Deceit and Intrigue in the USSR

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I've been toying with AARing for a while, but never really felt compelled to do the deed until just recently. This will be a warmup AAR, so I don't expect to be at the top of my game, but I figure I have to start somewhere.

The emphasis of this one is on Stalin, and how his madness impacted two of his officers. The first is Hovhannes Bagramyan:

Bagramyan is unique in that he's a non-Slav, an ethnic Armenian, placing him among the vast minority in Russia's army, and indeed he was the first non-Slav to command a major front. He did some time in the gulag for his association with an Armenian nationalist party (in the story, he's not exactly sure what his crime was, unlike in real life), but was released in time to make a name for himself in WW2. Interestingly, he foretold Hitler's invasion of the USSR - who knows how many Russian lives would have been spared had his warning been heard by someone less, shall we say, "touched" than Stalin.

The second is Johann Matthias Barringer:

A fictional officer, using a fictional picture both here and in-game. He is like Bagramyan in that he comes from foreign heritage and feels out of place in a Slavic Russia, and that he is not politik - the Russian term for orthodox and prudent political thought. Through a bizarre series of events, he was promoted to general without his knowledge or consent at the age of twenty-eight. Despite his penchant for crimethink, he has survived this long by knowing when to keep his mouth shut, and by assuming - perhaps correctly - that someone is watching for him to slip up.

The AAR itself is interesting in that I played it first and decided only afterward that it would make an interesting AAR, forcing me to go back through all my save files and reproduce the original events of the game as closely as possible. Although there will be some focus on strategy and military tactics, there will also be large blocks of warfare that go unmentioned (or are only mentioned later) because they happen away from, and don't much impact, Bagramyan or Barringer.

Here come the first string of updates.

 

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Hovhannes Bagramyan trudged through the snow and out of the gulag, his slow gait betraying the ecstasy in his heart. Curse Stalin, curse his paranoia and his political ineptitude. If the man wasn’t such a horrible leader, he might not have to kill all the people who opposed him – and there might not be millions upon millions of those people.

A train waited for him, and for the handful of other people who had been released from the gulag that spring morning. Normally a trip to one of Stalin’s camps was one-way only, but a lucky few would be considered “rehabilitated” and allowed to reenter civilized, if one could call it that, society. Bagramyan cast a furtive glance left and then right before pushing his way up the steps, looking for any reason to doubt that this was really happening to him.

“Lucky” was a good word for what had happened to him, Bagramyan thought as the train gently chugged away from the station. He settled back in his seat, the rocking motion lulling him into a state of relaxation he hadn’t known in months. It was exceptional that he had even been in the army at all; he was a non-Slav, an Armenian, frowned on by the ethnic Russians and distrusted by officers. Ignoring the prejudice, he had worked his hardest and in time climbed to the rank of lieutenant. It was a sizable feat, but before he’d had the chance to take an official command, Stalin’s purges began.
Bagramyan had been seized in the middle of the night, tried for some real or imaginary lapse in judgment, and been sent to Siberia for life. He closed his eyes, blocking out the heart-rending despair that had gripped him as he’d been hustled from the courtroom.

But now, just two years later, fortune smiled upon him. Stalin’s purges had gotten out of control, way out of control, as the maniacal dictator sought to root out every whiff of dissention. With half the generals and half the marshals dead, there was no one to lead the army – a bad thing under any circumstances, but worse now that the bells of war were tolling to the west again.

There would be a time to think about those things later. For now, there was sleep.

---

A slow lurching awoke Bagramyan just after five the next morning. He had slept for fourteen hours, and he felt a profound refreshment at the core of his being. The train was pulling into a station in Moscow. Virtually no one stood at the platform to greet the emaciated passengers; this was no sightseeing train, bringing weekend visitors from Leningrad.

A young man, about Bagramyan’s height, stood on the far end of the platform holding a sign. He spotted the disembarking passengers out of the corner of his eye and began to move closer, and only then did Bagramyan see that the sign had his own name inscribed on it.

