History WorldWarII / WarInEuropeAndAfrica

As the Western Allies push out into the interior of France, it becomes clear to the German people that they are going to lose the war. The mighty juggernaut of the Red Army is approaching from the east, and the British and Americans, with their superior weapons and air power,[[labelnote:*]]Bear in mind that, yes, Germany did develop several weapons that were considered superior to Allied technology, such as the Sturmgewehr-44 Assault Rifle, "Tiger" heavy tanks and the Me-262 jet fighter, these weapons were only superior ''on paper''; in application, they had their own flaws that made them more AwesomeButImpractical, and were deployed in very sparse numbers compared to their more standard equipment, like the Kar-98 bolt-action rifle, the Panzer IV medium tank, and the Bf-109 respectively, all three of which were considered equal or inferior to Allied technology of the time.[[/labelnote]] are rapidly approaching from the west. The devastation of cities like Hamburg, Mainz, Düsseldorf and in early 1945, Dresden, forces millions into refugee camps. On the Eastern Front, the fighting becomes more desperate as the German soldiers become convinced that their families and their friends really will be exterminated (just as the official propaganda claims) after three years of atrocities and a dozen million dead Soviet civilians. ''Reichsminister'' Goebbels starts to up the rhetoric in his broadcasts, using the idea of the new "wonder weapons" (such as the Me 262, the world's first operational jet fighter, and the V-2 rocket, the world's first ballistic missile) to say that the final victory will still be theirs. However, only the most delusional or fanatical Germans continue to believe him. Ever since Stalingrad, the news has gotten progressively worse; many Germans start behaving as though they have nothing to lose, recognizing that they only face total destruction.\\\

The Allied invasion goes well and by August, Paris is liberated by French and American forces. Soon after, American and French forces land in southern France in an amphibious landing known as Operation '''Dragoon'''. After some minor fighting, over 140,000 German soldiers are outmaneuvered and surrender. However, the invasion goes a little ''too'' well. By the beginning of September, the Allies find themselves advancing on towns they had not expected to reach until the following ''spring''. Allied forces race forward to confront the rapidly retreating Germans, well ahead of their supply lines (which become dangerously long due to a lack of deep water ports and have to be driven all the way from Normandy one truckload at a time). Along the way, the Vichy French collaborators either escape with the fleeing ''Wehrmacht'' or are lynched by the French Resistance or imprisoned ''and then'' killed by de Gaulle's Free French forces. This leaves crucial bureaucratic civilian posts empty and the Allies must now account for providing everything from police to food and medical aid to the French citizens in their already dangerously stretched supply lines. The Germans use this to pull back a sizable amount of their forces. Despite the vast withdrawal, the Allied High Command believes that the ''Wehrmacht'' is a spent force which poses little threat. The advance soon grinds to a halt as the Allies must literally wait for their supplies to catch up to them.\\\

The so-called "'''Battle of the Bulge'''" results in German gains for a few days under the cover of bad weather, followed by inevitable defeat as dogged American resistance delays Hitler's tight operational timetable just long enough for his Panzer formations to run out of fuel, sometimes literally within sight of their objectives. Even when the Germans achieve battlefield success, they lack the fuel to capitalize on their victories- their vehicles were provided with enough fuel to begin the offensive, but all plans for refueling required that they capture gasoline and diesel from allied supply dumps. Without these captured fuel supplies, there is no ability to engage in prolonged vehicular combat. For the Allies, General Eisenhower soon realized this attack is fact a prime opportunity to destroy the German forces since an attacking force is easier to do so. Meanwhile and most famously, American troops—primarily the 101st Airborne Division—manage to hold on to the critical road junctions in the Belgian town of Bastogne despite being surrounded, outnumbered nearly five to one, and severely lacking in cold-weather gear, medical supplies and ammunition, even as General Patton was racing to relieve them on Eisenhower's orders. Delaying actions such as these prove invaluable as the attack bogs down long enough for the streak of cloudy days to run out, allowing Montgomery to organize the various delaying actions into a concerted battle. Every hour that Bastogne held, the German vehicles had to burn the last of their fuel frying to capture it. Then the Allied air forces resume resupply and tactical operations, sending devastatingly powerful and accurate airstrikes that slow German forces even further and make their advances all the more hopeless.\\\

Even though Army Group A reaches the similarly-productive facilities of Grozny within the week, which also guards the route to the oilfields of Baku and the passes through the Caucasian Mountains, their logistical situation is too fragile for them to actually take it or advance any further. The Donbass–Grozny railway line is still damaged and it's ''500km'' from Grozny to the Donbass, a gap which once again has to be bridged by the diminishing truck-fleet while Army Group B struggles to do likewise given heavy ammunition expenditure around and within the city of Stalingrad. The Donbass itself is only supplied by one east-west railway line and a constant stream of barge traffic through the Black Sea. Even when Army Group A repairs its railway line it's still not enough, as the line can only really supply 100,000 troops and constant counterattacks by the Soviet Caucasian Front once again keep them from building up stockpiles. The fighting is threadbare, with Army Group A suffering from critical fuel and ammunition (and eventually food, once the locals' last foodstuffs have been confiscated) shortages and the Caucasian Front suffering from great training and equipment shortages. For instance one of the Caucasian Front's divisions (10,000 men) began the defense of Grozny halfway through its training with fewer than 3000 foreign-model rifles captured from ''Entente Cordiale'' troops in the Russian Civil War (which were only supposed to be used for marksmanship training, pending the arrival of standard-issue rifles and heavy weapons). They were only saved by the fact that the Panzer division (nominally 14,000 men and 200 tanks) attacking them had fewer than 20 working tanks and just a few thousand rounds of ammo between their 10,000 surviving men.\\\

When news of the unfolding disasters in Belarus and then western Ukraine reach Army Group South, they are not at all surprised at being forced to give up their Panzer divisions (with about 400 working tanks) in an attempt to salvage the situation. Nor are they surprised when the Soviets attack them the next month, nor when the Soviets again take advantage of the Romanians' inferiority in artillery strength and doctrine to punch through the Romanian-defended sections of the front lines, nor when the Romanians' lone tank division (100 tanks on a good day) is not enough to stop the Soviet Tank Army (600 tanks on a good day) which is used to exploit the gap created. What they ''are'' surprised and more than a little annoyed by is the coup which takes place in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. Even the German forces ''not'' already trapped in pockets are suddenly taken into custody by their former allies as the country switches sides and signs an alliance with the Soviet Union—the beginnings of what will later become the Warsaw Pact. Germany has not just lost the bulk of her oil supply, but Army Group South and a great deal of international prestige. This is quickly followed up with the defection of Bulgaria to the Allied side, causing German forces to evacuate the country, as well as their forces on the Greek mainland and the Balkans to prevent them from being cut off.\\\

The so-called "'''Battle of the Bulge'''" results in German gains for a few days under the cover of bad weather, followed by inevitable defeat as dogged American resistance delays Hitler's tight operational timetable just long enough for his Panzer formations to run out of fuel, sometimes literally within sight of their objectives. For the Allies, General Eisenhower soon realized this attack is fact a prime opportunity to destroy the German forces since an attacking force is easier to do so. Meanwhile and most famously, American troops—primarily the 101st Airborne Division—manage to hold on to the critical road junctions in the Belgian town of Bastogne despite being surrounded, outnumbered nearly five to one, and severely lacking in cold-weather gear, medical supplies and ammunition, even as General Patton was racing to relieve them on Eisenhower's orders. Delaying actions such as these prove invaluable as the attack bogs down long enough for the streak of cloudy days to run out, allowing Montgomery to organize the various delaying actions into a concerted battle. Then the Allied air forces resume resupply and tactical operations, sending devastatingly powerful and accurate airstrikes that slow German forces even further and make their advances all the more hopeless.\\\

