Having swapped passwords I could see why Giovanni was not enjoying his turn. I knew from the statistics:
that it was not going well for the Russians. I don’t know how these compare with typical games, but the whole of 1942 in the east had been something of a bloodbath. For example, all four of those German ARM had been lost in a single summer turn. (An Oscar Wilde quote comes to mind.) Looking at the other side of the hill the Russian situation seems dire. Moscow had just fallen; my situation in the north:
And from the Russian side:
I don’t think that there was going to be a counter attack towards Moscow or Gorki any time soon. In the South I was a little thinned out:
But what I could see was pretty much all that Giovanni had:
The real story was further south where I had overrun Turkey, Iraq and Iran. The struggle around Baku had been a fascinating and prolonged mini-campaign, so I will give a bit of detail. Lots of summer skirmishing in the mountains, with me repeatedly attempting a left hook. Giovanni based the RAF and a Russian TAC around Baku and we had a ding dong battle for air supremacy. When Tabriz fell I rebased the paratroopers who had helped take Ankara there. A couple of times Baku was left empty and I did nothing. I was waiting for Tehran to fall and my left hooks to make progress. Once I had an INF in the Caspian Sea port I shipped it to north of Baku, which nicely distracted Giovanni. I closed my eyes and para-dropped into Baku. Amazingly it took no step losses at all. I suspect that the odds of that happening are low. They were adjacent to three air units. The Fallschirmjäger must have thought that it was Christmas. Meanwhile my transport had been bombed down to 4 steps. It landed, an attack from my lead INF in the left hook – freshly brought up to strength and with a +1 attack general attached – linked up with them and the Russians were cut off and their supply source captured. My strength 4 amphibious effort was promptly wiped out. In total Giovanni fought his way in or out of the pocket three times. Happily I closed the ring four times. He even landed two INF from the sea himself. To no avail.
Whilst this was happening I was failing to take Rostov, Stalingrad, Tambov, Tula and Moscow. The fighting just went on, with both of us probably counter attacking too much. I reckoned that the Russians were losing about 1.6 PPs for every German one (see table below) but I was not experienced enough to know if that was good for me or him.
..........Jan – Dec 1942
........ German....Russian
Inf#....347 (19)....523 (42)
Arm.....63 (4)......80 (6)
AIR......61 (1)......78*
PPs†....2,000.......3,100
* Includes UK losses in Mid East and Russia
# Excludes UK losses in Mid East; excludes Italians etc
†Approximate PPs lost in year, including UK, Italians, minor allies; Russia and Mid East only.
By the end of August I had 1 ARM and 1 MECH left in Russia. Plus 1 MECH in the Middle East. But I remembered what von Bock had said about the real battle of Moscow - about the last battalion thrown in deciding the battle – and I kept attacking. In the second half of September the Russians collapsed and the Moscow encirclement was reduced to four corps. October was fair and I cut off Moscow and pocketed two more corps on the Oka. And a final heave gained me Rostov and Tula – stripped of troops to reinforce the Moscow front. I could relax a little, reduce the two pockets at leisure, whilst getting into position to face a winter offensive. At the time I didn’t realise that this wasn’t coming. Moscow finally fell in early January, a late Christmas present for the Führer.
What about the west? I had ten subs in the Atlantic for most of the year. By year end six German and four Italian. My sub labs were level 5 (plus 90%) for the Germans and level 4 for the Italians. The ten UK and US ships lost to one German sub gives an idea of how the campaign had gone.
A large troop convoy trampling over one of my subs alerted me to a forthcoming invasion.
I formed a strategic reserve, happy that Russia had quietened enough to allow this.
(Plus two TACs in Bulgaria.)
In the event the convoy only contained three ground units and so was, I suspect, either desperation or bluff.
STR repeatedly hammered my western PP sources all year. Very frustrating it was too. But as I picked up more in the east I could afford to grin and bear it.
So, that’s how my last game of 2.0 went. I have just started a 2.1 against AC67, but would like another one. Any takers out there?