“Hovhannes Bagramyan?” the young man asked, sizing up the ex-officer. His interlocutor could have passed for any Russian; he was tall, with dark brown hair and brown eyes, built like a soldier, and stood with military stiffness.

“At your service. Who might you be?”

“My name is Johann Barringer,” the other man said with a precise salute. “The Ministry of War sent me here to greet you, General.”

“General? I think there’s some mistake. I was formerly a lieutenant-“

“There is no mistake, sir. Marshal Stalin has ordered your full reinstatement…and promotion. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, I think.” Bagramyan wondered what he had done to earn this staggering reversal.

“But for now, sir, we must be off. Our presence is demanded at the Kremlin.”

“Lead the way, Mr. Barringer.”

“Er…that would be General Barringer, actually.”

Bagramyan stopped in his tracks and scrutinized the younger man, who looked back at him impassively. “That’s impossible. What are you, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-eight.” He spread his hands as if in apology. “It is, shall we say, a long story, and one I would rather not discuss.”

The pair began to walk the three miles toward downtown.

 

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“So,” Bagramyan inquired as they slogged down the snowy avenue, “what was the primary cause of Russia’s loss in the Russo-Japanese War?”

“You realize, of course, that the Stalin government considers that war to be a Russian victory,” Barringer pointed out. “But Stalin has his own special set of problems.”

Bagramyan, who had been thrown into the Gulag for a comment probably milder than that, was stunned. “That’s not very politik of you, General.”
Barringer waved his hand dismissively. “Politik and military do not mix, General. That, I would say, was one of the primary causes of our loss in 1905. The Russian government had two months of advance notice in which they utterly failed to mobilize or reinforce their divisions in Vladivostok. Such unpreparedness is something that only the best of generals can overcome.”

“Was Kuropatkin one of those generals?”

“No. Alexei did what he could with what he had, but ultimately, he fought the war like a Russian – with brute force and little imagination. Had he taken proper stock of his situation, he would have realized that he must have relied more on finesse than on force. He needed to fight like a dolphin. Dolphins can kill a shark, even though the shark is larger and more powerful, because dolphins are smarter and more agile. His failure of imagination was Russia’s other nail in the proverbial coffin.”

“Did you read my staff college dissertation?” chuckled Bagramyan; he had written the same observations nearly a decade ago. Come to think of it, that may have been the lack of politik that landed him in the gulag. Either way, he was impressed with the young officer’s insight and clarity of thought. Perhaps the boy would be a general yet.

“I’m merely an observer of the obvious,” Barringer demurred. “Unorthodox tactics can turn the tide of any encounter. A great philosopher* once said, ‘Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for.’”

Bagramyan guffawed. “Now those, General, are words to live by.”

Barringer cracked a smile. “Please, call me Johann.”

“Very well, Johann. You must call me Hovhannes.” The boy had pronounced his name spot-on at the train station, with no hint of that despicable Russian lisp that normally sullied Armenian names. “Your name…you are not Russian, are you?”

Barringer shrugged. “I am. I was born in this country, a Russian citizen. My family is originally from Germany, but have been here several generations.”
Something was off, thought Bagramyan. Stalin’s paranoia should never have allowed him to place anyone of German heritage in the army’s high command. Stranger still, the German in question was younger than thirty. Neither of those made sense by themselves, but coupled together, it was just too much. Bagramyan liked the boy, but it just wouldn’t be smart to trust him yet.


---

*the philosopher in question is stand-up comedian George Carlin.

 

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“Bagramyan and Barringer?” asked the clerk at the War Ministry. He shifted his glasses up and down. “Just one moment, sirs.”

He disappeared down a long, cavernous hallway, the clop-clapping of his shoes announcing his departure. The two officers stood, both of them unconsciously defaulting to a military attention, hands behind their backs and shoulders square.