Of course, for those that fought in it, the '''Battle of the Bulge''' was still ''notoriously'' brutal for both sides--the winter of 1944 in Europe brought with it record-breaking cold temperatures, and is still known as one of the coldest winters in Belgium's recent history. The Allied forces were caught completely unprepared, and compounding the situation was that most of the soldiers manning the frontlines were paratroopers, whose use in battle was intended more towards [[GlassCannon swift attacks and harassing forces behind their own lines]] rather than battles of attrition, but quickly found themselves performing the latter in the face of the sudden and unexpected advance for the (seemingly) well-equipped German forces. Making matters worse was that their reinforcements and resupply were delayed by the weather and already-present logistics problems (much of which was left over from the abortive Operation Market Garden), leaving them with what little they carried with them at the time. For the Axis, while they did not have to worry so much about unsuitable combat strategies, they ''did'' have just as many supply problems ''if not moreso'' due to the desperate war effort which spurred the offensive in the first place--It was not uncommon for entire German platoons to surrender to Allied forces, if only to get aid for their wounded...only to discover the Americans they surrendered to did not even have the supplies or manpower to look after their ''own.'' Such situations were rare, but there are stories of Allied soldiers leaving the surrendered German platoons [[LeaveBehindAPistol a single pistol loaded with ample ammunition]] as a merciful courtesy for what must be done. Even then, however, what the Western Allies had experienced in the Ardennes was but a taste of what had been going on on the Eastern Front for three years now, and its biggest contribution to the war was making the American and British forces all the more anxious to get this war over as quickly and bloodlessly as possible.\\\

In the summer of 1944, conditions for the invasion were still not perfect but they were about as good as could be hoped for. It was clear that German strength had been dealt a heavy blow by the Ukrainian battles of March–April, and that Anglo-American-Canadian forces would have the Germans in France heavily outnumbered when they managed to land. The 'strategic plan' (the Allies did not have a modern concept of what we today or the Germans and Soviets then would call 'operations') for '''Overlord''' anticipates that the Allied forces will drive the Germans out of France entirely within three months of relatively fluid, mobile warfare of the kind seen in North Africa in 1941-2.\\\

The German officer corps as a whole approved of Hitler's decision to fight on until Germany was totally annihilated. Desire to avoid admitting national weakness (by surrendering, as in November 1918) and [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar genuine fears of Judeo-Bolshevik]] [[EvilCannotComprehendGood vengeance upon the German people]] were widespread. However, even among more worldly officers there was quite simply prosaic desire to make the best of their 'glory days' and serve as high-ranking officers for as long as they could. If Germany survived the war and was allowed to have a military, they knew that their personal chances of being allowed to serve in it were pretty limited. Even if the Communists did not shoot them out of hand or imprison them forever, they would not want to touch ex-Fascist officers with ten-foot poles. And even if the Anglo-Americans didn't care what German officers had done to non-British and non-American civilians and POW, they might also be reluctant to be openly associated with such people. Finally, many junior officers had been promoted to positions above their abilities due to losses and diffusion of talent: they were unlikely to hold such high rank ever again in a much smaller and more selective peacetime military.\\\

Unable to supply both of his top generals, British Field Marshal UsefulNotes/BernardLawMontgomery in the south and American General UsefulNotes/GeorgeSPatton in the north, UsefulNotes/DwightEisenhower is forced to choose which one to give priority of supplies. Patton's plan is simply to break through the German lines directly east of Berlin, and then push through to the German capitol city to seize it before the Soviets do. But this means smashing through the heavily fortified Siegfried Line, and then across both Western ''and'' Central Germany, in a massive battle of attrition which, while more likely to work due to sheer numbers, would prove costly in both time and men, which Eisenhower was not sure he could afford, what with the war already having been going on for 5 years already. Judging by the actions in France during '''Overlord''' and '''Dragoon''', such attrition would mean committing to the World War I-style mobile defensives, only this time Germany would be on their home turf and by all accounts they intended to make the Allies fight tooth and nail for every inch--as one can imagine, this was not a very enticing concept for someone who wanted to end the war as quickly and bloodlessly as possible.\\\

Alternatively, Montgomery proposes a daring two-part plan called Operation '''Market Garden''', which envisions a massive paratrooper deployment (consisting of the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the British 1st Airborne) in Holland to seize nine vital bridges ("'''Market'''"), creating a secured corridor by which the British XXX Corps[[labelnote:*]]Pronounced "Thirty Corps"[[/labelnote]], an armoured formation, would ride straight across the Rhine and punch into Germany too swiftly for the Germans to counter ("'''Garden'''"). If it succeeds, they will be able to seize the Ruhr Valley, the industrial heart of Germany, and deal a fatal blow to the Reich's military might in one fell swoop. He claims that this will [[HomeByChristmas end the fighting by Christmas]] (which, [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI based on history]], he ''really'' [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong should've known not to say]], especially after the Germans said similar to ''the same thing'' about their Eastern Front campaign, just before Stalingrad came along). Pressured by civilian leaders to bring a quick end to the war, Eisenhower is forced to agree. Meanwhile, the Germans suspect that an Allied thrust through Holland is imminent and quickly work to replenish their divisions, many of which are at token strength.\\\

Unfortunately, a combination of bad weather, inaccurate intelligence, insuperable logistics and equipment failures (particularly radios) causes the operation to fail despite the best efforts of the troops, particularly those working in intelligence. Cells of the [[LaResistance Dutch Resistance]] managed to pass on reports that two SS Panzer Divisions were being held in reserve near Arnhem (the main target city, without which the operation was useless), [[IgnoredExpert but the Allied High Command distrusted them]]. The Americans are able to take their targets without too much of a problem, except for Nijmegen (which involves a dangerous river crossing), but the advance of XXX Corps slows considerably the further north they drive up the A50 motorway, by which the entire operation hinged upon to deliver the Allies into Germany. Unfortunately, the narrow, deep cutting corridor becomes the perfect environment for German artillery to rain upon the XXX Corps from both sides as they struggle to make headway, leading to the motorway quickly earning the name "[[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace Hell's Highway]]" from those unfortunate enough to travel it. Further complicating matters are that the British are dropped nearly ten miles away from their target area, due to heavy flak defenses in Arnhem, and the Germans overrun their resupply zones and isolate them. To make matters worse, on the evening of September 19th, Germany launches a massive night raid targeting the Netherlands city of Eindhoven, where the American 101st Airborne and portions of XXX Corps have garrisoned. With no anti-aircraft guns defending the city, the Allies could only watch in horror as the German bombers dropped parachute flares, and then hundreds of bombs, pulverizing the city from above and gutting buildings and structures had stood for more than one hundred years. Countless civilians are killed, who only in the days before had been celebrating with their liberators, only to be grimly reminded that their former occupiers yet existed with a vengeance. Along with the lives lost, the Allied supply line is crippled as well, further delaying XXX Corps as they struggle to reach their objective before the Allied-held bridges are overrun. In Arnhem, the British 1st Airborne, despite being critically low on supplies and heavily battered by German forces, manage to organize and take the northern bridgehead, but are forced into brutal house-to-house fighting with elite German forces, their only hope being that the XXX can reach them before they are overrun. Unfortunately, XXX Corps' momentum runs out in the city of Nijmegen--they manage to cross the bridge with the help of the 82nd Airborne, but on the far side they are met with stiff resistance from German tanks and anti-tank guns. After taking severe losses, and with their logistics already stretched to the breaking point up Hell's Highway, the Allies fall back and redraw their battle lines in Nijmegen. The 1st Airborne's relief would not be arriving. '''Operation Market Garden''' ends in failure.\\\

The Allied invasion goes well and by August, Paris is liberated by French and American forces. Soon after, American and French forces land in southern France in an amphibious landing known as Operation '''Dragoon'''. After some minor fighting, over 140,000 German soldiers are outmaneuvered and surrender. However, the invasion goes a little ''too'' well. By the beginning of September, the Allies find themselves advancing on towns they had not expected to reach until the following ''spring''. Allied forces race forward to confront the rapidly retreating Germans, well ahead of their supply lines (which become dangerously long due to a lack of deep water ports and have to be driven all the way from Normandy one truckload at a time). The Germans use this to pull back a sizable amount of their forces. Despite the vast withdrawal, the Allied High Command believes that the ''Wehrmacht'' is a spent force which poses little threat. The advance soon grinds to a halt as the Allies must literally wait for their supplies to catch up to them.\\\

