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[Seperallis]

For Liberty!
Part Two
Indian Liberation and the “Great” War

A Victoria 2 Japanese continuation game from Europa Universalis III

>> Click Here for the "Ethiopian Campaign!" <<
>> Click Here for the "European Expedition!" <<
>> Click Here for the "Sino-Japanese War!" (Part 1) <<
>> Click Here for the "Sino-Japanese War!" (Part 2) <<
>> Click Here for "For Liberty!" (Part 1) <<


Liberty has its challenges. Luckily, Japanese politics were up to the task.

The First War of Indian Liberation
The First War of Indian Liberation was fought as an intervention to the Portuguese invasion of Gujarat. The Imperial Japanese Navy was quickly drawn up to do what it did best and establish dominance of the Indian Ocean In the meantime, Army of India - based in Bengal and the closest force to the enemy - was sent to Astarabad to defend the retreating Gujarati and buy time for the war while the Expeditionary Army was enroute. Battles against the Portuguese in India were a veritable massacre as the powerful Japanese artillery lobbed dangerous poison gas shells, causing havoc in the Portuguese lines, and the new tank and aircraft weapons proved exceedingly resilient and deadly: though outnumbered, Army of India routed the enemy from Gujarat and occupied the Portuguese holdings in the north. The Expeditionary Army soon easily cleared the Portuguese from the south in several decisive engagements, forcing them from the continent.

Soon, the Portuguese capital in Angola would be under threat by Japanese occupiers after a naval engagement off the coast opened the way for Japan’s troop transports.

One thing that wasn’t counted on, though, was Spanish protection of Portugal, which drew one of Japan’s age-old rivals into the war. Though weakened from their communist coup and wars in Europe, they still had a sizeable-enough army to cause problems, which they did by attacking Japanese Africa. 1st and 2nd Africa Corps were sent to Spanish Djibouti and Aden to occupy the rear, while 3rd Africa Corps was sent to delay the Spanish advance until the occupations could be completed. Unfortunately, bad intelligence and an overconfident zeal on the part of the 3rd Africa Corps led to an attack on what turned out to be a superior Spanish force, and their waiting artillery. The attack was a disaster with 22 thousand casualties in a force of only 30 thousand before the Japanese retreated from the line, leaving Ethiopia open to attack.

At the same time, Syria Corps, defending the Suez canal, received news of a Spanish advance through Egypt to take the vital link between Asia and Europe, but attacked the unprepared Spaniards during their crossing of the Nile, obliterating the army twice their size with only a few hundred casualties. Thankfully, reinforcements from Korea and India were not long in coming, which shored up the battle line and prevented an attempted flank from a separate Spanish army further up the river. Down in Ethiopia, they met the Spaniards in the mountains, where the Japanese use of air power proved decisive in the small front.



The Spanish defeats proved to sap most of their remaining trained, veteran fighting force. IN a desperate bid to hold back the Japanese in Africa, waves of reserves were sent to the front, but the massed Japanese attack on such a large front proved too mobile for them to establish another line; within months, the Japanese had overrun Spanish Turkey, Greece, and all of Africa east of Algeria. With the front line gone and Japanese ships threatening Spanish home ports, surrender was the only option, and the Indian Liberation War came to a close.



I know, I have a bad habit of not getting screenshots of anything interesting. I’m too interested in playing.

The Second War of Indian Liberation
Japanese success against the Iberian alliance saw a unified pan-Indian state emerge for the first time, though its lands were scattered enclaves and split apart by a large area of British colonial control, which Japanese military commanders believed was necessary to eliminate if they were to push European colonial power further out of what they saw as “their” Asian domain. However, despite the British crown government falling to a communist coup (the after-effects of which severely weakened the stability and strength of this new “Worker’s Commonwealth”) an attack on the British Raj did not immediately occur; failings in the previous war had highlighted failings in the current Japanese corps structure, and so a certain amount of time was taken to disband and/or retrain certain regiments into a new kind of military.