“They tell us to hurry and then they’re surprised when we show up,” growled Barringer. “That’s bureaucracy for you.” His insight was cut short by the approach of several pairs of bootsteps.

“Ah! My soldiers!” bellowed a voice, and Bagramyan’s heart soared into his throat. He knew that voice, hoped he would never hear it again –

He turned, and there was Josef Stalin, beaming like a man proud of his children and surrounded by half a dozen bodyguards. Stalin opened his arms wide and moved to embrace Bagramyan. “Ivan!” he crowed, Russifying Bagramyan’s first name.

Hesitantly, Bagramyan accepted the embrace, but returned it with something less than enthusiasm. “Marshal Stalin,” he said deferentially. “It is…good to see you again.” The lie, expedient as it might have been, tasted like bile on his tongue.

Stalin moved on. “Johann!” Barringer moved to embrace the dictator, patting him on the back heartily. “Marshal Stalin. It is a pleasure.”

“I still owe you a dinner, Johann. I am sorry I had to cancel on you.”

Barringer waved off the apology. “These things happen, Marshal. I’m sure you were quite busy with important matters of state.” The praise was over-the-top, almost fawning, and Bagramyan thought for sure that Barringer was being sarcastic. Indeed, Barringer cast a sidelong look at Bagramyan and frowned ever so slightly, but Stalin noticed neither the tic nor the sarcasm.

“I wish I could repay you tonight, but I’m afraid I must deploy you immediately. Circumstances to the west of us are growing more worrisome by the day. That despicable animal Hitler is rattling his saber again, and I fear that any day he’s going to begin agitating in our border countries. We placed those countries to our west for a reason, you know. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland. The whole reason they even exist is to protect us from western aggression, and sure enough, now there’s more western aggression.”

“Who’s deployed along the front?” Barringer asked.

“That’s not your business. I’m sending you and Bagramyan to Finland.”
Barringer and Bagramyan exchanged a shocked glance. Immediately after telling them how important the western front was, Stalin was sending them to Finland? Either he was making a bold statement, or his thinking was muddled, as usual.

“Johann, you’ll be taking command of four tank divisions near Leningrad. The Finns have been making some noise in that area, and you need to push them back anytime they come near the border. Clear?”

“Crystal, Marshal Stalin.”

“And you, Bagramyan, will be just on the other side of Lake Ladoga. The Finns have their eyes on Karelia, populated as it is by ethnic Finnish, and your goal is to make sure no partisans get through the border. Understand that I trust your military commands, and I would not be giving this assignment to anyone else.”

“Of course, Marshal,” nodded Barringer, repaying the bald-faced lie with some obsequious affirmation.

“Gather your belongings.” He motioned to the clerk, who extended each officer a sheaf of papers. “These are your printed orders and your train tickets. Be gone tonight.”

“Marshal,” deferred Barringer, saluting. Bagramyan did the same, wordlessly. They exited into the bustling Moscow morning.

“I don’t trust either of those two men,” rumbled Stalin, the smile fading from his face. “Who will be their political officers?”

“Ah…” the clerk stuttered, shuffling through a file, “Pavel Ivanovich is the political officer for Barringer’s corps. Andrei Alexeev will be observing Bagramyan’s corps.”

“Make them report back to me personally, twice daily. The second either one of them says, breathes, or thinks anything against the state, I’ll ship them off to Siberia so fast it will make their children’s heads spin.”

“I don’t think either of them has children, sir.”

“Silence!” Stalin breathed heavily for a few moments. “Just keep them under observation.”

“Yes, Marshal.”

 

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In the fading evening’s sun – but evening was only two in the afternoon, this time of year – the two generals met again on the platform at the train station. Each toted the standard-issue military duffel bag, with almost, but not quite, enough room to carry half the things one truly needed. Barringer’s bag was somewhat fuller, sides almost bulging outward with a week’s worth of military attire, toiletries, and the unmistakable bulge of a Mosin-Nagant carbine at the top. Bagramyan’s was thinner, almost embarrassingly so; the only clothes he had owned were the ones he had brought with him from the gulag. Sometime around noon, he had managed to find a cousin who had loaned him some money to buy a better coat and some decent clothes. Now he sat on a bench, Barringer next to him, waiting for the two-thirty train to Leningrad.

