The Soviets struck back like a mad and howling hurricane, throwing everything into a wide front assault.
Although the Dacian Wall had only reached level 9 in my game menu, it was more than enough considering the poor state of the Soviet Army in 1940. They had lost about 30% of their officer corps during Stalin's purges, and the Army Commissars walked behind the charging soldiers with a pistol in hand, ready to shoot anyone lagging behind.
Things weren't so good in Bukovina and Crimea, since they barely had the first level of forts, meaning a ditch and pillboxes, but this is why they had all the mobile artillery and air support possible. Bukovina also held half of the Romanian Army, with new units being recruited from all over the Empire to replace the loses.
Even so, the Soviets had 30000 tanks and some 10000 aircraft at their disposal, plus a constant wave of foot soldiers to throw at our positions. The anti-tank ditches filled with enough corpses that tanks could step over them, and our airforce did 5 sorties a day to stop the Soviet Airforce from taking our sky away.
Anti-air guns fired continuously, while the jet fighters kept our cities safe from high-altitude Soviet bombers. They couldn't have stopped a massive 3000 bomber raid, but then the Soviet air doctrine wasn't so advanced, nor did they have prepared airfields in sufficient numbers or size.
As for the tanks, the vast majority of the Soviet tanks in this time were T-26 and BT-5 or BT-7 light tanks, which should never assault fortified positions. The Dnister river crossing became bogged down with thousands of wrecks, while the troops concentrations were being shelled by our 305mm fort guns ranging 30 kms with heavy high-explosive shells.
The shell numbers were limited, thus each shell was ordered only by direct observation via spotting planes, but that also caused extreme devastation in the Soviet logistics, as a column of trucks or a supply train would simply evaporate from one battleship sized shell.
It took the Soviets about two weeks to calm down and start concentrating their troops at 35 kilometers away. The front grew quiet for a few days, allowing us to drag away useful stuff and recover guns and equipment from the fallen Soviets, while also burning bodies in huge piles.
Then, as the orders arrived for a renewed offensive, double-charge guns fired once more from our 12 inch forts, striking the command posts and the large vehicle parks even at 35 kms away. The Soviet offensive continued, but it had lost most of its momentum (plus officers and supplies) before it started.
A single Romanian cruiser with a small 4 destroyer escorts parked itself beside the Crimean isthmus and shelled the advancing troops with its 8 inch guns, and its 105mm dual-purpose secondaries, killing over 100000 Soviets before the ships ran out of munitions. It wasn't like they could miss troops concentrations walking in big piles, from a few kilometers away. Firing once every 3 seconds, with a single gun, it allowed a cruiser to maintain a constant rate of fire, as before the last gun fired, the first gun was already loaded and targeting a new pile of troops or tanks.
Even the T-34 or KV-1 tanks blew up in spectacular fireballs when hit with a 203 mm high-explosive shell.
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As the cruiser turned away, another one departed from Constanta to take its place. The Soviet offensive stalled and splattered on the Crimean Wall, as more bunkers and pillboxes were being built by unwilling POWs.
I sat comfortably in my armchair, while my big blood-filled dick was getting itself sucked and slobbered over. Pretty much the best way to be an armchair general, raking up kills without raising a finger. I did a lot of hard work to achieve this, now I could simply enjoy it.
In France things got worse, as the Italians invaded from the South, taking Nice with a clever maritime invasion to bypass the fort line. The French fleet arrived from Toulon to bombard the invaders, then fought the Italian fleet, causing each of them to lose half their fleet in a single major battle. The Italians lost 2 battleships, the French lost 3.
This wasn't supposed to happen though. I remember the French sank their own fleet In Toulon without a fight. Oh well. Clearing the Italian Navy would be easier this way.
In the Alps, the Italian Army was butchered in the narrow passes, not even reaching Grenoble.
Over in the Channel, the BEF and several French division still held out, as the Germans lost 2000 Panzers to the Low Countries and the Aras counter-offensive. Right!
I did provide 600 Wolves and 600 65mm anti-air guns to the Low Countries. And since the older PZ 1 or 2 didn't have the firepower to take out a Wolf, while half of the Panzer 3 got lost in Norway, yeah. I kinda fucked Adolf over, with my help.
France still held, if barely. The next wave of German reinforcements coming from Norway, Poland and Cehia would be enough to force the French to surrender, especially the new Hetzers and the brand-new Panzer 4.
Even so, Brest was still a free city, and was busy evacuating soldiers and civilian administration to Britain, while the BEF began to withdraw in good order, including most of their supplies and tanks.
The Americans approved the Land-Lease even sooner, and weapons and planes poured into Britain in large numbers, as the British were still the richest country on Earth at this time.
Indian and South-African troops attacked the Italian-held Ethiopia in turn, with some French support from Djibouti. I gave the Italians a month at most before they lost the place.
India was a populous place, and they could send millions of soldiers to die for their overlord.
Although Romania was at war with the Soviet Union, oil and grain still arrived from the Soviets to help Adolf conquer Europe. Sadly, the trains had to pass through Poland, and Polish partisans always had explosives and guns to blow some trains up, and you couldn't prove it was me! Those were Soviet artillery shells and guns, right?
Months passed while the kill counter spun in my menu, reaching 2 million kills, while at the same time Crimea was getting emptier with each transport ship. If and when Stalin got Crimea back, there won't be anyone living there at all, nor a single building still standing. As the Romans said "Make it a desert and call it peace." as they salted the ground of Carthage.
Most of the Soviet immigrants moved on towards America or the new Romanian islands, some Soviet Jews chose Israel instead and some stayed in Romania to fight the Soviets. I guess being starved to death by your own government wasn't well received?
In Murmansk, 5 Romanian submarines were prowling the Arctic Sea and sinking Soviet transports, and the same in the Baltic, even sinking a Soviet cruiser, the Kirov as it got close to Helsinki.
My Archangels were training hard, since the Sevastopol strike showed than only 70% of them actually hit their target, making us miss 6 Soviet subs than now hounded the Romanian ships in the Black Sea. Thus, 60 Romanian destroyers patrolled the sea and escorted our convoys, with spotter planes flying around trying to locate the missing subs.
Then our Sea Admiral had a great idea, sending a small task force to strike the Batumi port in Soviet Georgia and catching 5 Soviet subs at anchor. There was still a lone sub left, being praised by the Pravda and the Soviet radio, but anyways. The Black Sea was ours now.