Come June 6, 1944: '''Operation Overlord''' commences. Over northern France, in the wee hours of morning before sunrise, an aerial fleet of 1,200 cargo planes carry out a massive aerial invasion, dropping American and British paratroopers by parachute and glider to secure strategic points and undermine German defenses. As the sun starts to rise, the Germans are greeted to the sight of more than '''5,000''' vessels across the horizon, who proceed to begin ferrying hundreds of thousands of Allied troops ashore, in what would become the largest invasion by sea in modern history. The landing operation is divided among 5 codenamed beaches: The [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks Americans]] land upon "Utah" and "Omaha", the [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships British]] attack "Sword" and "Gold", and finally the [[UsefulNotes/CanucksWithChinooks Canadians]] get "Juno" beach. To say the Germans are caught flat-footed is a massive understatement; an Allied deception campaign made German Command think that they were not going to land anywhere ''near'' Normandy and the fact that the dreary weather had whipped the Channel up to the point that conducting an invasion in the middle of that mess was just downright ''insane,'' yet here the Allies were. To make things even worse, UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel, the general in charge of the Western Front defenses, was away at home celebrating his wife's birthday, and a breakdown in communications made him ''vastly'' underestimate the size of the Allied invasion fleet, to the point that he was convinced that it was simply a diversionary attack before the main invasion would commence elsewhere. By the time he realized it was not an a diversion, it was too late as the defensive forces were in disarray as the Allies continued to pour ashore. Despite their surprise, however, the Germans fought doggedly, and the day quickly turned bloody for both sides. By the end of it, though, the Allies had gained a tenuous toehold, and over the next few days, the hold strengthened until it became a solid foothold. After four years, Fortress Europe's walls in the west are finally toppled. But the fight was far from over, as Allies and Axis began a deadly reenactment of the Great War in the northern French countryside.\\\

Of course, the battle was not without its challenges. Of particular concern to the Allied forces was the existence of "hedgerows" across the Normandy countryside; far from simple decorative hedges, these hedgerows were formed after ''centuries'' of farming and erosion, and essentially consisted of a mass of soil and root systems that were large enough and hardened enough to create natural barriers that even the hardiest of tanks could not cross. This slowed the Allied advance considerably, as the hedgerows forced the Allies to rely on air reconnaissance to move forward, and often put them in environments that made them fodder for enemy ambush. Such was the disarray they caused, that several times Allied and Axis soldiers would be separated by a single hedgerow, and so close they could ''hear each others' conversations.'' The original plan to deal with hedgerows was to use explosives to blow a hole, then bringing in "dozer tanks", essentially [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin tanks with bulldozer blades attached,]] to expand the hole until it was large enough to pass through. This was, however, a time-consuming process, and the conspicuous dozer tanks were often targeted by the Germans in order to deny them a means to pass. Eventually, the Allies came up with "Rhino Tanks," which were regular tanks field-modified with "hedgerow cutters" (which were ironically for the Germans often made from [[HoistByHisOwnPetard cut-up tank obstacles from the Normandy beaches]]), which could slice through the roots and soil of the hedgerows much quicker than the dozer tanks could, were a lot less easy to pick out from other Allied tanks, and could be added to pretty much ''any'' armored vehicle, making them a lot more versatile. With the Rhino tanks making quick work of hedgerows, and using combined-arms tactics to overwhelm more hardened German positions, the Allied forces moved forward, slowly but surely.\\\

In the Ukraine, Stalin and Hitler wrestle with their subordinates for control of military operations. Belarus and the Baltic States are a giant, swampy forest: though not entirely worthless, the area is of little value. But the primary aim of '''Barbarossa''' (albeit in the most roundabout and inefficient way possible) and pre-War Soviet planning had been to take and secure the Ukraine, respectively. With '''Barbarossa''' having ground to a halt on the Dvina–Dnepr rivers in the face of the Soviet Reserve Armies Hitler, Stalin, and their respective General Staffs disagree about how to proceed.\\\

The Ukrainian offensive didn't just fail, it was a ''catastrophe'' rivaled only by Stalin's colossal blunder at Kiev the previous September (Stalin had refused to allow Red Army forces to withdraw from the Kiev salient before the German offensive to cut it off, and only authorized a withdrawal once the forces there had already been encircled). It delayed the German offensive for two days at the most and left the entire front significantly weaker as a result. Although Soviet forces in the Donbass and Don bend lack the strength to counterattack they are ordered to do so anyway, '''Barbarossa'''-style—marking the last time the Red Army tolerates this kind of incompetence. With already-weaker Soviet forces helping wipe themselves out, even the poorly organized Germans are able to advance at a decent pace and secure the inner bend of the Don by the beginning of August—cutting the Soviet Union's supply of coal and iron by a fifth, and potentially resulting in production shortfalls if the region is not retaken within a year. Army Group South is split into Army Group A and Army Group B as they proceed onward, but with the taking of the Donbass the length of their front lines balloons from 500km to 1000km. [[{{Foreshadowing}} Axis troop density on the southernmost part of the Eastern Theater reaches its lowest point in the war so far.]]\\\

This section deals with events in Europe and Africa. In summary:

What follows is a series of {{Curb Stomp Battle}}s on every front. The British push into Libya, culminating in the encirclement of the Italian Tenth Army (about half of the Italian force in North Africa) near the town of Beda Fomm, where they are eventually forced to surrender ''en masse'' despite increasingly desperate and fiercely-fought breakthrough attempts using their new and improved M13/40 tanks… which aren't enough to compensate for the way the Italian army fundamentally lacks the communications equipment and staff they need to actually exploit such breakthroughs (even after the issues of who exactly is in charge and who is supposed to be obeying whom are largely sorted out). After all is said and done, by the end of February 1940 the British have taken most of eastern Libya and captured ''130,000 Italian soldiers'', several hundred vehicles and over a thousand artillery pieces. In doing so they have given the Allies their first major victory of the war and an invaluable morale boost given the litany of defeats they suffered beforehand.\\\

With more and more French airfields becoming available and fewer and fewer ''Luftwaffe'' interceptors around to stop them, it is not long before the burgeoning British and American Air Forces reduce every major industrial town and transport hub in Hitler's Reich to ruins. Even their vaunted new jets prove ineffective as the bomber's Mustang escorts outnumber them 60 to one with ace pilots in them like the Tuskegee Airmen able to shoot those jets down more often than the Germans had feared. Furthermore, the capture of French airfields starts to bring their own airfields within range of Allied tactical airpower and increasingly under the near-constant cover of the dreaded Thunderbolt and Typhoon fighter-bombers that are devastating ''Wehrmacht'' formations in France. With the ''Luftwaffe''[='=]s own bombing campaign rendered more and more ineffective as they lose serviceable airfields, Hitler turns to using the newly-developed ''Vergeltungswaffen'' ("retaliation weapons"), the V-1 "Buzz Bomb" and later the V-2 short-range ballistic missile to try and exact some vengeance upon the British—who, after the devastation of years past, by and large consider this a nuisance [[StiffUpperLip not worth getting worked up about]]. That attitude was aided with the facts that the former threat can be intercepted and the latter's impact was lessened by British intelligence's Doublecross system fooling the Germans into "correcting" the missile trajectories to avoid the cities. Not helping the German's situation is the fact that these weapons are aimed at British civilian targets out of "[[StupidEvil revenge]]", which has virtually no impact on the Allied war potential instead of targeting Allied-controlled ports, airfields or military bases that are actually vital to Allied logistics.\\\

Next comes a weird eight-month pause variously nicknamed the "Phony War", the "''Sitzkrieg''" (Sitting War), the "''Drôle de Guerre''" (Funny War), or the "Bore War" (a pun on the [[UsefulNotes/TheSecondBoerWar Boer War]]), in which the British and French mobilize all their industries and quietly churn out all the armaments they can, mobilising and organising all their reserves for a defence of the Low Countries while they sit behind their NavalBlockade and the UsefulNotes/MaginotLine. Germany does much the same in this period, but unbeknownst to the Allies the blockade strategy is near-totally ineffective—the Allies were right to assume that Germany had been largely unprepared for a war with them, and that the Nazis' strategic-resource stockpiles were very small. However, the Soviet Union is now trading with Germany as per the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and so numerous types of {{Unobtanium}} like molybdenum, tungsten, aluminium, rubber, and petroleum products are freely available to them... albeit at cut-throat prices. A brief spurt of excitement comes when Scandinavia gets involved—the Allies were [[GunboatDiplomacy considering getting involved there]] to stop Sweden supplying Germany with high-quality steel (a trade which was drastically less important than it appeared in the short term, as Germany was also able to get steel from the Soviets), but the Germans see this coming and attack Denmark and Norway to preempt them. This audacious attack in the face of Britain's superior seapower catches the Allies completely flat-footed, and the resulting confusion prevents the Royal Navy from intervening until it's too late, though the brand-new heavy cruiser ''Blücher'' is sunk and the pocket battleship ''Lutzow'' heavily damaged by the Norwegian shore batteries defending Oslo. While an Allied force (originally destined for Finland) manages to take the important Norwegian port of Narvik (through which Swedish iron ore is sent to Germany), they are in no position to hold it and are ordered to withdraw to France for a more important battle. Taking some of the sting from Britain's first major retreat, the initial Royal Navy assault on Narvik managed to sink a third of Germany's modern destroyers—a coup which, along with their other naval losses, will have serious repercussions later.\\\

