A World at War

The Axis fights a determined, furious struggle to drive Allied forces from the soft underbelly of Fortress Europe. Sicily and southern Italy have already been lost, American and British troops tightening their dominion over the former Axis territories. But the Allied advance has stalled, unable to free itself from the bloody stalemate of Monte Cassino and the horrific German wonder weapons that are becoming an ever increasing fixture in Axis forces. Benito Mussolini still rules Italy from his capital in Rome, intent on purging his country of the invading Allies and recapturing Italy’s lost possessions in Africa. The hills and valleys of southern Italy echo with the din of battle as Allied and Axis armies relentlessly probe for any hint of weakness in enemy positions. Despite the bravado and invective of Mussolini, the Italian front has become one all but forgotten by the world at large. The Allied high command has its eyes fixed on the campaign in France and the Middle East, while Hitler and the German high command are obsessed with the destruction of Soviet Russia. So the Italian theatre sinks into stagnation and neglect, but no less deadly for the men still fighting on the peninsula.

On the 6th of June, 1944, Allied forces in Europe were handed the most disastrous defeat since the fall of Paris when Rommel’s Atlantic Wall stopped the invading armies on the beaches of Normandy. Panzer divisions drove American and British troops back into the sea and the losses were of such magnitude that they shook the pillars of power in both the United Kingdom and the United States. But less than a year later, the Allies would try again. On the 15th of February, 1945, newly appointed Supreme Allied Commander Field Marshal Alexander sent the Axis a late Valentine they would not soon forget. The mass landing of nearly 300,000 American, British, Canadian and Free French soldiers along the southern coast of France. With the Germans set against an amphibious assault into northern Italy or a repeat of the Normandy invasion, the Axis was caught off guard by Alexander’s bold attack. Valuable time was lost as Axis forces staged in northern France were prevented from turning south without the express permission of Hitler himself – permission he refused to give until certain the landings in southern France were not merely a feint to draw the German attention away from the real attack, which Hitler was again convinced would strike Calais in northern France. By the time the high command could convince their Fuehrer of his mistake, it was too late. The original landings had been swollen by reinforcements – over 1 million Allied troops now occupied the French Riviera and were now pressing north toward Paris and east towards Vichy and the capital of Marshal Petain, leader of the fascist French. By November, Paris would be liberated by the Free French of Charles de Gaulle and Omar Bradley’s American 3rd Army and Vichy forces in full scale retreat toward the German and Italian borders. But these victories would not go unchallenged for long. In the dead of winter, as the Allies began to consolidate their gains, Hitler implemented Operation Wacht am Rhein. Nearly 200,000 German soldiers crashed into Allied positions in eastern France while in the west, Generalissimo Francisco Franco sent a similarly sized Spanish army smashing against the Allied rear. Thoughts of liberation faded from the minds of Allied commanders, their objectives turning toward mere survival against the mass assaults against their flanks. In January of 1946, the Allies still hold Marseille and Paris, but the cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse sit in Axis hands. Fierce fighting still rages in Allied strongholds such as Orleans, Dijon and Clermont-Ferrand. Embattled in the south, terrified that the Spanish and German armies will join and cut off Allied forces from their source of supply in Toulon and Marseille, MacArthur and Churchill contemplate another attempt at invading Normandy.

In the winter of 1944, newly appointed Kriegsmarshall Erwin Rommel, supreme commander of Germany’s Wehrmacht, arrived to take command of Axis forces on the Russian front. One of his first acts was to secure the valuable oil resources in the Crimea and Caucasus. Rommel would not permit his campaign to suffer for want of supply as his Afrika Korps had during the North Africa campaign. As the spring thaw set in, and in direct violation of Hitler’s obsessed demands for a general advance all along the immense Russian front, Rommel diverted much of his Army Group South into the USSR’s oil-rich underbelly. Leaving the other army groups in the capable hands of Guderian, Hoth and Manstein, Rommel pressed his attack, smashing through Soviet defences in the Caucasus and capturing fuel reserves and oil refineries that would keep the entire German army functional for six months. Hitler’s protests against Rommel’s strategy withered in the face of his success and the Fuehrer found himself giving grudging support to the Kriegsmarshall’s initiative. Rommel pressed his attack still further south, striking into Persia, seeking to push the British and Soviets from the oil-rich kingdom of the Shah. In this, Rommel’s panzers were supported by the ROA – the Russian Liberation Army, a fiercely anti-Soviet force commanded by a former Red Army general – Andrei Vlasov and his advisor, a sinister creature from Russia’s past, the ‘prophet’ Gregori Yefimovitch Rasputin. But not everything is going Rommel’s way. After his initial gains in the region, Rommel soon finds himself fighting once more a campaign characterised by hit-and-run strikes in a barren battlefield where lines of control are little more than marks on a map. Pressing into Persia from the south is an American army under the command of General George S. Patton and Rommel will spend the next year dancing around his more numerous and better supplied American opponent. Both commanders seek to draw their enemy into a decisive battle, but so far neither has fallen into the other’s trap, unable to tip the balance one way or another.

