Chapter 13: Stretch (April - July 1941)
By late April, the front line in Central Europe had mostly stabilized after the chaos of the German surrender. Despite making huge gains over the last two weeks, the Allied advance halted after their armies got caught up trying to encircle as many enemy divisions as possible, while the remaining Euro forces rallied to man the front line. In order to do so, many Italian forces were pulled from the fronts of Al-Turkis and Czechia, finally giving the defending forces room to breathe after the brutal fighting which had damaged them ever since Aquitaine’s capitulation.
The allies had pushed forward quite a bit in the west – a small amount of Bavarian territory was now occupied, creating a bulge to the east of European Order armies. The defenses in that area were still just as impenetrable as ever, so there was little chance of any change on that front in the near future.
The Aquitanean front had also advanced south after the encirclement in Cologne, but soon they were pushed back north after nearly becoming encircled themselves from the west by English armor.
In the meantime, the Baltic Navy’s raids off the Norwegian coast had done quite a bit of damage since January. The most successful raids so far had been off the southern coast of Norvegija – after the first two months of raids, most enemy convoys were sent through the capital, where their air support was initially able to discourage the Baltic Navy from attacking. However, the more recent allocation of LAF fighters out of Danija strained the enemy bombers’ ability to do much damage, leading to some devastating raids in late April and early May.
Over the course of the air battle along the Norwegian coast, the Fascists had lost a total of 218 warplanes, while the LAF lost only 34. The huge imbalance of casualties was down to three key factors – Livonian fighters were simply ordered to hunt (rather than escort bombers), the radar stations of Bornholm and Holstein made enemy positions known (allowing ambushes), and the quality of Livonian fighters was much higher than their opposition. Italian planes stationed here were mostly out of date at this point – the majority of their equipment development was for armor and infantry equipment.
After losing many of its carrier-based fighter planes during the raids, the Baltic Navy finally stared producing a newly designed modern fighter plane – this new model was actually overdue for about a year now, but the Baltic Navy’s inactivity in 1940 had put them low on the priority list for research funding. Now that these new planes were ready to be produced though, the Baltic Navy hoped that soon it would be able to fight off the older long-range bombers which had been harassing them without taking heavy losses.
In the meantime, construction teams were working to expand the country’s naval dockyards so that the Baltic Navy could reach full strength as soon as possible. Similarly to the research debate, this construction had also been delayed by the army’s needs, since equipment shortages had been a serious problem in 1940. At this point though, the army was in good enough shape, and production would increase in efficiency on its own as the new military factories became more accustomed to producing their assigned armaments.
(Note: This is just the queue. Not all of those military factories in the list were built.)
The Baltic Navy was already recovering fairly well though – since the Battle of Biscay, 21 modern Destroyers had been put into service, as well as 4 Light Cruisers. 17 of its older cruisers had survived as well; they were moderately useful for convoy raiding, but the past had proven that they were of little use in an actual battle.
Ever since the war in Europe had really escalated in scale, Livonia had taken advantage of its political leverage of Kuyavia (and Kiev) to import the majority of their iron, but this was hurting the industry of both Kuyavia itself and all other countries which had previously relied on their imports.
Occupying the North German Federation was boosting Livonia’s industrial capabilities though: the region’s steelworks were of the most use, allowing Livonia to temporarily cut back on Kuyavian imports. The local industry in the country was of limited use due to its destruction during the war and issues with occupation, but in the long run it could be of some use as well.
Livonia’s most major import though was oil – two thirds of the oil needed to fuel Livonia’s planes, ships, and vehicles came from America. The other third was produced within Livonia itself as a result of the earlier synthetics program, but expansion of that was stopped in early 1940 since construction resources were more urgently needed for military industry.
At this point, America had been suffering some as a result of the wars abroad – American trade and investment had been sizable in Italy and England, both of which were also large importers of its oil. At this point the oil trade was still continuing, but Europe wasn’t importing much else from the country.