Gone was the reliance on trench warfare and the use of sappers and massed artillery. In its place was the new modern mobile army of combined arms and air superiority.

When the war over India came, there wasn’t much to tell. The Japanese navy had once before delivered a crushing blow to the British navy, the latter of which never recovered and left Japan with undisputed dominance of the seas. Unable to reinforce their troops, British forces in India were overwhelmed and outgunned by a superior mobile army; all of British India fell within 2 months, and British Africa capitulated in 4 months. With Japan landing on British possessions in Europe, and the empire’s American allies beating the British in Louisiana, the Commonwealth ceded all its holdings in India to the natives, joining together the two halves of this new pan-Indian creation.

The “Great” War and the end of an era
...and that’s about it. By this time, the world was at or near 1930, and so I decided to take the remaining time to clean up the save and get it ready for a transfer to Hearts of Iron 3. The process meant changing my country tag around, creating/merging some small countries that don’t exist in HoI (though I found out later that doesn’t even matter), making some borders look better (though again, the converter borked some stuff anyway), and generally making sure the file was ok to convert.

Somewhere along the way, a crisis over self-determination for Bosnia and Croatia turned into “the Great War,” the first and last in the game as AI-Japan sided with Croatian liberation and Britain protected the Austrian status quo; in the end, Germany steamrolled Austria, securing a free Croatia. The war was over by Christmas.



With two years left in play, Japan completely reached max rank in all its technologies - the first and only country to do so - and the nation held a laudable 90%+ literacy rate in a diverse, world-spanning empire, which only served to prove the rightness of Reigen the First’s education initiatives...even if the school system was widely regarded as “discriminatory” until it was reformed in 1930. Regardless, the last two years passed without incident or note.

The time is now January 1st, 1936. The world rang in the new year full of tension, with war forecasted on the horizon between powers determined to attend to “unfinished business.”




Bonus Content!

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The Changing of Japan: 1836 (left) to 1936 (right)


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The Changing of the WORLD: 1878 (left) to 1936 (right)

[Seperallis]

Götterdämmerung

Part 1: Bringing Democracy to Fascist France

A Hearts of Iron III Japanese continuation game from Europa Universalis III


Brought by a thirst for revenge against national injustices, fascism spreads like wildfire throughout the world


Once again, my habit of not taking screenshots bites me.

Over the last several intervening years, World politics had changed drastically. A combination of Victorian era wars over spheres of influence, and incredulity at the decline of the great "civilized" European powers over the last 100 years at the hands of a now clearly dominant Empire of Japan had sparked waves of revanchist fervor throughout the world. The pendulum of politics swung far to the Right after decades of swinging left, as reactionary parties gained power in the world's preeminent democracies with promises of correcting past national injustices and restoring lost glories ... and where such parties *weren't* elected, fascist paramilitaries seized power with force.

Even the old great powers weren't immune. Following the decisive defeat and loss of the British Raj in the wars for Indian Independence, the Worker's Party of Great Britain, which once rose to power by overthrowing Queen Victoria and enacting a coup of Westminster, was itself overthrown by a right-wing coalition of rebels formed by fascist paramilitaries and old imperial sympathizers. With the queen restored, they looked to regain the lost glory of the British Empire, first securing the Isles by entering in union with a monarchist Ireland. Attempting to escape notice, they quietly gathered like-minded governments together into a kind of Axis Coalition; whatever their varied reasons for joining the group, all held the same purpose and aim: to cut the Empire of Japan down to size, and end its dominating influence over the world.

But Japan knew exactly what was coming.

France, exhausted by endless war with its neighbors, elected a fascist leader which quickly dissolved all democratic institutions and enacted military rule. With promises of retaking the lost territories on the Franco-German border, this new leadership entered into supposedly secret negotiations to enter the Axis coalition. However, the French security and government services were notoriously porous with information and riddled with all manner of informants and spies, and word soon reached the ("democratically elected") National-Socialist government in the German Empire of a new threat. With no intention of allowing France to find new allies (and likely secretly hoping to secure German claims held by France), word was sent to Japan of the development shortly before war was declared, to "finally put an end to the French menace."


