Dace Blanc- A French AAR
I have been wanted to do an AAR for awhile now but couldn't decide on a game or country. I finally have chosen HOI3 and France! I will do a journal style AAR. My first post is just back story to set everything up. I made up my own general to command the French army and that will help justify the modernization of the army. I will be playing on medium difficulty. I hope you enjoy!
France went through some rough times in the early 1930s. The Great Depression continued to crippled the French economy. Thousands were still without work. Strikes became more and more prevalent throughout France. The people were demanding the government to do something. Fascist and Communist groups promised to fixed the economy and started to become popular enough to have a chance in elections. Many people became scared of a revolution. The French government continued to do little to help its people.
Later in the decade, scandals rocked the government. The first was in 1934. The Paris-Soir reported that several of the president’s minister were planning to have members of the communist party murdered. They of course denied it but there was too much evidence. In order to try and appease the French people, the President, Albert Lebrun fired the ministers. A few months later Albert was intoxicated while taking an evening walk in Paris with some other officials in government. There was a group of laid off factory workers standing around a fire nearby that noticed the President. They started shouting many nasty slurs at him. The President laughed and the group made fun of the factory workers. The factory workers became enraged and started to charge the President. The President’s bodyguards quickly came and beat the factory workers. The next day’s headlines weren’t pretty. The people called for his resignation. The President refused but promised to make it up to the people. He said he planned to introduce large tax cuts across the board and introduce an unemployment system to help relieve the French people. He still hadn’t introduced any of that by the end of 1935. People were becoming restless and then disaster struck. November 15, 1935, the press unveiled a mass embezzling scheme ran by many top officials in government. It included people from many different parties. Albert acted fast. He fired everyone he could and the ones he couldn’t he forced to resign. He managed to find replacements rather quickly for all the positions but Chief of Army. He was in no rush for that. The Soviet Union was building a large military and he needed to appoint someone
capable to lead France to victory in an eventual war. Albert was strongly anti-communist. France and Great Britain at the time were letting Germany rearm a little so incase of any Soviet aggression they could have a buffer to help fight the communists. Albert canceled the rest of the Maginot Line because he planned on just sending troops into Germany to fight the Soviets. Besides, worst case scenario, Belgium would be an excellence defensive position.
December 31, 1935, Albert and several other members of government were attending a New Year’s party. After a few drinks Alberts started to talk a little too much. He got into conversation with Barque Ferdinand, a prominent journalist. Barque started to ask Albert about the last open position he has yet to fill. After a few minutes Albert started to joking throw out names and a few other officials noticed. Soon there was a small group all jokingly throwing out names of rather unknown major generals. Dace Blanc’s name was thrown out there and it caught Albert’s attention. He stopped everyone and claimed Dace was his man! He had the most backwards military ideas of everyone else. He was the worst candidate so why not choose him? The others agreed. The journalist laughed and jokingly said he already has the biggest news for the new year. The next day it was published. Albert was shocked. He had to play it cool though because if the public found out what really happened it would be the end of his career. He held an emergency meeting with his closest political allies. They were freaking out over what happened. How could such a no name be appointed to such an important position? He told them the story. They were shocked but agreed to go along with it. Danc came from a middle class family. He joined the military when he turned 18 to be able to help support his family. His family struggled due to be off in the late 1920s. Dace fought in several minor skirmishes in colonial territory. That is where he learned the usefulness of armor units. He developed a strategy in his head on how to fight a war with many armor units and aircraft to support him. He managed to climb up all the way to Major general. He commanded one of the few motorized divisions in the French army until he got promoted to Chief of Army. The men he commanded loved him for his ideas on how to conduct warfare. His strategy greatly cut down on the cost of men by encircling the enemy. His ideas were unproven on a large scaled though. Albert hoped that he could simply use Dace as a puppet and just hope he quits. Albert couldn’t afford another failure. France was already on the edge.
. Never gotten it to work in Hoi3 though lol. Best of luck! 
