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The Hearts of Iron Megathread

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SwiftRosenthal said:
That's historical too. France originally intended to fight in Belgium, honoring their 1920 alliance, but Belgium abrogated that treaty when they declared neutrality in 1936. That prompted France to extend the line to the sea. It was just too late to fortify to the same extent as the direct land border - plus, the local water table was too high for sufficient underground works.

The only difference in-game is that the player isn't limited by domestic politics.
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I've seen a LP video where going slightly ahistorical and being uncompromising with Germany the moment they start doing shit (remilitarizing the Ruhr, Anschluss) give France a stronger position when the war starts (started by France this time in fact) at the cost of a massive negative PP balance, but at this point France would still have the upper hand on equipment on Germany. Of course, that only works if Germany follows the historical path.
 
Mrmastro said:
French State leak from r/TNOmod

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*see that Huntziger survived the war in TNO*
Truly this is the darkest timeline for France.
I still find it weird that the French State's secret police is the OAS, since ITL it was a secret organization/terrorist group founded in 1962 in opposition to the French government's plan to give Algeria their independence, especially since their name was a deliberate callback to the Armée Secrète, the union of the three biggest gaullist resistance organizations.

The Vichy Regime did had its own secret police and counterintelligence agencies (the latter being clandestine): for the secret police it had specialized organizations such as the Anti-Communist Police or the Anti-Masonic Police, and for the counterintelligence they had the Bureau des menées antinationales (BMA).
 
Almost wrapped up an RFK run and, honestly, the COINTELPRO storyline seems kind've borked?

Like, you have zero choice to just "lolnope" out of using the program at all - no matter what you're working with Hoover. "Alright", I think, "It's part of the narrative, I guess now I get to choose how bad it gets". Except all the decisions are bugged (if you hover over the decisions it's like "tno.rfk.event.co193" or something), and even if you don't commit to any of them and just sit there riding out the focus trees...you still can get boned because you didn't fake the right kind of evidence/tap the right phones?

I mean...what the heck? I get that RFK's plot line is about what happens when A Good Man Goes Too Far, but there's a big disconnect between "This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked" firing when you never did anything with COINTELPRO in the first place.
 
ElMariachi said:
I've seen a LP video where going slightly ahistorical and being uncompromising with Germany the moment they start doing shit (remilitarizing the Ruhr, Anschluss) give France a stronger position when the war starts (started by France this time in fact) at the cost of a massive negative PP balance, but at this point France would still have the upper hand on equipment on Germany. Of course, that only works if Germany follows the historical path.
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Wait, doesn't being all uncompromising on remilitarizing the Ruhr start the war immediately, but France finds itself in a nasty position as the Communists start a civil war?
 
ElMariachi said:
I've seen a LP video where going slightly ahistorical and being uncompromising with Germany the moment they start doing shit (remilitarizing the Ruhr, Anschluss) give France a stronger position when the war starts (started by France this time in fact) at the cost of a massive negative PP balance, but at this point France would still have the upper hand on equipment on Germany. Of course, that only works if Germany follows the historical path.
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Thanks for noting this. I've decided to give it a try, along with more aggressive focus on industry focuses.

Does anyone know how to change the composition of the air wing on an existing carrier? I want to switch Bearn from a dual role carrier to a single role carrier (likely strike -I feel like its a better choice with out of carrier planes).
 
veteranMortal said:
its wrong and also offensively stupid. anyone vomiting up brainless takes abt how ppl would prefer the nazis to [not the nazis] can be safely assumed to have soup for brains.
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That's not what the post was saying at all. It's just "Given these factors, I don't see how reunified Russia can realistically defeat the Nazis," not "The Nazis deserve to defeat reunified Russia." It's a purely strategic argument, not a moral one.
 
SwiftRosenthal said:
That's not what the post was saying at all. It's just "Given these factors, I don't see how reunified Russia can realistically defeat the Nazis," not "The Nazis deserve to defeat reunified Russia." It's a purely strategic argument, not a moral one.
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Learn to read posts before you cape for them.

Even if that were to happen, the einheitspakt can mobilizr what? 30-40 million? Basically your entire population as soldiers? All those ex Soviet states sure as hell don't want Russia back. After seeing WTF happened there over the last 10 years Germany is the lesser evil. So yeah, population wise that's also impossible.
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If someone is the sort of dipshit wehraboo fuckstick who believes that eastern europe will see nazi fucking germany as the lesser evil when compared with literally any plausible russian unifier, then their opinion is frankly worth about as much as the dirt on my fucking boot.
 
veteranMortal said:
If someone is the sort of dipshit wehraboo fuckstick who believes that eastern europe will see nazi fucking germany as the lesser evil when compared with literally any plausible russian unifier, then their opinion is frankly worth about as much as the dirt on my fucking boot.
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I read that as an opinion that might plausibly be seen in-universe, not a reflection on the author.
 
