Part 109: Turn 116: September 2, 1943

Wow I love this, give me more guards Tanks and artillery goddamn.




The pocket holds what looks like most of the divisions that were trapped last turn and I control basically the entire eastern bank of the Oder. The goal now is to hold the pocket while taking the western bank of the Oder. If I can't make an opposed crossing of the river the Kalinin front in the south is ready to shatter the German line south of Berlin and loop north.



First off, Koenigsberg falls to the Northwest front. 3 German formations remain in the pocket but they will be routed or captured within a week or two.



Looks like I've got about 17 divisions in this pocket, now I just need to seal it shut and capture them.





And the last gasp from my tanks which are running on fumes. I'm now well and truly out of gas this far forward but I manage to secure 2 river crossings, hopefully I'll be able to hang onto one which I'll them be able to fortify and use as my jumping off point for Berlin. I would love to use Stettin since I can use it to run a rail across the river but I'll take what I can get.





6 German infantry divisions are forced to surrender allowing me to move my forces into their final positions for the turn. If this looks like a goddamn mess that's because it is. The mud sets in on turn 122 (October 14th) so I would very much like to win before then but I'm doubtful I'll be able to.



The rest of my forces in the region are less of a mess but there's a lot of minor rivers down here which makes progress slow.




With nearly all of my armor tied up in the drive for Moscow I'm becoming more and more skeptical of my ability to actually take Prague.



Finally getting these fronts under control, they're beginning to be an effective fighting force again.



The rest of my forces launch scattered attacks and don't really take any ground despite driving the Germans back all over the place. I doubt I'm going to make any serious headway down here until after the mud gives me a chance to re-organize.






The Germans immediately drive me back across the river with what is by far the largest concentration of German armor I've ever seen but they lack the MP to re-occupy Stettin. Next turn I'm going to have 2 mechanized corps in the city instead of a shitty tank corps with no fuel so they're going to have to work for it if they want to drive me out again.



Further south they attempt a similar rescue operation but there's no way they can dig through the wall of men I've got here.



German losses break 4 million and their OoB continues to plummet.