A new Historical USSR AAR

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About 2 years ago, I posted my first AAR, a historical USSR AAR, spoilers for that AAR, it didn’t go well. I did get better at that patch, but I didn’t start another AAR because it would have been mostly the same thing.

However, a few things recently happened which make me want to try again.
1: The continuation war has been added. I am really excited to try to hold Leningrad in the face of Finish (and German) counterattack in the north.
2: Consumer goods factories were reworked, and modifiers are no longer as overpowered.
3: a few people read my AAR and replied that they would be interested in seeing how another attempt would go and so would I.

This is happening over the busy Christmas period, so I might not have time to publish my AAR daily. But I will try.
Goals are:
1: Have Spain stay neutral.
2: Survive Operation Barbarossa
3: Capture Berlin before 1946
4: Complete an AAR section after each year. For (hopefully) a total of 10 sections.

Rules are much the same as last time.
1: No manual justifications
2: No building Forts manually
3: No building troops before war with Germany (changing templates is fine)
4: Mass assault is mandatory
5: Expansion focuses must complete in the year that they historically were completed (Finland 1939, Baltics 1940, Romania 1940, Iran 1941). No other expansion focuses are allowed
6: No volunteers to the allies or Ethiopia
7: I will be playing without AAT because I don’t own it yet (Finland’s historical focus tree is in the base game, thanks Paradox) and BBA because I find the air designer is clunky and disadvantages the AI while removes a lot of use for air experience.
8: We will be playing with Historical focuses, sadly Paradox has gotten more lax over time about making sure countries make historical choices on events with this on, so we will still see our fair share of ahistorical events.
9: Germany will have a slight buff (mainly to help them deal with the allies)

 

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In 1936, The Soviet Union has the largest army in the world. Whereas for most nations the great war ended in 1918, the USSR were fighting on all their borders throughout the 20s. Defeats in Finland, Poland and the Baltics have seen the country lose massive amounts of the eastern border and led many Europeans to question the effectiveness of the red army.

The USSR needed to cut down on the ambition of the Red army, its infantry divisions were turned into cavalry divisions, demobilising a third of its army by going from just over 1 million to 700,000 troops and moving much needed guns into the stockpile.

Next military production was cut, factories in major cities were repurposed to construct tools instead of weapons.

Finally, production of high tech weapons, tanks and big ships were cut. Leaving the USSR with a much more basic production of rifles, submarines, and artillery.

Abolishing the old standards, Women were given the ability to work in factories allowing the USSR to mobilise the economy, these bold moves towards the fundamentals of communism gain detractors however, who Stalin intended to deal with in the coming months.

The first purge saw Zinoviev confess to conspiring to kill Stalin and various members of the party with Trotsky and 15 others, all of which were found guilty and executed. Between purges, focus went to industry and propaganda.

Not long after the trial, On the 24th of November, Norway extradited Trotsky to the Soviet Union, who was quickly executed for having tried to kill Stalin.

The 1932-1937 5-year plan was focusing on heavy industry, a plan that had worked as the USSR was now the most industrial country in Europe. Because of its large borders and many enemies, the USSR always had to be weary of attack so in 1936, it devised an industrial plan that would allow them to quickly shift into a war footing if needed.

The first Propaganda campaign was launched to encourage workers to help achieve the industrial aims of the USSR, the USSR supported 62 civilian factories by the end of 1936, an increase of 40% from the start of the year.

On the 18th of July 1936, tensions in Spain bubbled over into a civil war. The USSR was keen to support the Spanish government and stop another European nation from falling to fascism. However, the Nationalist navy blocked reinforcements from the Soviet Union to Spain and lack of coordination made it difficult to push quickly and end the war.

Believing that this would be a war of attrition, The soviet union devised a plan to control Spain’s industry and allow the Republic to win. 4 of Spain’s 7 military factories were located in Northwestern Iberia, a region that could be strategically controlled by just a small airforce, rather than focusing on pushing everywhere in Iberia, the USSR would conserve their efforts and focus on taking and holding just this region.