SwiftRosenthal said:
I read that as an opinion that might plausibly be seen in-universe, not a reflection on the author.
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The only way you can believe this would be a widespread opinion amongst people who were around under the soviets and the Germans - this being what the post claims - is if you're a wehraboo with McCarthy squatting in your head like a foetid little shitgoblin.
 
SwiftRosenthal said:
I read that as an opinion that might plausibly be seen in-universe, not a reflection on the author.
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The fact that the author thinks this is an opinion that might plausibly be seen in-universe...does make me roll my eyes hard.

I will remind you that in TNOTL Germany literally exterminated a huge part of the Russian population, bombed them for a decade, and is the direct reason Russia is in its miserable state as of 1962.
 
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Large parts of Eastern Europe have spent decades under the German thumb, and moreover, have tried and failed to get revolutions or revolts going only to be crushed without mercy.

I'm pretty sure they'd view all but the WORST of the Russian Unifiers as a step up, even some of the really bad ones that aren't actually a step up, because "maybe the devil you don't know won't be as bad."*

*Which is why some decolonizing forces allied with Japan or the Nazis over the British or French Empires, because they weren't the immediate oppressor they'd spent decades fighting against.

****

And, obviously, the top 10% of Russian Unifiers--the good communists, the liberal democrats that are at least engaging in some positive reform, etc, etc--have a lot to offer as an anti-Nazi ideology by the sheer fact of their success in unifying the country, increasing education and industrial technology, etc, etc, despite the costs.
 
Ignoring the somewhat concerning idea that Eastern Europe would view the Nazis as a lesser evil, I do wonder what a reunified Russia's odds would be against Germany. I do think the post brought up some good points in that regard, specifically in how utterly depopulated Russia would be.
 
You know, I think the horrifying nature of TNO Germany's decade long terror bombing of West Russia and Northwest Africa is something that is underappreciated.

Sverdlovsk has a couple of very moving story events that capture what it meant to live with the bombing as a fact of daily life, and the massive wave of near-indescribable relief that occurred when the bombings finally stopped. But I don't remember anything of the kind in any of the other unifiers I played.

Also, the Sverdlovsk playthrough is underrated in general.
 
veteranMortal said:
The only way you can believe this would be a widespread opinion amongst people who were around under the soviets and the Germans - this being what the post claims - is if you're a wehraboo with McCarthy squatting in your head like a foetid little shitgoblin.
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Hold on. Are you accusing me of being pro-Nazi too, not just the original poster? I have no idea what that poster's personal beliefs are.

I do know that I've expressed "I don't see how most reunified Russias can win round 2 3" before on SV, for much the same strategic reasons. For me, Nazis vs. Russia Round 3 ranges from "the Nazis are 100% the villains" to "Why can't they both lose?" (ignoring Go4 Germany I guess, which still isn't great for the non-German peoples of Eastern Europe)
 
myrkwise said:
Ignoring the somewhat concerning idea that Eastern Europe would view the Nazis as a lesser evil, I do wonder what a reunified Russia's odds would be against Germany. I do think the post brought up some good points in that regard, specifically in how utterly depopulated Russia would be.
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The thing is, the immediate goal isn't conquering Berlin, it's reconquering Moscow and regions that defined themselves as Russian not long ago, and were held by force by a bunch of scummy mass-murdering collaborators. A Germany that's been through a Civil War or two is operating at the end of its supply lines through hostile territory. So I think the odds of Russia winning the immediate conflicts for Moscow/etc are... honestly not that bad, barring self-destructive unifiers.

Getting further than that, on the other hand, would probably involve more subtlety and things like linking up with anti-Nazi resistance movements in Poland, in the Balkans, etc, etc. IMO, obviously.

E: Which is actually a really neat set of mechanics just waiting to happen. As you support resistance movements, how much ideological flexibility do you show? How much do the movements themselves dress up for you?

"Oh, we're totally capitalist monarchists, look at us naming nobles, please give us money. Please ignore that we're actually a socialist resistance group."

"Friend, we must slap red paint onto our Ethnic Slovakian movement for independence to get the communists to support us!"
 
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myrkwise said:
Ignoring the somewhat concerning idea that Eastern Europe would view the Nazis as a lesser evil, I do wonder what a reunified Russia's odds would be against Germany. I do think the post brought up some good points in that regard, specifically in how utterly depopulated Russia would be.
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As opposed to Germany, which has been slaughtering its own population, fighting near constant wars, is industrially reliant on slave labour, just had a brutal civil war, damn near got beat down by the most war-torn section of the newly unified Russia, has no realistic choice but to deploy much of its - corrupt and bloated - military to police the vast majority of its "allies" to prevent their inevitable overthrow by the subject people, is led by its second consecutive dipshit slowly dying of dumbass nazi disease, is effectively despised by literally every country it does not directly control (and all the countries it directly controls are more than likely a net drain on their manpower and industrial capacity)

The idea that Germany in TNO is in any way stable enough to survive a major war with a peer or near-peer opponent is a fantasy.