It was May, 1937.

Japan wasn't led by fools and the ministers in Kyoto knew very well of German imperial ambitions, yet they felt a sort of kinship with the upstart continental power, which, much like themselves, had risen above the predations of the ancient regimes. Still, even as the Japanese navy raised anchor and made to defend the seas from any French aggression as it had for generations, debate ensued in Kyoto over whether to lend aid to the Empire's recent ally; approval was eventually given to only "defend the home seas" from possible threat, and the Australia Corps of the army was mobilized to pacify the few remaining French possessions in the Indian and Pacific oceans.


Japanese air units reinforce German units in Koln and Stuttgart

The German army saw early success on the first several days, driving through an unprepared French border, however the lines soon stalled from Liege to Metz. Japan met no French resistance in the Pacific, and watched news from the fighting in earnest; both sides were clearly tired and unprepared for war, and the hasty decision to attack began to bite the Germans as the line had to retreat from Liege and it looked that the French might force a gap in the German Alps. It was clear that Germany could not convincingly win alone despite material and technical assistance from the Japanese, and so plans were drawn to create a new "European Command" under which select units would "gain valuable practical combat training experience" by winning Germany's war for them.

The fact that it would give Japan greater sway at the post-war negotiations was purely a coincidence.

Several wings of Japanese bombers and fighter interceptors were flown en masse to air bases near the front, and their presence was immediately felt as they began to provide relief to German soldiers on the ground by securing the skies and disrupting French operations. While this relief was only intended to buy time for Japan to organize an expeditionary force, the effect of constant and reliable air power was so great that the front lines began to shift again in the favor of Germany as they pushed as far as Antwerp and Nancy.


Japan provides relief to the German lines as Syria Corps lands in Nice.

Several obstacles sat in the way of Japanese troops landing in Europe.

First, Japan had little command experience in the European theatre and no command structure ready to support such an invasion. Syria Corps was selected as the basis for the new "European Command," but at the time it was a small occupational force consisting of mostly infantry supported by a few light tanks and armored cars, whose purpose was to defend the Suez Canal and support local allies. Units could be pulled as needed from elsewhere in the empire to constitute the new force, but it could take several months to transport men and materials to grow Syria Corps into a proper theatre command, and then train them into a cohesive fighting force; Japanese command, however, would only allow three weeks, for want of relieving the still shaky alpine front. The army proved up to the task and did what they could, growing Syria Corps to three times its original size in men and armor in two weeks, and using the remainder of the time to reorganize and train the units for the amphibious landings in southern France.

The second obstacle was the French navy. While not large, it was still powerful enough to pose a threat to landing forces. The Japanese navy was far and away the largest navy in the world, but it also had a massive area to patrol; while not nearly as impressive, the French navy was still the third largest in the world with many powerful modern battleships, and the French Mediterranean fleet had local parity with the Japanese fleet based in Suez. Initial orders had been to await reinforcement from the 1st and 2nd Imperial Indian Fleets and the transport fleet escorts that were on their way with the new invasion forces, but Admiral Enomoto was forced to answer the French challenge to prevent an attack on the canal.

After several days of chase and positioning, the 10 ships of the Suez Fleet were led by the "battleships" Kongo and Kashima, and comprised mostly of some of the Japanese navy's older cruisers, paired against 8 ships from the French Mediterranean fleet, led by the new and modern battleship Dunkerque. Volume of fire was more or less equal between the fleets, but after exchanging fire for several minutes a lucky shot from the older Bretagne-class battleship Louis XIV found its way into the forward magazine spaces of the Kashima before detonating spectacularly, depriving the Japanese fleet of half its heavy 14" guns, then turned its attention to the enemy cruisers before attentions from the heavy cruiser Kasuga exacted revenge. Kongo and Dunkerque dueled, and the latter was saved from torpedoes when a French destroyer accidentally ran in front of them and lost its nose for the trouble. The fighting lasted 30 minutes more before it became apparent to Admiral Enomoto that he could not guarantee that he could win this fight; with 4 ships lost and the Kongo slowly losing seaworthiness, he ordered a general withdrawal from the battle back to harbor in Suez.