Next comes a weird eight-month pause variously nicknamed the "Phony War", the "''Sitzkrieg''" (Sitting War), the "''Drôle de Guerre''" (Funny War), or the "Bore War" (a pun on the [[UsefulNotes/TheSecondBoerWar Boer War]]), in which the British and French mobilize all their industries and quietly churn out all the armaments they can, mobilising and organising all their reserves for a defence of the Low Countries while they sit behind their NavalBlockade and the UsefulNotes/MaginotLine. Germany does much the same in this period, but unbeknownst to the Allies the blockade strategy is near-totally ineffective—the Allies were right to assume that Germany had been largely unprepared for a war with them, and that the Nazis' strategic-resource stockpiles were very small. However, the Soviet Union is now trading with Germany as per the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and so numerous types of {{Unobtanium}} like molybdenum, tungsten, aluminium, rubber, and petroleum products are freely available to them... albeit at cut-throat prices. A brief spurt of excitement comes when Scandinavia gets involved—the Allies were [[GunboatDiplomacy considering getting involved there]] to stop Sweden supplying Germany with high-quality steel (a trade which was drastically less important than it appeared in the short term, as Germany was also able to get steel from the Soviets), but the Germans see this coming and attack Denmark and Norway to preempt them. This audacious attack in the face of Britain's superior seapower catches the Allies completely flat-footed, and the resulting confusion prevents the Royal Navy from intervening until it's too late, though the brand-new heavy cruiser ''Blücher'' is sunk and the pocket battleship ''Lutzow'' heavily damaged by the Norwegian shore batteries defending Oslo. While an Allied force (originally destined for Finland) manages to take the important Norwegian port of Narvik (through which Swedish iron ore is sent to Germany), they are in no position to hold it and are ordered to withdraw to France for a more important battle. Taking some of the sting from Britain's first major retreat, the initial Royal Navy assault on Narvik managed to sink a third of Germany's modern destroyers—a coup which, along with their other naval losses, will have serious repercussions later.\\\

When the Germans do declare war on Belgium on May 10, 1940, the Allies are seemingly ready for them. The Allies have a numerical advantage in troops, artillery and tanks, and though the Royal Air Force and ''Armée de l'Air'' have fewer bombers than the Luftwaffe, they have more fighters. Almost all their troops have modern weapons with sufficient ammunition and the training to use them properly—France has had conscription for years, meaning that virtually all of the troops in their army have completed at least a year or two of military training. The ''Wehrmacht'', on the other hand, is largely inexperienced and ill-equipped (though the veterans of the "Condor Legion" have disseminated their experiences from the UsefulNotes/SpanishCivilWar, and the motorised small mobile force has also been bloodied in the invasion of Poland and the battles in Scandinavia even if the infantry are still overwhelmingly 'green'). The Allies' forces also have far more horses, trucks, and mobile/'motorized' troops (infantry units which use trucks to get around).\\\

However, French military 'doctrine' has greater shortcomings than German doctrine does. 'Doctrine' is a shorthand term for the philosophy, 'how-to' guides, and structure militaries use for waging war. French and German doctrine is shaped by their First World War experiences, and neither is perfect. An 'operation' consists of a series of battles fought in pursuit of a strategic goal, the length of which is dictated by what is physically possible in terms of the required production, stockpiles, and throughput of supplies (ammunition, fuel, food, spare parts, and so on). German doctrine has two critical shortcomings regarding planning in that it has no concept of a war which is not over in the space of a single 'campaign' or 'operation', and the physical possibility of enacting the operation (in terms of supply requirements) is never considered in the planning phase. The problem with the planning of operations in French doctrine is even more fundamental: it doesn't recognise the existence of Campaigns/Operations. There is no such thing as a 'completely incompetent' Campaign/Operational-level German planner, as he always has standardised guidelines to thought and action to underwrite his performance. On the other hand, there is no minimum standard of competence for a French Operational planner.\\\

French doctrine's flaws regarding the actual conduct of operations are also greater than the German. French doctrine is based around 'positional warfare': the seizure and defense of landmarks and territory on the battlefield. It emphasises the inexorable and centrally-directed concentration of overwhelming artillery and armoured assets on the battlefield to take territory and repel attacks at minimal cost through the expenditure of large amounts of ammunition. This is a modernised and frankly ''superb'' version of the slow-paced, methodical, low-casualty warfare which France perfected in 1918. German doctrine on the other hand is based upon a complete rejection of 'positional warfare' in favour of pre-WWI German theories of ''Bewegungskrieg'' or 'manoeuvre warfare': the rapid movement and concentration of forces at the operational level. It emphasises the ad-hoc movement of highly independent mobile forces to encircle operational-level groupings of enemy forces to defeat them at minimal cost through cutting them off from resupply. This is a modernised and passably-workable version of the rapid, chaotic, low-casualty warfare which Germany practiced against Romania in 1917.\\\

In other words, the betting man would favour the Germans if they manage to keep the war mobile and the French if they manage to bog it down. If the war bogs down into positional warfare then the German Army will be completely incapable of making any headway against the French Army, or stopping the French from making headway of their own: the French, with their centrally-directed Artillery and Armour, will be tactically unstoppable. But if the Germans can strike a decisive blow while the situation is still relatively fluid and manoeuvre is still possible, then the French will be largely incapable of reacting in time to halt the German Army's movements or making headway of their own: the Germans, with their independently-acting mobile Infantry and Armour, will have surrounded and destroyed a significant portion of the French Army. Interestingly, this debate (Manoeuvre versus Positional Warfare) had already played out and been resolved in the Soviet Union: the victor was ''neither'' school of thought, with Vladimir Triandafilov combining the two into a new school of warfare which he called 'Deep Battle'. As he saw it, a Modern Army needed to be capable of breaking the deadlock of positional warfare ''as a pre-requisite to'' executing sophisticated operational manoeuvres and encirclements to net large hauls of prisoners. [[ForeShadowing But more on that later]].\\\

The French high command under Gamelin decides that this time, the Allies will hold the line in Belgium at a series of major rivers while making good on their industrial-commercial advantage by further building up their forces, before (when the Germans are virtually out of fuel because of the blockade) pushing the Germans back across the border. They haven't, however, ironed out the details. Politicking within the high command (careers and reputations were at stake when the Allies' plans were devised) meant that only one plan (holding the line in Belgium and building up their forces) was fleshed-out in detail. Even so, it's a good idea (despite the whole "blockade not actually working" thing). Germany is the only Great Power not to have a high command[[note]]Hitler dissolved it because he feared its power and wanted to oversee 'all' military operations personally[[/note]], but Germany's top generals and Hitler[[note]]who is still willing to listen to advice at this early stage of the war[[/note]] know all too well their forces' own inadequacies, and that the Allies' advantages will only increase with time. They are also uncomfortably aware of just how untenable their alliance with the Soviets is in the long term.\\\

With all this in mind, Hitler has chosen to launch an offensive against the Allies through Belgium. Germany's small and out-classed force of armored and motorized units will use their superior speed and communications to punch a tiny opening in the Allied front and force their way through to wreak havoc behind Allied lines—and the rest of the German army will follow, on foot, to encircle ''half'' the entire French Army in one fell swoop by attacking where they least expect it! The old guard of Hitler's generals—who saw combat in UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne—believe that this is ''monumentally'' stupid. France's reserves will stop the ''Wehrmacht''[='=]s ''Panzer'' forces dead in their tracks—or worse, lure them into a huge trap and destroy them at their leisure. The only thing stopping the French Army's massive (albeit non-motorized) regular forces from doing much the same would be speed. And no modern army could survive for long with such constricted lines of supply. In effect they say it is a fool's mission, and waste no time telling Hitler and his "new guard."\\\

