Part 31: Turn 28: December 25, 1941

Merry Christmas! We're not going to have a white Christmas because I finally snapped and turned off that godawful overlay.



Guards. The 10th guards rifles are part of the 21st army on the southern flank of the Bryansk front. They've been getting a few guards brigades but this is their first Guards division. Just south of them is the 12th army which picks up the 11th Guards rifles, their first Guards promotion of any kind. The 12th, 13th and 14th Guards rifles are attatched to the 29th army just outside Moscow and the arty is attached to the 49th army just north of them. Finally we have the guards Cavalry, since that cavalry division isn't technically on the map anymore, it's represented by a single fused corps counter, the counter does not get Guards status. Corps units do not earn guards until atleast 2 of the divisions that make up the counter get promoted. Anyways the cavalry is attached to the 44th army, south of Tula.




The Germans aren't retreating up here, maybe they're relying on the awful terrain to protect them?



We break through the lines around Leningrad but without any support from the rest of the front the Germans are just going to bottle us back up again.



The 2nd shock army arrives at the front and blasts a German division out of the way, next turn those Cavalry are going to open up and hopefully reach Leningrad.



This line is getting shredded. There's a few German hardpoints that are opposing me but the rest of the line is collapsing around them.



I've been trying to bite off single divisions wherever I can since the start of the blizzard and one finally sticks around.




A lot of the Germans on this front are pulling back, time to go chasing em.



Every once and awhile i run into something like this. This mountain division would take way too much effort to move and it's got a scary high offensive CV rating. So instead I just threaten it with encirclement, forcing it to uproot and move. Next turn after it's out of its fortification I'll run it down and butcher it with cavalry.



I think this is the first time this has happened. A motorized unit in reserve got activated and I won. Sure it was only a motorized regiment but I'll take what I can get.



Some of my armies are seriously understrength right now, with about half of their on-paper strength. In an ideal world my armies work like this: I've got 8 rifle divisions, 3 tank battalions and 2 rifle batalions per army (ideally, probably half the armies don't have this.) The tanks sit just behind the lines and act as reserves or wait to exploit a breakthrough and threaten an encirclement, or to finish an encirclement the rifles start. The rifle battalions are there to hold hexes or reinforce an attack and the divisions are the ones that do the real work, attacking and taking the brunt of German attacks. Since I've got 8 of them the goal is for each army to have 1-2 divisions off the line at all times refitting and 6-7 divisions on the line fighting, but that's not really happening right now since everything is a mess. So the end result is some of my divisions are being run ragged and are at half strength or worse.




This front is really ugly, everyone is bunched up behind the lines outside orel, we're gonna have to fix that.



Somehow I don't think these infantry divisions are going to be escaping me, just a hunch.



Near Orel the 41st and 44th Cavalry armies meet up and nearly encircle an entire panzer corps, but are stopped short by a hero infantry division that refuses to budge.



The 1st Shock army continues to terrorize the Italians and Hungarians, obliterating their line and retaking Kursk.




The Romanians are running away



The 53rd joins the frontline, ready to take it to the evil Romanians.



The Caucasus front is unstoppable here, I barely even have to attack these units to get them to retreat. If I had the option to look sternly at counters I'm pretty sure that would have been just as effective.



The Southern front makes it across the frozen Dnepr in force. They're well rested and there's almost no Germans down here to stop them.



New armies time! The 46th rifle army forms up at Stalino.



East of Moscow we have the 4th Shock, also primarily made of rifle divisions.



And up at Yaroslavl the 3rd Shock forms up. As soon as I have some AP to spare I'm going to convert these cavalry to Corps and ship this army out.



Make it stop



Nothing, I'm done evacuating for the rest of the blizzard. I need to wait and see where the Germans are planning on going before I get anything else, if I get anythign else.




The Germans are stripping the eastern front here to keep me bottled up in Leningrad, that cavarly army is going to run rampant nex turn.





Along the rest of the front the Germans do their pull back 10 miles in some places, stick to hardpoints in other places routine. They didn't do a very good job of it though, just by quickly scanning the new frontlines I spotted 6 divisions I can probably encircle.



Some more infantry divisions to capture next turn, we're running rampant in the south and Leningrad is going to join the rest of the front in a turn or two. All is going well.



German losses break 1 million, a lovely Christmas present for the Red Army. See you next year.