To that end, for the first few months of the war, the Soviets held their troops in reserve, until november when the Spanish republic had planned an attack on Salamanca. Soviet troops moved quickly to the front, breaking though the nationalist line and quickly moving up into Leon before the Nationalists had a chance to react.

By the turn of 1937, the Soviets had moved up to the border of Oviedo, the location of one of the strategic military factories the Soviets hoped to recapture.

 

[HistoryDude]

The Spanish Civil War is a good place to start intervening in Europe more... is the Spanish Republic officially communist in the game? If so, why are you not aiming to ally with them?

Let's hope that the Nazis can be crushed - and the war with Finland will be interesting.

 

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The Spanish Civil War is a good place to start intervening in Europe more... is the Spanish Republic officially communist in the game? If so, why are you not aiming to ally with them?

the Spanish republic is not communist. In la resistance, the republic is democratic and can either become a communist puppet of the USSR or stay a democratic nation after the civil war depending on which focuses they take. Even with historical focus, this appears to be random since in WW2, they lost the civil war. The reason I don't want them in the war is because there wasn't a Spanish front in WW2, and I am going for historical WW2 borders (which will involve taking the 70 day Finland focus only to take 3 small states on the border and other bad choices).

 

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1937 was the most crucial year in the Spanish civil war, it would also be the first time the Axis forces met the Soviet forces in battle, both sides lost around 150k troops mainly through encirclement.

At the start of the year, all of the Soviet troops were pulled up to the northern front, this created a dire supply situation as the Spanish could only supply the front through a small area with no railroad around Salamanca

The Soviets ordered troops to focus on taking the ports of Oviedo and La Coruna to get supply from Valencia via a sea route.

Progress was slow and expensive for the Soviets, who couldn’t recover their losses due to Nationalist blockade, and just as the port of Oviedo was captured, a German tank division broke though republican defences in the south, cutting the northern front off from Madrid.

As things already looked favourable for the Nationalists, an Anarchist Uprising broke out in Barcelona and many Republican soldiers abandoned the front to join it. This greatly weakened the South-eastern front, which slowly collapsed in the next few months.

However, the nationalists only left a small force to control the soviet forces in the north, relocating most of their forces to push on to surround Madrid, taking advantage of the small force defending the north, the Soviets captured all 3 major ports in the north of Spain. The Republican navy relocated to Bilbao and ended the blockade of Biscay Bay allowing supplies to get to Spain from Moscow.

With Increased supplies and no threat from the East, the Soviet forces pushed on and took Burgos, the Nationalist Capital.

Faith in Franco’s leadership collapsed after the loss of Burgos and the Carlists launched their own uprising. This broke the planned encirclement of Madrid leaving many Nationalist forces sandwiched between the Anarchists and the Carlists.

Taking advantage of the disorganisation on the front, the Soviet forces pushed down to reunite with the Republican forces then encircled a German armour division. With this manoeuvre, the Soviet aims were completed and 6 of the 9 military factories in Spain were in Republican hands.

In the 20s the Red Army had helped train and equip the disarmed German army of the Weimar Republic so it would provide a threat to Britain and France. Even while the Germans and Soviets fought in Spain, the USSR saw the advantage of working with the Germans to modernise its military in case the Empires of the West started to make trouble for them. Trouble that looked close with a break out of war in China.

Meanwhile the Carlist forces pushed in from the east taking Bilbao. The Republicans had few troops defending the front and the Soviet volunteers founds themselves encircled, however with heroic effort they push the Carlists out from behind them, allowing a rescue mission after a month of heavy combat.

With Soviets troops no longer needed in the South, they pushed to eliminate the central pocket of Nationalist resistance, which contained many Italian and German forces. The outnumbered and out of supply troops were quickly divided and surrounded by Republican forces.

In the last few months of the year, Republican forces mounted an offensive to defeat the Carlists once and for all. The Carlist forces crumbled against the organised offensives of the Republicans. With the fall of Pamplona, they surrendered.

By the end of the year the Borders had settled into a North/South/East divide between Republican, Nationalist and Anarchist forces. With the Republicans owning the majority of the military industry and the Nationalists holding more Civilian Industry.