But, fool's mission though it should have been, it ''[[CrazyEnoughToWork works]]''. This is a result of the way France designed, organized, and deployed her forces in general terms and with specific regards to the plan they are implementing (moving into Belgium to defend it with a few solid lines of defence). The French forces engaged there have held far too few units back as a strategic reserve, which would be fine if they were facing an enemy offensive on a (relatively) broad front—but not one so insanely narrow and concentrated. The organization of France's military also does not help—France has more tanks than Germany, but very few dedicated tank units. Instead, France's large number of well-armored tanks are dispersed throughout their regular infantry divisions and [[MightyGlacier move at speeds to match]], all part of their strategy of defending and advancing on broad fronts. Most of the ''Armée de l'Air''[='=]s planes are either obsolete or unserviceable, meaning they are outnumbered and outclassed by the ''Luftwaffe'' despite their numerical superiority on paper. The French armed forces also have too little communications equipment; most of the stuff they ''do'' have is of poor quality and has too few operators to match—meaning that it takes French officers longer than their German counterparts to receive, pass on, and implement new information and new orders.[[note]]This is at least partly because the Ministry of Defence hadn't seen the need for spending large sums on things like radios and switchboard operators, when machine guns and riflemen were considered more important (and were easier to justify to a government keen to cut defence expenditure in the middle of TheGreatDepression)[[/note]]. But perhaps more importantly, the French don't have a plan to counter the German one and have a very hard time improvising a solution. A fatal combination of flawed military doctrine and politicking has led to a critical failure of operational planning. The failure to devise contingency plans for the overall "Battle of France" and French doctrine's low emphasis on lower-level initiative and ad-hoc measures means that it's very difficult for the French Army to respond on-the-fly. Essentially, [[FragileSpeedster German improvisation and movement]] has outwitted [[MightyGlacier France's ponderous brawn]].\\\

What happens is that, as planned, ''all'' of Germany's mobile forces lead a rush through the Ardennes Forest (the French thought it impossible to get ''that many'' tanks through and adequately-supplied over such poor terrain with such little trace, and it ''was'' admittedly difficult) and make a mad, frenzied dash to the English Channel before the French reserves or regular forces can catch up with them in detail, with as many battle-ready regular troops as Germany can spare following in their wake. France's commanders are too slow to react, and a 'very' large portion of the French Army (plus the Belgian Army and British Expeditionary Force) is cut off in Belgium with few supplies (the idea had been that they would move up to establish a forward perimeter first, and their supplies would follow). Hitler orders his Panzers to stop short of totally destroying the BEF, believing he can cut a deal with Britain, allowing the Royal Navy to evacuate the BEF (the "miracle of Dunkerque", though [[SmallReferencePools Dunkirk was just one of the many evacuations that happened at the time]]) and a sizeable number of French troops as well, albeit with the loss of most of their weapons and all of their vehicles. So the BEF lives to fight another day and France gains the nucleus of a "Free French" army in exile. However, as Churchill himself puts it, "Wars are not won by evacuations." The Allies have still suffered a catastrophic defeat.\\\

The triumphant German army then turns north and crushes—or forces the surrender—of what pockets remain of the entrapped French Army. In seemingly no time at all, they've solved their supply problems by linking up their forces and continue to overrun what badly-outnumbered and increasingly isolated French forces remain to the south. [[CurbStompCushion The whole campaign only takes about six weeks, but the Germans take heavy casualties in the process]]—much as you'd expect, given their less well-equipped and numerous, but much better coordinated and applied forces. As France collapses, UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini decides to imitate his buddy Hitler and attack France too. The Italian army does ''badly'' despite ''greatly'' outnumbering the French, [[UnwantedAssistance a sign of things to come for Germany's worse-than-useless ally.]] Nevertheless, after the dust settles, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France have all fallen to the Axis Powers. Hitler makes a point of it to sign France's surrender in the same railway car and in the same forest where Germany signed the armistice at the end of World War I (and even makes the same gesture of leaving during the negotiations as Marshal Foch had done). Celebrations break out across Germany and the population is driven into a euphoric war fever.\\\

The fall of France can be better understood if one notes the near-total collapse of French morale that came with the encirclement and then destruction of the Belgian pocket; with this one stunning strategic victory French defeat was certain, and her soldiers knew this all too well. Whereas Germany's forces were on a morale-high after the conquest of Poland—backed up by a culture of gung-ho militaristic Revanchism that had characterized pre-WWI French culture—France's post-WWI culture was marked by its rejection of all that in favour of a kind of cynical (if not fatalistic) pacifism. Thus, when it was clear that France had lost, many of her soldiers (wisely) legged it rather than die pointlessly—and her leadership looked for a way to end the war on the least harsh terms possible under the circumstances, i.e. as quickly as possible while the Germans' terms were still kinda acceptable[[note]]They were still really, really harsh terms but they were better than the 'or else'[[/note]]. As this happens, the German U-boat flotillas begin relocating to the ports on France's western coastline, giving them a clear and open window into the North Atlantic.

Finally, on the 22nd of June 1941—exactly one year after the fall of France—Hitler launches Operation '''Barbarossa'''. The day before, the German Army sends its secret codewords to confirm its immienent commencement, and at 3:15 in the morning, German artillery begins firing at Red Army positions along the entirety of the new Eastern Front. It is the largest offensive in the history of warfare, one so massive that ''three'' dedicated headquarters are needed to coordinate it. All three HQ manage an army group of more than a million men each (including logistics personnel) for a total of about 2.7 million combat troops (of whom half are "first-rate"/can be used for offensive actions and the rest only "second-rate"/only useful for defensive actions and policing stuff), 624k horses, c.500k troop-transport and scout vehicles, 120k supply trucks, 3k tanks, and 3k airplanes. This force constitutes about 3/4 of the German Army, 19/20ths of the German Army's mobile forces, and half the German Air Force. In this initial period of the war the Germans make up the majoriy of this force while being supplemented by the Romanian and Finnish armies on the southern and northern flanks respectively[[note]] Although in 1942 so many Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, Croats and Finns integrate into their ranks (chiefly in the rear areas where they're just fighting partisans, "fighting" partisans, and fighting "partisans") that the force is as little as 2/3 German[[/note]]. In the westernmost districts of the Soviet Union the Red Army has three HQ and about 2 million combat troops (all of them 'first-rate' on a good day), as many as 5k working tanks (depending on how many make it out of the repair shop on any given day), and up to 5k working aeroplanes. Together these forces about 1/3 of the Red Army, 1/4 of the Red Army's mobile forces, and 1/3 of the Red Army Air Force. On the 22nd of June the front stretches from the lower Baltic, across the Polish plains and Carpathian mountains to the Black Sea and is 1000km long—lengthening rapidly as the Germans make their way out of 'the Eurasian funnel'.\\\

In the meantime, the Western Allies have amassed sufficient supplies to finally break out of their beachhead in Normandy. Increasingly-frequent Allied bombing raids like the one described in ''Literature/SlaughterhouseFive'' put a real dampener on the German war effort, causing massive damage and disruption to German industry and infrastructure in civilian-casualty-heavy attacks which grow steadily more intense, culminating in the (in)famous fire bombing of Dresden (an important military target) in February 1945, a joint USAAF and RAF raid led by the latter and seen by the head of Bomber Command, Arthur "Bomber" Harris, as revenge for the Blitz, most particularly the destruction of Coventry (a similarly beautiful city). "They have sown the wind," he said. "Now they are going to reap the whirlwind."[[note]]This was not specifically about Dresden. It was part of a statement he made in 1942 about the commencement of the strategic bombing campaign against Germany. However, the statement remained relevant amid protests about Dresden's burning; at this point, Germany had made it increasingly clear they held no reservations about attacking purely civilian targets, such as residential London and Coventry, as mentioned above. This was compounded by the reported atrocities of Nazi SS regiments against civilians, and it was made clear that Hitler intended to wage "Total War" against the Allies, be they civilian or military. The "whirlwind" that the Nazis had to reap now was the Allies waging "Total War" back at them. [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement Whether this is a good or bad thing is not something to be debated here,]] but what is certain is that Dresden marked a point in which the [[WarIsHell brutality of war]] became apparent on the Western Front of Europe[[/note]] The city was almost completely pulverized, with an estimated 25,000 civilians being consumed by the firestorms caused by liberal use of incendiary bombs.\\\