“Stalin has lost his mind,” Barringer sighed. “If he ever had it to begin with.”

“You were certainly not afraid to praise him earlier today,” Bagramyan pointed out, his annoyance bubbling to the surface.

“It’s politik, Hovhannes. You know the game. And it really is a game; it serves no useful purpose.”

“But ingratiating yourself like that, to a man responsible for the slaughter of thousands? You play his game, doesn’t that make you party to his actions?”

“No, Hovhannes, it doesn’t. It keeps me from being a victim of them.” Barringer turned, his brown eyes drilling into Bagramyan’s. “Stalin is going to be a maniac whether I play his game or not. I’m not responsible for his actions. The only thing I can change is whether or not I’m among his body count.”

“You realize I could turn you in for this,” Bagramyan observed. “I could have you sent to the same camp I just got back from.”

“I’m sorry for what you went through, General, I really am. But I didn’t do it to you, and there’s no sense being bitter at me. Reporting me would get you nowhere; I’m politik and you’ve already done time for being an enemy of the state. Which of us would Stalin believe? Likely as not he’d just send us both away,” Barringer finished with an ironic bark of laughter.

Bagramyan was silent.

Barringer leaned in. “Look, I’m trying to be your friend. I may be the closest thing you have to a friend. You can’t afford to hate me for having the favor of the man who put you away.”

“Why do you have his favor, anyway,” snapped Bagramyan. “None of this makes any sense. You’re way too young to be a general, and you’re a German. You should be dead, not a general!”

“You want to know why I’m a general?” Barringer paused, tension lines showing on his forehead. “You want to know?”

“If you want my trust, I have to have yours. So yes, I want to know.”

There was silence for a few moments, then Barringer unzipped his pack and removed his rifle. Surprise registered on Bagramyan’s face, but Barringer merely opened and closed the bolt; the magazine was empty. Again he opened the bolt, again he closed it. Bagramyan realized he was buying time; his mother had had a similar tic, having to play with something when deep in thought.

“Have you ever wondered,” Barringer began, “back in 1924, how Stalin was able to win a power struggle against Leon Trotsky?” A nod. “Trotsky was one of the fathers of the Communist Party. Who was Stalin? Yet Stalin took power.” Barringer heaved a long breath, then sat back, still working the bolt on his rifle. “My father…was one of Stalin’s aides. He was instrumental in raising support from the other politicians, promising them mind-blowing amounts of money and land if they would help Stalin. Trotsky was too much of an idealist; bribing people were below him. He wouldn’t play politics. And so Stalin won. He owed my father favors…unending favors, really, but all my father demanded was that I be given a general’s commission in the army. There are dozens of generals; what was one more? So Stalin gave it to me, as a political appointment, and now I think he regrets it. He hates that I didn’t have to play the game.” He was rambling now, and abruptly cut himself off. After a few moments of awkward silence, he shrugged. “And now he’s probably watching me. Waiting for me to slip up so he can put me away like he wants to. So I play his little game, smile when I should smile, and that’s that. Who knows, maybe I’ll defect someday.” With that monologue hanging in the air, gathering mist in the dusk, the two men sat. A distant train whistle broke the silence, and a locomotive’s headlamp shone down the rails.

“So,” concluded Barringer, clacking the Mosin’s bolt shut and zipping the rifle into his bag, “that’s why I’m a general. And I guess that when we get to Finland, there’ll be some snot-faced political officer watching me like a hawk, and probably one watching you, too. I bet there’s a good reason Stalin stationed us near each other; he knows we’re both political heretics, and he wants us to feed off each other until we get caught. So we’re going to play his game, you and me, and we’re going to beat him at it.” The platform rumbled as the locomotive wheeled into the station, and Barringer looked over with a lopsided grin on his face. “Deal?”