The last year of the 2nd five-year plan saw the Soviets focus less on industry and more on the growing concern that many in the Government could be working against Stalin’s party. The NKVD were given more powers to interrogate and extract confessions by any means necessary. 17 known Trotskyists confessed to crimes against the Soviet state and were imprisoned or executed. Many of them also gave names of other collaborators furthering the paranoia of the party and the power of the NKVD.

The NKVD used their new authority to clamp down on the military, Generals with any connections to Trosky or Bukharim had their loyalties questions and were thrown into holding cell for interrogation and confession. Even the head of the NKVD, Yagoda, was accused by Yezhov of being a German Spy and the former was arrested and replaced by the latter.

In the 2nd Moscow trial, Radek had implicated Tukhachevsky which Yezhov intended to use to his advantage. Stalin had a rivalry with Tukhachevsky for 20 years, Stalin saw Tukhachevsky as a threat to his power. Stalin had even tried Tukhachevsky when he first came to power in 1930, but he had been found innocent.

Yezhov extracted a confession from Tukhachevsky and implicated 7 other popular generals. The Trial was kept a secret to avoid backlash from the executions and many troops under the generals command were dismissed or arrested to avoid a coup.

As the year of Terror came to an end, Stalin’s position looked stronger than ever, Victories against Germany in Spain, and against his rivals within the country had affirmed him as one of the most powerful people in the world. It is to be seen if dealing with his personal grievances would bear fruit or cost his country down the line.

 

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sorry there has been such a large gap between the last chapter and this one, this is because Christmas used up a lot of my time and these chapters require a lot more time than they look. Believe it or not, this 1937 chapter took me over 4 hours to make despite me doing nothing else in the meantime.
Anyway, hopfully I will be back to able to complete daily chapters from now on, however new years might get in the way.

 

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Yezhov had hoped that by persecuting Stalin’s rivals he would win his favour and protection. However, the unfair nature of the trials had made the purges unpopular, since Yezhov had served his purpose, Stalin pinned the injustices of the trials on Yezhov. Yezhov was arrested and replaced with Beriya, a close associate of Stalin. Beriya started to lessen the influence of the NKVD over the country.

Beriya did not stop the purges completely, in fact shortly after being appointed he delivered a list of "enemies of the people" to Stalin. Who were arrested and tried in secret.

The final Moscow trial took place early 1938, where Stalin’s remaining opponents were rounded up and accused of many different crimes. Unlike previous trials, this one had not been as carefully orchestrated and led to many accusations of it being rigged. In response the trials were ended and many of the people involved were denounced by the party as Stalin attempted to distance himself from the purges.

The second five year plan ended in 1938, beginning the third five year plan, which was focused on consumer goods and services. The USSR began to invest more into developing the east and middle of the country in preparation for a war in Europe. After setting up the USSR academy of sciences, focus shifted to the airforce as the new Soviet high command believed that the skies would be a decisive battlefield in any war.

In Iberia, The Republican’s began a push into Nationalist held southern Spain in 1938, the Nationalists were now without support from the German military and were slowly overwhelmed by the superior Republican forces. In April the Eastern flank completely collapsed and Republican took every port and city along the south coast of Spain forcing Nationalist Capitulation

Due to the length of the war and the lack of weapons production, the Anarchists were suffering from huge equipment shortages and were unable to compete with the full Republican army. In a month Barcelona was captured and the Spanish civil war was over.

On the 28th of may the Soviet troops withdrew from Spain, the Spanish government no longer required nor wanted them. The next few years would see their government repress the communists who helped them during the civil war to maintain the 2nd Spanish republic.

Meanwhile Germany started to consolidate Europe, first they pressured Austria into annexation. Seeing this as a threat, the USSR switched into a war economy in preparation for conflict with the Germans

Germany set its sights on Czechoslovakia next, the Soviets promised to aid the Czechoslovaks in the event of an attack but were unable to negotiate military access through Poland. This forced Czechoslovakia to accept the Munich agreement that gave Czechoslovak border defences over to Germany.