Finally, on the 22nd of June 1941—exactly one year after the fall of France—Hitler launches Operation '''Barbarossa'''. It is the largest offensive in the history of warfare, one so massive that ''three'' dedicated headquarters are needed to coordinate it. All three HQ manage an army group of more than a million men each (including logistics personnel) for a total of about 2.7 million combat troops (of whom half are "first-rate"/can be used for offensive actions and the rest only "second-rate"/only useful for defensive actions and policing stuff), 624k horses, c.500k troop-transport and scout vehicles, 120k supply trucks, 3k tanks, and 3k airplanes. This force constitutes about 3/4 of the German Army, 19/20ths of the German Army's mobile forces, and half the German Air Force. In this initial period of the war the Germans make up the majoriy of this force while being supplemented by the Romanian and Finnish armies on the southern and northern flanks respectively[[note]] Although in 1942 so many Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, Croats and Finns integrate into their ranks (chiefly in the rear areas where they're just fighting partisans, "fighting" partisans, and fighting "partisans") that the force is as little as 2/3 German[[/note]]. In the westernmost districts of the Soviet Union the Red Army has three HQ and about 2 million combat troops (all of them 'first-rate' on a good day), as many as 5k working tanks (depending on how many make it out of the repair shop on any given day), and up to 5k working aeroplanes. Together these forces about 1/3 of the Red Army, 1/4 of the Red Army's mobile forces, and 1/3 of the Red Army Air Force. On the 22nd of June the front stretches from the lower Baltic, across the Polish plains and Carpathian mountains to the Black Sea and is 1000km long—lengthening rapidly as the Germans make their way out of 'the Eurasian funnel'.\\\

Finally, on the 22nd of June 1941—exactly one year after the fall of France—Hitler launches Operation '''Barbarossa'''. It is the largest offensive in the history of warfare, one so massive that ''three'' dedicated headquarters are needed to coordinate it. All three HQ manage an army group of more than a million men each (including logistics personnel) for a total of about 2.7 million combat troops (of whom half are "first-rate"/can be used for offensive actions and the rest only "second-rate"/only useful for defensive actions and policing stuff), 624k horses, c.500k troop-transport and scout vehicles, 120k supply trucks, 3k tanks, and 3k airplanes. This force constitutes about 3/4 of the German Army, 19/20ths of the German Army's mobile forces, and half the German Air Force. In this initial period of the war the Germans make up the majoriy of this force while being supplemented by the Romanian and Finnish armies on the southern and northn flanks respectively[[note]] Although in 1942 so many Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, Croats and Finns integrate into their ranks (chiefly in the rear areas where they're just fighting partisans, "fighting" partisans, and fighting "partisans") that the force is as little as 2/3 German[[/note]]. In the westernmost districts of the Soviet Union the Red Army has three HQ and about 2 million combat troops (all of them 'first-rate' on a good day), as many as 5k working tanks (depending on how many make it out of the repair shop on any given day), and up to 5k working aeroplanes. Together these forces about 1/3 of the Red Army, 1/4 of the Red Army's mobile forces, and 1/3 of the Red Army Air Force. On the 22nd of June the front stretches from the lower Baltic, across the Polish plains and Carpathian mountains to the Black Sea and is 1000km long—lengthening rapidly as the Germans make their way out of 'the Eurasian funnel'.\\\

[[YouShouldKnowThisAlready Every year northern Europe experiences a period of cold, typically sub-zero temperatures which are known in English as "winter".]] [[RunningGag Advancing and keeping forces supplied through this period was traditionally considered impossible, or at the very least bloody difficult.]] In the area of Smolensk–Moscow, winter usually arrives by late October, but in 1941 it arrived in early December and by its absence allowed the advances made in the second phase of Unternehmen '''Taifun'''. Contrary to later German accounts, the temperatures encountered were average for the region and were in fact well-known to German forces, which had experienced them in the Smolensk–Moscow area firsthand during the Great War. Despite this there had been a hitherto-ignored emphasis on maximum throughput of supply at the expense of maintaining the supply services actually needed to ensure said maximum throughput. Moreover, throughout the entire '''Barbarossa''' and '''Taifun''' campaigns, lubricant and spare parts—needed for the routine maintenance of weapons and vehicles—had been totally neglected even for the combat services, resulting in guns and vehicles that were otherwise perfectly serviceable having to be abandoned. But most egregiously of all, long after the army had procured sufficient winter uniforms [[note]] The initial number in storage on 22/6/1941, intended for the occupation force remaining behind in the European USSR, had been just 200k [[/note]] and antifreeze for its weapons and vehicles, all those winter supplies were left in depots in Poland. As casualties from frostbite and hypothermia mounted, fuel lines froze solid in German trucks and tanks, the hydraulic shock-absorbers in German artillery pieces froze and broke the guns, moving parts jammed in German small-arms, and the water pipes in the trains' steam engines froze and burst (rendering them inoperable) they finally realized they had to do ''something''… but it was already too late. On 6 December 1941, the Soviet Winter Counteroffensive began.\\\

[[YouShouldKnowThisAlready Of course, in 1939]] [[EnemyMine the Germans and Soviets had entered into the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]], in which they agreed they would not fight each other, would continue trading with each other in the event of a war with the Allies, and would divide up Eastern Europe between them. More specifically, they agreed that Finland down to Eastern Poland would constitute a new "Soviet Sphere" and Prussia/West Poland would be the new "German Sphere". [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Germany also licensed the Soviets to produce a model of the BMW motorcycle.]][[note]] Which they still make to this day, interestingly enough, sold internationally under the "Ural" brand name[[/note]]\\\

The absolute capper to Germany's shitty summer is Finland's unilateral signing of a peace treaty with the Soviet Union on the 19th of September. It had been a long time coming. The day after the German Sixth Army surrendered (for the first time, of three) at Stalingrad on the 2nd of March 1943, Field Marshal Mannerheim met with the Finnish Cabinet. They unanimously agreed that Germany was screwed and they had to find a way to avoid being dragged down with them. In 1943 the PM promised Hitler that he would never break solidarity with Germany and sign a separate peace, while Finland bade its time and quietly sent out peace feelers. After the destruction of Army Groups Center (June), North Ukraine (July), North and South (August), the Finnish PM resigned in favor of Mannerheim, who began formal peace negotiations shortly thereafter. The resulting treaty conceded Finnish independence in return for the removal of German forces still attempting to hold on to the northern half of the country, and islands in the Gulf of Finland. Much like Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria, the Finns would spend the rest of the war fighting their former brothers-in-arms as the Germans withdrew from the entire area encompassing northern Finland and far northern Norway. The move was a huge blow to German prestige, as it left Germany without a single voluntary ally bar Japan.\\\

When news of the unfolding disasters in Belarus and then western Ukraine reach Army Group South, they are not at all surprised at being forced to give up their Panzer divisions (with about 400 working tanks) in an attempt to salvage the situation. Nor are they surprised when the Soviets attack them the next month, nor when the Soviets again take advantage of the Romanians' inferiority in artillery strength and doctrine to punch through the Romanian-defended sections of the front lines, nor when the Romanians' lone tank division (100 tanks on a good day) is not enough to stop the Soviet Tank Army (600 tanks on a good day) which is used to exploit the gap created. What they ''are'' surprised and more than a little annoyed by is the coup which takes place in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. Even the German forces ''not'' already trapped in pockets are suddenly taken into custody by their former allies as the country switches sides and signs an alliance with the Soviet Union—the beginnings of what will later become the Warsaw Pact. Germany has not just lost the bulk of her oil supply, but Army Group South and a great deal of international prestige. This is quickly followed up with the defection of Bulgaria to the Allied side, causing German forces to evacuate the country, as well as their forces on the Greek mainland to prevent them from being cut off.\\\

