Die Kaiserzeit : Chapter 8, Endsieg

Following the surrender of France the largest threat to Germany was the United Kingdom. However in the Baltic Sea Sweden was far too close to German shores to allow us to sail out to face the United Kingdom. So Operation Northern Lion was prepared, envisioning strikes at Gothenburg, Malmö and Stockholm it would shock and overwhelm the Swedes with hopefully low losses on both sides.

Against the British Operation Seawolf would be a slow slog. As we lack the naval strength to contest the entirety of the British Isles we will hold a small part of the channel open to our transports and convoys.

One of the primary tools in this task would be the Luftstreitkräfte. The German Air force had grown far since the times of 1914. It now had everything from interceptors to large Zeppelin fleets.

Not all German troops would be allowed to go at the new task of subduing the enemy however as the British presence in the Middle East was threatening to truly destroy the Ottoman Empire. We must keep them alive, for honors sake.

The Japanese finally realize we hold Qingdao and launch an attack on the small and starved garrison.

An unfair battle.

The British dare launch an assault on Hamburg? Have they learnt nothing from their innumerable defeats by the Kaiserliche Marine?

But this battle would prove different. As von Spee engaged the huge British fleet he was attacked by sea planes carrying torpedoes. Lacking in anti-aircraft armament they ran amok among our fleet sinking our damaging many ships.

A battered fleet is what remains of von Spee’s famous battle fleet. The smaller escorts gave themselves up to save the large Dreadnoughts which had cost the state a fortune to create. They died like true German heroes.

As the second battle of Helgoland comes to an end which was all in all a pretty even exchange the Russian civil war breaks out.

The communists control much of the Russian heartland while the Rebels control everything else. Of note is also the large amounts of Japanese troops within the country. The Japanese had been using the Trans-Siberian railway to transport troops to the Middle East for some time, they were now stuck in the middle of the civil war.

If we have learnt one thing from the battle of Helgoland it is that we need more planes than ever before.

Following the enormous exchanges between German and British fleets the British retreat to lick their wounds while we launch Operation Nordlöwe.

Our battered fleets continue the struggle.

Stormtroopers seize Stockholm and with it the king who refused to flee the capital, he in fact met with von Huiter and invited him into the Royal Palace, thanking him for saving Sweden from degenerate socialism.

After two weeks most of the Swedish population is under our control.

A line is drawn to hold the British in place.

Another army is sent east, to guard our borders with the considered hostile communist regime.

Operation Sandstorm is planned out, it envisions a concentrated push followed by a large encirclement maneuver after we breach the initial lines.

The Swedish government is finally caught in northern Sweden and surrenders. The king is promptly installed as absolute monarch and told to create a cabinet of loyalists.

Operation Sandstorm begins.

The British work on liberating Sicily.

The average losses in battles in the Middle East are proving quite high.

So high in fact that Operation Sandstorm is promptly cancelled. We'll hold the ground, but not take any back for the Turks.

The communist revolt collapses after a mere two months. The primary factor being the large Japanese presence along the Trans-Siberian railway which left large amounts of troops hostile to the communist regime within their territory. Since the railway was the primary means of transportation this doomed the communists from the outset.

With the end of the threats to both the east and the north Operation Seawolf is set to begin before November.

The Kaiserliche Marine sails out with their shattered remains to protect the landings. Both the British and German fleets have been vastly reduced since the onset of the war. The thought that navies wouldn’t fight due to how expensive they were proved false.

The landings are quickly contested by British and Serbian troops. It is clear the British have strong defenses in their homeland.

Attempting to land without dedicated landing craft is proving hazardous.

But just as hazardous are the normal battles in the fields of England. In Thetford 25 000 die in a few hours. Trench war has been broken by the modernized armies of tanks and airplanes but losses have by no means gone down. We are out in the open

The Stormtroopers take Dover and with it a crucial port.

A large concentration of troops is found in Cambridge.

More troops land in Dover, onwards!More troops land in Dover, onwards!

Cambridge is taken through sheer will and heavy losses. Germany is bleeding out her last young.

London is surrounded. Defended by a variety of divisions it will be the next great city to be destroyed by this war.

Everything is thrown into the battle.

And the battle quickly ends with much of the city being spared the fate of complete destruction, including Buckingham palace and Big Ben.

There are no reserves left this is the final push of the German Army.

Yet the bleeding must go on, for the Endsieg!

As we approach the British government in Liverpool resistance becomes fiercer and fiercer.

As Liverpool falls the first cases of the Spanish Flu start trickling in. What at first seemed like a minor disease outbreak would prove to be the deadliest disease outbreak ever. Killing even more than the deadliest war in history. What a cruel time we live in.

The British combat situation has collapsed. Most of their troops are now stuck in Wales with a small force up in Scotland. More than half of the original British troops on the isles have already surrendered or been killed.

And so will the government.

On the 21 of January 1918 the guns finally went silent in Europe. What had started in Serbia ended in Newcastle, England. In the Treaty of Newcastle the United Kingdom surrendered unconditionally to the German Empire. Reinforcements had been rushed in from every possession in the vast empire yet nothing could stop the final push of the Deutsches Heer. With the fall of the United Kingdom the Entente began to denigrate.

After 4 years of war the army is demobilized, the German men can finally go home, those that remain that it.

Europe has shifted enormously since the start of the war in 1914. Germany has gained huge tracts of land but with it the once German nation state now contains many minorities. The strong and stable state would be destabilized but still held strong by the German majority and the huge monetary gains from the defeated nations.

Meanwhile Austria-Hungary a dying empire gained huge tracts of land as well in a desperate attempt to gain glory and prestige. The millions upon millions of new Serbs, Italians and Ukrainians inside the empire would kill the already morbidly wounded state.

Japan was the first nation after Britain within the Entente to approach Germany for peace, at first demands for Qingdao and other German colonies were put forth but in the end a bribe of British colonies proved enough. Brunei, Malaya and Chinese ports proved enough to satisfy the Japanese.

America proved more reluctant to sign peace but by freeing old colonies of the British and handing them to America peace was reached in the end. Both sides reluctant to carry out a full blown war over the Atlantic, a cold war would instead begin.

If one could describe the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a dying state the Ottoman Empire was a buried state that had begun to rot. As Ottoman troops reentered old lost lands in the Middle-East they ran into the Arab nationalists who had fought so hard for freedom. What followed was a constant insurgency against Ottoman rule that would never truly be suppressed.

Much of Africa was restructured to fulfill the long held dream of a Deutsches Mittelafrika. With huge amounts of lands being seceded to Germany.

In the south to lands previously held by the British was promptly handed over, the collapsed British state handing over whatever Germany demanded to leave the British Isles.

The Central Powers would hold together and keep each other afloat during the period of 1918-1922 which saw communist uprisings all over Europe. France would fall to Communism, refusing German aid against the communists while the United Kingdom would barely hold on to their constitutional-monarchy.

Russia found itself in a constant state of strife between the monarchists, democrats, communists and many more small groups. The once great empire would become a backward warzone where German and Japanese forces fought a never ending proxy war.

In the end for all that had been lost not much would be gained. Empires would collapse and the world was set for another great conflict. The French looking to reclaim their lost lands, the British to restore their prestige and the Japanese to control all of Asia. The world barely cooled as the Great War ended.

Yet for Germany their glory would forever be enshrined in the history books. The nation that beat the world while carrying two dying empires on its back. Die Kaiserzeit would go on, the demands for abdication swept away by glorious victory of arms. The gray uniformed Germans had won themselves a great empire, an empire on which the sun never set.