The Munich Agreement was celebrated in Western Europe, but the USSR saw it as a great betrayal. Rather than contain German aggression and maintain their agreements with the Czechoslovaks, the Allies had handed a large part of Czechoslovakia to Germany.
Despite the fact the participants of the Munich agreement had promised peace, every country was preparing for war and the soviets hoped they would be ready

 

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As the Soviets had feared, the Munich agreement was not the end of German aggression. The USSR had seen how the allies were willing to sacrifice one country they had promised to defend, just to avoid a war and were not willing to see themselves put in a similar position.

France and Britain wanted the USSR to enter a war with Germany should Poland be attacked, but the Stalin did not trust that France or Britain would get involved in such a war, so the USSR pulled out of negotiations with the Allies and began negotiations with Germany.

The resulting Molotov-Ribbentrop agreed non-aggression and secretly divided Europe between the USSR and Germany. Germany had agreed to battle France and Britain over Poland and the Soviets could remain out of any large wars.

Just as promised on the 24th of August, the Germans invaded Poland, despite guarantees that France and Britain would protect them. On the 13th of October Poland capitulated and France and Britain predictably did very little to stop it. Three weeks later, the German troops left eastern Poland and Soviet troops moved in. In one masterstroke of diplomacy, the Soviets had regained everything they had lost in the Soviet-Polish war without a fight while playing their two biggest enemies against each other.

now with 146 civilian factories built. In 1939 the USSR completely switched from making civilian industry to military industry, focusing on the regions behind Moscow.
The Soviets also finalised plans to create advanced fighter planes to support their army. They would be ready for manufacture by October 1939 and in production in 1940.

Finally, the entire red army apart from the special forces and tanks were updated with a new template. In 1939 the Soviet Union went from just 15 military factories to 88. Production had been used to produce new equipment for the Red Army, to have enough guns for the reserves and to create trucks to supply the front lines.

With its new military and the allies busy in their war. The Soviets looked to expand into bordering countries such as Finland. On the 4th of November the Soviets demanded Karelia. The Finnish rejected Soviet demands and war broke out on the 7th of November.

The Finnish line crumbled exceptionally quickly, they failed to have enough troops to defend the entire Mannerheim line and it was overrun and surrounded by a single Soviet Cavalry division.

The Soviets quickly took advantage of the lack of Finnish troops by encircling and taking Helsinki. By the end of November, all of Southern Finland was controlled by the Red Army.

On the 19th of December, having lost 45k troops and the majority of the populated area of its country, Finland finally offered concessions, The soviets having lost 20k troops and running quickly out of supplies accepted the offer.

Before the Winter War, many had considered the Soviet army to be sub-par compared to the other armies in Europe it had taken almost 20 years but it had finally proven itself to be an effective fighting force.

 

[HistoryDude]

Congrats on defeating Finland and achieving a victory in the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish Civil War had a lot of factions. Did the new government attempt any concessions to the other factions except persecuting the communists?

Does the USSR still have an alliance with (Republican) Spain?

 

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Congrats on defeating Finland and achieving a victory in the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish Civil War had a lot of factions. Did the new government attempt any concessions to the other factions except persecuting the communists?

Does the USSR still have an alliance with (Republican) Spain?

no concessions were given to any factions and Spain is fully democratic now. I couldn't ally them even if I wanted to. The only relationship I have with them is military access because they offered that during the civil war. As far as Spain is concerned, the Communists served their purposes and can get back into the factories and prisons again. Spain also dislikes my invasion of Finland because they are a democratic nation.
Officially there was never an alliance between the Soviet Union and the Spanish Republic, Soviet Volunteers just helped fight for them in the civil war.

 

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The world had expected a slow and bitter war. When Germany annonced that Paris had fallen and France had signed an armistice on the 21st of Febuary 1940, it changed everything.