The French fleet had technically won the field, and it's unknown why they didn't press the matter further; likely they suffered enough of a bloody nose from the engagement that further operation, especially within range of land-based bombers, was deemed unwise.

Eventually Admiral Yashiro brought to Suez a greater force of warships and the invasion transports. Taking command from Adm. Enomoto, he led two fleets out into the Mediterranean to force a decisive battle, eventually finding it and sending three French capital ships to the bottom for the loss of the battleship Yashima and sending the remains of the French Mediterranean fleet into port in Montpellier, where they remained for the rest of the war, hemmed in by Yashiro's navy.

With the way open, the army began its landings near Nice; within days, they had fanned out and captured the ports of Nice and Genoa with almost no resistance, finally being stopped by a rushed defense near Marseille. With a beachhead secure, heavier equipment was unloaded and supply lines were opened, spelling the end coming end of the war.


With Germany closing in from the north and Japan coming from the south, France surrenders.

The ploy to relieve the German lines worked; slowly, Germany began to gain more momentum as the French defense was forced to draw resources south to meet the Japanese army. Despite their exhaustion, the French troops held strong in the Alps despite the long salient, and a counter-push down the Rhone river threatened to split the Japanese line as they jockeyed for position along the river to cross troops and supplies. After a couple weeks of jockeying, Japanese armor finally broke through at Le Puy, though the breakthrough was under constant threat of repeated attempts to close it. Unable to contain the ever-lengthening front, however, meant the French lines everywhere were forced to fall back.

Eventually, Japanese troops reached the Atlantic and wheeled north. With their forces split and the enemy approaching Paris from both sides, the France finally surrendered on the 24th of September, 1937. The war lasted 4 months.

Sitting at the table as the largest combatant in the war, Japan used its clout to force both Germany and France to accept that the only outcome of the war would be the dissolution of the French fascist government, and reinstatement of a democratic government with free and fair elections.

Loyal to the Japanese and the cause of Liberty, of course.

- - -
Though victorious, the valuable experience in modern war provided several lessons in the failures of Japanese naval doctrine:

First, the war at sea was much more spread out and warfare was non longer decided by one or two decisive battles. Though forcing the French Mediterranean into port had been a critical victory, other French fleets harassed Japanese merchant shipping to allied and neutral countries. If Japan were to go to defend its trade in a much larger war, it was evident that it could not maintain its sole reliance on fast capital ships and cruisers, which were much too expensive to maintain as convoy escorts across the globe. Instead, Japan would concentrate on expanding its meager destroyer force to cruise the seas as convoy escorts and to hunt the convoy hunters.

Second, Japan had emphasized speed in its ships to patrol and reinforce its vast oceanic domain, with its aging Kongo-class battleships receiving upgrades of speed, and building a vast fleet of Amagi-class battlecruisers. While fast and powerful, speed could never fully protect a ship like proper protection could, and Japanese naval command never should have assumed that such ships could replace battleships in the conventional line of battle. While the new and unnamed B-64-class battlecruisers under construction were allowed to complete, plans for further battlecruiser hulls were scrapped, with current designs being revised and uptiered into possible - and proper - fast battleships.

Third, a few air wings were shown to demonstrably swing land battles, and it was assumed the same could happen with navies. With the new Shokaku-class fleet carriers entering trials, and learning from operating and training aboard the Hosho and its sister ships, the decision was made to form new fleets centered around these new "fleet carriers," instead of traditional heavy-gun capital ships.

Aside from minor tactical errors, no issues were found in greater Japanese land strategy.
- - -

All these lessons were taken in and acted upon rather quickly...which was just as well, as only a month after the armistice was signed, Germany declared its intention to "annex Austria and form a Greater Germany," triggering guarantees from Russia and Spain to come to Austria's aid. The Japanese government agreed that Austria's borders were "ugly" and "deserved to be removed from the map," but battling with two of the largest powers in the world was going to be such a pain...

