Its dark in here - a german 1944 AAR

[Mjarr]

June 18th, 1944. Dear diary, I was recently appointed as personal secretary for Heinz Guderian, the Chief of Staff. I knew much about his reputation, and meeting him in person gave me great feeling of uneasiness, but it was nothing truly to worry about. However, that was the end of the good news. Germany was facing three front war and was on the brink of destruction and Hitler is not in his right mind. He demands constantly new head-on offences, blames generals for incompetence, Göring for the failure of Luftwaffe among other things. It is getting out of hands.

June 19th, 1944. After another staff meeting, Hitler went way over the top. He smashed several glasses and howled like a banshee. I am not exactly sure what it was all about, but after the meeting Guderian gave me a optimistic smile and told me he finally was able to authorize full-front withdrawal on the Eastern Front, partitial on the Western Front and to reinforce Italy with some rearguard units. He was concerned about the massive stress caused to our logistics though, as they were already streched very thin and the massive movement would strain it even further. The withdrawal will begin on midnight, 20th of June. He also mentioned that instead of adding extra drafts he was able to put more effort of putting more coherent training and organisation for the remaining troops, rather than keep putting fresh, green faces on the front.

Notes:
-This is played with the mod linked in my signature.
-There will be minor 'roleplaying' elements involved, E.G. a chief of staff won't be at the frontline.
-I'll try to update this regularly.
-This is the regular 1944 scenario.
-While this won't be a complete imageorgy, still warning for those with slower connection.
-Whoever gets the reference in the title will gain a free cookie

Settings played with:

 

[Mjarr]

June 27th, 1944. Mein Gott in Himmel, it has been one crazy week. The initial withdrawal on the eastern front went fine as the russians didn't go out for all-front attack as we initially expected and most of the actions were only low-level fighting in several sectors. The VVS on the other hand caused alot more trouble, but there weren't that many casualties as we initially expected. Several divisions are lagging behind as the radio connections went dead due the massive interdiction while the Luftwaffe was succesfully transferred around Warsaw. On the western front it was relatively quiet, ignoring the american attack in Cherbourgh. The garrison had to surrender after two days of bitter fighting.

On the evening of 21st, Göring gave order for all Luftwaffe units permission for limited sorties in local areas in order to slow down the allied bomber stream. Even though most formations in the west are under reorganisation and even the acting commanders are not in contact, several small engagements were fought around Paris on 22nd. Our losses were mostly minor, few planes and one dead pilot while their losses unfortunately are unknown. Around 14 bombers and 2 fighters were claimed as probable. In the past few days losses had been minimal on both sides, but the allies just keeps bombing everything in sight.

On the 23rd, the americans launched major offence in Angers. Hausser gave orders for HQ staff and for the paratroopers to retreat while they'll hold them off to buy more time. After a day Hausser gave a full retreat order aswell, as most of the others had been able to retreat from the frontline.

On the morning of the 25th however, a knack of surprise came into light. A british paratrooper division had captured Auch. The local units responded immediatly by launching an attack, and even when fighting understrenght they had some moderate success initially but the lack of men was imminent. It was shortly after followed by british invasion in Dax, which ultimately gave an order for several divisions to march from Marseille towards west. In the east the russians began advancing, but no major contacts were done with any army groups.

Part of Guderian's strategy (after Hitler finally approving it, with very bitter teeth) was to delay the allied advance in the west in order to reinforce units, and also to take several fresh divisions from Norway and transfer them to the western front. Dönitz put several orders for the whole Kriegsmarine, including small convoy raiding diversions in the Atlantic and also to establish a defensive blockade so no allied ships can interfere with the troop transports. An american carrier and a heavy cruiser was spotted nearby the coast of Norway and even though they retreated after few hours we lost Lützow. The transports were able to return back to Germany without any problems, making the operation a success despite the loss of a ship. In the east, it's just a matter of waiting until the inevitable mass assault will come.

 

[Mjarr]

Retreating from Lvov is not a very smart decision albeit you get river bonuses on the other province, you are losing a baldly needed airbase, and also you should build some land forts asap.

I was considering should I give it up or not but trying to hold onto it would make it very nasty salient, and Crakow has airbases which provides range to operate in the southern area of the front.

As for the land fort suggestion, the time it takes to build would be bit too much to benefit anything else, other than fortifying Berlin or so

 

[quaazi]

Well, I'd say you're gonna need some luck to beat this one, but there's a limit...

 

[Mjarr]

As a matter of fact, landforts do benefit quite a bit, especially in situations like '44 Ger, because they give a small bonus, and having a fortified line lets you use up additional units for fighting in the West, after that, take all the western units that are not garissons, and attack Turkey -> Baku that will solve your Oil problems and give you a new front on which to shake the bear up.