The old order was gone, the victors of the Great War were faced with total defeat less than a year before the war began. With no one maintaining the old treaties, Europe was quickly carved up between the Soviets and Germans. The Soviets accused the Baltic States of conspiring against them and insisted they elect pro-Soviet governments instead. These government then all decided to join the USSR bringing much needed industry into the Union. Germany meanwhile took Norway while Italy became entangled in a war with Greece. Romania attempted to maintain their neutrality only to receive demands for territories from both the Germans and the Soviets just 5 days apart.

It now seemed inevitable that these two powers would clash. It was just a matter of when. In preparation, the Soviet Union started to produce yet more weapons, the Sturmovik Close Air Fighter and the T-34 Tank were produced.

Some of the Restrictions that came about because of the purge were lifted and the Streltsy were changed yet again to have Rocket Artillery, Engineers and NKVD divisions.

Soviet Intel suggested that even with most of Europe under their domain the German Industry was weaker or equal to the Soviet Industry and The Germans weren't able to produce more than 47 planes or trucks at a time due to rubber shortages.

The USSR hoped large amounts of production would make up for their outdated military institutions.

The Germans had pulled off a surprise quick victory in France, but would they do the same in the USSR?

 

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The Soviets lacked Artillery and there army fielded only half of the manpower of the German Reich. The Soviets knew if the Germans attacked they would be force to give ground and retreat into Russia.

In preparation, they started to move industry from the front lines to the Ural regions, Kiev had been one of the most industrial cities in the Soviet Union, but the Soviets took everything apart in just 2 months.

Meanwhile, German leadership had been frustrated with the slow progress against Greece, Great Britain and Yugoslavia. The Italian navy had been suck, Africa and every island in the mediterranean had been lost and the USA had entered the war on the side of the allies. The blockade on Europe was strangling the German Economy.

Germany had one chance to get the resources it needed to continue the war with the West, the USSR had more than enough Oil, Grain and Iron for Germany to strike back. Yet, Germany had waited for so long that they would only have a month before Winter set in. Feeling forced into action, on the 18th of September, the Axis allied Finland and invaded the USSR.

The Soviet saw the immediate threat not from Germany, but from Finland. Much of the Soviet Industry was built between Moscow, Leningrad and Riga. The Soviets therefore planned to hold the Germans at the border and invade Finland. 62 submarines were deployed to guard the Baltics and stop the Germans from reinforcing Finland, Meanwhile the Germans sent a huge force of Tanks, Planes and Artillery to blitzkrieg Poland.

In the Winter War, the Soviets had used 400 planes to support their invasion of Finland, in the continuation war, the Soviets placed 1500 planes over Finland with 2 railway guns, Germany quickly realised this was a losing battle and sent no support to the Finnish. On the 25th of september, Helsinki was declared an open city and was captured by advancing Soviet Soldiers.

As the Soviets advanced in Finland, they broke and fell back in Poland. The German army exploited any weakness in the line, as the Red Army fell back, the Line they defended grew longer and as the Red Army's line grew longer, more weaknesses appeared.

as the front line collapsed, 100,000 troops found themselves encircled on the Hungarian border. In the first month of the war, The soviets realised they would not be able to defend Poland or Bessarabia and pulled their airforce back to Belarus and Ukraine.

on the 12th, of October Odessa became the first major city in the Soviet Union to fall. In Response the Soviets Mobilised 1.5 million Reserves to take the front line.

8 days later, winter started and the line began to Stabilise.

As it did, Finland agreed on a peace with the Soviet Union. The Soviets would withdraw in exchange for much valuable weaponry including much needed Artillery. A planned invasion of Iran was called off after Iran submitted to demands becoming a Soviet puppet. Both armies and airplanes from the regions were relocated to the German front.

The Germans advanced was slowed, but it wasn't stopped. As the end of the year approached, the Germans had started to make their way towards 3 important cities.
Riga and the Baltic states beyond it, were a center of industry in the USSR and the ports would make it easier for the Germans to supply an invasion Northern Russia.

The heaviest fighting happened around Minsk, seen as a gateway city to Moscow.

The German Luftwaffe planes focused on supporting an assault on Kiev, Capital of the resource rich Ukrainian SSR.

by the end of 1941, Both the Axis and Soviet forces had taken 900k casualties. The Germans were a third of the way to Moscow and the Winter would end soon.