The fighting fit and fighting willing german population is plausibly almost certainly less than that of pretty much any russian unifier.
 
SwiftRosenthal said:
Hold on. Are you accusing me of being pro-Nazi too, not just the original poster? I have no idea what that poster's personal beliefs are.

I do know that I've expressed "I don't see how most reunified Russias can win round 2 3" before on SV, for much the same strategic reasons. For me, Nazis vs. Russia Round 3 ranges from "the Nazis are 100% the villains" to "Why can't they both lose?" (ignoring Go4 Germany I guess, which still isn't great for the non-German peoples of Eastern Europe)
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I'm saying that the idea that any meaningful population of people in Eastern Europe is going to prefer life under Bohrmann or Hitler to life under Bukharin's USSR is wehraboo bullshit. If you believe that, then yes, you believe some wehraboo bullshit.
 
As for the conversation regarding who would win the German-Russian War in TNO2:

Based on my playthrough as Goering, I'd place my bets on Russia. The economy doom timer that Goering's Germany is subject to makes it surprisingly easy to lose to Sweden, and AI Goering often does. Even having beaten the Scandinavian states after many, many reloads, I went on to accidentally lose most of my armoured divisions in the utterly awful infrastructure regions of the Middle East, to the point I was completely unable to make any headway against the Russian unifier come Fall Rot.

And the unifier in question was the Kingdom of Rus. That's not even one of the more militaristic unifiers such as Tukhachevsky's WRRF.
 
veteranMortal said:
I'm saying that the idea that any meaningful population of people in Eastern Europe is going to prefer life under Bohrmann or Hitler to life under Bukharin's USSR is wehraboo bullshit. If you believe that, then yes, you believe some wehraboo bullshit.
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Meaningful? Probably not, especially among the local population. I can't assert the same about the German settlers, though that obviously depends on how thoroughly the region was Germanized and who's in charge in Berlin.

Additionally, the existence of pro-Nazi collaborators in the historical Eastern Front is just a fact, even if they were likely more relevant in both sides' propaganda than the battlefield.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't basically every possible Reich (that doesn't get nuked by Burgundy) explicitly doomed to failure?
  • Speer loses to the Gang of Four, putting Germany on the (slow) path to some kind of sanity
  • Speer ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
  • Borman ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
  • Goering ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
  • Heydrich ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
That's basically it, right?

The question isn't "Will the Reich implode (again)?", but rather "Word will the Reich implode for good?". Even if the Gang of Four sidelines Speer and actually factually tries to de-Nazify the country, that's still an uphill battle, and even then it's not like the OFN and Russia is gonna go "Okay yeah those were the bad Germans, you guys are cool" and let them keep on keeping on.
 
Arthur Frayn said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't basically every possible Reich (that doesn't get nuked by Burgundy) explicitly doomed to failure?
  • Speer loses to the Gang of Four, putting Germany on the (slow) path to some kind of sanity
  • Speer ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
  • Borman ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
  • Goering ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
  • Heydrich ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
That's basically it, right?

The question isn't "Will the Reich implode (again)?", but rather "Word will the Reich implode for good?". Even if the Gang of Four sidelines Speer and actually factually tries to de-Nazify the country, that's still an uphill battle, and even then it's not like the OFN and Russia is gonna go "Okay yeah those were the bad Germans, you guys are cool" and let them keep on keeping on.
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Well, the OFN might, honestly, to the extent that it's a vehicle for American power. America has a very powerful capacity for hypocrisy, and Germany is far away.
 
Arthur Frayn said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't basically every possible Reich (that doesn't get nuked by Burgundy) explicitly doomed to failure?
  • Speer loses to the Gang of Four, putting Germany on the (slow) path to some kind of sanity
  • Speer ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
  • Borman ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
  • Goering ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
  • Heydrich ends up a decrepit old Nazi with the Reich sputtering along on life support
That's basically it, right?

The question isn't "Will the Reich implode (again)?", but rather "Word will the Reich implode for good?". Even if the Gang of Four sidelines Speer and actually factually tries to de-Nazify the country, that's still an uphill battle, and even then it's not like the OFN and Russia is gonna go "Okay yeah those were the bad Germans, you guys are cool" and let them keep on keeping on.
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Of the possible German paths, only two (well, maybe three) are really viable. Heydrich is an utter non-factor, as he can't win without player intervention, Goering always ends in either nuking the world or (much more likely) collapse, Bormann will usually end with a soviet-style slow collapse, and conservative puppet Speer will be much the same as Bormann.

Of the German paths that can succeed, there's Speer's Germany and the Gang of Four's Germany, but even they have to deal with severe economic consequences from Erhard's free market reforms. There also might possibly be a post-Bormann path that can reform the country in some way, but we know literally nothing about it.
 
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