Bagramyan took the outstretched hand and shook it. “Deal.”

---

Gameplay and screenies to begin next post. I had to chew some scenery to get to where the rest of it made sense

 

[TheExecuter]

<chewing>

Mmmm....good stuff...

May the fawning games begin!

P.S.
Loved this sentence for some reason...
"A distant train whistle broke the silence, and a locomotive’s headlamp shone down the rails."

It really got me into the scene from a visual standpoint...
Keep up the good work!

 

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Thanks for the feedback. It's funny, I almost cut that sentence out of the AAR because it seemed clunky to me, but I'm glad I left it in.

Now it's time for things to heat up.

 

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Three years is a long time, as most people know, and it is made incalculably longer when any day within those three years could be the last day of one’s life. Nonetheless, Hovhannes Bagramyan and Johann Barringer were none the worse for the wear, sharing mugs of warm honey tea in a Leningrad café. Their political officers sat at another table, trying and failing to look as if they were not observing the two generals, who in the intervening time had been promoted to field marshal along with several other commanders along the Polish and Baltic fronts.

“Do you think this Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is for real?” asked Barringer, thumping the front page of Leningrad’s daily paper.

“Not a chance,” Bagramyan responded instantly, scowling at the triumphant headline. “That Hitler fellow is unpredictable and volatile. He’s probably planning to attack France, as he’s been wanting to for some time, and wants silence on his eastern flank during that time. The moment France is subjugated – and it probably won’t take long – we’ll be next.”

“You really think that?” asked Barringer. Now 31, he had lost some of his youthful naivete, but was still eleven years Bagramyan’s junior. “I mean, he didn’t have to give us any of Poland at all. He could have occupied all of it, and been that much closer to Moscow when he attacked us, if that was truly his goal.”

Bagramyan shook his head. “Look, Hitler and Stalin are cut from the same cloth.” Quickly he caught himself and lowered his voice, leaning in toward the other marshal. “They’re both schemers, opportunists, and paranoid. The big difference is that Hitler’s a visionary, whereas Stalin’s a reactionary. As long as we’re out here, huge and populous, we’re a threat to Hitler. He knows that, and he’s not going to put up with it. He’s just biding his time.”

Barringer set his mug on the table and glanced around the room, which was packed to bursting with civilians and soldiers alike, carrying on and conversing after dinner. “I can’t make sense of it. Stalin mistrusts his own people, to the point of slaughtering thousands of them in labor camps, but he trusts Hitler, a foreigner who hates Slavs, to the point of taking him at his word?” It was one of the great ironies of history, thought Barringer, his eyes drifting to the two political officers in the corner. One of them was watching him and Bagramyan, and looked away quickly when Barringer’s gaze wandered over, embarrassed at being caught. A tight smile crossed the marshal’s face; the officers were inept. Keeping secrets from them had not been hard.

Bagramyan finished his tea and put his mug aside, pushing to his feet; Barringer did the same, and the two political officers across the way did likewise. “It has been a good meal, Hovi,” Barringer said with a smile.

“Yes, it has, Hani. Take care of yourself.” The two men embraced and parted ways, their political officers shadowing them down the avenue.

---

Events of the next month would unfold in a way that surprised even the Soviet political insiders. Less than a month after concluding the historic Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Hitler launched a massive invasion of Poland, earning him the ire of France, Britain, and a host of other allies, all of whom declared war on him in retribution.

Even faced with a two-front war, however, the Wehrmacht was able to polish off Poland in just under a month, all while holding back the French legions on the other border.

Days later, the lands of eastern Poland, promised to Russia by foreign minister Ribbentrop, were formally handed over.