[Seperallis]

So I have decided to not really continue this playthrough of my Japan game in Hearts of Iron.

As soon as Germany declared war against Austria, I contemplated simply blocking the conflict and signing an instant white peace with Russia to uphold the status quo. However, the Austrian borders were very ugly, so I chose to allow Germany's war to continue, with all intention for it to be a fast war and quick experiment in cheering war goals...What followed was instead a 12 hour marathon session, with half that time spent fighting a 4 front war and only advancing in-game time a month.

Now I remember why I never came back to this game; ain't nobody got time for that.

Now to be fair, half that time was spent simply shifting around and consolidating units, and reorganizing my command structure and order of battle... 6 hours going through my unit lists, renaming things, moving around unit attachments, redeployment assets, etc. For some reason, I find that kind of pointless time wasting to be fun and rewarding.

The other 6 hours were spent fighting a 1 month campaign in a war for which no one was prepared.

Right off the bat, French Iberia was under threat from an immediate Spanish advance as a much-too-small defense force fresh from defeat at the hands of Germany and Japan scrambled to form a defensive line. Japanese troops that were in the process of returning home instead were sent to form a defense in the foothills of the Pyrenees. With armor and numbers, and a Japanese air campaign launched over the mountains at every runway, smoke stack, and any gatherings of 10 or more Spaniards, Japan was able to enforce social distancing by shifting the front line back to the status quo by the end of the month.

Africa was in Africa, the story was much the same as it has always been, except initially I wasn't paying attention to this frankly uninteresting theater. Thus it took slightly more time and effort for the overwhelming superiority of the Japanese war machine to thwart the meagre Spanish defenders than it otherwise should have. This meant, by the end of the month, Spanish lines were only mostly shattered, instead of completely isolated and destroyed. *sigh*

The front in Japanese Mongolia @ Manchuria was another matter. Initially it seemed like Russia was just simply uninterested in the thousands of miles of sparsely defended border and we would have a cool Gentleman's agreement to just sit together and sing campfire songs. I was proven wrong when Russian troops began an attack into my far east and far west salient a week later. I had a bit of a crisis when it looked like my far west defenses might get surrounded, but some clever battle tactics and GLORIOUS JAPANESE AIR POWER was able thwart the initial assaults and secure enough breathing room to beat a hasty retreat towards a consolidated second line of defense I had planned further to the southeast.

It wasn't all gloom in Siberia, though. One armored corps defending the middle of the "line" almost managed an encirclement on its Russian counterpart, and an amphibious reinforcement and counter-invasion in the war east is looking to throw back and overwhelm the Russian attack. Oh and somewhere in there I found some time to send a few reinforcements from Mongolia to the Siberian line...sure, I could trivialize this entire war by drawing my entire army north from the border with China and bully Russia into submission with overwhelming weight of numbers, but that would mean turning my back to filthy stinking Commies.

At least Austria fell in a month to the combined Franco-German armies, and Japanese air power, but not before their navy sent 1/10th of my entire light cruiser force to the bottom of the Adriatic. Sure I forced them to withdraw, and can win any war of attrition, but it's still annoying.

So that's it, 12 hours of my life for a month of fighting for Germany to finally claim Austria. From here it's really a foregone conclusion. Even if I make it hard for myself against Russia, Japan's huge industrial might, 10x manpower advantage and absolute naval and air superiority (I mean it, the Japanese airforce and navy have both a roughly 2:1 advantage over the rest of the world combined) means absolute victory is eventually guaranteed. While fun to win, I don't see a point in really continuing with this time-sink when I have so many other games to play.


And so, I leave it there. From 1399 to 1937, over 538 years, Japan has gone from being a collection of fractured warrior tribes to the world's preeminent technological, economic, and military leader. The world's first, and only, true superpower. Who knows how that would last in the post-colonialism of the 50's and 60's...