That's all true, but bear in mind this is with a modded game. It takes easily 8months to build a single landfort, so june + 8 months would make it early 1945 before it would be ready. In worst case scenario I'm done by that time already

 

[unmerged(83496)]

P.S. Venezuela has alot of oil.

This is true but the Atlantic is the Allies swimming pool in '44.

What is the oil situation?

 

[unmerged(166917)]

Oh great a new Götter AAR.
Subscribed

 

[Mjarr]

I dont see a reason why a landfort would take 8months IRL.

Considering a land fort doesn't really mean there is just a single land for in the province but some sort of major installation of fortifications, how long it takes to build E.G. even a small line of bunkers, fortifications, probably some trenches, barbed wires, pre-mined areas etc? It took around 10 years just to build Maginot Line for example

What is the oil situation?

See the last photo of the AAR. Now that most of the initial chaos is toned down presuming I minimise any unnecessary oil usage I could hang on for several months before I am truly running out.

New update(s?) coming tomorrow, have some other things to take care of today.

 

[DvD-IT]

-Whoever gets the reference in the title will gain a free cookie

Guess what could that be?

and Crakow has airbases which provides range to operate in the southern area of the front.

I see you're not going to reshuffle your airforce to the West. Aren't you afraid of Allied air superiority?

 

[Mjarr]

I see you're not going to reshuffle your airforce to the West. Aren't you afraid of Allied air superiority?

Not entirely. Too much traffic on airbases isn't exactly a good thing since the frontline is going to be rather unstable and attempting any long range transfers has been bit difficult due AI actually being active with air superiority and bombing missions. I already had several airfield attacks in Paris, even though the damage was mostly minimal. I did transfer three interceptor squadrons from the east to the west, but it's going to take atleast 10-15 days before they are worthy to actually go for aerial operations, and they're in Frankfurt currently so transferring them closer would add easily yet another 3-7 days.

Of course the fact they control the air makes any major troop movement very difficult, but I'm more afraid of their bombers going batshit on IC targets than army interdiction for the moment. We'll see how things will wrap up later today once I'll continue the game

Guess what could that be?

It's bit obscure, but the name itself is actually a reference to video game related thing. Consider it as free hint.

 

[Mjarr]

it took two years to build, and could be represented as lvl 3-4 naval forts or landforts if you will to do so.

It would take around two years to build to do it with 8x month buildtime average to have lvl3 forts, bit above for lvl4 forts.

However, I have tiny question to ask as there might be big problem. When my last AAR was butchered due failed savegame load, I took necessary steps to create three save files for each save (normal, backup and backup of the backup). Now I get this error regardless of which of them I load:

I checked all savegame files and there is NOT, repeat NOT any multi_role model = 8 anywhere in the saves. I checked all country techapps, there is nothing out of place or anything. Unfortunately if I can't get past this this AAR can be effectively terminated even before it began :rofl:

 

[quaazi]

Delete the save game and load another?

 

[Mjarr]

Delete the save game and load another?

None of the save games work (that is, made in that specific '44 game. Every other savegame I have for non-44 scenario do work fine as expected). They all give that specific error and I checked through the save files and none of them had any model = 8 MR anywhere. Deleting it doesn't really help anything in this case.

 

[quaazi]

Backups are useless when they're all the same.

Autosaves recently?

 

[DvD-IT]

What happens if you delete that unit altogether?

 

[Mjarr]

What happens if you delete that unit altogether?

Part of the problem is that there is no such unit to be found. I searched for model = 8 after opening the save file and no model = 8 MRs to be found. Then I searched with multi_role and checked through every squadron and production queque and still no luck.

Backups are useless when they're all the same.

Autosaves recently?

Autosaves likes to crash my AoD in about every 3rd time it kicks in so I don't use them. The shortest time for an autosave would also be a month IIRC and the scenario begins and 20th of June and I saved at 27t of June, making it useless even if I would have them on.

 

[tuore]

Could you send the file? I could have a look.

 

[Mjarr]

Sure thing.

 

[tuore]

It should work now. I can't check it, because you didn't send me the .cfg file related to the save, but it should work.

What I did was I went to the line mentioned in the error report (55029) and copied the multi_role values from a regular 1944 savegame. The nation which had the problem was UK, so I took the U.K values of the 1944 and replaced the corrupted ones.

http://www.filefront.com/16744109/GDDark1.rar

 

[Mjarr]

Ah yes, I forgot the config. Unfortunately your fix didn't help so far, but here's the config: