Mechasaurian
Big Bossu
- Location
- Lost among fields of history
- Pronouns
- They/Them
So goddamn many high ranking officials died in plane crashes in WW2. It's almost amusing, really.
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The Hearts of Iron Megathread
- Thread starter Kiyone4ever
- Start date
- Megathread
- Pronouns
- His
Władysław Sikorski, Italo Balbo, Ordo Wingate, Charles Huntzinger and many more
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
History is rarely pushed by a single person, but Huntzinger very much threw the battle of France in a huge way and turned what was already a hairy situation into history's single most catastrophic rout. The Battle of France could have been salvaged even with Gamelin completely misreading German intentions and having the big-brained idea to throw away troops trying to link up with the Belgian and Dutch armies up until Huntziger basically did everything in his power to make the defence of the Ardennes impossible and thus unravel the entire Allied front as the French Army got sectioned off into digestible pieces and annihilated. You can't say any of the Wehrmacht's commanders won the French campaign entirely of their own merits, but you can certainly say Gamelin and Huntziger lost it because there was no way the French army would have lost to the Wehrmacht so badly if it weren't for fumbling at their duties so badly with an army already saddled with a communications disadvantage, a fractious officer corps full of people of questionable loyalty to the Republic, poor tank and aerial doctrine, questionable morale, and inferior industrial output behind it.He was the French general in charge of the Ardennes secondary front in 1940, yes the one that the German tanks famously broke through to encircle most of the Franco-British forces and put France to its knees in barely 7 weeks. And he fucked up the management and preparation of this front to nearly epic levels:
And his exploits don't stop here: he was the one whom Pétain sent to negotiate and sign the Armistice with the Germans, and afterward became the Vichy Regime's No 2. His incompetence is so huge that even today there's a theory that he might had deliberately sabotaged his frontline to precipitate a French defeat opening the country to a regime change. (the guy was a suspected fascist sympathizer, that's why he was sent to what the generals thought was a secondary frontline)
- he refused to have extra anti-tank equipment sent to his front
- barely reinforced his frontline, going as far a reprimanding the units that tool the initiative to reinforce their defenses
- dismissed the aerial recon reports warning of panzer division movements in the Ardennes forest
- dismissed intelligence reports from France and the UK that a Germans' offensive in the region was imminent (because yes, turns out that the Allies detected in advance the German blitzkrieg), to the point that the day of the attack he was at the theater!
- once he realized that there was an attack, he immediately relocated his HQ farther back instead of trying to organize his line before pulling out, leaving his poor army headless for several days while the Germans were tearing them a new one
- refused aerial reinforcements because that would make him look bad to need reinforcements
OTL he died on a plane crash in 1941 (and no, it wasn't a sabotage from the resistance, it was a banal accident), but it seems that in TNO France can't even have that.
France was always going to lose to Germany by 1940 if it were a one on one affair. Germany simply had more manpower and industry and by that point the Wehrmacht had grown large enough that the French couldn't crush it in a single push like they could in 1936. But the Franco-British alliance shouldn't have folded that badly to the German-Italian one if it weren't for the Allied commanders doing their level best to not do anything right. The British expeditionary force, while less focused on for its failures than the French Army, was also quite simply a disaster of poor cooperation with its ally, horrific lack of preparation for the kind of war that ended up being fought, and bungling mismanagement and poor positioning that allowed them to be completely pocketed off from the rest of France and thus unable to help in any meaningful way once the campaign entered its most crucial phase. And then the BEF would go on to take another fat L at Greece that would see them thrown out of the continent altogether, holding onto North Africa mostly because the Italians were even less prepared for a modern war than they were.
Really the Axis got as far as they did because the Allies were absolutely not ready for a war of that scale at the time it came to them and survived largely because the Axis was too weak to completely capitulate the British Empire, United States, Republic of China, and Soviet Union when they were at their weakest with their initial advantage. But the general performance of the Allied armies up until the fall of 1942 was largely nothing short of disgraceful; speaking to none of the four major components of the Alliance having completed sufficient preparations for a major conflict with other great powers when it came knocking to their doors. The Axis couldn't have won, not with the conditions for victory they set for themselves against the opposition they ended up choosing, but they also got much farther than they really should have.
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Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
If you're willing to include the Spanish Civil War, then you have Jose Sanjurjo, the man who decided to take a smaller plane because his friend was the pilot but also refused to abandon his heavy suitcases full of all the fancy clothes he would need for speeches and parades.
Plus Yamamoto, although that wasn't an accident.
Cloak&Dagger
Definitely Insane
I do like that setting, but for playability and variety, I like OWB's implementation in the actual gameplay, where you nation's history is a few short focuses at the start of your tree. It allows for interesting strategies in multiplayer so the game is less samey every single time.
Septentrion
DRM Mapping Project
- Location
- Scotland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wasn't he the "6 months until we lose" guy who fully realised that going to war with the US was suicide and when pushed his government to do it anyway?
Sulemain
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It is a common phernonomen of authoritarian regimes to be singularly unaware of the risk of failure. The Argentine Junta in '82 and Hussein's Regime in '91 made the same mistake.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
You'd kind of expect our navy to do well. I
Shame the imperial diplomatic corps didn't deliver the declaration of war until after the bombs had started landing on hawaii.
My almost certainly faulty understanding is that the plan was along the lines of "rush goals in SEA, bloody the USN's nose, sue for a peace that lets us keep some gains".
Shame the imperial diplomatic corps didn't deliver the declaration of war until after the bombs had started landing on hawaii.
I doubt the timing would've made much of a real difference. The US was already, rightly mind you, strongly opposed to Japanese efforts to subjugate China and, once war broke out, wasn't just going to back down.