 

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In February The Germans took the city of Molodechno North of Minsk, they now almost encircled Minsk. They poured reinforcements into the pocket in order to widen the gap in the Soviet lines but left themselves dangerously exposed to a counterattack.

The soviet tank force was relocated to the front and retook Molodechno, encircling 150,000 German troops. With that defeat, the German Offense had to stop as Germany was suffering from massive equipment shortages.

Germany had also lost its entire Airforce in Operation Barbarossa and so seeking to press the advantage, the Soviets launched a massive counterattack on the Germans.

The German line first started to buckle around Kiev. The advance was slow and costly and even a months progress might only be 30-50 miles.

On the 21st of September, the Soviets managed to recapture Odessa. Shortly afterwards the Germans retreated from Romania and the Entire country started to fall to the Red Army.

At the end of the year, the entire front had moved back from Kiev and Minsk into Poland and Romania. The Germans only managed to defend the Baltics.

Losses on both sides were incredibly high, over the course of the year, Germany alone had lost 4 million troops and was also starting to run out of manpower. the Soviets losses amounted to 2 Million troops, But the war had turned and the Red Army wasn't stopping.

 

[HistoryDude]

Barbarossa was probably inevitable, given Germany and the USSR's ideological differences...

Even so, the operation appears to be going well for the Soviets - the Germans are retreating, and the USSR will soon advance into Poland.

Can the USSR seize all of Germany here?

What are the Western Allies doing? Have they attacked Italy or Vichy France or Germany yet?

I wonder if Republican Spain will get involved...

Poor Finland. They never had a chance after allying with Germany, did they?

 

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Can the USSR seize all of Germany here?

I think the allies will naval invade before that happens, the front isn't advancing that quickly. The rest of the Axis will be much easier to defeat as they lack Germany's industry, technology and buffs.

What are the Western Allies doing? Have they attacked Italy or Vichy France or Germany yet?

This is the whole world. Vichy joined the war in October 1942 and Greece has gained ground against the Axis.

The UK did manage to inflict a million casualties since 1939, but the majority of fighting is happening over on the Eastern Front. The Italian navy is at the bottom of the ocean but both Germany and Vichy still have navies.

the allies have also done a lot of fighting with Japan who have lost Iwo Jima and Okinawa but still have a decent Navy.

I wonder if Republican Spain will get involved...

the Earliest they can join is May 1944. even if they got involved I don't think they would last long. They haven't reintegrated any of their states yet.

Poor Finland. They never had a chance after allying with Germany, did they?

They didn't have enough troops to cover their borders, so my troops just marched to Helsinki unopposed, I completely overestimated how much of a fight they were able to put up. It was necessary though because Germany could easily have overran Leningrad if they had got to the Finnish border in time. You saw how quickly they got from their border to Kiev.

 

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French and Italian soldiers attempted to stop the Soviet advance on the Balkans. Sadly for them, The Red Army proved to be unstoppable, on the 18th of January, Romania announced its capitulation and on the 24th of February, Bulgaria capulated.

As victory was achieved in the south, the Soviets took memel and closed off a Courland Pocket, 300,000 German troops were surrounded and surrendered. Weakening the German army significantly

With most of the German forces gone, the Soviets picked up speed, taking Warsaw by the 29th of March and Berlin just 5 days later

What was left of the German army continued the fight for another few months as the Soviets raced to move their border as close to France as possible. On the 26th of July, Germany gave an unconditional surrender to the USSR.

The final Axis country in Europe was Italy, the Soviets breached through the North while the British landed in the south. After the fall of Rome in Italy deposed Mussolini on the 7th of October and appointed a pro-Soviet government. Victory in Europe was achieved.

The same day Victory in Europe was declared, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. The Japanese were completely taken by surprise and didn't have any troops on the border.

on the 23rd of December, the Soviet far east navy, with the support of 400 German naval bombers and 1000 soviet fighter planes, escorted a Soviet army to land in Japan.

The Japanese fought for another 2 months before Toyko fell on the 4th of February, 1944.

