to be rebuilt from scratch, the Lithuanian glider corps had lost over 60% of it's manpower, and in general, the army was tired of the war of movement. But this was the end of the war, right? Capture Tver' = Russia collapses...
Well. On the last day of October, the Lithuanians sent a diplomatic note to the wartime Russian government, now in Nizhny Novgorod, requesting their capitulation, "in the face of Lithuania's overwhelming victory in the war".
Russia declined.
Russian civilians constructing trenches during the Battle for Tver'.
"Don't hide behind the back! Join the Lithuanian soldier lines!" 1939 Lithuanian propaganda poster
The fall of 1939 saw the beginning of not just the Battle of Tver', but also an another military expedition in Europe. After the defeat in the Siege of Pecs earlier this year, the Confederation of Unitarian States had been biding their strength, staying on the defensive and fighting against German and loyalist offensives. Thanks to inheriting the majority of Visegrad's industry and military facilities, it was quickly able to outproduce their loyalist counterparts. Turkish help played a lot here as well - the Union supplied their Visegradian allies with industrial machines, infantry equipment and all sorts of military vehicles from landships to armored cars. With the constant Unitarian defensive stance, the Baltic-Adriatic Coalition dropped it's metaphorical guard, and thus it did not expect Operation Revolutionary Hammer in October of 1939. With s sudden combined arms strike, the CUS broke through the loyalist lines in Moravia and soon swarmed into Bohemia, reaching the river Vltava in two weeks. While additional German reserves were brought in to prevent the Unitarians spilling through the Sudetes, the consequences were severe - Prague, the last major political center in loyalist Visegrad, fell, and the Convention of Three Nations disbanded during the chaos of the siege of the city. Sandor Marton, the head of the loyalist Visegradian government, was shot in that same battle, possibly by his own men, while Ferenc III Luxemburg and the royal family of the kingdom fled to Vienna. While some successor organizations and generals continued flying the old Visegradian banner, it had become painfully clear that the United Kingdom was no more, the remaining unoccupied territory practically becoming a German-occupied zone.
The fall of Prague coincided with important developments in East Asia, that being the Saigon Talks between France and China. At the beginning of the war, France, headed by the Democratic Unitarian Radical Party, stayed neutral, although many elements within the nation, both radical nationalist and radical Unitarian, called for a strike into Germania to claim revenge for the Great European War. However, cooler heads prevailed, and as time went on, the threat of a Commonwealth attack on French soil, including Malaysia, Indochina and Africa, and perhaps even France itself if Germania ended up overrun, grew greater and greater. Meanwhile, China had been worried about the belligerence of the Commonwealth since the alliance's foundation, and being squished between Japan and India, it knew that sooner or later it will become the next target of the Unitarians. Indian attacks on the Chinese sphere of influence were also very clear - Aceh fell under Purple Unitarianism in the 1930s, and the Burmese Revolution of 1939 followed, replacing the pro-Chinese government with an Anarcho-Unitarian one. With the conclusion of India's Central Asia push, this conflict of interests in Asia would only grow more fierce - and the Saigon Talks were the beginning of cooperation between France and China to try to undermine the Indian goliath. Their first act was pulling up a common trade embargo on the Commonwealth, an embargo soon followed by most other democratic powers across the world. France soon mobilised it's Asian fleet, located in the important naval base of De-Foix at the very tip of the Malay Peninsula, in preparation for possible conflict.
France's colonies in Malaysia and Indochina had always incited Indian appetites with their strategic location and rich resources like rubber plantations - perhaps incited them even more than Chinese-dominated Indochina. To decide on their course of action, the Commonwealth made a meeting of their own, albeit in secret, in the Deccan city of Nijasure. Sanjay Nijasure himself wished to strike the French before they are able to make any alliances with China, and the Turks, concerned with spreading the revolution across all of Europe, agreed. Both India and the Union believed that Germania had little steam left and will soon collapse, as judging from espionage information. The problem was that the Unitarians were working with falsified information sources - the strong and well-funded German espionage corps had been aware of Unitarian spy cells for years and purposefully fed them false knowledge to create the idea that the German army is small, weak and undersupplied. The Commonwealth had no idea that this was not the case, and thus believed that Germania can be taken care of quickly, and so, dragging France into the war will not cause a problem.
Only the Japanese delegation protested the idea - after all, this would delay the promised Indo-Japanese attack on China.
Map of the world in November 1939
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Ryan
Donor
that seems rather higher given that the battle only lasted a couple of months. IIRC Stalingrad resulted in about 250 000 axis deaths over 5 months, which involved a massive counter-attack.
Is this just Russia having so small and thinly stretched air forces, or it's typical for the time ITTL?
Also, how are the Russian principal communications organized? If they are they going out radially from Tver (like from Moscow IOTL), with little to no bypass arteries, then Russia is screwed even after the Dunkirk-like evacuation.
Hm, I could have sworn that the casualties in Stalingrad were a lot higher. I'll edit it.
Small air forces, and most of the aircraft was either destroyed in Tver or in other parts of the front.
While Tver' is indeed a very important center of communications, the rail and road network in Russia is mostly decentralized. This is because the majority of the roads and rails in Russia were inherited from the Imperial period, during which the territory which would become Russia was a distant periphery.
Ryan
Donor
you're correct that the casualties were higher (728 000 Axis total) but casualties include wounded and POW's as well.
I think your 120 000 would work (if not a bit higher, say 160-200 000) as an overall casualty number rather than just deaths, as it would be in the same ballpark as the battle of Kiev (which, IMO your battle of Tver is closer too than the Battle of Stalingrad due to weather, duration, military opposition etc.)
Is the city of Nijasure equivalent to any major OTL city location-wise? Also, what's the state of the Lithuanian Navy (I know Russia's virtually landlocked even before the war but how good is it compared to the Germanian Navy)?
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So, @bhlee0019, what on earth do you think are the Japanese thinking with their plans to attack China?
They would invade korea first, I think. Korea wouldn't turn unitarian with Nagai in power across the strait.
Nijasure is Madurai.
The Lithuanian navy is mostly a coastal defense force and cannot operate outside of the Baltic Sea. While a number of battleships and other heavy ships were inherited from the Imperial Navy, most were outdated and Lithuania could no longer afford maintaining them, so they were sold.