When news of the unfolding disasters in Belarus and then western Ukraine reach Army Group South, they are not at all surprised at being forced to give up their Panzer divisions (with about 400 working tanks) in an attempt to salvage the situation. Nor are they surprised when the Soviets attack them the next month, nor when the Soviets again take advantage of the Romanians' inferiority in artillery strength and doctrine to punch through the Romanian-defended sections of the front lines, nor when the Romanians' lone tank division (100 tanks on a good day) is not enough to stop the Soviet Tank Army (600 tanks on a good day) which is used to exploit the gap created. What they ''are'' surprised and more than a little annoyed by is the coup which takes place in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. Even the German forces ''not'' already trapped in pockets are suddenly taken into custody by their former allies as the country switches sides and signs an alliance with the Soviet Union—the beginnings of what will later become the Warsaw Pact. Germany has not just lost the bulk of her oil supply, but Army Group South and a great deal of international prestige.\\\

The absolute capper to Germany's shitty summer is Finland's unilateral signing of a peace treaty with the Soviet Union on the 19th of September. It had been a long time coming. The day after the German Sixth Army surrendered (for the first time, of three) at Stalingrad on the 2nd of March 1943, Field Marshal Mannerheim met with the Finnish Cabinet. They unanimously agreed that Germany was screwed and they had to find a way to avoid being dragged down with them. In 1943 the PM promised Hitler that he would never break solidarity with Germany and sign a separate peace, while Finland bade its time and quietly sent out peace feelers. After the destruction of Army Groups Center (June), North Ukraine (July), North and South (August), the Finnish PM resigned in favor of Mannerheim, who began formal peace negotiations shortly thereafter. The resulting treaty conceded Finnish independence in return for the removal of German forces still attempting to hold on to the northern half of the country, and islands in the Gulf of Finland. Much like Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria, the Finns would spend the rest of the war fighting their former brothers-in-arms. The move was a huge blow to German prestige, as it left Germany without a single voluntary ally bar Japan.\\\

* On 6 June 1944, the Allies implement Operation '''Overlord''' and successfully establish a beachhead at Normandy, northern France. As Germany scrambles to keep them contained, on 22 June General Rokossovskiy's forces catch the Germans off-guard by launching a double-envelopment offensive into Belarus and not Poland [[note]] A cunning ruse by Rokossovskiy, who was renowned for juggling his forces about and thereby always catching his opponents off-guard when he struck. It was enacted against one of the men most likely to swallow it, Front commander Erich von Manstein. Manstein, in the way of extremely intelligent people who have trouble grasping the fact that there are others just as intelligent as them (if not more so), seems to have been enticed by the opportunity to outwit the Soviets once more and unleash a devastating southward counteroffensive thrust of his own using mobile forces concealed in southern Belarus [[/note]]- operation '''Bagration'''. Sealing up half of Army Group Center's forces in a pocket east of Minsk, they then barge aside the rest and an eclectic mix of German reinforcements on their way south and west to northern Poland and the Baltic States. The Germans divert forces from eastern Poland to slow them down, whereupon the Soviets execute the second phase of '''Bagration'''—from Ukraine into Poland. The sites of former extermination camps destroyed by the retreating Germans, including Treblinka, fall into Soviet hands. Soviet-backed Communist Republic of Poland is established in city of Lwow, and in response British-backed Polish Government-in-Exile orders Polish '[[LaResistance Home Army]]' to rise up and liberate Poland before Soviet and Communist Polish forces arrive in the hopes of establishing anti-Communist Polish regime. Home Army forcibly incorporated into Army of Communist Poland, with Soviet help, or crushed by German forces. Warsaw Uprising falls to mix of Foreign-SS, Green Police, Luftwaffe, and Army units after two months of urban warfare. With German counterattacks in Prussia and Poland stabilising the front at Germany's pre-war borders and along the Vistula, the Soviets launch the '''Iassy–Kishinev''' offensive into Romania that September [[note]] Encircling Army Group South's Sixth Army (of Stalingrad fame) for the second time (this time with only 100,000 men) [[/note]]. When Romania switches sides, Bulgaria and Finland follow suit, and the Soviets are poised to invade Hungary by the time the Rasputitsa arrives. Half of Germany's entire 22-June stock of combat troops has been killed or captured [[note]]c.290,000-540,000 German, including 158,480 German prisoners from ''Armeegruppe Mittel'' alone, and 180,000 Soviet irrecoverable losses[[/note]] and their replacements are woefully inexperienced. Army Group North is cut off in the Baltic states by a daring offensive into East Prussia. Allied troops have captured 50,000 German troops in the Falaize Pocket and broken out of Normandy; facing forces more than three times the size of her own[[note]]A full quarter of these troops are from states other than the USSR (USA, UK, Canada, etc), as are a third of the armored vehicles and half the planes[[/note]], Germany's defeat is imminent. The Soviets and Allies take Romania and France and get bogged down in Hungary and the Low Countries[[note]]Operation '''Market'''–'''Garden''', which was to make extensive use of paratroopers to seize key bridges in the Netherlands and so make possible a rapid advance on to the North German plain, fails due to a combination of hasty planning and effective German counterintelligence[[/note]] respectively. As the Red Army's Hungarian Offensive against German Army Group South grinds on into its second month, a German force of about the same size (c.300,000 men) launches a counteroffensive—codenamed Operation '''Wacht am Rhein'''[[note]] "Watch on the Rhein"[[/note]]—against the Western Allies (primarily Americans) in Belgium on 16 December in what will become known as the Battle of the Bulge. Despite limited initial success, it's soon bogged down and is cancelled on the 25th of December, the forces involved being ordered to withdraw as the Red Army completes its encirclement of Budapest by the 26th of December[[note]]trapping 188,000 German troops in the city. [[RunningGag This includes the entirety of the Sixth Army.]] ''[[NeverHeardThatOneBefore Again]].'' [[/note]]. Hitler orders that the siege be relieved by ''Panzer'' forces withdrawn from the French and Polish fronts, but Operation '''Konrad''' grinds to a halt south of the city before the Red Army counterattack goes on to encircle them. Only food and fuel shortages—unlike Hitler, ''''Stavka'''' considers the Hungarian front to be of secondary importance—prevent the Red Army spearheads from entering Austria immediately. German irrecoverable c.500k OKH/Ostfront c.100k OKW/other, Hungarian+Romanian c.200k, Soviet c.1 million, Western Allies c.200k

Finally, on the 22nd of June 1941—exactly one year after the fall of France—Hitler launches Operation '''Barbarossa'''. It is the largest offensive in the history of warfare, one so massive that ''three'' dedicated headquarters are needed to coordinate it. All three HQ manage an army group of more than a million men each (including logistics personnel) for a total of about 2.7 million combat troops (of whom half are "first-rate"/can be used for offensive actions and the rest only "second-rate"/only useful for defensive actions and policing stuff), 624k horses, c.500k troop-transport and scout vehicles, 120k supply trucks, 3k tanks, and 3k airplanes. This force constitutes about 3/4 of the German Army, 19/20ths of the German Army's mobile forces, and half the German Air Force. In this initial period of the war only Germans make up this force[[note]] Although in 1942 so many Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, Croats and Finns integrate into their ranks (chiefly in the rear areas where they're just fighting partisans, "fighting" partisans, and fighting "partisans") that the force is as little as 2/3 German[[/note]]. In the westernmost districts of the Soviet Union the Red Army has three HQ and about 2 million combat troops (all of them 'first-rate' on a good day), as many as 5k working tanks (depending on how many make it out of the repair shop on any given day), and up to 5k working aeroplanes. Together these forces about 1/3 of the Red Army, 1/4 of the Red Army's mobile forces, and 1/3 of the Red Army Air Force. On the 22nd of June the front stretches from the lower Baltic, across the Polish plains and Carpathian mountains to the Black Sea and is 1000km long—lengthening rapidly as the Germans make their way out of 'the Eurasian funnel'.\\\