Russian marshals on the front lines, notably Chuikov and Rokossovsky, watched in bewilderment as Hitler took advantage of a tranquil eastern front to steamroll over even more of western Europe.

Bewilderment would continue to be the prevailing attitude for the next two weeks of October, as the Germans positioned a large contingent of troops along what was ostensibly a peaceful, even friendly, border. Admittedly, the German force was still far smaller than the Russian complement opposite it, but was still sizable enough for concern.

 

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“If they’re friendly with us, why are they guarding that border so jealously?” Bagramyan spat. It was November 13, a month after the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, and German and Russian troops were still eyeballing each other nervously across the Vistula.

“Aren’t we doing the same?” Barringer pointed out. “And we still have more soldiers stationed there than they do, even.”

“Where else are we going to put them? Hitler, on the other hand, is fighting a war against two of the premiere industrial nations on earth, and he can spare a million men to guard a border with his ‘ally’?” Bagramyan shook his head in disgust. “I’m telling you, this is going to end poorly for us.”

“I don’t disagree with you, Hovi, but I don’t see what we can do about it from here.” Barringer unconsciously lowered his voice and snuck a peek out of the corner of his eye at the lone political officer who had tailed them here, to a city park in Leningrad proper. “Register your protests with the High Command – gently, though, not strongly enough to get you thrown in jail for dissent…”

Bagramyan merely shrugged. “It’s almost not worth making the noise. Stalin has his eye on Finland, anyway. I hear we’ve had diplomats demanding Viipuri and some other land along Lake Ladoga for months now. Rumor has it that there’s going to be war if they don’t relent.”

“I’ve heard. That puts you and me along the front lines, you realize.”

“I do. In fact I should probably be getting back to camp. They’re expecting the go-word any day now. With that said, we’ve been expecting it for
several weeks, now.”

“Why pick a time like this to move against Finland?” Barringer wondered aloud.
“Strategy. Hitler just picked off Poland; we have to ante up and rattle our sabers too.” Night was imminent, the glow of the sidewalk lamps almost obliterating the view of the starry sky. Bagramyan craned his neck anyway, picking out Ursa Major, the Great Bear. He jerked involuntarily as a hulking shape came running up to the two marshals.

“Sirs!” the deputy gasped breathlessly. “An order came over the wireless for you.”

Barringer took the outstretched paper and broke the seal; three words stared back at him. “Tiger. Repeat: Tiger.” He looked up at Bagramyan. “It begins.”

 

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“Have you received your orders?” Marshal Stalin’s voice crackled over the phone line. It was three in the morning in Moscow; Stalin was obviously concerned for his invasion.

“We’re moving in an hour, Marshal,” Barringer affirmed. He glanced out at his corps of tanks, forty thousand men, with an ocean of trucks supporting them. The corps had acquired the nickname “Fast Movers,” because that’s basically what tanks were; no one had any idea whether they would be at all worthwhile in modern combat. Germany’s tanks had showed well in the Polish campaign, but those were advanced Panzers; Barringer’s Fast Movers were outdated Russian experiments, left over from the Great War. The tanks themselves were predictably Russian, large, squat, and bulky – and of questionable usefulness in combat, Barringer thought with a wry grin. Armed with a pair of machine guns, they could probably cut through infantry fairly well, but would run into major problems if they encountered any obstacles.

His mind drifted back to his present conversation with Stalin. “Also, we need a new political officer.”

“Another?” Stalin roared. “What happened to Mikhailovich?”

“He went for a midnight stroll along the lake…against my advice. The ice apparently broke, and he fell through. We found him the next morning.” The account hung in midair for a few long moments, punctuated by Stalin’s heavy breathing, before the dictator sighed.

“You must learn to take better care of your politicos, Johann,” he chided. “But that is a discussion for another day. Move quickly and fight well.”

“Yes sir, Marshal Stalin.” Barringer quickly hung up the field telephone and climbed into the cupola of the lead tank. “Issue the orders,” he told his aide. “We’ll see you in Viipuri by tomorrow evening.”

