Part 29: Turn 26: December 11, 1941

It's brigades all the way down.




No mustache? You're slipping Stalin.



This artillery is attached to the 21st Army on the southern flank of the Bryansk front. With the amount of guards artillery we're geting I'm going to start having trouble tracking these guys down eventually.




The ice level this far north has capped out at 10, rivers no longer have any effect on combat. Let's go open up Leningrad.



The guards in Leningrad open up and go on the offensive, charging across the frozen rivers. Now we've got 3 hexes to launch attacks from, next week we'll have 1-2 more and then they won't be able to keep us bottled up anymore.



Along the rest of the front we go on a general offensive, pushing the Germans back everywhere we can, launching 18 attacks, 16 successful.



The center of the line suffers the worst of it with a 20 mile gap getting blasted open. We don't have the MP to exploit openings like this but they're hell for the Germans to fix.




My goal here is to push the Germans as far back from Moscow as I possibly can. There's no real way to get encirclements in this weather so I've got to just launch attacks absolutely everywhere I can get favorable odds.



22 attacks are launched, 19 succeed. I'm having incredible amounts of trouble getting troops onto the lines here, we've got too many troops and not enough frontage for them.



Oh my god I hate these motorized units. Normal combats range about 500-1000 losses on both sides with the Germans normally losing several hundred more than us. Sometimes these guys swoop in and just wreck us though.




I love this front just because of the 1st Shock army, they are horrifyingly effective.



While pushing up we nearly encircle a Hungarian cavalry brigade and a German Infantry division. They're probably going to be able to escape but it was worth trying.



The 1st shock army lays waste to its section of the line, with luck they may be able to retake Kursk next turn.




This is the only section on the front where the rivers haven't frozen solid, next turn when they do I am going to tear those Romanians apart.



1=1 Panzer divisions, I love it.



Don't worry little guy, I'll protect you from the nasty weather.



I think I could actually use some more troops down here. I'll see if a reserve army that can't squeeze onto the line further north could be railed down here.



The Caucasus front gets across the river, and the southern front gets its first few units across. The rivers down here will freeze next turn and then the rest of the southern front will open up on the Romanians.





We grab some factories out of the Crimea and some plane factories near Rostov.




3 attacks from the German army this turn, the first fails to move a rifle division.



The second causes a tank brigade to retreat.



And the last frees that panzer division I trapped, what a shame.



The Red Army launched 93 attacks this turn, 69 succeed. 1 Romanian division and 1 Romanian brigade routed, no axis units shattered.



Map showing the current extent of our advance. In the north our advance is incredibly slow, hampered by the terrain and the weather. Down south though we're making huge strides, the only places the Germans have held on are where I've tried to encircle a division or two.

Our losses break 2 million and the German OOB falls below 3 million.