Mechasaurian
Big Bossu
- Location
- Lost among fields of history
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The exact quotation is "I can run wild with the US navy for six months...after that I have no expectation of success.
But yes, that's the guy. At a guess, he probably didn't expect the US to be so bloody minded as to persue the complete obliteration of Japan as an imperial power.
Also, add Subhas Chandra Bose (the Indian nationalist who rebelled against the British Raj and sided with the Axis powers). His death is the centre of a lot of conspiracy theories.
Don't forget Fritz Todt, the Nazi Armaments Minister whose death in an air crash in 1942 allowed Albert Speer to become as prominent as he did.
Didnt help that those 6 months ended with theUS taking one look at the IJN plan for midway, putting a brain cell towards thinking on it, then deciding "You want to use Midway as bait? Ok, that will be about 220 Million Yen plus around 500k US Dollars in Bomb charges, thank you very much."
King Washington
Semi-Depressed Lurker
- Location
- Indiana
So I just stumbled upon this
Also
Basically this means everything post 1962. So there's no canonical starting situation for TNO2 anymore.
Is there a reason for that decision? I'd be curious to hear what it is.
Interestingly in the now cancelled TNO2 canon, George McGovern was planned to be the canon 1972 US president and not Robert McNamara as most of the TNO fanbase assumed.
Many were very perplexed by the choice. George McGovern of all the US presidents was going to be the president that would collapse the OFN, start a new cold war with Zhukov's reborn USSR and China, and help make the US a more morally darker and dirty force on the world stage and eventually the villains of TNO3?
You're off by a few decades. The new cold war with the USSR and China starts around at the turn of the 90s, maybe the end of the 80s. The Nazi regime and sphere doesn't collapse until the 80s, I think. That's when it's lost all inertia and falls apart at the seems completely. George McGovern could be a two term president and still be years away from the new cold war unfolding.
Walker Of Chaos
Best/Worst Dynasty
- Location
- Sweden
It's been the defacto status quo for months, if not years at this point. Canon never really mattered to the team. Speaking as the US TL I couldn't tell you any details about the US canon, besides all RDs, not even which specific Presidents canonically won. Not because canon was this uber secret thing entrusted to only a sacred few minds but merely for the fact that canon never became relevant enough that I bothered remembering what it was supposed to be. Canon also wasn't really used when planning or prioritizing content either. Given that, and that having a canon always implicitly sent a message of "your run/headcanon matters less than what actually happened" we didn't really see any reasons to stick with a formal canon.
Lonely Knightess
The artist formerly known as Panzer
In my planned story, Germany was technically a republic in 80 and the new cold War was beginning
- Location
- France
Wait, so the Second West Russian War would had actually been between the new USSR and the Republic of Germany? (or still officially the Greater German Reich but a de fact Republic that doesn't tell its name?)
Also, could it be that part of your team's decision to abandon the idea of a "canon" is because of the shitstorms it created, notably the part where the USA served as the middleman between Germany and the USSR to avoid a nuclear war and everyone was going "OMG the USA sides with the NAZIS to own the Left!"?
Pretty sure the Second West Russian War happens in the 70s, so I'm guessing that after Germany is forced into the OFN after the war, it becomes a republic.
- Location
- I think somewhere. I might be nowhere though
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Obviously it's subjective and I have seen some people legitimately have this view, but having a canon to me just gives me more incentive to be original and change things up. It enthuses me rather than depressing me
Don't care either way whether TNO has an "official" future or not. Just found that bit interesting to comment on.
I may be in a minority here, but I liked canon. I don't agree with the idea that it says "your run doesn't matter." It showed the intent behind the mod. It was interesting to know that there was a canon story in mind for the world, but since it's a game anything could happen in any run. It didn't devalue other paths and experiences. It was also useful for later start dates, which I suppose are being removed.
Ah okay, I was off by a bit. I recall an interview where you said by the 90s the new cold war had started, or was already underway, with America opposing the Soviets and China, so I thought the tensions started later. That's my mistake.
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People really love willfully misinterpreting that explanation. It's aggressively ignorant. America acts as a mediator to prevent Eurasia from getting nuked, and suddenly they're monsters defending fascism. I don't think people like accepting the fact that war with nuclear armed states ends either ends in a victory, de-escalation, or total annihilation. They can be destroyed but never defeated. The Soviet Union defeats Germany conventionally but in order to hold onto their empire, and defend their core territory, they will push the button and raze the entire continent in the process.
I don't think people understand that even a "local" exchange limited to just Eastern Europe and Russia would devastate the entire world with its literal and metaphorical fallout.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
I've had the idea for a mod where it starts with a normal OTL world, but the focus trees are developed from the perspective of a world where history went differently and so reflect the assumptions of that world rather than our own (Not in the Fuherreich/The Red Order sense but in that the point of divergence is after the start date of the mod), which is kind of like the relationship between TNO "canon" and the runs you can have playing it.
Walker Of Chaos
Best/Worst Dynasty
- Location
- Sweden
Realistically speaking TNO2 is at minimum one year away, likely more than that. There'll probably be some form of start date but anything more really can't be said by virtue of the timespan near guaranteeing that any plans laid down now would inevitably change beyond recognition by the time they are relevant.
Lady Insane
Loyalist to the Alvarian Merchant's Guild
- Location
- Bohuslän, Occupied Norway
Apparently Pax Britannia is veering off into victorian-steampunk stylings. While I have no issue with, and in indeed like, there being mods like that, shifting a previously more, hm, serious mod to it seems a bit wrongfooted (TBH, I had to double-check I hadn't somehow missed most of March and it wasn't the 1st of April today...).