Encouraged by the early gains made by Rommel in Persia, Heinrich Himmler convinces Hitler to allow a similar operation against British-held territories in the Middle East. The first phase of this operation takes the form of a fascist coup in Turkey and the entrance of that nation into the Axis. The second phase is when the 1st Waffen SS army, under Obergruppenfuehrer Sepp Dietrich, acting under Himmler’s direct command, moves nearly 150,000 men and 1000 tanks into Syria and Lebanon. The attack is one the British have prepared for, dedicating Field Marshal Montgomery to the defence of the valuable oil fields of the Middle East. Unable to co-ordinate a large and widespread force effectively, and hampered by the tactically unsound and sometimes erratic ‘suggestions’ of Himmler, Dietrich is stopped by Montgomery as his SS army pushes into Palestine. Within sight of the ancient walls of Jerusalem, the Germans are pushed back, forced to retreat back into their early conquests in Syria and northern Iraq. Montgomery allows Dietrich to retreat, suing the time to build his defences and gather his forces. But the Germans are using the time to gather forces of their own, using the anti-British invective of the exiled Grand Mufti to recruit thousands of Syrians and Iraqis into newly formed ‘Freikorps’ regiments. When the Germans do return, they will not return alone.

On the Russian front, the Soviet Union recovers from the hideous rout at the Battle of Kursk. Poised to deliver a deathblow to the German army, Marshal Zhukov found his carefully nurtured battleplan incinerated by a ghastly new German wonder-weapon. Just as German forces crumbled before Soviet tank divisions, Zhukov found his entire left flank obliterated by a flash of light and a grotesque mushroom cloud. Soviet spies reveal the weapon was a new ‘atomic disintegration shell’ fired from the gargantuan 80cm mortar the Germans call ‘Dora’. Stalin and his marshals shudder at the prospect of such a weapon being used on Moscow and redouble their efforts to hold the battleline that exists between the city of Rostov in the south, the river Seim and the heavily fortified German positions stretching from Sevsk to Zhidra in the north known as the Hagen Line. Such is Stalin’s fear that he orders the successful Soviet campaign in the north halted and divisions reformed to menace the Hagen Line, rather than pushing on into the rear of the Axis forces. The Soviets have managed to lift the siege at Leningrad, recapture Estonia and Latvia, and advance close enough to shell the cities of Minsk and Vilinus, now this promising offensive is called off to prevent a German push through the centre of Russia. Once again, Stalin hopes to play for time, time to allow the vast industries of the Soviet Union to churn out newer and better weapons, time to allow a new generation of Soviet super soldiers to take the field. Time to allow his scientists to unlock a weapon that will make even the hideous German device used at Kursk seem insignificant by comparison.

Far behind the front lines, deep within Soviet held territory, on the banks of the Volga, Field Marshal Paulus continues to hold the blasted carcass of Stalingrad with the ragged remains of Army Group Volga. The once imposing Axis army has been cut off from its own lines for nearly a year, reduced from a force that numbered in the hundreds of thousands to a wretched remnant barely numbering 10,000 men. Surrounding the city, nearly a half-million Soviets ensure that there will be no escape from Stalingrad. Yet still, Hitler will not allow Paulus to surrender, will not allow Army Group Volga to even consider retreat. From the air, mighty armoured zeppelins strive to keep the Axis forces within the city supplied and reinforced, but the supplies and men are never enough. There is no hope for victory at Stalingrad, the only thing the air drops bring is the means to drag out the conflict. Yet Hitler will not be swayed – he will have Stalin’s city, no matter the price. For his part, Stalin is only too happy to allow the Luftwaffe to bring more material for his ‘fascist meatgrinder’, for every fascist soldier who arrives in Stalingrad is one less soldier who might be sent someplace where he might realistically oppose the Soviets.

In the Pacific, the once mighty Japanese Empire reels from disastrous defeats on the Asian mainland. Since their first setbacks during the attempted invasion of Australia in 1942, the Japanese have been increasingly on the defensive. Burma has been reclaimed by the British, Chinese and American forces have ousted the Japanese from Cambodia and much of French Indo-China. Nanking and Hong Kong have been liberated and now Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces threaten Japanese-held Shanghai. Japan’s only ally in the Pacific, the kingdom of Thailand has abandoned her, joining the Allied cause. Increasingly, the Japanese are forced to employ ‘colonial’ soldiers from Manchuria and Korea to augment their own troops in China, trying to contain the American and Chinese armies moving upon the strongholds that yet remain within Japanese hands. In the north, communist guerrillas under Mao Tse-Tung stage increasingly devastating raids against the Manchurian frontier, further stretching Imperial Japanese Army resources.

The islands of Java and the Dutch East Indies have been back in Allied hands for over a year, denying Japan a valuable source of oil and fuel. The Japanese garrisons at Guadalcanal and in New Britain have been annihilated, the navy base in Rabaul pounded into rubble by relentless bombing campaigns. After driving the Australians from the island, much of New Guinea has been reclaimed by the Allies and in the Philippines, American forces have gained almost complete control of Mindanao, making good on their president’s promise to return. Yamamoto’s fleet, while still a formidable power in the Pacific, finds itself increasingly playing the role of hunted rather than hunter. Far in the past are the victories of Pearl Harbour, Midway and San Francisco.

Only in North America is the Japanese Empire still on the offensive. Japanese forces first landed in Alaska in 1944, since then they have steadily increased their presence, using vast numbers of Korean ‘colonials’ to prosecute their war against the Americans and Canadians, penetrating into parts of the Yukon. It is a desperate attempt by the Japanese to forestall an invasion of their home islands by drawing MacArthur’s attention to his own defence, but it is bait the American president has so far been unwilling to take. In the frozen tundra and forests of the sub-arctic, another ‘forgotten’ war rages across some of the most inhospitable and unforgiving land the world can offer.

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