The world had been carved up between the victorious powers. The cost had been 15 million military deaths on all sides, more than 50% more than the Great war. The winners would enjoy a new period of peace. One that this time would last... Hopefully.

 

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Retrospective.
So this is the end of my AAR. I want to talk about things I learnt, things I did and the differences between this AAR and the last one.

Differences in Strategy:
The biggest Difference was the massive airforce and also building military factories from 1939, everything that isn't a fighter or a piece of infantry equipment feels unnecessary to me as long as I have the manpower to drop a million troops anytime a breach happens in my line. Tanks and Artillery both feel good when used on offense but they are too costly to replace and with Mass Assault doctrine they don't do much. Fighter planes feel really good because they are only destroyed by other fighter planes, so they don't need replacement even if you are losing ground on the front.

Difficulty:
I won, that is all good, but the difficulty clearly wasn't high enough, The Germans didn't make it even to Kiev never mind Stalingrad. When I played this before, I called myself a novice, I understood most of the mechanics but I couldn't translate that into winning games. I really like the NSB patch and I played a lot of it. I would happily call myself an advanced player now. I have played enough of this game to know what works and what doesn't.
Put simply I think that I could play either with a higher game difficulty or more Axis buffs and it would have been a closer more engaging war. I used to play Elite difficulty and full Axis buffs on the NSB patch but I had never played this patch before and I wasn't trying to be remotely historical when I did that. I could also try the AI mod for this game, I had a try with it on NSB and it was fun but a slog in the late game, the mod also makes the AI more historical which is nice.

Focus Tree:
Unlike last time, it didn't feel as hard to go through the focus tree in a somewhat historical way, there are still some terrible focuses, but I have come to realise that the focuses that improve your army and airforce aren't necessary and at the end of the game I still had a lot of debuffs.

The move industry to the Urals focus that struck me as useless last time, surprised me in how effective it was. If I had more trains (which are cheap and easy to make) I could have move a huge part of my economy there before the war started. I think they may have removed a condition that you have to be at war to do it which made it valuable. Some expansion focuses still feel bad, like the 70 day claim on Bessarabia focus but almost every focus now serves a purpose.

Historicity and Fun:
Naturally Trosky wasn't given to the USSR by Norway, Finland put up a better fight, casualties are always too low for the Eastern Front, Tanks and cav divisions don't feel worth building before or during Barbarossa and the British and Soviets invaded Iran together. Other than that it is very good and more importantly, very fun. The Spanish civil war is perfect, Barbarossa is great, the winter war still needs some improvements.

I don't know if I will do another one of these, but I might, just so I can one day have an AAR where I surround the Germans in Stalingrad, hold out in Leningrad and defend Moscow. But I might wait until a patch where Finland can defend its borders and the German AI goes for the AA line.
Equally, I might do a non-historical AAR next.

 

[HistoryDude]

The USSR did better here than in real history. I imagine that means that the Warsaw Pact did better in the Cold War here?

 

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The USSR did better here than in real history. I imagine that means that the Warsaw Pact did better in the Cold War here?

There was no Western front, no conference of Yalta and no atomic bombing of Japan. Even though the Soviets have more land under control, that doesn't mean they would have done better in the cold war.

The Soviet union was unstable for various reasons, but one of its main issues was famine (which brought down the Russian Empire before it). The USSR lacked arable land and the land it did have suffered from occasional droughts which caused famines. The other countries taken are all net-importers of food, although Japan has significant fishing areas.
The second reason the USSR isn't stable is Stalin. Simply the man is a dictator who got rid of everyone who opposed him, his death in real life caused a leadership struggle, the process of de-stalinization polarised public opinion on Stalin and the government. However in my game, I never took "the collectivisation process" focus which is what most deaths during the Great Purge are ascribed to.

If the war had ended in early 1944, the USA may have not have had an Atomic bomb until much later. This would also mean the rest of the world wouldn't have a bomb as quickly. Had the USA and USSR been enemies when it was developed, the USA might have dropped an atomic bomb on Russia. So the Cold War would have been different but not necessarily Soviet favoured