* On 6 June 1944, the Allies implement Operation '''Overlord''' and successfully establish a beachhead at Normandy, northern France. As Germany scrambles to keep them contained, on 22 June General Rokossovskiy's forces catch the Germans off-guard by launching a double-envelopment offensive into Belarus and not Poland [[note]] A cunning ruse by Rokossovskiy, who was renowned for juggling his forces about and thereby always catching his opponents off-guard when he struck. It was enacted against one of the men most likely to swallow it, Front commander Erich von Manstein. Manstein, in the way of extremely intelligent people who have trouble grasping the fact that there are others just as intelligent as them (if not more so), seems to have been enticed by the opportunity to outwit the Soviets once more and unleash a devastating southward counteroffensive thrust of his own using mobile forces concealed in southern Belarus [[/note]]- operation '''Bagration'''. Sealing up half of Army Group Center's forces in a pocket east of Minsk, they then barge aside the rest and an eclectic mix of German reinforcements on their way south and west to northern Poland and the Baltic States. The Germans divert forces from eastern Poland to slow them down, whereupon the Soviets execute the second phase of '''Bagration'''—from Ukraine into Poland. The sites of former extermination camps destroyed by the retreating Germans, including Treblinka, fall into Soviet hands. Soviet-backed Communist Republic of Poland is established in city of Lwow, and in response British-backed Polish Government-in-Exile orders Polish '[[LaResistance Home Army]]' to rise up and liberate Poland before Soviet and Communist Polish forces arrive in the hopes of establishing anti-Communist Polish regime. Home Army forcibly incorporated into Army of Communist Poland, with Soviet help, or crushed by German forces. Warsaw Uprising falls to mix of Foreign-SS, Green Police, Luftwaffe, and Army units after two months of urban warfare. With German counterattacks in Prussia and Poland stabilising the front at Germany's pre-war borders and along the Vistula, the Soviets launch the '''Iassy–Kishinev''' offensive into Romania that September [[note]] Encircling Army Group South's Sixth Army (of Stalingrad fame) for the second time (this time with only 100,000 men) [[/note]]. When Romania switches sides Bulgaria follows suit and the Soviets are poised to invade Hungary by the time the Rasputitsa arrives. Half of Germany's entire 22-June stock of combat troops has been killed or captured [[note]]c.290,000-540,000 German, including 158,480 German prisoners from ''Armeegruppe Mittel'' alone, and 180,000 Soviet irrecoverable losses[[/note]] and their replacements are woefully inexperienced. Army Group North is cut off in the Baltic states by a daring offensive into East Prussia. Allied troops have captured 50,000 German troops in the Falaize Pocket and broken out of Normandy; facing forces more than three times the size of her own[[note]]A full quarter of these troops are from states other than the USSR (USA, UK, Canada, etc), as are a third of the armored vehicles and half the planes[[/note]], Germany's defeat is imminent. The Soviets and Allies take Romania and France and get bogged down in Hungary and the Low Countries[[note]]Operation '''Market'''–'''Garden''', which was to make extensive use of paratroopers to seize key bridges in the Netherlands and so make possible a rapid advance on to the North German plain, fails due to a combination of hasty planning and effective German counterintelligence[[/note]] respectively. As the Red Army's Hungarian Offensive against German Army Group South grinds on into its second month, a German force of about the same size (c.300,000 men) launches a counteroffensive—codenamed Operation '''Wacht am Rhein'''[[note]] "Watch on the Rhein"[[/note]]—against the Western Allies (primarily Americans) in Belgium on 16 December in what will become known as the Battle of the Bulge. Despite limited initial success, it's soon bogged down and is cancelled on the 25th of December, the forces involved being ordered to withdraw as the Red Army completes its encirclement of Budapest by the 26th of December[[note]]trapping 188,000 German troops in the city. [[RunningGag This includes the entirety of the Sixth Army.]] ''[[NeverHeardThatOneBefore Again]].'' [[/note]]. Hitler orders that the siege be relieved by ''Panzer'' forces withdrawn from the French and Polish fronts, but Operation '''Konrad''' grinds to a halt south of the city before the Red Army counterattack goes on to encircle them. Only food and fuel shortages—unlike Hitler, ''''Stavka'''' considers the Hungarian front to be of secondary importance—prevent the Red Army spearheads from entering Austria immediately. German irrecoverable c.500k OKH/Ostfront c.100k OKW/other, Hungarian+Romanian c.200k, Soviet c.1 million, Western Allies c.200k

By early 1945, the war in Europe has entered its endgame and the Third Reich takes its last, shuddering gasp. In March, the Americans, to their ''own'' surprise, manage to capture the intact Ludendorff Bridge in the German city of Remagen,[[labelnote:*]]The bridge collapsed due to battle damage ten days later, but by that time, Allied engineers had managed to set up a more stable pontoon bridge, keeping the vital first bridgehead into Germany open[[/labelnote]] allowing for the Allies to cross the Rhine, the last line of defense in the West for Germany. In April, the last major German army on the Western Front has surrendered to the Americans and British after being outmaneuvered, and the Ruhr—the primary steelmaking and manufacturing center of the country—is captured. '''317,000''' German troops are captured, along with 24 seasoned generals, leading to a complete collapse of defenses on the Western front and reducing resistance to isolated pockets which are either dead-set on holding out to the last, or simply waiting for someone to surrender to. Meanwhile the Soviets have finished securing their flanks in Prussia and Silesia, with Koniev's forces being ''extremely'' careful to minimize damage to the German industries which have been moved there from the Ruhr to protect them from Air Attack. Many of these industrial enterprises are dismantled wholesale and reassembled in Ukraine, where they only partially replace the industries destroyed by Erich von Manstein in the long German retreat (of 1943-4) from the region.\\\

Alternatively, Montgomery proposes a daring two-part plan called Operation '''Market Garden''', which envisions a massive paratrooper deployment (consisting of the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the British 1st Airborne) in Holland to seize nine vital bridges ("'''Market'''"), creating a secured corridor by which the British XXX Corps, an armoured formation, would ride straight across the Rhine and punch into Germany too swiftly for the Germans to counter ("'''Garden'''"). If it succeeds, they will be able to seize the Ruhr Valley, the industrial heart of Germany, and deal a fatal blow to the Reich's military might in one fell swoop. He claims that this will [[HomeByChristmas end the fighting by Christmas]] (which, [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI based on history]], he ''really'' [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong should've known not to say]], especially after the Germans said similar to ''the same thing'' about their Eastern Front campaign, just before Stalingrad came along). Pressured by civilian leaders to bring a quick end to the war, Eisenhower is forced to agree. Meanwhile, the Germans suspect that an Allied thrust through Holland is imminent and quickly work to replenish their divisions, many of which are at token strength.\\\

The neutrality line had to be preserved. The Altmark incident was debated in Norway because ''both'' the British ''and'' the Germans had violated Norwegian neutrality (underscoring the point that the British authorities had declined to alert the Norwegian coastal guard, and the Norwegians likewise had not contacted the British on the identity of the [=POWs=]). The local fascists, however. had already begun their moves. Thus, [[TropeNamer Vidkun Quisling]] had already made a trip to Germany, assuring Hitler that Norway would cooperate if necessary. He was, of course, at odds with his own government over this. Great Britain was also wary that Norway might fall under German influence, because of the iron shippings from Narvik. This argument was used UpToEleven by [[TheQuisling Norwegian]] [[LesCollaborateurs collaborators]] later on. During the crucial end of March and beginning of April, Britain and France mined parts of the Norwegian coastline, stirring a debate in the Norwegian parliament on what exactly the British were up to.\\\

To his credit, Stalin was able to recognize that maybe Tukhachevskiy had actually had a point. In fact, Stalin thought that Tukhachevskiy had had so much of a point he ordered the immediate re-constitution of all the Red Army's big mobile units… but bigger. [[UpToEleven Much, much bigger.]] Instead of just putting the pre-purge big mobile units back together again a whole bunch of new large units would be created. In this way, the entire mobile element of the Red Army would be more than quadrupled in size by 1945! In the meantime, each and every one of those units would only have a tiny fraction of the men, equipment, and weaponry that it should when it was finally reinforced to full-strength. [[TemptingFate But just so long as they weren't actually required to do any fighting between 1940 and 1943, everything would be fine!]]\\\

The Allies follow up on their victory in North Africa by landing in Italy after feeding the Germans false information that the real thrust of the invasion will be through Greece/Yugoslavia and into the Balkans[[note]]The most famous part of the deception being the British Operation '''Mincemeat''', wherein a corpse was floated ashore in neutral but Axis-friendly Spain with convincing fake invasion plans in his pockets[[/note]]. The Germans swallow the lie, diverting a significant force from Italy to Yugoslavia. The invasion of Sicily sees the start of joint British and American operations, which will become very important the following year, along with the combat debut of the "All-American" 82nd Airborne Division. With the Allies at the gates of Rome, the Italian government votes Mussolini out of power and signs a peace treaty with the Allies. In reality, this move has been coming for a long time now—ever since Mussolini declared war on France, in fact.\\\