Part 96: Turn 101-102: May 20 - May 27, 1943

This is a mud turn unfortunately but something wonderful has happened that offsets that.



The Steppe front arrives with a 1 time infusion of 120 admin points. I've already got some armies picked out for this front and they're going to be slotted in between the Central and Voronezh fronts near Brest Litovsk. Unless I'm rather unlucky transferring the armies around shouldn't take all 120 AP so I should have some left over to continue my crusade to compact this line.




The Leningrad front is completely stuck behind the lines. I'm just going to give them a few weeks off to rest and refit until a spot opens up for them.



It looks like the Germans are planning on defending Koenigsberg, for their sake I hope they stick around.



Warsaw falls to the newly formed Steppe front without resistance, how anti-climactic.



The Germans appear to be sticking to the rivers in the south. I give it 50/50 odds they stand and fight here or fall back another 20-30 miles next turn.



And the Austrian/Hungarian border. This stretch of the line is incredibly well defended and the Germans are sticking like glue to any river they can find down here. Attacking down here remains incredibly difficult due to my forces being stretched too thin and the Germans having too many reserves.




Clear weather oh boy oh boy.




Huh, I wonder where those 3 million Germans are hiding. Lets run some recon flights and take advantage of this nice weather.



Oh, that's where they are.




In the far north those divisions refuse to surrender. It will be another 2 weeks before I can try again.



Triple stacks of German counters 30 miles deep, nasty. Luckily it's mostly level 2 forts so I should be able to grind through this barring massive reserve activations like I'm seeing down south. Even if I can't make progress I'm still going to be launching attacks, if I can trade 2,000 Russians for 500-1,000 Germans this line will crumble before I run out of men.



The Central front comes off the line to refit and reorganize. I've now got 2 entire fronts off the line to refit and the Northwest and Volkhov fronts are each only able to get half their troops on.




The last 2 fronts on the map that haven't had the majority of their troops converted to corps. I Think I'm going to slot the central front in here around the Volkhov front in 2 weeks.



Yup definitely room for another front here. I think it's going to be the Central front just because the Leningrad front is too far away and will take too long to get down here.



North of Krakow the German line is rather weak and gets pushed back from the rivers. South of Krakow is another matter, a very strong line with lots of reserves. There's no way I can budge that without more corps down here.




The Germans are holding their ground down here and I can't really do much about it until the Transcaucasus front finishes its rotation west so I can increase troop density on the line.



Slovakia has nearly been pacified, only a few German divisions remain in the mountains to slow me down.



Near Vienna I probe the strength of the German line and find it lacking, next clear week I'm going to try to break through the line and cut this line in half.




And in the south the 3rd shock forces 2 divisions to surrender. The German line down here is too strong to make much progress against so I have to content myself with pushing around the weaker counters.




Another clear turn. There's a total of 3 mud turns left spread over the next 6 weeks so we're almost through this.



Near Koenigsberg the Germans finally hold the line, abandoning only a single hex on the very edge of the formation.




And in the far far south the Germans take 2 hexes off the 4th shock army for some reason.



That German line is starting to look very scary and their tank numbers are even more horrifying.