Day 778: Spain and Poland move to finish France and Germany

Day 778, 08:50 • Published in USA Australia • by Aeros

SUMMARY

It has been a busy 48 hours since my last recap. Victories for Phoenix: Inner Mongolia was secured by Hungary, Jilin was secured by Russia. Victories for EDEN: Greece has secured the Aegean Islands, Crete and Tel Aviv. Spain has advanced through much of France thanks to a French retreat, while Poland has secured all of Germany down to Bavaria and the Rheinland while advancing against the United Kingdom in Belgium. China secured Liaoning and Xinjiang from a Russian attack, while Malaysia has successfully driven Indonesia from its territory following a counterattack on Sarawak.


EUROPEAN THEATER

The Western and Central European fronts were united two days ago when Spanish and Polish forces met on the French/German border near Strassbourg in Alsace province. With Germany reduced to its final bastions, Poland decided to put the Germans into an unwinnable situation. A few strategic land swaps with Spain completely surrounded the Saarland with Spanish territory following the Polish attack on the Rheinland. While Germany may have been reduced to the point where Poland must fight initiative deciding battles, the presence of the Spanish occupation zones will prevent Germany from mounting a counterattack even if they do prevail against the Polish attack. For starters, Germany would have to cough up the Gold to declare war on Spain before they could even consider trying to retake their country. If they do declare war, then they would have to fight 1 v 1 against the Spanish. Having already lost so much to Poland with activated MPP’s, it is unlikely Germany could advance against Spain without considerable Phoenix support. At this point, Germany’s position is unsustainable. Any defense will be stop gap at best with no possibility of capitalizing on any defensive victories Germany might win against Poland. The options for the Germans at this point are either surrender or total occupation. Knowing them, they will most likely opt to go down fighting, though what this will mean for Germany’s future will remain to be seen.

Germany’s predicament is directly caused by the plight of France, in that Spain was able to reach the Polish occupation zone after thoroughly trouncing the French and the Italians in their own campaign. Ever since Paris was captured, Spain has been keeping both countries initiative locked and unable to attack. The situation was so bad, France opted for the nuclear option of a defending country; scorched earth initiative flipping. This is a highly dangerous strategy that involves retreating all regions under attack except for a single battle that is about to close. If the strategy works, the defense wins the last battle and regains initiative. What makes it so dangerous is that if the attacking country notices what is going on they can declare an attack against a new province. This is what happened in this case. The French President began retreating battles and the Spanish President started attacking new ones. In this manner, France lost Pays de Loire, Provence Alps Azur and Lower Normandy. Now thanks to the region swaps with Poland, Spain has now launched an attack on the French reserve Hospital region of North Calais. If France loses all the currently active battles, they will be reduced to Upper Normandy and Corsica. With Poland advancing through Belgium, the Spanish could even region swap with the Poles to lock in the occupied French regions and remove any hope France has for retaking their territory in these final do or die battles. The options for the French at this point are either surrender or total occupation. France has thus far shown a willingness to go down fighting, though recent news media has expressed deep disappointment at the lack of support France has received from other countries presently fighting EDEN.


ASIAN THEATER

EDEN forces engaged in some intense fighting with Russia in Liaoning and Xinjiang provinces in an effort to mitigate the damage caused from the collapse of the Heilongjiang campaign. Xinjiang in particular had one of the most desperate mobile forces battles I have seen in some time. Hungarian tanks slammed the wall (which was set at about 20k in No Mans Land) in the final 15 seconds of the engagement. The US Military was rushed in as the clock clicked down to zero. The wall bounced back and forth between Secure and Underground without stopping in the middle at least two times before settling in No Mans land. Liaoning was much less dramatic, as EDEN Mobile forces and the Chinese handily held off the Russians. While Russia was defeated in Xinjiang and Liaoning, Hungary has thus far made no effort to press the advantage and advance further into China. With the Hungarian offensive on Chisana Romania, the Hungarians probably do not want to risk exposing themselves to a border with the United States without the Russians. Advancing in lock step with the Russians has the advantage of adding an extra country to help hold initiative. The downside to this strategy is that it depends on Russia being able to advance against China, who is proving to be a much harder nut to crack then anticipated if Liaoning is any indication. Overall, EDEN has managed to stall the Phoenix Asian counterattack, but this is largely due to Hungary’s unwillingness to commit itself more fully in this Theater.

While the Northern Front remains in flux, the United States has been moving decisively to shore up the Southern Sector in India. A horde of brand new citizens in India have been organized in an epic fashion almost inconceivable considering their age. A citizen barely a few weeks old nearly won the Indian Presidential elections, being supported by more than 200 other voters. For someone who never paid for major advertising, does not even possess a newspaper and has a total of 8 military fights to his name, this is an astounding accomplishment. I must commend ex.akrado, for being able to so successfully organize hundreds of other new citizens towards a common goal. It happened with “machine” like precision, and he should be proud. Alas, it was not enough thanks to a timely US intervention that gave the sitting Indian President the votes he needed to secure the position. No doubt Serbia, which is lurking inside Pakistan was counting on this PTO succeeding so they could easily region swap into India and attack the United States in Karnataka. They must now consider taking the hard road and fighting their way through India and dealing with counterattacks. As the Serbians approach Karnataka, they run the risk of having the United States counterattack the moment they secure a region adjacent to Karnataka. Serbia does have one thing going for them on this path however, in that the USA has proven a miserable failure at launching timely attacks and region swaps when it truly matters, though this could change now that this major weakness in America's defensive posture has been identified.


FINAL ANALYSIS

France and Germany are done. Its just a matter of convincing them of this fact. No doubt the rest of Phoenix has realized it even if they have not. Poland and Spain can region swap with each other at will, while France and Germany lack open wars with one of the aggressors. Even if such a war is declared, they would have to counterattack alone and without MPP’s against either Spain or Poland. At this point, defending both Germany and France will be just a waste of damage for Phoenix. Knowing this, we can expect most Allied support for both countries to disperse in favor of committing resources to other campaigns, and preparation for the defense of the United Kingdom and the United Netherlands who are now completely surrounded by EDEN. In Asia, the United States will move to shore up the defensive line. Heilongjiang is unattainable as things now stand, thanks to the presence of the Russians in Jilin and the Hungarians in Inner Mongolia. Both will have to be removed in near simultaneous fashion before an attack on Heilongjiang can be launched. This is unlikely to happen soon as EDEN is spread out on multiple fronts and the US Gold coffers are greatly reduced from the 3,000 spent to declare the failed double attacks on Heilongjiang and subsequent tanking.