Other than the economic hardship of this war though, Americans were uninterested in any larger role in the conflict. Though the country’s membership of the Coalition in the war 40 years ago brought some sympathy to the Allies of this conflict, that had mainly been a war of opportunism for America, and there was little for them to gain this time by fighting in Europe.
America’s government was still interested in colonialism though – ever since they had become a colonial power after the Great War, the country had rapidly expanded its reach: taking all remaining independent land in the Southeast Pacific, supporting Haiti’s expansion into South America, and conquering what remained of Jiazhou on the country’s west coast. As far as colonial ambition, America had nothing to gain from the Allies, since they held all of the remaining colonies at this point – though it would do more harm than good to fight
against the Allies for the sake of conquest.
Over the course of June, the Livonian army worked with other Allied army staff to plan another invasion of Norvegija. The constant bombing of Sweden and recent naval raids left the defenders in very poor shape, and the Livonian mobile divisions were nearly ready for deployment. The plan was somewhat similar to the previous one – the recently expanded Livonian Marines would storm the ports of southern Stockholm, while another army from Danija would push up from the south.
This southern army was composed of all Livonian vehicle divisions currently ready for action, as well as 7 infantry divisions from the army on the northern front. Severak Livonian Vērsis corps were to be part of this attack, although they had been somewhat rushed out – while in Danija, their crews still trained up until right before the invasion began.
At this point, the front line in mainland Europe was static once again – the Allies weren’t committing to any major offensives after defeating the North German Union, and Euro forces weren’t able to successfully launch any major offensives of their own. Livonia was confident enough in its own defenses to pull men from the front line, but a concentrated offensive could disrupt the northern invasion if the Euro forces were bold enough.
The Norwegian Invasion began on July 6th, after one week of LAF tactical bombing. Many of the LAF’s warplanes, including most of the late 1940 bombers that had been produced so far, were sent to the country in order to support the invasion. The Bornholm radars extended far enough for the LAF to support the army’s advance fairly deep into the country, and with the Baltic Navy now stationed back in its sea, there was no more need for warplanes to deploy west of Danija.
In the south, the Vērsis tanks attacked to the east, where enemy defenses were the lightest. Immediately, they proved their utility as they smashed through enemy trenches and survived well against their field artillery and bunkers. Of course, Norwegian equipment wasn’t of great quality to begin with, but advancing to the east would give the army better room to maneuver against the Euro divisions stationed in Norvegija.
Meanwhile, the naval invasion of Stockholm successfully overwhelmed the undermanned defenses of the city at first. The LAF’s bombers were heavily focused here to support the army’s advance, but the real test would come over the next week or two as reinforcements poured in, just as they had during the previously attempted invasion of the city.
As it turned out, the invasion went exceedingly well. Within the first 16 days, the southern army managed to push strongly into the country, though the most success was along the east coast where the armored corps were focused – this land was less forested and had fewer entrenchments than the west, allowing both the Vērsis and LAF more flexibility on the battlefield.
The quality of the Norwegian army was much weaker than expected – Livonian equipment and tactics had evolved some since the war began, but Norwegians still fought around the concept of entrenched defense – indeed, this actually had worked quite well for them in Finland so far, but at the cost of most army resources.
In Stockholm, the marines pushed west, trying to advance to the initial fortresses which Livonia had constructed to defend the city in 1939. They still saw little resistance so far; the shock of the advance as well as LAF coverage made troop movement and reinforcements very difficult.
Rather shocking though was the amount of foreign volunteers defending the country – there were even men from Bresil and Khalij fighting against the Livonians. It seemed this war was becoming about more than simply fighting Fascism – many nations saw this as perhaps the final chance to end Livonia’s colonial and influential hold over much of the world. Allied propaganda would leave out this detail when showing footage of the invasion, but the politicians within the country as well as Klavess himself would begin to consider exactly how much weight this war was having on both Livonia’s empire and the rest of the world.
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