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Stalin set the phone down, seething. “This will be the third political officer I’ve sent that man,” he ranted to nobody in particular. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was killing them intentionally!”

“Fortunately for all of us, you know better, Marshal,” soothed General Bulganin, no particular friend of Barringer’s, but loyal to his fellow officers.

Stalin breathed out and pounded his fist on the desk. “No matter. The boy is facing Mannerheim, an excellent general. His tanks are old and outdated. He will fight hard, and he will lose. Then I will humiliate him.”

Bulganin said nothing.

The fight for Viipuri took less than a day, and Barringer’s triumphant tank force pushed on toward Helsinki. Intelligence reports were sketchy, but he knew that Finnish mastermind Carl Mannerheim was waiting for him there, along with somewhere between four and ten divisions of Finnish infantry. Although the Russians were no stranger to winter, the Finns clearly outclassed them in terms of gear and training when it came to fighting in the cold. They would also be defending a city, a tactical and logistical nightmare for even the best general. The thought gave Barringer pause, until he remembered a long-ago conversation with Bagramyan.

He turned to his aide. “Where is Eremenko’s force?”

The aide looked at a clipboard. “About a day behind us.”

“Hold them here. Infantry will only hinder us. We need mobility and speed.”

The aide looked baffled. “Sir, don’t we want all the soldiers we can muster for our attack on the capital?”

Barringer grinned. “You’re thinking like a shark. We’re going to fight like a dolphin.”

Now the aide was totally lost, and Barringer laughed aloud at the confusion on the other man’s face. “Order Khorkina and Grishenko to take their divisions around the city. Send Khorkina in from the back, and have Grishenko attack from the north. My two divisions will attack from the front. Mannerheim is expecting us to attack with a Russian strategy, straight forward and with brute force. We don’t have brute force, so we must be unconventional.” The aide was scribbling all of this on his pad, and Barringer chuckled. “Remember, anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for.”

The aide looked up. “Should I send that in the orders, sir?”

“Please do.”

It was to the surprise of everybody in the Soviet leadership, except Field Marshal Hovhannes Bagramyan, that Barringer’s tankers annihilated the Finnish defenses in record time, despite fighting in unproven vehicles against a fully-entrenched enemy. Bagramyan’s own troops were surging forward, into the Finnish territory around Ladoga, and he joyously took in the hourly radio updates in which Barringer sent back report after report of his forces wiping the Finns out of the city and into the countryside. Eremenko’s infantry poured into the city behind Barringer’s advance, and pursued the Finns out to the remote coastal town of Turku as Barringer’s Fast Movers did just that, outflanking the Finns and seizing the last major centers of resistance, Vaasa and Pori.

One of Bagramyan’s aides caught up with his truck, relaying to him an update from several days before, but which had only now made it to his attention on the front lines.

“Well, that was unexpected,” he said to himself, lifting his eyes to the white horizon pocked with evergreens.

 

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And so, just days after storming into Finland, Russian soldiers eliminated the last resistance and formally annexed the entire nation, over the protests of the international community. Events on the ground had not been standing still, though, as Barringer and Eremenko launched across the Mariehamn straits and into Stockholm, with Bagramyan hot on their heels. Eremenko’s troops went north to block off any Swedish troops from advancing or coming to the aid of their comrades, while Bagramyan was tasked with routing scattered pockets of opposition, and Barringer (in Stalin’s increasingly desperate attempts to shame him with failure) was sent into action against odds greater than four-to-one.

With Barringer’s forty thousand troops tying down nearly two hundred thousand Swedes in Kalma, Bagramyan swung around in an encircling action, cutting off a pair of unfortunate cavalry divisions at Karlskrona. Before long, seventeen Swedish divisions had been liquidated, and Barringer’s tankers pushed north to patch the holes in the Soviet advance.

Somewhere along the line, the Swedes managed to land a single infantry division on the Karlskrona coast, much to the amusement of Barringer, who debated detaching one of his tank divisions to wipe it out.

In the end, it wasn’t worth the effort; Soviet troops reached the last pocket of Swedish resistance at Gallivare and the Winter War was over.

But disturbing news about the western front was trickling into army headquarters…

 

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“It’s brilliant, Marshal Timoshenko, just brilliant. The Germans get free passage into the heart of our country, position their units and tanks at their leisure, and declare war on us when the time is opportune for them. We can’t accept this! We’ll be annihilated!”

Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, one of Stalin’s military advisors alongside Marshal Bulganin, listened with half an ear as Bagramyan ranted. Finally, one eyebrow raised, he interjected. “You’ve been talking about German aggression for, what, four years now? Isn’t it time to face the music? You’re a competent officer, Ivan. Don’t let this one idea sully your name.”
Bagramyan fumed. “What do they need military access to our nation for? They’re not fighting anyone who borders our territory. There’s no reason at all! And if there’s no good reason, there must be a bad one!”
This at least made Timoshenko pause, as he didn’t have a good comeback. “I’ll pass it on to Stalin.”

He didn’t have to. Shamed on the world stage by Russia’s stonewalling of their military access proposal, Germany declared war. Their forces on the Polish border were impressive, but the Russians’ more so.

Forces were rushed to the front from all across the Soviet Union, while the German forces were still bogged down with operations in France and the Low Countries. The initial wave of the Soviet attack would be devastating, although Russia faced an uphill battle in terms of military strength.

One week into the battle, Soviet divisions had pushed the Germans back at least 20 miles across the entire front; two weeks after that, the German front had collapsed entirely and there was virtually nothing between the Soviets and Berlin. Marshal Timoshenko’s men, however, found themselves on the wrong end of numerical superiority in the province of Breslau; more Russians made haste to his position in the hope of damaging or annihilating over a quarter of Germany’s entire Wehrmacht.

Somewhere near Warsaw, Barringer’s field telephone rang. “Speaking.”
Stalin’s brusque grunt was unmistakable. “I want you to rush to Berlin.”
This was unanticipated, but being as he did have the fastest vehicles, it made a modicum of sense – something that was too often lacking in directives from Stalin’s office. “We will leave immediately,” Barringer said, trying to hide his surprise.
“Do it.”

Back at military headquarters, Bulganin turned to Stalin. “This is an odd method of discrediting the boy, no? By giving him the glory of being first into Berlin?”
“You know nothing!” Stalin snapped. “Barringer’s family is German. He will likely defect. I already have his political officer watching him like the proverbial hawk. Even if he does not defect, Berlin will be heavily defended, and Barringer’s tanks are weak. His assault will fail, and he will be shamed.”
Just like his assault on Helsinki failed, mused Bulganin ironically, but he knew better than to say those words out loud.

A week later, a photo of Barringer, wearing a lopsided grin and brandishing an STG-44 in front of the Reichstag, ran on the front page of Pravda. Stalin’s fury was incalculable. His men dug in as the remaining Soviet divisions expanded the perimeter around Berlin.

Meanwhile, Timoshenko’s situation in the south had elevated to epic levels. Three and a half million Russians squared off against two and a half million Germans, in a shallow valley which had already earned the nickname “The Cauldron.” Finally, rapid movement by Barringer’s tankers sealed off the area near Breslau to prevent the Germans from escaping. Their destruction, when it invariably came, would be total.

 

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I'm debating whether or not to finish this AAR. Its sole purposes - to kill time until I got Victoria, and prepare me for writing some future Victoria AAR - have been fulfilled, as I now have Vicky and have already played through it once (as Russia - I'm not sure where my fascination with the Bear comes from). I really like the material that would be coming in the next few updates, so we'll see. If I don't, I'll at least give the Cliffs Notes version of how the thing ends, just in case there's anyone wanting to see what happens between Stalin and his two nemeses.